Barring other funky card stuff, this game is won by holding more flux wells than your opponent for 10 turns.

Due to salvage and sturdiness of most buildings (more so if youre a dwarf) its somewhat troublesome to dislodge an occupied flux well.

All that taken into account you want as many buildings on as many flux wells, being built as soon as possible (and have them survive to grow into a real building .

A very simple, basic tactic which dictates how the rest of the game evolves.
(c'mon lets face it: building, scoutcreature, move within sight of central flux...90% of games)
To do that you need:

A) Vision to all those flux points
B) Flux to cast the darn buildings
C) Stall tactics (what some people also call creature control)


Early creature advantage is very important, so lets see what we have available:
flux cost followed by name:

Dwarves)
1Dwarf warrior,
2craig scout,
3Prospectors(my favorite, also if lucky to stumble upon hills, best for this type of tactic)

Sylvan)
1valedune, 1 archer, 1sapling(cast even more forward! in a forest),
2 scout (cruise missile but 1/1 so its ok),
3falcon, 3treeherd(again pop-up freak AND 1/3! +seedling), 3windreader(1/1 but vision:), 3fairy(odd)

DL)
2crypt doc(great special), 2red imp, 2zombie(not even a corpse.... jeez, blah),
3hellcat(the real cruise missile), 3hypnotic, 3leper(takes you with him),

Elementals)
1Flamekin(use your 4turns wisely... also pray you manage to take smth out),
2sleet mogi (pathetic stats, 1/1 2vision), 2dew mogi(rare)


(non offensive)
1Stone mason, 3plasma, 3wind mogi, 1water weird(pointless other than for some trick-stuff)


THE SOLUTION for the much desired balance:

Somebody must have noticed that i yell "nerf Sylvan" in the lobby all the time, and have even started playing with them to prove my point.
That is all complete nonsense

Other factions are way more broken. (caveat- only if you have the necessary cards, the poor dwarves especially gimped in this manner).
Its just they dont get to use their stuff because by then the sylvan player has 14glory and just keeps dropping salvage buildings). And the reason: they lost the early land grab, because they lacked enough cheap creatures.

Just give all the factions more darn weenies... at least 2 per faction that are 1/1 spd3/vision3 for 1flux and special, and 2 that are 1/2 for 2flux.
Elementals in particular really need any help in this department they can get, having only 2 usable creatures. And by far the worst vision of all the factions.
The new weenies is probably best done with a new set of cards.

Right now Sylvan can dependably cast 3 creatures in their first turn and gang up, eliminating 1/2's while waiting for the buildings. Even the odds and that will nerf sylvan enough (to the point they will require some new stuff themselves)


*caveat:
i didnt bother with other stuff that also matters (Hill giant contractors, entangle, fear, gather spirits!)
or the buildings themselves (every faction has cheap buildings (ie. elementals have the worst cheap one, mogi nest... but also arguably the best one(if limited), chambered reef), dwarves pwn with their buildings and iron gate.
And yes i am way more interested in elementals than pansy elves, but theyre literally unplayable competitively.
And if youre still scared of Sylvan, try using trainings and armor, or just play dark legion... It seems theres a strong rock/scissors/paper among the factions Dwarf>DL>Sylvan>Dwarf. And yes elementals just loose to all of them

wtf?
my first post to this forum and it's a guest account?

cylone here

...also why do hell do you even allow guest to post? havent you heard of spambots?

I think it's pretty clear that building vision is not priced correctly (and certainly not evenly distributed), creature vision is a finer point. And movement is not priced correctly.

Just looking at the vision breakdown for buildings (excluding defaults):
sylvan 6/7 2+ vision buildings
MF 2/11 2+ vision buildings
DL 4/8 2+ vision buildings
elem 1/7 2+ vision building (counting seat as 1)

Comparing those buildings, it seems that vision is not counted at all in cost, either domain or flux (or to such a minor degree it's unnoticeable), especially for sylvan buildings. For example: ghost crypt (2d/4f), Hadark's Fort (2d/4f), and Beacon of Celdaor (1d/4f) all have the same vision and about balanced hp/abilities and yet beacon is way cheaper (and has an arguably much better special). Watchtower is 1d/2f for 1 hp and 2 vision, which would imply a bump from 1 vision to 2 vision is worth 1 flux, which is at least half the price it should be in my mind (i.e. I'd value it at 2 flux or more).

Likewise, building hp seems to be priced unreliably, looking at the four 'cheap' bases: dank pit 2f for 3hp, mine 3f for 5hp (and a pretty useless ability), em spring 4f for 8hp (and a good ability), mogi nest 3f for 4hp (and a good ability). This implies that a base with one hp is worth 1 flux, 2 extra hp are worth 1 flux, and a good ability is worth 1 hp or .5 flux. This works for all but spring which should either cost 5f or have 6 hp according to the above values.

Creature vision, the only major disparity is that elem have zero 4 vision creatures and a relative overabundance of 2 vision creatures (especially at the 1-domain level). It's not something that you could add/take away a whole flux for, but it should be something factored into for the overall creature strength. Right now almost all have 3 vision, and I think that's a reasonable baseline. So I'd maybe consider the bump from 3 to 4 vision worth about .25-.33 flux and a reduction from 3 to 2 to be worth .33-.5 flux.

Movement is a whole nother story. 4 movement is much, much better than 3 and is my main factor when selecting creatures. Anyone who's been trapped in a half-forest map and had to move one space at a time knows this. Unless you're playing sylvan and then the abundance of foreststride/hover/aloft makes 3 movement good. It seems to me aloft/hover creatures have too much movement and should generally not have more than 3 unless it makes sense for the specific card (like haunt). I'd say the change from 3 to 4 movement is worth about .75 flux. 6 movement seems to have about 1.5 flux value. -stride/hover/aloft also seem to be worth about .5/1/2 flux to me, respectively.

I'm assuming that a level of domain 'gifts' a card about 1.5-2 flux in costs.

Theres a few things that make or break a building:

A) first the hp:
1 = everything can and will kill it, its really just a temporary construction
2 = volcano aoe bait (oh the poor thrones die like this all the time) + 1/2 creature can smack it easily in 2 turns if defended by an equal 1/2 creature (it has to sacrifice, so what)
4 & less = volcano, tremor, 2/x creature just like above

5 &more = real survivability ergo dependable. Basically anything bellow this is VERY prone to dissapearing in a single turn (usually when you have spent the flux that could be used for a replacement -> flux well lost)


B) Salvage
great mechanic, this basically means that destroying a token filled building while having anything better to do with the cratures/spells used is actually bad for you. Many people just go with the standard RTS mentality and are just stalled with new popping buildings turn after turn (especially with autodraw).


..... more on this later.... to be continued....

Thank god for this thread! I was starting to think I was crazy! Any time I talk about how ridiculous Sylvan is on the client, people tell me I'm just a whiner. Of course, these people are always playing Sylvan decks.

Anyways, I feel like vision is certainly not priced correctly on units either. I'm looking at you, Windreader.

I called you a whiner because every time I beat you, you whine about it. This time I used Sylvan, so lo and behold, here you are whining about Sylvan. The time before that, it was because I "had too many buildings" (10 in my deck) when I was using MF, and the time before that I think it was clock related.

Let's just nerf everything that CapAp doesn't like, shall we?

Uhhh, what?

Id agree sylvan is the best in the meta game. almost silly' so


to add to the mounting arguement:

slyvan has one of the best of ratio of low domain cost cards. this means with they are easy to get out and use their cards. and additionally they're easy to splash into other teams.

to examine this i site the domain totals for the 4 factions

Sylvan - 110 domains + 3 zeros: 63 cards (25 one domains)
DL - 119 domains + 2 zeros: 63 cards
MF - 113 domains + 1 zeros: 64 cards
LEMTL - 109 domains +3 zeros: 63 cards

I have to agree that sylvan seem the most overpowered...I'm still pretty new to this game and as such I play mostly in drafts and vs that sarsAI idiot. Cheap aloft + the bamboo WT makes it really too easy to get control of the middle flux well. Once you start getting those extra 2 points a turn (combined with the inexpensive quality hordes) the rest of the game is really just a technicality...This might not be the case if people played anything other than 12x13 maps (or starting with 7 flux instead of 10), but that is pretty much the de facto standard game. Instead of nerfing cards already in circulation I would rather see more creative use of some of the abillties that some of the larger cards already have. Battle Ready on a more castable guy would help MF a lot. Healing on a small scout like guy with 2-3 health would be nice to help DL. Maybe a cheap building can be added for the other races. DL's can spawn from a corpse (would make sacrifice cards better). MF's could spawn in a mountain in sight or something like that. Capturing flux wells is a game objective that all races must accomplish and as such each race should have a fast building that can allow for fast well captures, not just sylvan.

I believe the point was to give each race it's own flavor. Unfortunately it seems like the Sylvan cards just got more love in creation. My own personal feeling is that if the new expansion doesn't significantly change the dynamics of the game, and further nerfing remains off limits, it will remain broken.