Hello, I've just made this goblin army. I don't know anything about the lands of Terrinoth, so, forgive me if there aren't goblins there.

The units put into play with The horde don't use their abilities.

I haven't tested them, but I think the Recruiter may be too good, maybe he needs just a 1 strenght. What do you think?

PGrande said:

Great cards!

I'm not sure the Recruiter is too powerful. First of all, he only adds one unit (potentially 2 attack). Secondly, you will want a lot of Screamer cards in your deck so you can swarm with them and make them more powerful, meaning you may encounter times when you have no 1-cost enemies left to draw with the Recruiter. I would probably change the text to say, "When played: Add a 1-cost unit from your barracks to the battle, wounded." The wounding makes it get discarded at the end of the round and makes it susceptible to abilities that destroy wounded units.

On the contrary, I think The Horde may be too powerful. Many of the card-drawing units draw 1 card or draw 2 cards and discard one. Those cards have no guarantee that you will draw a unit. This one guarantees that you will draw AND be able to play 2 units. If you take its attack even lower, that might even things out because it's going to bring out at least 2 more attack and potentially get you the bonus of outnumbering your opponents. I would increase the Assassin's attack to 3 and decrease The Horde to 1 or 2, probably 2 since it does cost a lot and, in my experience, it's not very often you can buy a 5-cost card.

I just tried out your cards against the dragon scenario. It was pretty tough because these guys aren't very powerful. I had a question, too. Do the Screamers get to use their ability against enemy cards? I didn't, which may be why it was so hard. But since destroy-unit abilities don't affect enemies, I figured this wouldn't either. Otherwise you're almost guaranteed to have more units than your opponent since you only battle one enemy at a time.

I never did get my The Horde into play, so I cant comment on its effectiveness yet (though I did purchase one).

Thank you for your feedback.

I didn't think about them in the solo play, but you are right, the buff for the Screamers does not apply against enemies. Maybe they can gain the buff if you control X or more units instead of more units than your opponent, so they work against enemies too.

I want races to play against other races in competitive scenarios, I don't play Cataclysm or solo.

I thought the recruiter was too powerful because he adds units for free to the battle and you don't need to have them in your deck. That means you'll be drawing good cards all the time. If you only buy Recruiters you'll be probably adding 4 STR to your army (agains other players): 2 for the recruiter and 2 for the screamer. 4 STR for 2 gold.

I agree The Horde may be too powerful, although it only picks Goblin cards which aren't very strong.

Thank you for testing it, I didn't still had the chance.

Very cool cards, can't wait to try them out. I like the mechanic for this race being about high numbers.

~telengard

You know, I don't think I expressed to you earlier how utterly cool it is that you made your own custom cards. Not just the game mechanics, but images as well! Nicely done.

Well, I finally got a chance to test your race out in my solo pseudo-Runewars game. I replaced the Latari Elves with the Goblins and played a 4-deck game with the other races. I'm not sure how well the Goblins do against the Waiqar the Undying. If the Waiqar player ever ends his turn by shuffling his deck to draw up to five cards, the other players pounce on him because they know he doesn't have reanimates in his discard pile, so he got taken out pretty early.

I think the goblins trump the Uthuk Y'llan because the Uthuk are about getting a few strong units, so they get swarmed by the goblins. My poor Uthuk were pulling an average of 5-8 attack each battle but the goblins kept coming up with 10. (I'll explain some goblin strategy below.)

The Daqan Lords really seemed to give the goblins a run for their money because they could swarm with footmen, defeating the benefit of the screamers.

Here's what I found with the Goblins:

Screamer : The Screamer is an amazingly powerful unit. If you get enough of them, you double the total attack of all Screamers, so it's actually worth while for an opponent to target this 1-cost enemy, rather than focusing solely on the more expensive goblins.

Recruiter : I'd say this is the bread and butter of this race. Because the goblins focus on outnumbering, you want to buy these units every chance you get in the early game. Assuming all goes to plan, they're basically a 4-attack unit. Pretty powerful, for only 2 gold. And the best part is that they set up . . .

Assassin : . . . the Assassin. The Assassin was the bane of the rest of the teams. Just by playing it, an Assassin will cause a faction to lose units. But the key to unlocking it's effectiveness lies in its combat ability: it is a "When played" ability, rather than a Resolution ability. This means you benefit the most from it if you make sure to play it only when you outnumber your enemy. The Recruiter lets you start off with 2 cards instead of 1, so on turn two, you can lay down your Assassin and destroy an opposing card. That's why the Assassin works so well with the Recruiter. For the exception of Waiqar's Reanimates, no other team has the ability to play two cards in one turn of battle, so your Recruiters guarantee a numerical advantage. Another thought on the Assassin is that it's ability to destroy when you outnumber your opponent is extremely powerful because it assists you in keeping your numbers higher than your opponent after you've already established some superiority.

Now, I haven't really been fair in saying Waiqar is the only other one that can play two cards in one turn because numerically, destroying an enemy unit is as good as adding two of your own, and the other factions have ways of doing this. Unfortunately, the Uthuk can only destroy enemies with their 5-cost unit, and that rarely sees play. Waiqar the Undying and the Daqan Lords have 2-cost archers that can destroy pretty effectively. If they take down the Recruiters or Assassins, the goblin numbers fall and the conscripted Screamers are weakened. Though I didn't play using the elves, their 3-cost Darnati Warriors would probably do well at destroying goblins, but since their card draw is only found in their 5-cost unit, they don't really have a chance. Only the Daqan Footmen and Waiqar's Reanimates stand a chance at outnumbering the goblins.

But what about The Horde? Sadly, in this game, the only 5-cost unit I bought was a Chaos Lord which was taken out by an Assassin on it's first time in battle. I imagine the Horde will only accelerate the goblin's strategy, but in all honesty, I think a deck full of Recruiters and Assassins will do pretty well against most opponents.

I've only played one game so it would be premature to say whether this race is too strong or too weak. I'll report again after a few more plays.

EDIT: I forgot the most important part: the Daqan Lords won the game. Once they discovered the strategy of picking off the Recruiters and Assassins with their Bowmen, the goblins were sent scurrying away with their ears held back.

Thank you, Budgernaut, for your comment. It's really satisfying to read things about one thing you've created.

The thing is I should have made the mechanics first, then test them and when I think they were fine I should have posted them, but I don't usually play board games and when I do, we can't always try new things because there is new people in the table. So it's really nice you tried them and gave me feedback. Making the cards is not that big deal, the images aren't obviously mine (they are Magic: The Gathering cards). What's more, if you have an idea of a new race I can transform it into card images

So you made your comments about the different matchups and how the match worked. Although you only played once, will you switch any value or any ability? Did you feel you were really playing an horde of little creatures?

Is it really worth to buy the 8 screamers if you know the Recruiters are bringing them to battle and then destroying them? You need to have them in your barracks in order to do the ability of the Recruiter.

I'll create more factions

PGrande said:

This time through I played the cards as you originally made them. The only thing I changed was making the temporary Screamer added by the Recruiter added to the battle wounded. This is important so that you don't get confused and put it in your discard pile by accident. At this point, it's too early to change stats, I think.

I did feel like I was playing with a swarm of little creatures because they really multiplied on the battlefield with the Recruiter.

I would say that it really isn't worth it to buy 8 Screamers. If you focus on purchasing Recruiters and Assassins you can do very well. On the odd turn where you draw only a single gold card you can buy a Screamer, but it's not necessary.

If I were to change a stat, I'd lower the Recruiter to 1 instead of 2, which was one of your first comments. But considering that the Goblins lost, I'm not sure they need to be adjusted.