Goblageddon (quite scary)

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101

You are talking about the (sometimes inevitable) arms race that TCGs fall into… GoW is resilient to that happening as (1) things can be patched/balanced if they are broken or unfair and (2) the devs seem to be aware of this risk…

For the record, I don’t think anything is currently broken (meaning a game-busting exploit of a combo or spell) - but the Goblins are disproportionately strong for their rarity and have good synergy and bonuses, making them by far the best option for most players needing a competitive team…

Most games like this need commons and crap to make the good ones look good… this game has a pretty decent meta, with a wide range of usable troops… or used to, but it’s risking slipping away, and Goblins are a big part of that loss of variety issue right now… it will be (eventually) fixed…

Not true, many decent strategies still use heroes, and for lower level players your hero will often be amongst your best cards. I am level 750+ and use my hero all the time - admittedly only 3-4 of the weapons currently mixed into my teams. And heroes are due some love / catching up in the next patch.

That part you’ll be stuck with for a while, I fear… unless some nerfing is done soon (not likely to be anything major or anything too soon)… one day the other types will catch up and some variety come back into it… but I too am fighting (or skipping) Goblin teams at least half my battles for now… sigh…

102

It would be much difficult to create the perfect sets but I like your idea.
Imagine every kingdome has its knight, mage, leader, monster…
It reminds me the The Malazan book of fallen from Steven Erikson. There were also knights, mages, heralds, etc. of particular holds.

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103

everyone is complaining about traited goblins and i am pissed off by the skeleton team. 3 skeletons and a slime killed me so quick i could not retaliate

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104

Well, I started to hate Charl or Charles (not sure the name) :smile:
I mean it in positive way.I met him few times today and always lost the battle. This is a hell defence he has.
I am just not sure if it is a good choice for him with respec to chance for less revenges.
I am definitely not going to invade him again, well at least until I find an effective combo against him :smile:

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I beat Charles (lev 1000) and his pimped up globlins with Herdmaster (mythic) and legendary Celestasia, Bone Dragon, Sheggra. I doubt there is any other way to quickly produce green minced gobbos.
Before and after pics above

106

That’s not the worst Goblin team you can meet @esslee Just alt=F4ed out of the same line up with all having all traits.

Seriously, who thought it a good idea to give Hobgoblin “Agile” ?
As if it wasn’t enough that goblins get extra turns, have better stats, need less mana while doing no less damage (more skull damage with that attack value), let’s also give them a good chance to avoid any damage you try to get in when you get a chance to play.

That isn’t even worth any sarcastic remark.

107

Goblins are strong, they’ve always been. Well, at least the plain Goblin, Goblin Shaman, and Hobgoblin. The Goblin King leaves a lot to be desired still, even after his “not forced to shoot his team in the foot anymore” buff, and the Goblin Rocket is subpar by itself. The Boar Rider used to be on par with the others, but his useless Beast Trait holds him back a ton now.

Goblin line-ups used to reign supreme in 1.0.7, not just because they’re a great, highly synergistic team, but chiefly because of the fact that they’re basically the ONLY existing combination of genuinely good troops + troop type bonus + kingdom bonus.

Now, the troop type bonus has been severely nerfed with 1.0.8 making duplicates utterly useless, and instead forcing us to use unique troops at all cost. This HAS nerfed Goblin line-ups quite a bit. Now you can’t have 3 plain Goblins + 1 Shaman and call it a day, and this was by far the strongest version of the team.

BUT it doesn’t change the fact that Zaejin bonus + Marauder bonus is still the ONLY feasible, viable Kingdom bonus + Troop type bonus combo there is.

I’ve been toying around with multiple potential line-ups recently. Did you know, for instance, that Fey line-ups have an insane potential? +2 Magic to all. PLUS TWO! Not just +1 like the Dragons or Daemons. Also +3 Life, +3 Armor and +2 Attack if you stick to Forest of Thorns troops, which is decent.

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Unfortunately, there isn’t even a single Fey troop that uses Brown mana, among other problems. As you can guess from my Fey Retail example above, no direct damage, no AoE and no true damage either. This is a line-up that wins from setting up the board, buffing its top troop and eventually lining up skulls. Without a Bone Drag or Skeleton to give you skulls. So this isn’t anywhere near consistent or efficient, especially compared to Goblins.

I’ve tried Folks, too. They have better troops overall, and a really good explosion synergy, but not a hope in hell to get a Kingdom bonus, as they’re scattered all over the place, and their Troop Type bonus is unfortunately negligible. +2 to all stats except for Magic? That’s peanuts in this meta!

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I could go on, but the simple conclusion is that we need either a whole lot of new, excellent troops for most types except Marauders and Dragons, or we need a complete makeover of Troop Types. They’re not balanced at all as it is.

Until then, Goblin-based line-ups will continue to rule by default, not because they’re overpowered, but because everything else is underpowered.

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108

Yeah I’ve been really looking at a Fey lineup in the future. Dryad and Green Seer both have the Fey Bond and Bless traits and Gloom Leaf has one of the best set of traits for a troops ability. Unfortunately it’ll take a ton of resources to get these unlocked to create a viable defense team.

109

Hey @LegendMaker, excellent post and examples, thanks.

I beg to differ with you just a few remarks…

Er, actually (in my view) it’s damned good. Explode a gem (worth c. 6 mana spread around), great board control, dish out a decent (ish, given that Magic stats are so low now) damage shot, and get an extra turn, all for just 9 mana, with a +1 red mana trait to charge himself and Hobgob up? That all sounds pretty good to me, and it’s a staple in many teams, not just Zaejin teams. I firmly believe that all ‘extra turn’ spells are really under-costed compared to most others…

Mostly true, but part of the problem is Goblins were already good before all the other bonuses etc came into the game. Per my above note, extra turn spells are all really under-costed - getting an extra turn is itself worth 3 mana minimum, and often more. If you have an extra turn on a board control spell (rocket, shaman, boar rider all do) then you have all the benefit of that control without the downside from bad drops / gem spawns.

Agree that the best solution has to be more diverse (and better) troops from other kingdoms/type combos - but I’d expect some fine-tuning of the Goblins to make them basically more fair to happen too… though seeing as everyone and his cousin and his cousin’s neighbour are all using Goblins, any changes to balance them will be unpopular as ever…

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110

Try khetar. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Khetar has great synergy and awesome team bonuses. You can sub out Alastair for revenant if you don’t like destroying all your purple to get defense, or for wight if you want some direct damage. You can sub out either for another skeleton if you want, if you don’t mind losing the mastery bonus. There are TONS of options for Khetar, and is my favorite team.

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111

@Jainus Thanks. Agree to disagree on the Gob Rock; it is a decent troop, but nowhere near worthy of being a Goblin. Satyr has extra turns too and that doesn’t make him a great troop. Edit: if you want an OP exploder, that’s HerdMaster or SoothSayer, for instance, they absolutely rock. Gob Rock is nowhere near that league.

@Machiknight Thanks. I still don’t have a single Keeper of Souls to this day, though, so it’s a moot point for me, I’m afraid. Some of us aren’t as lucky as others when it comes to opening chests. Even before 1.0.8, it was frustrating at times. I faced a guy who had a line-up of 4 Sheggras at one point; I still don’t have a single one to this day. I’m sure someone out there has a Mythic KoS and loves Khetar (maybe you? ^^), but that’s an unreachable dream for me.

112

Dude, you don’t need kos. I don’t even use him half the time, trust me. Skeleton, revenant, aziris, wight is a fantastic team also!

113

Nice line-up, functional and themed… but I’d fight that any day over the Zaejin band… your team needs skill to use, which the AI won’t be employing…

Also - your team has two Epics and a Legendary… A kick-ass Zaejin team can include a Common and two Rares… the latter is clearly easier to obtain, and ascend, and unlock traits… and ends up (in most people’s view) far better…

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114

I don’t know, Aziris really sucks in my opinion. And I also agree with Jainus that this kind of team will only work for Invades. Aziris might be THE troop the AI is the most pathetic with. Seriously, it’ll add a skull in the far left corner even if there’s a 5-skull match to make with his power elsewhere.

115

I thought we were talking about invades.

Aziris is one of the best units in the game during invades. Seriously, you get to use him almost every turn, and with skulls being add powerful add they are right now it really pays off.

Were we not talking about invades? My khetar team crushes goblins like nothing. I really only have problems with the all dragon teams.

116

We were talking (mostly complaining) about Goblins being everywhere and being unduly strong and easy to access and upgrade…

117

Ah, I thought the subject had switched slightly to other teams needing good bonuses as well. But yea, those Gobbos are prolific!

118

Wish I could retreat during my opponents turn. There are matches against goblins when I know I’ve lost because they are ready to kill my skeletons, but it is faster to Alt-F4 and reload the game than to wait for them to finish their dozen extra turns.

119

I’m not a fan of how you developed the idea in all your examples, but I like the idea itself. A LOT.

Troop Types are seemingly randomly distributed on a number of troops, and it feels counter-intuitive, not to mention it breaks any semblance of Lore, balance aside. The Bone Dragon is obviously an Undead and a Dragon. That he only counts as one of these two categories when he clearly belongs to both is a problem. Same thing for Alastair and the Grave Knight who are visibly Knights, not just Undead.

However, I’m not sold on the idea of giving every single troop two types instead of just one as you suggest. This would be forced and won’t make sense in even more cases than the ones we can name now. Instead, I think it would be a great idea to simply give certain troops a secondary Troop Type.

This would be much more subtle tweaking and would open the horizon for many more line-ups without forcing stuff that doesn’t make sense. The idea would be to make things more intuitive and varied, not the opposite. Even if most troops ended up with two types, as long as it’s consistently logical, it would be perfectly okay.

The only thing that would need to be watched would be the potential to add up two Troop Type bonuses, which could prove overpowered, but if the possible combo are varied enough, it could simply add more depth and choice and give a lot of forgotten troops the love they need.

For instance:

1/ Everybody who is obviously a Human would actually be a Human, whether they’re also Undead or also a Knight or whatever.

2/ And so on! ^^

But a plain Goblin would still only be a Marauder, and a Pegasus would still only be a Beast, etc.

Edit: I replaced Avina with the Banshee as @Archenassa has correctly pointed out that Avina is still alive. =) Point stands, though, I hope!

120

That was then (OP and couple of following posts). This is now (the bulk of the thread since then). We are talking about synergies and Troop Types and bonuses and how unbalanced it all is right now and how the Goblins end up at the top of the food chain mainly because they’re the exception to the “nothing works” rule of the current Troop Type distribution across all Kingdoms.

At least I hope we are. Just another vanilla QQ thread against the flavor of the month line-up is nowhere near as interesting. ^^