I've been playing "Oath and Anvil" for a while now and have figured out plenty of ways to win with the elves, but each of them always feels like just a little more work than the winning strategies of the other factions. Sadly, I've come to the conclusion that the expansion did not give this faction the balance fix that was required.

So…. I've been thinking about ways to fix the elves through easy game play changes, in particular giving them a slight leg up through two simple changes:

1. Elves always go first: We've noticed in all of our Rune Age games (core set and expansion) that the first player has a definite advantage over the other players. It's small, but it's there. A very easy way to give the elves a slight power boost is to say that elves always go first. If you're looking for some sort of story rationale for this, you could say that their mastery of influence gave them advanced warning of impending hostilities so they were first out of the gate.

2. Starting gold bonus: The elves replace one of their starting 1-gold cards with a 2-gold card. Again, this is a minor tweak but when combined with always going first the power boost will really add up over the course of the game.

So what do you think? Would this help the elves in their search for balance or is this messing with the game too much?

How do you feel about dwarves? I personally feel they are weaker than elves.

I feel that card-draw is one of the most important abilities in this game. To me, this is the reason the Latari Elves are so week. The Uthuk Y'llan have a 2-cost card drawing ability in the Flesh Ripper. The Daqan Lords and Waiqar the Undying have card-draw (of sorts) in both their 1-cost and 3-cost units. The Latari Elves, however, must obtain their 5-cost unit in order to get their card-draw going. Additionally, the Uthuk Y'llan and Daqan Lords don't seem to get as much out of their 5-cost units as the Latari Elves do. This makes me wonder if giving everyone more starting gold would level the playing field without giving anyone an unfair advantage. I think it has potential, but the Dark Knight will probably be a bit broken since he would be so easy to purchase. Still, in a 3-player game, I'd be willing to try trading some 1-gold for 2-gold in all players' decks and see where it goes, as long as nobody plays Waiqar.

I don't know how I feel about changing gold standards, and especially limiting playable races, to accommodate a particular race.

To discuss card draw potential, one way of trying to play elves is buy early on the Storm Sorceresses and either do one of two things when they hit your hand: use them to attack a stronghold or city, OR activate them for their influence, gaining early on high influence cards that no one else has garnered yet AND destroying her from your deck at the same time, further accelerating the deck to get what you just bought as a high price card one card earlier (again, now with the sorceress missing from the deck).

I am sure there is more strategy to using the elves that others haven't seen yet but I recommend maybe trying that tactic for a little while and see if that helps before modifying the entire game.

Tromdial said:

I agree. That's exactly how I play elves. I'm just saying, it still takes a while to get the Pegasus Rider.

I'm crossing my fingers that elves and dwarves will get a boost in the next expansion and undead will not get any more rediculously overpowered as they are now.

To me it's not the fact they don't have card draw, It's the fact that there 1 cost unit just doesn't do anything early. while the reanimates and footman can draw or get another unit. The orc's one cost can become a 2 strength. The beserkers can combo with the flesh ripper and the drawfs can find more gold to get you that big unit early and the elfin archer is just a 1 strength unit, can't get any bigger or draw another unit. I think the easiest way to hot fix them is say change the elfin archers effect to say (and this is just an idea) Resolution: this unit gains plus 1 strength is you have an untaped stronghold or maybe Resolution: spend 1 influence to make this unit get plus one strength

Zerosaber321 said:

That's a good point on why the elves are so inefficient at the beginning of the game. Though I play with what FFG publishes, your suggestion to how it should have been done is not bad. Likewise, though the elves could be useful mid to late game for their ability (which I have seen), they still clutter the deck because they only have 1 strength. I'd say that card may be the real reason elves feel so weak is because the archer card slows them down by a turn or two compared to the other decks. Good eye, Zero.

Yea, that is a food point about the Deepwood Archer. It's funny because those units are quite awesome in Runewars (the board game, not the scenario).

Will there ever be an official errata or fix for the elves?

I see so much potential with this game, but dividing into factions always has a tendency to have a balance struggle. In our playtests too, we often scratch our heads in dismay on how broken other races are just because the elves can never be at par.

I hope that FFG will spend a bit more time in hearing the community who's striving to make this deck building game top tier in the genre. As of now all the "bugs" are creating a negative buzz in the social world for quickly adapting the game.

If one hasn't played the game too many times, I can understand why one would think the Elves were in need of a fix. They don't play like the other factions and have the worst early game. However, they have the best mid-to-late game (and the best late game by a large margin) and I feel like they are the best faction in the game for that reason.

The trick to playing the Elves is to get Forest Guardian as quickly as possible, as it is the best unit in the game (if the best isn't Beastmaster). It's unkillable, it makes two very good units (Darnathi Warrior and Pegasus Rider) unbelievable, and it shuts down the ever-frustrating Stasis Rune (amongst other cards). The Elves don't need to go first - they need to go LAST to get Forest Guardian for free off of Reinforcements.

A cause for limits in the development of the deck will be if there are few (or no) cards that help you trash cards. If you're playing the Elves, you should be trashing cheap gold early and often, and replacing it with gold that will help you get to better units quickly. At the beginning you should use the bump from Storm Sorceress to offset the inability to get cities at the beginning of the game to get cards to trash out the junk and gold to buy the good units. When you get down to a deck of around 8 cards and something like: 2 x Forest Guardian, 3 x Darnathi Warrior, 2 x 3 Gold, 1 x Pegasus Rider… you're going to have a very hard time losing.

I saddly have to disagree. The saddly part comes from myself believeing exactly what you discribed. there early game sucks but I considered them to have the best late game. However game after game they started to go down hill because we all figured out how to play against them. either A rush them early when they can do nothing or the most popular option just watch them. At some point your going to spend most if not all of your infulence or a 3-gold or or perhaps something even more expensive and thats when you will not be able to efficitly defend yourself. The forest guardian helps a lot but it can't always be there. so In just my own experience there really easy to beat in a pvp senerio, expecially if they don't get an early helping dragon rune.

Zerosaber321 said:

Sure, if everyone decides to rush the Elves early because they are they Elves, they will go down. If one person gets picked on, they will go down regardless of the faction they are using. I would encourage your playgroup to avoid this method of playing as it leads to an unbalance and a less enjoyable experience. Attack when it makes sense to attack.

What you're saying is that because the Elves are so strong, they get picked on early; and I agree they are that strong and therefore responded in kind. As far as your option B - "Watching for them to spend all of their influence", Forest Guardian negates the cost of using Leonin Rider and Darnathi Warrior and proper use of Deepwood Archer will allow you to free up influence. Also, a good Elves player wouldn't exhaust all of their influence while holding cards that use influence.

If you build your deck right and play correctly, the Forest Guardian can absolutely always be there.

After 100+ games, the consensus in our group is that the Elves are the best faction in the game, followed by the Uthuk and Orcs. Perhaps not coincidentally, I believe the best three units are Forest Guardian (Elves), Beastmaster (Orcs), and Chaos Lord (Uthuk).

I did watch tonight my friend survive 7 rounds against an undead overlord alone. I had to pick up my jaw every time he broke the undead's combos by using the Darnathi [?] Warriors: 1 influence destroy guys defense, and Forest Guardians to boot. He couldn't accelerate any further than that but that's because the Overlord is just stupid powerful. I was impressed with the otherwise pvp potential.

Don't get me wrong I'm not talking about 3 people ganging up on the elves. In a normal 4 person game it often ends up spliting into 2 1v1's. And what I ment to say is since the elves starting is slower than pretty much everyone else they end up being very open to everyone else within say 5 or 6 turns. I know they have amazing PVP potential but it takes to long to get there under normal circumstances. If they hit one of the more powerful dragonrune cards then sure they may get there or if perhaps that have a bit of luck and hit the hands they need to hit but realisticly (at least in my own experience) it ends up not getting quite there in comparison to some of the others.

I know the forest gaurdian is there to (in my opinion) make the deck work. Without that ability they would just run out of influence way to fast but realisticly It can't be there everytime. Plus without a wealth and industry or (insert really good dragon rune card here) they have to go though normal means of getting rid of there 1-gold cards and such which also take up more room in the deck. I like the elves and I see and have seen the damage they can do but in my over all experience they just take a couple turns too long to get to that unbeatable point

Knapik said:

If you, as the Elves, don't play your Forest Guardian as your first creature, you're not playing correctly.

And if your opponent plays Stasis Rune as his first card in the combat, he's obviously a beginner.

Conclusion: shutting down the Stasis Rune with a Forest Guardian will only happen if either one of you (or both) is an unexperienced player.

Freeman said:

Except, of course, on the rare cases where your opponent holds just one Stasis Rune, or one Stasis Rune and one unit, and you have two Forest Guardians. Not like an advantage for you that will happen often.

Edit: repeated message.

Freeman said:

I think Knapik was suggesting that the Elves need to be the last player, not play Forest Guardian last. By being last player, they can get the most out of the Reinforcements event card and hopefully get the Forest Guardian.

Budgernaut said:

Yes, I understood that part, but I was not adressing the comment about profiting from Reinforcements, but the one I specifically quoted: " The trick to playing the Elves is to get Forest Guardian as quickly as possible, as it is the best unit in the game (if the best isn't Beastmaster). It's unkillable, it makes two very good units (Darnathi Warrior and Pegasus Rider) unbelievable, and it shuts down the ever-frustrating Stasis Rune (amongst other cards)." One of the listed advantages of the Forest Guardian isn't really working unless one of you (or both) is an inexperienced player, as I said, and for the reasons I mentioned.

Of course every instance doesn't make Forest Guardian trump Stasis Rune, I was only stating that as an example of its efficacy. If your opponent has one Stasis Rune, and they know you have a Forest Guardian, it should rightly affect their play. There are myriad instances where you would both want to play Stasis Rune as your opening play and even more where you would want to play Forest Guardian after your first play (assuming you aren't head-to-head with the Orcs.) If you've played enough, you've already encountered these circumstances many times - especially the Stasis Rune scenario - but here is a bit on Forest Guardian vs. Stasis Rune:

Say you are playing Elves and have one Forest Guardian in your 10 card deck. Your opponent has a Stasis Rune in hand. The opponent has to consider the possibility you are holding the Guardian and will, of course, wait for you to play your Forest Guardian to play his Stasis Rune. If you lead as the defender with Forest Guardian, your next unit will die to Stasis Rune. However, if you read your opponent correctly (and have influence free), you can wait and neutralize the Stasis Rune. The best part of all this - you are altering and almost controlling how your opponent plays (specifically with Stasis Rune) by just having Forest Guardian somewhere in your deck. Awesome.

Knapik said:

Sorry to disagree, after more than 100 plays, I can't see a myriad instances where this will happen. In your example, you didn't adress a very important fact: which faction is your opponent playing? Does he have killing units in his deck? Do you know for sure he has a Stasis Rune in his hand? You can't advice any strategy withouth having all these things in account. If your opponent went heavy on killing units, playing any other thing but the Forest Guardian is giving away one of your units for free. Your only way to stall with the Elves is playing the Forest Guardian as your first unit (of course, you could also play the Pegasus, but then you're being not very clever, because stalling this way would be harmful to you)). If you played first a Leonx, and you target your opponent, you are actually giving him a better hand if he is the defender. If you target yourself, you are wasting influence. If you play first a Darnati, you are putting him into play without an interesting target. If you play a Pegasus, you don't know what you're doing. And if you play a Deepwood archer or a Sorceress, I would question why this two units are in your 10 card deck, lacking efficiency…

For the same reason, I, as the attacker, will wait to play the Stasis Rune, or simply save my killing units. There's no sense in playing otherwise.

I would also debate your statement about the Forest Guardian being the best unit on the game. It's not that good on coop., except if you happen to have both on your hand, and I can't find a lot of situations where 2 Barrow Wyrms aren't even better, even on versus. For instance, if your first Barrow Wyrm gets killed by the Stasis Rune, not only it doesn't matter, because you can retrieve it with your second Barrow Wyrm, but you've actually stalled, giving you the edge; this won't ever happen with the Forest Guardians…

Hi all, I know this is an old thread, however I felt the need to jump in and share a thought that I haven't seen until now.

Everyone I have been playing for now have exclaimed that they think the elves are underpowered. Now all of my friends, including myself, are new to the game, playing it for two months now. So I wasn't quick to jump to conculsions and tried to think logically about the elves, and some other races in particular:

- As this is a "Save the elves" campaign, I will start with them. The main reason for the elves to feel underpowered has been pointed out - card draw. They have few early card draw cards, and the Pegasus is so **** expensive, compared to the rest of the races. Yes, dwarves can't draw units, but they can draw gold, which fuels their ranks, and gives them combat advantage even early on (not regarding PvE or PvP, bare with me). However, the true reason the elves feel so slow is different, and it could not be changed by any expansion. It was also pointed out, but not discussed enough. Here it is, my fellow deckbuilders: The Deepwood Archer;

- So what has the poor archer done to be so neglected? Well, let's take a few steps back and look into much wider perspective, going beyond card games and board games, let's just think about games. Why is every piece in chess valuable? Because it works in synergy. Some are stronger, some are weaker/slower, but you need ALL of them, for they give you positional advantage. Therefore we can say they are balanced (strength to numbers). But the archer lacks something, and it is kicking power. For 1 strength the ability you get is really situational, and works well only with high-influence cities which are hard to get early on. So they are not viable early-game unit... But are they worthy in late-game? Doubtfully yes, as 1 or 2 in your deck can serve as cheap cannon fodder as well as help you refresh a 2/3 influence cost city to purchase another card or save a few valuable ones while still gaining something before that. Yet they still clutter the deck and almost every other card, even the one-gold piece is better than them in 90% of the cases.

- So, I have played at least 20 games in a row with the elves in the vanilla game (do not say that the expansion fixes them, beacuse a) it doesn't completely, b) a faction must be balanced in every version of the game because all individual units must be balanced by themselves) as well as the expansion and tried every strategy I thougt. And I hadn't had a single case in which I would like to buy more than 1 archer for the whole game, even while throwing them at the attrition die monsters. Compared to the rest of the cards in the deck they are just... lacking, as a single sorcerress is marginally better than two archers, in terms of combat strength, deck speed and influence gain (yes, it is hard to get 2 cities with the long-eared guys so you can get more than 3 influence from 2 cards). This is the place to mention the best strategy I found - buy sorceress, use them early to take strongholds, spend influence to keep them in hand, destroy them at turns 4-6 for two 3-gold cards. There - the early strength for strongholds/ neutrals is covered with them, you clear the deck later on and get to 5-gold hand by turn 5. And this strategy allowed for a small deck that does not require ANY cities to get in the zone. So... no cities, no great archer value.

- OK, so this was vanilla, and I was really looking forward to taking the expansion and be proven wrong - that there is a synergy. And then I saw the Forest Guardian and my ships sunk - no, it is amazingly beasty card, but negates the importance of archers even more. So now a single guardian allows for a pegasus + 2 darnatis combo for 1 influence... alright, let's not jump to conclusions. Maybe archers are good for the elves economy? The mercenary cards seems to give more sense to refreshing influnce, but then again, why shouldn't I just get a sorceress? The deck will be smaller, I will have the 2 additional influence I need so badly for whatever reasons, and also I will have a 2 strength unit. So, my point is not that the Stormy chick is good, that she is, but that the archers do not represent enough value by themselves. They have seen a couple of ok turns, where they allow me to take one neutral card and refresh my stronghold to be able to keep a card in hand. Doesn't sound like much, now, does it?

As I really like the elves, I tried, and compared them to the others. Bottom line - I think you are right to say they are amazingly good race, but none of it is thanks to the archer. I would really like to see a strategy, involving mass archers in a reliably working deck, so if someone thought of something, please share.

Now, that I have shared my point, I think that the archers need a bit of a rework to be viable. Will this make the elves too strong? I like one of the solutions suggested above - change their ability to spend 1 influence for 1 strength. It will allow them to get a bit more descent early game, without breaking the late game, and will certainly reduce the incoming damage from early player aggression against them. Please notice that any analysis I have made does not make a gameplay comparison to the other races for each must develop well on their own and not be compared like "in battle Forest Guardian is better than the Giant Troll because...". If we can reason why a unit is good by itself and for the rest of the deck, it is enough for the balancing act.

Cheers and happy playing!

It has been a while I posted (nearly half year, that is) and even though I am not ready with the final modifications (due to work, many other games and outright laziness ) I would like to give you a few ideas on which I have been working, so that you may try for yourself if they will make the game more interesting or balanced in favor of your specific game group.

To keep it short: after a lot of thought my changes to the factions were compressed to the 'light' side: Daqan, Elves and Dwarves:

- For Daqan, I was not really happy with the Siege machine, but for now, I have left it like this. If it is not very popular, you can always experiment with discard/destroy text instead of plain discard for the ability. I do not recommend it, though.

- For the elves, I got the best result by changing the archer's text to: You may discard Elven Archer from your hand or from this battle. If you do, reduce the influence cost of your next spend influence action by 1. Also, this goes with the Sorrcerress changed ability - Action/Combat action: Destroy a card in your hand. If you do, you may refresh a stronghold or city you control. If you decide to try the game with the above changes, keep in mind that you should increase the Darnatti Warrior's ability cost to 2 influence. This combination of abilities reintroduced the archer to the game, while making the deck balance for the elves really interesting and providing interesting choices for your opening game. Try it and tell me what you think.

- For the dwarves, after many tries, I decided that no card draw will be better for the faction overall, so I changed the Forgemaster like this: You may treat this unit as a gold card worth 1 gold (it was already possible in over 95% of the cases to buy the Digging machine on your first turn, so not a big change, but one that allows you to keep those dwarves as your front line and later on discard them for positive effects like destroy an enemy or even remove them with the mythical). The bigger change and the one I am really proud of, is the cahnge to the Demolitionist. The original way he worked actually made taking 2-gold cards a bad strategy overall and was cutting off a few good deck types, while the only bonus provided was to look the hand of the oponent (which, honestly, was dumb - it removed the thrill of battle and helped little besides the push or pass decision). Instead, along with the changed Forgemaster, try this to see the mindgames that can be played now - Demolitionist: When Played: Choose an opponent. Reveal 2 cards from the top of his deck. If no gold was revealed, return them in any order. Otherwise, you may claim one of the revealed gold cards (return the other card on top of the deck) as a Reward that reads: "You may use this card as if it in your hand. Instead of discarding it, destroying it, or at the end of your turn put it into your opponent's discard pile instead". Try it and thank me later

I also worked on modifications over other cards (like the runes for example), but those I haven't tested out enough to include it. If you wish, you may test my best choice - Tact and Diplomacy: Exhaust this card and discard a unit from your hand to reduce the cost of your next spend influence action by 2. Now cities are no longer that hard to take back and you still get the primary bonus for which the card was good - the early influence surge. I repeat - not tested at all, so it might proove to be considerably better/worse than necessary. Anyway, feel free to experiment with the above ideas and of course, I am open to suggestions.