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Post by woelf on Sept 23, 2009 12:04:21 GMT -5
Marie Marvingt - 1 - Barbary Corsair Hostile: France, explorer, helmsman, this ship gets -1 to its cannon rolls while it carries treasure. Flavor text: Marie was once an explorer for the french crown, but after years of dissatisfaction with the way the crown treated it's colonies, she found a new home amidst the enemies of France. One point for the explorer-helmsman combo is too low, unless you're bringing that cost down with a much more significant ability. Chances are pretty good that a crew like this would end up on a treasure-runner that wasn't going to do much shooting in the first place, so reducing its cannon rolls when it carries treasure is virtually meaningless - for lack of a better term, you can call it the "Banshee's Cry effect". A straight 3 points for the E-H combo without that negative ability would be very useful though, just because of the cargo space it saves.
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Post by woelf on Sept 23, 2009 12:20:16 GMT -5
'nother one: Eternal Dragon - 7 - Jade Rebellion Whenever this ship eliminates the last segment of a sea creature, instead of eliminating the sea creature, it gains the eternal keyword, becomes docked at your homeisland, becomes a member of your fleet, and its faction becomes Jade Rebellion. It sounds interesting and at first glance the cost doesn't look too bad, but a lot of playtesting would definitely be required on this one. However, this ability is almost too specialized because you really can't build your fleet around it - instead, you're depending entirely on what your opponent brings to the table. If they don't have any sea creatures (which is most likely to be the case) you've just wasted 7 points. Lowering it to 5 points, which would allow it to be pulled in using Li Quin (0LR+5), would make it way too powerful unless it came with a serious (and meaningful!) downside of some sort.
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Post by marhawkman on Sept 23, 2009 20:16:34 GMT -5
Marie Marvingt: So Hostile: France and the "Banshee's Cry" effect isn't worth -2? I guess we could make it a 2 point crew then.
Hmm.... Maybe make it so that the effect only lasts until Eternal Dragon is eliminated? Thus giving your opponent a way to take out the horde of Zombie seacreatures? It kinda makes sense actually. Zombies(okay.... HUGE zombies) die when the necromancer that summoned them dies. Sound good? Of course the effect wearing off would mean that the zombies die, but they're already undead so it's no biggie.
So a reword: Eternal Dragon - 5 - Jade Rebellion Whenever this ship eliminates the last segment of a sea creature, instead of eliminating the sea creature, it gains the eternal keyword, becomes docked at your home island, becomes a member of your fleet, and its faction becomes Jade Rebellion. If Eternal Dragon is eliminated, all sea creatures affected by his effect are eliminated as well.
Good, yes?
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Post by woelf on Sept 23, 2009 21:21:12 GMT -5
Marie Marvingt: So Hostile: France and the "Banshee's Cry" effect isn't worth -2? I guess we could make it a 2 point crew then. I should clarify... By saying it was "too low", I didn't mean that the cost was incorrect - I meant that it was way too good of a combo to be that cheap, and would make it too much of an "automatic" addition to a fleet. At 3 points, without anything extra (aside from maybe Hostile: France just for flavor reasons) it would be perfect - useful enough that it would be worth using more often than not, but not so good that you would *always* take it no matter what. Also, by "Banshee's Cry effect" I wasn't referring to the ability itself - I was referring to the fact that it got a significant point reduction from a negative ability that means nothing to it. Ships that use explorers and carry treasure usually don't go around attacking other ships, so giving a cannon reduction to an explorer crew is a bad combo, and definitely pushes into the realm of those "meaningless abilities" I've mentioned before. If you still wanted that crew to cost 1 or 2 points, a much better negative would be the one from Longshanks - it can never load the last treasure from an island. A cost of five feels too low for this one - the original seven you gave it was better. Sure it may be a little too specialized for general useage, but if you come up against an opponent that is using a couple sea creatures (or a scenario that uses them) it suddenly becomes good to the point of being too good.
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Post by marhawkman on Sept 24, 2009 9:05:51 GMT -5
Marie Marvingt: I see. I like those ideas.... Not sure which to use though....
Eternal Dragon: hmm... yeah... to much dependant on the opponent. Hmmm which takes me to the next idea.
Zen Monk - 10 - Jade Rebellion You may eliminate this crew to take 10 point of crew from outside the game and add them to this ship.
Would limit or ransom be needed here?
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Post by woelf on Sept 24, 2009 12:48:43 GMT -5
Zen Monk - 10 - Jade Rebellion You may eliminate this crew to take 10 point of crew from outside the game and add them to this ship. Would limit or ransom be needed here? A 1-to-1 exchange is way too powerful, even if this one did have Limit and/or Ransom. Compare it to one of the existing "recruiter" crew. With them you're paying 3 points to add any 2-point crew later - you have to pay extra for the flexibility of pulling in exactly what you need when you need it, so this should use a similar exchange. One option would be to keep it at 10 points but only allow you to bring in 7 points of new stuff, another option would be to raise the base cost to around 14 to bring in 10.
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Post by admiralb on Sept 24, 2009 13:09:25 GMT -5
just a though about Zen Monk...I personally think it should be limited to generic crew and equipment only or maybe make it a specific number of crew/equipment like: "Place this crew out of play to add three crew or equipment from your collection to this ship with a total point cost no greater than 10."
yeah, the 1-to-1 is powerful, but just by making it 10pts throws it into that realm of near unusableness (is that even a word?!). I could see Limit on it...most abilities that are that high have Limit (ie. Davy Jones)...plus by having Limit it does not allow you to also have Li Quin in the same fleet...Woelf is right though, straight up 1-to-1 exchange is probably too powerful without a downside...especially that many points worth.
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Post by marhawkman on Sept 24, 2009 18:01:43 GMT -5
Okay so would a 10 - 7 exchange and limit be good?
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Post by Commodore Vendari on Oct 7, 2009 23:07:28 GMT -5
Hmmmm.....here's an idea:
A crew has two abilities, say Musketeer and Helmsman. At the beginning of your turn, choose which ability the crew is using. If one of this crew's abilities is cancelled, it can't use its other ability. The crew costs as much as the most expensive ability for fleet building, but cost the points of the current ability it's using for the ship's cost, meaning it costs 3 points for fleet building, and 3 points if it's using the Musketeer ability or 2 points if it's using the Helmsman ability.
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Post by woelf on Oct 8, 2009 18:10:17 GMT -5
Hmmmm.....here's an idea: A crew has two abilities, say Musketeer and Helmsman. At the beginning of your turn, choose which ability the crew is using. If one of this crew's abilities is cancelled, it can't use its other ability. The crew costs as much as the most expensive ability for fleet building, but cost the points of the current ability it's using for the ship's cost, meaning it costs 3 points for fleet building, and 3 points if it's using the Musketeer ability or 2 points if it's using the Helmsman ability. Being able to switch between two different abilities is a workable idea, but I'd say get rid of the variable point cost. If the crew just barely fit onto a ship using its lower cost, it would be too easy for a player to "forget" that they didn't have enough space under the point cap to switch to the alternate ability. It could get even messier when point reducers get involved, so it would be best to just give it a fixed cost and leave it at that. I'd also recommend adding 1 or 2 points (depending on the combo) as a cost "premium" just for the convenience factor, otherwise they'd get chosen all the time over the non-switching equivalent of their higher-priced ability.
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Post by marhawkman on Oct 10, 2009 14:33:06 GMT -5
Hmm... that does sound rather neat. Reduce the cost of one of them by 50%.
what about combining captain and explorer in this way?
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