Balance Thread

Laser Surgeon - Possibly reduce the sac? Visions of Sporkman appear in my head.
Avrillian Fiend - needs a boost (Phantom Galgarion has 12 less attack, 2 more life, and costs a heck of a lot less)
Cosmic Rift - Make it unique at least, or this thing will break games.

Replibot- Speed summon guarentees a win if you get one out. Remove it possibly?

Scanning Field: Too strong in shotgun decks (no current suggestions)

Gunner Turret: Change to 8 damage per use

MX-42 Armormail: Needs less life, maybe 5/8

Orbital Cannon: Block dizzy on use and add a cost; currently never undizzies naturally

Replibot: needs to lose speed summoning

Electromagnetic Net - too expensive just to remove an ability
Mad Tinkerer - reduce his ability or up his cost
Deadly Appliance - Hidden ability, or just incredibly weak?
Space Leech - Very weak ability
Nadri Megus - needs a nerf (compare: Skeletal Bird)
Dethstrik Cruiser - needs a boost

It's kind of hard to balance cards without knowing what "Allying #" means (I think I've worked out "Power #").  But first shot across the bow-- I think the new "either-or" crystal generators are kind of weak.  I think if you took off the 'into play' part of each of them, they'd be fine.  Also, there's no way in hell I would play Nuclear Reactor unless I had a creatureless deck (or nearly so).  To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, 5% chances crop up nine times out of ten.  If it were "...a random creature you control..." or reduced to something like 2%, I'd be okay with it.  (Or is Power really that valuable?)

Allying # means:
"If you control # other entities which have allying"

Power # means
"If you control enough entities which provide a total of # power or more"

Thanks, webrunner, for clearing that up.  Now, Robot Invasion initial comments:

Wow, Slimeborg sucks.  Let's say, perfect conditions, you have 5 generators and you spend 77 on his ability-- now he's a whopping 37/45 creature that cost you 20 mana.  I'd suggest something like gaining attack equal to 3x # of generators you control, and boosting his initial stats to 30/45 or thereabouts.

Space Leech is only generally useful against Radd-lifers, and then not against Wizard, who draws the most complaints.

After seeing Fossil Engine, yeah, Nuclear Reactor definitely needs to tone down the meltdown factor.

Avrillian Fiend costs twice as much as Giant Letter X for +10/+6?  I'd probably go something like 52.

I'm not convinced that "face-down-ness" is worth an extra mana for the PR-66 Skitter, especially since the opponent can probably guess what it is based on how much mana you spent, and 19/2 is arguably not worth one mana to begin with.  Frankly, I'd probably be okay with just making it one mana, but since it's bi-color, how about making it 24/2 instead?

I can't see Arms Locker being worth 2/2.

Yeah, those "either-or" generators still look weak.

Hyperspace Warp is a bit nuts. It makes abusing Lifetimers even easier, especially because you don't discard the Lifetimer.

You can alternatively fix Lifetimer itself by changing 'On Destruction' to 'Leaves Play' (as per Year One Cake). Obliteration and Bouncing would trigger the Lose condition if this happened.

This would be my preferred balance, fixing an existing cheap combo, while not making Hyperspace Warp absolutely worthless.

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The X Lens Lasers look almost balanced, as demi-crossovers, but being exactly half the cost and generation for a single card seems just a tad weak... I'd perhaps give them a sac value of 1 mana of the current color? I guess if they were either common or if the common-type-of-uncommon they might be allright, but I can't see that at the moment.

Am I missing something about the facedown cards? It seems like they force people to have the cardlist handy and pencil and paper to keep track of their opponent's mana available just to figure out what their opponent just played, but as near as I can tell there's nothing *stopping* you from doing so, so in a tournament setting it would be necessary.

Edit: Also, just for clarity's sake, does Allying #: ability mean both "this card has allying" and "if you control # cards with allying this card has ability"?

The Face Down mechanic is used for a lot of different things, as well as just hiding the cards. But that said, there should be a small set of 'Cost Groups', so that for each Face Down card there are a number of other cards that it could be.

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I've not tested out Deregister, nor have I had a chance to properly look at the cscs, but it sounds like you'd be able to make walls into normal monsters at a fraction of the cost they should be. Even if you can't (ie walls have Light NPC code in them), it should clarifiy this fact on the card itself.

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Torpedo Launcher looks like a hoser that's far too powerful. It's almost useless if you're opponent isn't playing space ships, but it's uberpowerful if they are. I'm not sure how you could fix this... maybe something like:
33
Torpedo Launcher
1 counter: Target monster takes 10 damage, if it's a spaceship it takes 46 damage instead.
This way it wouldn't be a complete hoser, and it wouldn't completely suck when it wasn't hosing.

Cost groups would fix half of my objection, yeah. The other half is still there though--you need to know how much mana your opponent just spent on that mystery card. Perhaps the status box could say something like "facedown card played into slot # for XlYdZg"?

Reclamation, (I believe that is how it is spelled, the site is down for me currently) either way, the thing that forces a sacrifice on an entity needs to perhaps cost more, or be limited to the casters side, or something. Creature destruction that cheap would not go well in the grand scheme of things

Or just pay VERY close attention.

I figured that Reclaimation was just a spell equivalent of a non-colorbiased Mana Furnace. Not tested however.

Reclaimation DOES work on enemy monsters.

Yeah, when I saw Reclamation, I was thinking 'that'd better only work on my stuff'....because it's brutal atm. Use it on Prime Shadey, or an Eternal....

Aldgar Omk Wrote:Or just pay VERY close attention.

I assume this was meant in response to my objection, and my response is that while I *can* keep track of my opponent's mana totals that closely, it's unnecessarily unfun.

Dav1000 Wrote:I assume this was meant in response to my objection, and my response is that while I *can* keep track of my opponent's mana totals that closely, it's unnecessarily unfun.

As is knowing your opponent's facedowns. I say if you're so caught up in winning that you WANT to go to the trouble, do so, otherwise, don't worry about it.

The point is that in tourney matches etc you will be playing to win, but the current system means that the best way to do that is very timeconsuming, and therefore inconvenient to both players (and observers).