I just cannot figure out the point of these cards, and they always seem to come up in the developers posts.

To me, as units they are too weak, and as developments they seem too expensive to switch.

I mean, I guess you could flip them to developments as damage is being assigned to melt some of it off, but that's not really even all that cool.

What am I missing, guys?

Glad I am not the only one. The wild rider looks like a strong finisher, but I fail to see the point in the tree spirts at this point in time. I am assuming some kind of synergetic (is that a real word) card types will come out that makes sence of them.

I wish I could tell you.

My group of friends wishes they had kept it simple and just made most wood elves have scout and then make the forest spirits gain or trigger abilities whenever an opponent discarded cards.

We still have two more battle packs that may tie it all together, so I will wait to see. Personally the main race I played in the table top game was wood elves. I quit back during 5th edition because GW spent WAAAAAAAY too long to update the race (last one to be updated) and just as the new wood elves came out 6th edition was announced. I am glad they were included in this game,but I just wanted to be able to make a good wood elf deck and don't think it will happen.

Fluff wise it doesn't make sense that they fight for order only either. That being said they don't work for destruction either. Wood elves are NOT good guys. They defend their forest from all outsiders, hanging and impaling the bodies of intruders along the edges of the forest. These are not night elves or peaceful forest elves. When travelers get lost or happen upon the edge of the wood elf domain all but one traveler is killed with uncanny archery as a warning to carry back home.

Keep those woodies off the table a while longer. In 8th eddition they realllly suck. They were great in 7th where the game favored combat scrmishers and light fast stuff, but the now the table top game favorers large blocks, and mean very large blocks, or cheap infantry, and with the new dice based charge distances, wood elves no longer outmanuver the other races.

Here is how I see things. When a unit becomes a dev it removes all damage on it (unless I missed this rule) this gives spirits the regenerate ability from Magic the Gathering basically. Many wood elves depend on developments to be effective. When you pay two resources to make a spirit a development you are adding health to the capital, resetting the damage, and boosting the wood elves.

Even if you don't include any wood elves the forest spirits can become walls with Regenerate (2) for you to stall and gather developments.

The way I can see a player using a unit like Treeman Ancient, is to play it to the Quest Zone. If opponent wants to get through they need to send 4 power worth of units (5 power to kill it) otherwise the damage will go away when the spirit "regenerates". This also means 4(5) power worth of units are not available to defend the Battle Zone.

Playing a Thornflesh Dryad to the zone is equally as useful because of its Counterstrike 2. Weenies will die if sent to attack the Quest Zone because of the Counterstrike 2 and at the same time the Dryad can just shrug off the damage when you use it to draw a card. In any card game drawing more cards than the opponent is a good thing.

Treekin are good for early game. 1 power units don't kill it and it can regenerate the damage on its controller's turn.

Protective Sprites can be used to stall having to flip a spirit over and slow the tempo of the card drawing. Before wood elves were introduced, players had to be careful about not decking themselves out. With forest spirits, players can now control how many cards they draw at the cost of resources.

I wish Drycha had the forest spirit ability. Imagine a 2/3 unit with the ability to pay 2 resources to gain power equal to number of developments int he zone PLUS the regenerate ability...oh well.

I think we are done with the spirits cards. They got maybe another type of dryad coming and that is it. If we see more cards that start to flip developments face up...watch out because these spirits will become a nightmare when combined with the wood elves placement of top cards as developments.

Dywnarc said:

Yeh I quit GW for that reason. They think their customers are dumb. "Let's increase the number of figures to qualify for a unit. Then reduce the number of figures that come in a box for these units and jack the price up. Finally, we change the requirements for adding lords, heroes, special, and rare units".

That is why I converted to Malifaux. Free rulebook. Free stat cards. Encouraged proxying. And the developers talk actively in the forums. Nothing puts a smile on my face more than when I see developers and players acting as one active community. I remember when Eric Johns commented on my painted figures. That made my day.

I would like to see a development reanimator card for the Spirits. For example if a card is placed facedown from the deck and when it's a treekin then you can flip it over despite that it wasn't played from hand or a tactic that let's you "mass"-flip all your treekin on the board.

I kind of thought it was similar to magic where you declare it as a blocker, then change it to a development. The creature survives, the enemy is blocked and the damage is gone. And how I mean similar to magic is once an attacker is blocked, no matter what happens to the blocker, the attacker is still blocked. Is the timing similar in this game.

eg. Block with walking sacrifice, then sac it for the card draw. The attacker is still blocked no matter what happens to the blocker?

Units don't fight duels. It's not one attacker versus one defender/blocker. The attackers as a whole deal their damage to the defenders as a whole, and vice versa. You're still basically right though. If you assign a unit as defender, and then sacrifice or destroy it or turn it into a development in the following action window, it won't help you much. You can however get rid of it in the action window following the assign damage step. The unit will be gone, and so will be any damage assigned to it. That damage won't be reassigned to other defenders or the capital. Take a look at the detailed combat structure in the FAQ.

There's also the possibility of responding to a Verena by creating a development out of your Wood Elf. It's often tough to keep the two resources hanging around for that though.

Papa