There are currently 10 troops/weapons with an added effect on 13 or more gems on the board. Even with a generator, 13 gems almost never happens. It is unreliable to the point I don’t consider it when casting or building a team.
I would like to see this changed to majority of gems. For example, there are 11x reds, 10x blue/yellow/green/brown/purple, and 3x skulls on the board. A troop with effect on majority of reds would activate. This would be a lot more reliable, while still being easy to counter.
The downside, it would be a little harder to calculate majority versus counting to 13 gems. A status box when casting conditional spells would be a nice addition. Not only for these troops, but others like Archon Statue and Wolf Knight.
I would also like to see troops with effects on minority of gems not including skulls, or at least with ‘6 or fewer’ gems on the board. For example, “If there is a minority of blue gems, create 10 more.”
It used to be 10 or more gems, but they raised it to 13 because having some of those abilities activate WITHOUT being reliant on a mana generator can be downright broken.
Do you enjoy having turns? Do you enjoy having the enemy Queen Mab not function like a Goblin?
You could counter it by creating more of another color. There could be 13 blues on the board, and 14 reds. I used to love the 10 or more before Mab came along. As usual, the one legendary had to ruin all of the other troops.
Then you’re playing very poorly. Their goal was for the conditional effect to be achievable approximately 80% of the time, when you’re trying to engineer it to occur. In my experience, it’s trivial to exceed that with a generator, and I still often see if without one. There are only 64 gems on the board, and 7 types of gems, including skulls. On average, there should be close to 9-10 of any given color, unless you’re actively removing or creating certain colors. Achieving 13 of a particular color only requires focusing on removing others, shifting the board distribution away from the average. If you’re actively collecting the color that you need for the conditional, then yes, you’re never going to trigger it without a generator.
Being an avid Mab user, I often get the extra turn. More than often enough in my opinion.
And the added complexity of having to count all colors and not just the one you’re after makes your idea, although in design elegant, too complex to be worthwhile to implement.
I’ve tried playing with kruarg and after maybe 200 games I had to stop using him. He doesn’t use purple at all, yet he requires 13 purple or more to do a summon. And that happens about 20% of the times which kills the whole purpose of even having kruarg in your team. Main problem is that kruarg doesn’t use purple so you either fill him or make purple for his condition. Not both. Troops like mab are fine with 13, but kruarg sure isn’t.
Majority of colours? Nah, too much trouble for people to count everything, not a helpful change.
I do agree that most of the 13+ bonus effects are irrelevant and hardly happen: Mab is okay on 13 as Valkyrie (and other blue meta) builds can make sure she can fire and keep the turn, as @spherix says.
For most of the others, 13 is too much; they should be tailored based on the power of the troop and the power of the extra effect.
I have no experience with Kruarg, I don’t have him, and wouldn’t use him if I did, but the solution to your problem seems simple on the surface: don’t take purple, don’t convert it. Pulling other colors off the board should leave enough purple for the conditional. In fact, I would think having the conditional require a color you don’t need would be preferable, because otherwise charging the troop actively works against having enough on the board to trigger it, making a generator or converter for the color necessary if you want it to occur with any reliability. It’s a very different playstyle from the usual convert half the board for cascades to fill all your troops in one shot that generators and converters have encouraged, but more like the early game, where matching gems dominates over casting spells.
Trust me I did that. Even played with green slime to generate more purple it still doesn’t work in more then just about 20% of the time. While you match others and leave purple, enemy will match purple. I never convert purple of course. And green slime can result in to many cascades which leaves you with less then 13 purple once again. I also tried giant spider which is the only good purple generator out there and but he summons a small spider when cast (if there’s an empty spot). So while GS is ideal to make kruarg work, he kills his chance to summon a troop anyway. Either that or you only have GS and kruarg remains which means you have empty spots for both spider summon and kruargs summon, but that’s not a very favorable situation.
Bottom line I tried making kruarg work, and 13 is to much. Leaving purple and matching other colors doesn’t make it happen.
If 13 is too much, then what’s a good number? 10 is absolutely trivial, and there will usually be 10 of a given color on the board unless you’re actively removing it. The conditional effects are not supposed to be free and effortless. Again, @Sirrian’s stated goal was 80% success rate. It shouldn’t be “guaranteed, unless the enemy actively denies it”.
I really don’t think I’m all that good at match-3. I often drop quad-matches or skulls into my opponent’s hands that were predictable from the visible gems. If I can still effortlessly achieve 13 gems most of the time, even when I’m not using a converter, then it’s hard for me to believe that it’s too high. I think it likely that the developers are very familiar with the math as it applies to an 8 x 8 grid with 7 gems, and if people are experiencing lower-than-expected success rates, it’s because the way they play is actively biasing the board against triggering the conditionals.
Well now sounds like you played more kruarg games then I did? Care to share your strategy and team? Because I did 200+ battles testing and didn’t get the results you are mentioning. But hey I probably don’t know how to play?
As I said, I’ve played absolutely zero games with Kruarg. And when I said I frequently achieve 13 gems for conditionals effortlessly, I meant it literally – it frequently occurs when I’m not even trying to engineer it. So if I have a “strategy” that’s conducive to it, I’m not aware of what it is.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that you don’t know how to play, or that I’m any better. I’m most likely worse. My point is that the dominant playstyle revolving around converters normally works very well, because it manipulates the the board, rapidly charges spells, and grants lots of extra turns. But just because it’s effective doesn’t mean it will work for everything. Converting often creates large clumps, which removes large sections of the board, and causes lots of cascades. Depending on the original distribution and targeting, this either biases the board towards fewer colors, which are easily matched away, or it resets most of the board to an average distribution, which is close to 10 gems of each color. What you want for conditionals is the target color spread across the board, blocked from being matched. Gem creators are probably better than converters for this purpose, though risky.
The converter style of play works best with conditionals that also grant an extra turn, so that you can leave the quad-matches on the board. This is why it’s so effective with Mab. Cast Valkyrie, cast Mab, match the quads, cast Mab again. Dire Wolf is the only other troop that currently has a gem-count conditional and spell that grants an extra turn, and it wouldn’t be very useful to cast it back-to-back in most cases.
I just don’t think it’s a problem for different troops to work best with different playstyles. Looping converters shouldn’t be the only option, and shouldn’t get the maximum benefit from every troop for no additional effort. Gem-count conditionals are deliberately something different that rewards matching gems and careful board manipulation, rather than spamming spells.
I agree that for mab it’s not a problem to get those 13 gems. What I am saying is the problem exists for kruarg. I haven’t playtested any other troops with this condition, so I know it’s not a problem for mab, but it is a problem for kruarg. If you don’t believe me try it for yourself, and tell me how many times did you manage to summon with him
[stating the obvious]
It is Green/Red but works on an “13 Purple+” condition, while cards with this “13+” condition will work with their own colors you get to use an transformer/generator/converter to usually be able to reap the extra benefits.
Also since the 13+ effect is a summoning effect you need to also work out some space in your team to be able to summon so even if you manage to collect enough green/red mana and at the same time have 13+ purple gems you would need an empty slot in yout team to gamble on what Daemon you will summon… [/stating the obvious]
It’s a bad deal of a troop and i’m not even mentioning the legendary “nomnomnom” trait that demands it to be in the upfront of battle while it doesn’t have any tanking capability aside from the meager Regeneration, so doesn’t matter if you will play one billion games with it, basically all of it will suck because of Kruarg and not because of the 13+ condition.
Again, I don’t have Kruarg, so there’s no way I can try it for myself. Summoning is tricky to begin with, because of needing an empty slot, which either means you’ve already lost control of the board, or you’re running something that deliberately opens a slot (Black Beast, Bombot, Sacrificial Priest, Sacrifice, etc.), which means you need a reliable summon. A gem-conditional summon seems extra tricky, regardless of the colors, because a good board isn’t necessarily going to be available when you need the summon. Other conditional effects are more likely to be good whenever they’re available, so you can hold the spell until the board is favorable.
I don’t think Kruarg is well designed, but I don’t think the conditional triggering on a color it doesn’t use is the problem.
Edit: @Ivar, how did I not see your post while writing this one? Would have saved me some typing if I had!
Perfectly said. But he either needs a color condition that corresponds with his own colors, or to be reduced to 10 purple. I’d prefer the first solution.
Ò_ô… Uh… I don’t know why, but my message went on top of yours…
When i was replying i saw your reply, and noticed that it was similar, but i went ahead and posted it the same way but my message went on top, maybe because i clicked “Reply” first and the system had my message’s spot reserved in some sense?
I would even go further and try to explore more options for the legendary trait. Just because the monster eats stuff it doesn’t need to be a devourer and such, mechanically speaking. It could have a trigger effect when it kills a troop with skull damage, maybe healing a little and add the summoning effect to it as part of the “meal” powers up the portal on it’s mouth and then a Daemon shows up.
Something like that would work. Even tho I got those 5% to trigger couple times (he was the last troop in all team I used so he didn’t had much chance to skull hit) it’s still a garbage trait for a legendary
