1.0.9 Sneak Peek- Frozen

It seems like an interesting anti goblin/spam skill. I don’t know if I’m looking forward to playing against it, but I’ll enjoy using it.

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At first glance, not a huge fan of this status ailment. Much of the fun of this game is working your way through multiple turns, manipulating the board, counting gem drops, etc. Now if I get hit with this ability I might as well just choose a match at random like the computer does.

Sure, we can prioritize targets, but no matter how much you prioritize luck can turn against you and the troop you are trying to stop will charge. Then you lose all board control and the entire theme of your team goes out the window. You are forced to play the way the random AI wants you to play.

There is a line in card games right down the middle of the board. GoW and other games like it cross that line a little because we share a puzzle space. But when you start playing too much on the other person’s side of the board things get testy very quickly. I would rather sit through the turns the computer chains letting it do its thing, than have it reach across the board and start screwing with the basic concept of my team. Status ailments like poison, burning, entangle, silence. Fine. I can bide my time powering up, or switch to a secondary magic attack strat (or physical attack if silenced). But shutting down my actual ability to even play the game is too far.

I know things like this never get rescinded once announced and we never get a chance to chime in until it is announced. This leads to a vicious cycle where bad ideas are implemented over the objections of the community, but in this case especially this needs to be very seriously reconsidered.

The concept is interesting for sure. Changes suggested by @Fourdottwoone would help, they also point out a very obvious abuse of this ability. Another alternative would be a slot for team ailments, it needs to be a single slot overridden when a new team ailment hits with a single cure timer preferably at cumulative 20% since it is global.

Hopefully the dev team is listening and doesn’t just double down on something so obviously broken when we haven’t even resolved the current issues with the last series of traits that were released in a ridiculously broken state. True Shot Agile cards I can work against. They don’t stop me from playing the game, they just randomly cause me to explode. This ailment literally makes you unable to play the core match-3 mechanics of the game and that is ridiculous.

As to its interaction with burning, it shouldn’t. Clearly frozen is an incapacitation not a damaging effect. I can freeze your feet in a block of ice and still set you on fire. You will be both immobilized and burning, that is both status ailments. You would be long dead before that block of ice melted. If freezing did damage similar to burning, then it might make some sense to have them interact. As presented, it doesn’t.

-Razlath

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I like the new concept, I’m curious to see how it’s going to fare. Also I’d rather have in on troops rather traits, which bare pretty long to farm for as it is. But it looks like it could be pretty interesting.

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Don’t forget to add it to Hag’s random status effects.

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Yeah, poor Hag deserves some love too !

  • Looks at Hag *
    Well, maybe not, but give her some none the less !

Yeah, I just noticed that. Well, Firemantle already used Earth mana though, but, yeah, I enjoy this kind of tweak, that will force us to reassess what we can or cannot do putting some cards together !
On another note… It will change the traitstones needed to unlock his traits… Some may want to upgrade him right now has we (could) get a lot of Arcane Sword (Blue/Yellow) Traitstone during Zelaroth’s event, go for it boys !

Speaking of witch (pun intended), Ice Witch became a bit fiercer with her Arcane Trait, a Freezing effect on top of that might make her one freaking good card in my opinion… So… When is the Yellow / Purple Arcane Stone week again?

On reflection - and reading through the thread’s further comments - I think this status effect is too much as is. Its far too intrusive.

  • It doesn’t make much sense thematically - one troop is frozen and I can no longer use the board properly? Seems like something that should be more localized.
  • It forces the afflicted player to play badly - kind of self-explanatory with the inability to make use of 4-/5-matches but the need to get rid of them anyway. But it also becomes a question of whether you want to keep that troop alive at all if its having a debilitating effect on your gameplay - if its in front and its preventing you from chaining things, would you let it get hit by skulls a couple times so you could continue? I realize it probably lasts 3-4 turns on average but the thought crossed my mind…
  • It ironically also makes the OTHER player play badly - if my enemy has this cursed troop stopping them getting extra turns and vacuuming up mana, I’m sure as hell not going to wipe it out the first chance I get while its still having that effect

Instead of just locking down everything, this could be something that functions on the afflicted troop’s abilities and/or mana colors. So if you have a frozen Goblin King, it doesn’t give you extra turns for brown and green, but it will for the other four colors. Not entirely sure how that would work for transformers i.e. Valkyrie being frozen should lock up red, yellow and blue? More likely it would just be red and yellow unless she uses her ability in which case no extra turns can be gained from matching tons of blue or any ensuing cascades’ extra turn matches.

At any rate, keeping it localized to the afflicted troop/s allows people to play around it in ways other than running Herdmaster or Sheggra’s Heart whenever they have to deal with this.

Also, I am completely fine with this countering goblins, but being such a hard counter to an entire goblin team is not ideal. Localizing the effect would be healthier.

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I am a fan of changes, well done, Devs! :slightly_smiling:

I agree. When I first read it, I thought it only affected the targeted card. So for instance, a frozen Goblin would not be able to get his extra turn after he casts his spell. But if it affects the whole team, it might be a little more difficult to work around.

That. I like that.

  • No extra turn on the unit’s colors’ 4-/5- gem matches
  • No extra turn from the unit’s spell (wether it is through Goblin like spell or Board manipulation)
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I love the ability.

There are too many troops right now that abuse the cascades into multiple turns. Bone Dragon, Green Slime, Green Seer, Alchemist, Valkyrie, etc. Yes, I abuse them too.

The amount of potential gain from cascades + free turns have been undervalued in calculating ability costs.

This is finally an ability that gives you the chance to counter combo heavy decks. The abilities are not free to use, so you can play a counter tactic with mana denial, killing the unit, or mana drain.

I want to stress again, I don’t see this coming out all that often.

How many times are your troops afflicted with burning? I can count on one hand.

How many times are they hit with hunters mark?

Out of all the troops out there, this ability is not on any truly used troop.

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Neither burn, nor hunter mark nor any of the ailment status beat combos.

Freeze is a combo breaker.

Besides, without combos, there are no “smart outplays” giving you advantages over the AI.
Basically, without combos, a player cannot be much stronger than the AI (the AI doesn’t predict anything, it’s the only thing that would give us an advantage when it comes to matching gems only).

Freeze isn’t the same as evening the grounds between AI and players, since you need freeze to be applied and to stay applied on at least one living unit. But that’s the closest thing there is, so, yeah, unlike the other ailments, freeze should effectively be played in defense decks. Hopefully, there are some counter plays to this ailment…

I would agree with you @Machiknight if the ability itself weren’t so broken. In your examples, burning is frankly just not that great. Is it nice to stack on? Sure, but you don’t build around it. Combined with its rarity for being inflicted you just don’t see it. Hunters Mark only has two troops that can reliably apply it (I don’t count Hag or any other random ailment here). One of them does nothing else. On top of that Hunter’s mark is rarely going to be enough of a game changer to justify slotting those cards simply for that ability.

Shutting off your opponent’s ability to play the game is game changing and will be slotted quite often I am sure. And worse, it does it in this horrible you aren’t actually dead, but you have to keep playing kind of way. When I played Magic: The Gathering, this is exactly the kind of effect that destroyed friendships and drove people away from the game. Stay on your side of the board, take a couple extra turns, dish out smack, cripple my units, but for goodness sakes on my turn let me play.

-Razlath

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I still prefer the million times asked option to make all enemy turns happen in a blink.

If appears only on a few useless characters it will hardly help on offense, while has great potential to be another super-irritating thing facing on the opponent.

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The silent One already does that, and shuts the opponent`s ability to play the game down in an even more powerful way than frozen will do(you can still use your troops’s spells while frozen).

You dont see an excessive use of the silent One right now, what makes you think a watered down version of his ability will make people swarm to use these two troops, that quite literally aren’t in use at all right now?
I personally welcome a reason to play ice witch and/or frost giant cause i like the troops, but i am a sucker for stormheim anyways.

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The Silent One used to be OP, then took a nerf (silence himself) to become Very Good, and another indirect nerf from traits introduction (ailment immunities).

His spell costs a lot. Pick Ice Witch, it costs 9 mana and freezing one unit will cripple all the other, wether they have an ailment immunity or not.

Yes TSO’s spell is more expensive, naturally, as his spell is much more powerfull than the frozen effect.
Stopping Spell Combos is a mere sideproduct of his mass silence, which completely cripples the enemy team, and not just stops combos but any kind of defensive or offensive measures via spells.

I didn’t bring up TSO to talk balance, but just to point out that there already is a spell in the game that kinda does what frozen does just in a more powerful fashion, and it didn’t cause the meta to be swarmed with TOS Teams, quite the opposite, he is rather rare compared to Dragons, goblins, trueshot troops etc…

Frozen wont stop multi cascades, so your Bone Dragon/Sheggra activation will still evaporize the first enemy troop, you just wont be able to pick off the second and maybe third one without some blowback.

Also both frozen troops will give you the turn after activation, they can’t combo it and they have no direct synergy with anything. They are also not tanky, and after firing their Special the ball is in your courtyard-Play it safe, wait for frozen to wear off, make safe Matches meanwhile, or take a risk and pick of troops with spells and safe skullmatches. Things you wouldn’t be able to do if TOS just activated.

Anyways we will have to wait and see how it works out, I’m just saying frozen, especially restricted to these two troops isn’t going to be as gamebreaking as some might think.

Will the AI still take a 4/5/6 match first when frozen? If it does you could use frozen to nerf the AI. It would skip skulls and spells to take a useless 4/5/6 match. It would be nice if freeze stops extra turns for both sides, then it would be very strong on invade, but much less useful for defense.

Completely agree. With battles no longer risking gold to fight, more times than not I’ll just quit if the AI’s silent one charges in the first turn or 2. Same reason webspinner death loops were so frustrating. I play the game to play the game, not make pointless matches or watch the AI play.

It really seems like at some point the questions asked behind closed doors changed from, “Is it fun?” Because as you said, anyone with experience in MtG knows discard/burn/turn denial/mana denial decks range from annoying at best to table-flipping at worst.

People saying “wait to play it until you complain” don’t realize that plenty of us already have.

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Emperina, Herdmaster, Priestess. Bam solved everyone’s concerns right there!

This will not be an issue honestly, worst case scenario it makes people play a little slower until they can use their spells safely. It won’t end the match, just extends it.

I already expected this sort of reaction the moment I saw the main post. Overreactions are very common when it comes to new mechanics. You could claim I’m “underreacting” here, but all I’m reacting to is a slowed game pace, not the end of the game. This, at worst, offers better challenge, not you become a sitting duck counting the turns that pass. (Which you’ll do anyways, but regardless…)

Just because the current meta’s gotten people use to beating their enemy in a couple turns doesn’t mean the skills broken. If anything it shows how over reliant we all are on turn-chaining.

Calm down a sec, step back here. What does this skill actually do, how does it combo with present troops, how would you work around it? Don’t just read “No extra turns, bub” and start seeing red, it’s not that simplified.

We all seem more terrified of the concept rather than the actual effect. All I can say is “Wait and see,” if it shows signs of trouble, then you can be concerned because it’s then that the devs will tweak it.
In this game nothing seems entirely permanent anyways, because that’s just how the devs roll. :sunglasses:

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