Basically, I think Glorn Airship should remain the same, except that it should be forced to land after it takes an action. It just hits too hard and is too tough to deal with, and its casting cost being so low means that Ascent isn't really an effective counter to it.

I suggest these changes because (1) there is a distinct lack of flying creatures in the different factions and (2) in addition to the limited number of ranged units, there are few ranged units that hit hard enough to make an impact on a 4 attack/ 5 HP flying creature.

While I don't see any of the individual heavy hitters (or cricket) in DF as a problem, the high number of them taken as a whole with the ease of domain gain does create a problem in proportion to the available options for creature negation and a lack of opposing options in other domains.

My problem with Cricket comes when it's mixed with Living Monument, and then enchanted with Iron Gate and Mountain's Blessing, and Hadarth does his Battle Ready thing to it.

I mean, come on. An easily buffable building with armor?

(That was a bad game for me. Thanks akk!)

Ain't that ship got enough drawbacks? Come on, it's just Crushin' Wheels aloft cousin, clumsy and vulnerable to other flyers. MF got lots of better creature choices

Exactly- but how many flying units are there in the game? Thistle Falcon (1/1), Carrion Eater (0/1, at least 3 turns to make it useful for attacking), Dusk Efreet (3/4, decent enough but you have to be playing elemental), Sleet Mogi (1/1), Barkskin Dragon (4/7, but takes a helluva long time to bring into play), Zeppelin Raiders (you lose after you move anything else), etc.

It's just that most domains lack serious flying and ranged capabilities, and many of the flyers they do have aren't all that powerful. Couple that with MF's ability to remove enchantment creature buffs, and it could take you 5 rounds to take out a Glorn Airship with, say, a Thistle Falcon. By which time it probably has destroyed 2 of your buildings.

It's too tough: take away its range or force it to land at the end of the round.

As to the Crushing Wheel analogy- it can't be blocked by terrain like a Crushing Wheel. Which is part of why I think it should be forced to land at the end of a turn - preserves its ability to attack over a distance, but allows for retaliation strikes from the ground (turns out the Glorn suck at maintaining gas pressure. . .).

You're missing the point, the glorn airship is sloooooooooooooooooooooow. it has movement of two. it has okay vision but it's range is only 1. I'll agree it's tricky, but it's not tricky the way a tortured ghost is tricky to deal with.

But the point is, once it gets somewhere, how do you deal with it?

Sides, 2 movement isn't horrible considering (1) it has a vision of 4, so anything that attacks it can be neutralized by spells, etc, and (2) it flies.

I'm just saying, when i plop my airship on the map you've got plenty of time to come up with a plan. Between moving, then killing, then moving, then killing, you're getting new cards the whole time. If you're going to gimp something that about gimping cards that are inevitably frustrating, like mag beacon, which can be used as many times as you've got flux. I've been more frustrated and powerless to the powers of the mag beacon than i ever have against a single, slow moving time-bomb. But maybe that's just me.

I see what you're saying, but the Mag Beacon and the Airship are completely different things. For one, you can find the Mag Beacon and attack it. For another, the airship essentially soaks most of the damage you're able to throw at it (let's face it, the best army for dealing with the Airship is MF anyway), and is unassailable by most of your creatures.

All I want is a reliable means of attacking it.

Wait a sec, you're way off base, mf has the least flying creatures. mf is the perfect place for the airship in terms of balance because the only other flying defense it has is a moody dragon. The point about the mag b. is that it represents a multi-step process that is unavoidable for the most part once set in motion. (when a creature moves in and you get to watch, turn by turn, as he pulls your army into the ocean, for example) this is not so with the airship.

Aside from all this, i've been using one for weeks now in my deck, and it has never been the game changer that i can remember, it tends to do the end of game clean-up/round-up.