In our second game with the Dragon expansion, I played the Conjurer. Early in the game, a "Coven" dragon card came out which allows you to exchange a spell for a dragon scale. This allowed me to become overpowered very quickly, and pretty soon I had a total of 11 dragon scales. Then card came up that let you add up all the dragon scales in the region and in your play area, roll a die, and if you got 22 or higher, you went to the Crown of Command. So, that was it for that game (I had an item and a follower that made the Dragon fight trivial).

We were disappointed that this combination (Conjurer and Coven) made one character totally overpowered. Granted, that card had to come out early, when the board was not very full, and I had to land on those empty spaces to keep building up scales. Even so, we didn't like the end result.

We searched for rules details which might prevent this from happening, and we unfortunately found one which weakens the Conjurer too much, in my opinion. The Conjurer can summon any "Adventure card" to her space. When you look at the Dragon rules, it states that Dragon cards are "like" Adventure cards, but are stacked separately. This distinction has led to the rules determination that the Conjurer cannot summon any Dragon cards to her, only non-Dragon cards (e.g. Adventure cards, Highlands cards, Dungeon cards).

I think this weakens the Conjurer too much, as a game played with the Dragon set will have mostly Dragon cards on it (if people go after scales aggressively, which we do in our group).

Does anyone have an opinion about this ruling?

Thanks!

I think that you can still move a faceup dragon card to your space.

Dragon cards are treated as adventure cards after they have been drawn.

The Conjurer's abillity is made for cards that are already in the game.

So it looks legal, but a overpowered combo..

Baradakas said:

Velhart is right, Dragon cards are treated exactly as Adventure cards when placed on the board. So, Prophetess and Sage abilities do not work on Dragon cards, while Philosopher and Conjurer are perfectly fine.

If the Grilipus Coven Place card shows up early on and the Conjurer is in play, there's nothing other players can do besides discarding the Coven by some means (Destruction Spell, Goblin Sapper and such).

I've noticed that there's a significant imbalance between the "Lose 1 Spell" penalty, typical of Grilipus Deck, and the penalties of the other Dragon Decks. Characters that have easy access to Spells will gladly sacrifice a Spell and sometimes get rid of a useless one, while nobody likes losing Objects or Followers. Moreover, there are combos like this which are impossible with Cadorus and Varthrax cards.

Conjurer is very strong and with such an ability it might go out of control with upcoming expansions. She's already too good for what I've seen in a handful of games with Dragon Expansions.

We had the conjurer in one game without the coven and she turned out well there as well. All pools and streams were empty before my character got there and even if it was close enough to be reached on my next die roll, it was moved before I had a shot at it. The only bad thing, which most of the time ain't so bad, is that the conjurer might miss many good cards by focusing on powering up with cards already on the board.

Is it just me or are the expansion characters getting more overpowered with each new expansion...? We always draw two characters at the start of the game and choose which order to play them, and it's rare to see a base game character from the start (except prophetess of course).

I don't believe the Conjurer to be overpowered. It's just one ability which you guys seem to think is too powerful. I heard it about the Assassin too! lol

Ell.

talismanamsilat said:

I don't think the Assassin is overpowered, just a winner in battle. He is solid but not comfortable in all situations. But I know that I am quite alone with this thought.

But Conjurer has not only the ability to conjure cards (which is very powerful considering it has no cost, while other poor guys like the Highlander have to miss a turn to get a +2 in battle), it has the "always 1 Spell ability" which is becoming more and more valuable as the expansions come out, adding powerful Spells with almost no fillers.

Let's say the Conjurer equals the Prophetess in power, but the option to encounter a known card of choice is far better than randomly drawing an unknown replacement card (you know what you miss but not what you get).

cojurer is strong. fully agree. but what you can say about pyroblast? Then what about deadly cut? Very strong guys! But on top of that you can place dragon rider. when she gets this horse, then game goes realy downhill: she may land wherever she wants due to 'go according movement roll plus up to 3'. next ability is +3 against dragons. if not enough, you may remember, that rider rolls 2 dice in battle or combat. unstoppable tripple abilities.

i wrote this with reason to highlight some more superchars from dragon expansion. we now playing sometimes without them.

The_Warlock said:

The Assassin almost died in my last game.

I was lucky that i have keep him alive.

gedasm said:

I think that the Fire wizard is a balanced character.

He can safe himself from strong enemies in combat.

Mainwhile, he can level himself up.

Oke, i must say that the dragonrider has too good abilities, but i have not play with that character yet.

But if you don't play with the dragon expansion, then the chance will drop that she encounter a dragon.

But she can still increase her chance by going to the highland etc

Thanks for everyone's input. It was insightful and helpful.

We're going to experiment with a little house-ruling on the Conjurer, and take away her ability to receive a spell every time she casts one. This will make her less powerful, for certain, but we're hoping that the Conjuring ability itself will keep her quite viable and perhaps a bit more balanced with most of the other characters.