So how do we fix the problem of no one wanting to really every play Quests? At last year's GenCon Championships, no one was using them and I heard from nearly everyone there (some of whom were even just casual players at heart) that they're 1. too difficult to fit into a tight 50-card deck, 2. too difficult to keep a Unit on them to get them to fire-off, and 3. just weren't that great in general for what they offered.

I've heard some suggestions that making stronger Quest rewards would work, though I think that just leads to Power Creep that ruins older quests so I'm not in favor of that.

The suggestion I have is for FFG to allow players to start with 1 Quest card in play at the beginning of the game. You'd have to rule that the Loyalty symbol on a Quest that starts in play is NOT counted, though.

To me, that seems like the best solution and easiest, overall. As it currently stands, Quests just aren't much more than an uninteresting and barely functional side-track to the main game.

Let's hear your thoughts, folks!

I think perhaps even starting the quest card in play might be too strong. I know many people that would an infiltrate as their starting quest every time. That could just be theory though. Starting the game with an infiltrate might not be as bead as I think it would be. Units that gain abilities while on a quest such as "cannot be moved from this quest" or (for empire or something) "this unit may be placed on a quest when it is moved to the quest zone"

I'm not sure if it would strengthen quests, but I think it would be nice if a unit could "hop" onto a quest if it's already in the zone. Say my ranger gets sniped off my quest, it would be pretty neat if another random unit that I happened to have in the quest zone could hop onto the quest either right away or next turn during the quest phase.

It's pretty hard, like you mentioned, to help quests without them suddenly being ridiculous.

There's no easy way to fix them and maintain their current flavor. The idea of some unit dedicating himself to several turns of questing is pure nonsense in the current environment. By the time a quest is really usable, the game is over and the side that is questing has probably lost due to lack of firepower in the battlefield or due to an ill conceived idea to quest.

The idea that this game was played competitively at GenCon.... Well, I've already posted what I feel about the state of this game as a competitive entity..

Starting the game with a quest might be ok. If you want to remove the loyalty icon, why not just make them all neutral with order/destruction only restrictions? I don't see a big problem with letting the icon count. It's not like the designers care about game balance. That, or their playtesting groups are just atrocious. The extra loyalty icon will ensure their use for no other reason than to speed up the game. Maybe it will promote multifaction decks.

Another idea is to allow quests to build up tokens on their own(still needing a unit on the quest in the quest phase in order to be used, so there's the turn delay), or have a great effect that can be triggered by spending resources like an activated ability. It'd have to be a pretty rockin effect.

Both of these ideas lead to a fast game in an already quick play environment. If that's how the game was "meant to be played" as some have claimed, then cool.

Another solution could be to increase the amount of health that zones have to create a longer game experience on top of making quests worth while. Of course Destruction would need a way to get developments into play. Increasing base health from 8 to 12 could make the game last a few turns longer. Though, all this does is prolong the inevitable. It doesn't make questing more viable. Quests would be ok if this were a 10-15 turn game. The game is a 4-7 turn game right now. Maybe the new cycle will prolong the game a bit with it's focus on developments. Maybe not. Quests can't really be good for probably another 120 cards. Make them a focus for the next cycle, or next expansion.. along with multifaction

Also, rein in the Dwarf.

Sorry if I sound grumpy, but I started playing Magic again and I hate that they can get it right, or at least fix things by cycling stuff out, and this game has Dwarf on one end, Chaos on the other, and the other factions in the middle, when it could be more balanced.

Problem:

My main problem when including quests into a deck is that most quests get redundant as soon as you have more then one. The best example is Forges of Nuln. If you get one early it is a great quests because it helps immediately. Another one wont help you, but to get one early you need to have 3 in your deck. Ancient Maps can help, but they are only useful if you have two different quests. The first problem is that including quests means you have to put cards into your deck that are useless as soon as you have your quest in play.

The second problem is that you need to commit 2 cards for every quest. This means you need to have a unit that you want in your quest zone and a quest in your hand to start your quest. Lots of units are useless in quests and this means you have to wait before you have the quest and the right unit in your hand, which slows quests down even more. If you can not play your quest immediately (no quest/unit), you will have to boost your card draw anyway. In this case playing the quests after boosting your card draw will over develop your quests zone. Quest that get better the more you have in play like Extending the Wastes multiply this problem. You need units without power to run three of them if you don't want to deck yourself.

Possible solutions:

New Card:
Make a new card combining Ancient Map (searching for a quest) and A Noble Quest (gaining tokens). That would help getting your quest into play and the card wont be useless as soon as you have it. This would help with limited quest like Infiltrate.

Rule solutions:
1. Let units move onto quest from your quest zone. You would still lose all tokens but you wont have to keep you quest-zone units in your hand until you get your quest. This would lessen the commitment to quest, which would make easier to justify in a deck not build around them.

2. Quests should be stackable. I use the Extending the Wastes to explain the idea. There are 3 Extending the Wastes in your deck to increase your chance of getting it early. You are lucky and you have a Bule and Extending the Wastes in turn two. You play them and start to gain a token every turn. Two turns later you gain another one and you have a Chaos Spawn. Now you have a choice either you play the quest and let the spawn quest on it, or you stack the quests. Bule would be questing on both quests at the same time. You would gain two token per turn and with a third tree tokens per turn. If you stack quests the unit on your quest will be a bigger target but you will lessen your commitment to your quests. This way even wait till you have 3 tokes quests would get useable.

Change Offering to Herkati that quest is nuts if you have multiples in play... those changes would make it impossible to deal with.

Some really good suggestions, Wichtel.

I think that allowing units to move onto a pre-existing Quest is one simple rule change that could help.

I'm intrigued by the idea of stacking Quests...could be cool.

Sidenote: Ancient Map isn't useless if you just use it with 1 Quest type because it could be drawn before you get your Quest and thus help you get it into play a bit quicker. It's still fairly useless and clogs up your deck to have more of them but it does have some measure of functionality.

Wichtel said:

I think a lot of these sound like great ideas if they want to change up the rules and errata a lot of cards, but I think this last sentence of your post makes the case that quests can be useful if they have the right abilities. Yes, just making new quests will make the old quests obsolete, but tons of the newer cards make older cards obsolete, so I don't really consider that a problem. Would people play a quest that got 1 token a turn, but let you remove a token to destroy an attacking unit? What about remove a token to give target unit -2 HP?

I'm guessing the answer to those (in some cases at least) is yes, which means that they can be made playable if their power level matches their disadvantages. It just seems like the disadvantages that everyone has outlined here are currently too high for the benefits currently gained.

To me, the key to making future quests more usable is that they need to have a way of gaining multiple tokens a turn, and the benefits need to be usable as soon as you have only 1 token (but obviously stronger with more tokens). Offering to Hakarti does both of these things, and is sort of playable.

I think just about anything that's been suggested would be an improvement. Making big changes to the fundamentals of how quests work though, could be confusing for players who aren't on these forums all the time following the latest changes.

another idea I had was to allow another unit in the quest zone to "take up the quest." If a second unit is present in the quest zone when a unit is removed from a friendly quest, you may move that unit onto the quest and not lose any tokens.

This could allow a strengthening of the quests, without giving them an early game surge.

Another possibility would be to allow multiple units on the same quest. Makes sense, right? Having more people on a quest should make it "safer" and more likely to complete.

Hi!

I also think, that Quest should be somehow boosted. Maybe good and simple idea is just to allow multiple units to "do" Quests and add additional token to Quest when unit starts questing. It should give us benefits from Quests sooner and only small FAQ for that is needed.

/Regards Colan

Well two things. One, like periculum said, allow multiple units to partake in the same quest. It makes sense logically and it makes sense from a play point of veiw. Two, make more "zonebending" quests, like Sac Tor Aendris and Wolves of the North. These quests are simply awesome in my opinion, allowing you to draw and beat on your opponent. A quest that allows some sort of tricking with quest/kingdom zones would be super nifty. Additionally, I'd say its important to keep the cost of this kind of quest low, otherwise they are pretty unplayable due to the fact that they will gib your ramp up in many cases.

And on a side note, if the power level of quests does increase significantly, there will need to be some kind of quest removal.

I came up with another idea on my way to work. Not sure how it would work out, but perhaps you could forfeit your card draw on a turn to add a token to a quest instead. Card draw is pretty important in this game so it probably wouldn't be used early game too much unless you were going for an early Infiltrate. Plus, it would help players manage their card draw later in the game when they have a handful of crap they don't need.

Personally I feel that the best fix for quests is to #1 make better, more useful quests and #2 make more cards that interact with quests. Things like the knight that costs less when you control a quest is a good start. Obviously the biggest issue with quests is that you are committing two cards to them and when the unit is destroyed the quest becomes useless. Really attachments have the same issue in that they are not useful without a unit to attach them too. With quests, at least the quest stays in play when the unit is destroyed. More powerful quests seem like the best solution to me. I understand your concerns about power creep, but most of the early quests had such a low power level that trying to keep new quests in line with them would mean that they would always be held at this low power level. Putting a power icon onto a quest might be an interesting idea as well. This kind of quest would need to be much more costly than a unit or support with similar power, as there are no cards able to destroy quests.

I know that I have had players in my area loss interest in WI when they made major rules changes early on and I'm wary of making any kind of major change for this reason. If there was going to be a rules change for quests the best idea that I have would be to allow you to play a quest on a unit in the quest zone as well (the opposite of how quests are used now).

Thanks for sharing your thought, Vita T.

I'm not enthused about the idea of the Power creep that will happen to fix Quests by just making them better but it might be the easiest solution, in some regards.

I am also against power creep in general. However in the case of quests they are so far behind the general power curve as a whole that I dont think that it even counts as power creep. Tactics, supports, and units are all much more powerful than quests right now, making quests that are better almost inst even power creep as it is just bringing them into line with the other card types.

It appears to me that the main reason Quests seem rather weak, is the fact that tournament deck building leads to very short games. 5-6 turns! I have seen players give up after a couple of turns because an opponent got their 'killer combo' out first. Personally I do not like tournament play for this reason, but can't knock the appeal to others. For me, it is much more the fun (and skill?) of playing the cards you get. I have divided all the cards currently available - 1 each of Core, 2 big expansions and 11 boosters of the 2 cycles to reach the UK so far - into 18 decks (3 for each faction) of 55 or 56 cards. Each deck is of roughly even strength of units, supports, tactics and quests. This way, each deck has an equal chance to win and it normally boils down to which player played the most efficiently. Of course, games will be longer, but still finish in 30-40 mins. Now you have time to invest in Quests and react to an opponents good combos before the game is over due to one powerful one. Therefore I havn't had any issues with Quests, but I certainly agree that more quest specific cards would be nice. I like the one that adds tokens to quests, so how about some that move tokens from one to another? With my style of play, I always thought 'Infiltrate' was a killer quest. However, in short games I can see it being pretty ineffectual. I always saw quests as worth the investment in time and resources to gain an advantage which the opponent would have to invest time and resources to counter. It obviously is down to style of play. Give me the old fashioned style of cut and thrust, nip and tuck, back and forth over a longer period of time than shuffle the cards, play 2 rounds and see who has the upper hand, then concede. Maybe I am getting old, but do others prefer this style? Cheers!

I like the idea of being able to add more units to the quest, you don't need to add more tokens for each unit. Use the same rules on the cards that the quest can acquire 1 token per turn. The only problem I see are the quests that allow you to attack or defend, there would have to be a unit limit on those.

Rashley said:

Nothing wrong with liking and playing the game to suite your style. I don't think it means you're getting "old" by any means. It sounds fun! I appreciate hearing your thoughts.

Wytefang said:

I see you point, and usually rail vs. power creep as well - but in this case I would say make better cards.

We don't need a rule change to make Chaos better, we just need better cards. Is that power creep? Dang right it is, but that is how you fix it.

If you want to talk about issues with rules and power creep, I would say the Hero's are WAY worse. Every time I look at a Hero I instantly say 'is this the best Hero for this faction?'. If not, bye-bye. SOMETIMES I put more than one in a deck, knowing which zones I will play them in, but rarely. Also, remember Destruction/Order nuetral hero's - sometimes they not only have to be the best in faction, but the best overall. I would rather see them axe the 'one per zone' rule than anything with quests. It isn't like Hero's are any more overpowered than non-heros, and they have the negative of being unique regardless. *shrug* I die a little inside when I see a cool Hero, but it obviously won't be played due to them having one 10% better.

The big problem I see with quests is they are to fragile. You have to have a quest and a unit on that card. While you cannot destroy the quest you can easily destroy or move a unit on a quest negating any progress made on the quest with one card generally costing 0-2 resources. You then have to place another unit on the quest and begin building from scratch.

Another issue is that some quests you only need one of. Having three in a deck makes the others worthless after the first is out.

Lastly quest with no unit on them do nothing.

Some ideas.

As noted before allow multiple units on a quest. This needs some thought as certain defensive or offensive quests might become to powerful but I think the idea deserves some serious consideration.

Allow quests to keep some progress when unit is destroyed. Maybe quests don't lose resources till the end of the owners next Capital phase allowing them to put down another unit to continue the quest, picking up where the previous questor left off. Perhaps a quest only loses half of its resources when a unit is destoryed leaving some clues behind for the next questor.

Allow quest stacking to have an effect. If you have one quest out and place another of the same name underneath maybe vertically you get an effect. Perhaps it produced 1 power now. Perhaps it allows another unit to quest on that quest. Perhaps it simply adds another resource immediately.

Those are some thoughts.

Nice thread.

-Wraith428

Well I see some nice ideas here, good to know people want to use quest more. However I also see some idead which I think will make too much impact (like just pumping up the power of the cards, getting more units on one quest or stacking powers). I think it will just leas to (another) imbalance in the game, where I doubt it will get any better or more fun to play the game.

I think we need to look at why we don't use them and then look how we can make little tweaks to the game to make them more feasible to use (I still like the idea that Quest should be viable in a competative deck build around them, but are not a MUST-HAVE in all decks)

So whats the problem then (well what I think):

1: Too fragile.

Like Wraith explained, we have no quest removal cards (I hope it will never be needed in the game), but removing units from the quest in many ways can be done easily, leaving the player to begin from scratch with collecting tokens) Even making it harder is that you MUST play the quest card from your hand onto a quest, forcing you to maybe hold some quest cards in hand. The reason that I never hope for quest-removal cards, is because we allready need anti unit, anti support, anti tactic, and now becoming even more important next cycle, anti development cards. a yeah we need some attack as well, some spells, some defense etc well if we keep the 50 cards format then this way everybody will get similar decks with the same/best anti-cards and some few slots left over for variation in deckbuilding.

2: Too slow:

Like said before, this game seems to be just a few turns with competition decks (though when I play regular fun games with friends we usually take our time and enjoy, sometimes even using Quests!) This means for most quest that the game is usually over before they could ever be usefull.

3: What to do with multiples?:

Again, allready being discussed, but very true. With no quest removal you should only need 1 card, but then you get trouble with drawing it (and since you need some turns to collect any tokens you want it out as soon as possible). So what can we do? Ancient map is usefull, but how many copies of that do you take? (besides taking up slots, ancient map makes the quest more expensive as well, not something you want in this fast game as it is right now) Also, ancient map has the same problem, it is so specific because what to do if you allready have your quest on hand or on table?

4: Taking up slots you could use better (well as in the stage the game is in now)

Taking up slots in the deck you need for other/better stuff. I guess all the above makes you think twice about taking Quest in your deck, occupying slots you could use for that handy spell or whatever.

Well what to do with these 3 problems? (number 4 will solve when the other 3 are solved)

I think this will be very hard to tell, because nobody (well at least the players) have no idea where the game is exactly going. Sure we know some stuff or have some rumors, but nobody knows where we will be in 2 years. But since nobody here in the forums wants to sit and wait to see what will happen I'll give my thoughts:

Problem 1: This problem applies to most quests, but not the ones (wolves of the north and protect the empire) that do not work with collecting tokens. I don't know where the game is heading (maybe we get more quest cards that work without tokens) so I am not sure if this is the main problem where we should focus on with getting quest to use in games. I did read some nice ideas, like not losing tokens until your next capitol phase. Though I think this could also become tricky as we do not have a quest removal card, so could be really hard to stop the effect of the quest. The other idea was leaving half of the tokens ("leaving clues behind for the next questor") and I think this should work brilliantly. Opponent gets a real change of stopping the effect of the quest for the moment, but opportunity for the player to retaliate. However I think it should also be possible to put cards from the quest zone onto a quest card (I still don't get why the developers chose to do this)

Problem 2: I think this is the biggest issue and also really hard to fix. Because if you play a quest in turn 2 (Usually you would try to use your resources better at the start then spending it on a quest) and the game is (allmost) decided in turn 6, even if some effect triggered, you did not get its effect in time to change the result of the match. So what to do when it's too slow: make it faster (because I don't see it happening that the game itself will become much slower any time soon). "A noble quest" is a nice start, but too weak to change the game right now. I really think we should get more (good for their cost, good enough even without the quest interaction) cards that interact with quest (or even the unit questing). The new Brettonion Knight is a great example and there could be thought of a ton of other cards that could interact with quest as well. Some random examples that came into mind: Tactic, action "force each opponent without a questing unit to give you up to 2 resources, if able", or: Attachment, action "1power icon, attach to target questing unit you control. if attached unit is destroyed, instead leave it in play and put this card into the discardpile"

Problem 3: Well I think I have some nice ideas for this one: Making cards that make use of useless cards:) Again, the card should be good enough to be considered in decks, even without the quest cards. Example: Neutral Support, 2 cost, 1 power icon, action: "put target quest card in your hand face down as a development, you choose which zone. (limit once per turn)". Maybe people can even think of better ones like this, or variations for each race or 1 for order and 1 for destruction. With the comming of the morsslieb cycle getting cards like this will allways be nice and makes it viable to get multiple copies of 1 quest or even using different ones (depending on what deck your opponent play you can choose which quests suits best and get rid of ones that won't work)

I like the idea of being able to have an additional unit on a quest to make them less fagile. For quests like Wolves of the North, only one of the units may attack. In addition to makeing it less fragile, it could be ruled that when a second unit is placed on a quest, you may add a token. This helps with speeding up the quest as well. As far as being stuck with a useless quest due to already having one in play...maybe a zero cost tactic that reads something like "discard a quest card if you already have the same quest in play. If you do, you may place a token on the quest in play" Again, speeding up the quest. Then of course units with abilities that make them better with quests or abilities allowing them to move onto quests. I also like the idea of only losing half of the tokens if there are no longer any units on the quest or maybe even just losing one token for every turn that there is no unit on it. I think there are a lot of simple fixes for quests.

Another idea to make quest more powerful could be, that cost of playing unit which is about to quest is decreased by number of tokens on that quest card. And If unit stops questing, resource tokens are removed not immediately but as it was noted at capital phase next turn - so user have opportunity to keep questing.

/Regards

With some help from Doc9, I can see just granting quests the ability to discard a copy of the same quest to immediately get another token on that quest. I've seen many games where you can discard a card to heal a character of the same name, since they know you won't be doing anything with that second copy.

At least with this game, we have developments. I love having easy choices for my developments. Not too many of course, but easy choices are always nice.

Perhaps a bit a late but I just saw this topic.

We've been over this before but now we all have a fresh view on it. And I like a lot of the answers from the players here. I do have some suggestions for some of the ideas.

What to do about multpile copies of the same quest?

Well there's all ready a precident for this rule mechanic in another FFG called Civilazations. In that game you research technology by earning "trade" points equal to the technology's cost and then turning all your trade in reguardless of how many more points over the cost you earned for the tech. Now if you earned a gold coin then your trade points won't go below the number of gold coins you have. The same concept could be used here for quests that need resources on them. How about placing the extra copy of the same quest face down as a special quest zone developement under the quest. Then said quest's resouces could never go below the number of copies of the quest. You'd still need a unit on the quest to use it though. Then there is no need for additional types of "control" cards for handling an opponent's quests. You can play developement control cards or simply bump his units off the quest.

Current Quest Mechanics Concerning Units.

I agree that making a player play a unit onto a quest is silly. Any unit moving into the quest or being placed in the quest zone should be able to take up the quest as needed. And we all like movement control cards so this naturally opens up avenues for new cards.

Lastly Quest Control Cards.

I mentioned this all ready but many folks seem to be against quest control cards. I am as well as they are a good clever source of loyality icons and the occasional usefull mechanic. However if you wish to use them I'd suggest putting the effects onto units or support cards that we'd like to use. Like the questing knight that was made. A brilliant card and both order and disorder could use more cards like that. Say a disorder unit that stole a quest resources when played from hand or a high elf unit that could be put into play with damage on it in exchange for putting a quest resource out. Fun clever effects that would be nice. One card propeling another from simple to very powerfull.

Perhaps remove the following from the core rules

If the questing unit leaves play for any reason, the quest card remains in play but all
resource tokens accumulated on that quest card are
discarded, and returned to the pool in the centre of the table.

and add the following to each Quest card

Forced: Remove 1 resource token from this card at the beginning of your turn if there is not a unit questing here.

This would provide a temporary respite from the effect of the Quest (until the player was able to send another unit questing) without completely negating all the effort that went into advancing the Quest.

I think it's a good step in the right direction and I may try it out in my local playgroup to see how it affects the balance.

I also believe that the addition of more cards that feed off of Quests (like the new Knight) would encourage the use of Quests.

Finally, I think that with the emphasis on developments in the next cycle the designers are trying to extend the length of the game slightly, which again would help to overcome some of the limitations of using Quests.

I don't think that having Quests show up in the ultra-competitve GenCon decks is a realistic goal. However, I would like to see them become a staple in almost every other environment.

We actually had a discussion on this a while ago. Note that not all quests are terrible - it's the "needs 3 counters" ones that are largely unplayable.

I think the first thing to try (as I suggested then) would be the tweak where they lose just 1 counter until the unit leaves the quest. I question whether this would be enough, but it's at least a starting point and would make them more appealing in the semi-casual space.