NOTE: This balance discussion post is temporarily in this section until the Alpha.

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Name: Thunder Surge
Type: Spell
Cost: 6 Growth

Effect: "Target unit, and all units connected by adjacent units, take 2 damage."
Balance Issue: Too much damage potential from one scroll.

Complaint: As demonstrated in Roger Karlsson's gameplay video, Thunder Surge is a game-breaker. It has the potential to do 30 damage across the board, which is far too high. Thunder Surge made more sense when the game board was larger, but it was recently reduced to 15 tiles / side. This means that your chances of having connected units is incredibly high, to the point where Thunder Surge is simply too effective.


Suggested Fix: Target unit takes 3 damage, adjacent units take 2 damage, and units connected to adjacent units take 1 damage.

Fix Result: The absolute maximum damage that can result is 23, a reasonable improvement over 30. Also, this gives Thunder Surge an effect that's more similar to how a lightning strike would work...which is neat, isn't it?


Other Remarks: Balance issue loses validity if Thunder Surge rarity is high.

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Hopefully we can standardize this layout, poll included [which is an arbitrary rating].

Name: [url]Link to Wiki[/url]
Type:
Cost:

Effect: "Whatever it is."
Balance Issue: One-line summary.

Complaint: Detailed explanation of issue.


Suggested Fix: New effect / whatever else is required to balance the issue.

Fix Result: How the suggested fix would help.


Other Remarks: Anything else that's relevant, such as why your complain could be argued against.

I do agree that it is a little overpowered, not as much as you say though. Of course 30 damage is a lot, but I don't think that you will manage often to deal all of them.
Just an experience I have made with cards like this in other TCG's is that they don't get played for a long time because the players want to deal as much damage as possible and so end up not playing it until it is too late. Also I have the feeling that the majority of the scrolls are rather weak and mostly die within three or four turns, except if someone plays extremely defensively and when you have an opponent like that, you will be glad to have a spell like this.

However, I do like your suggestion of improvement and wouldn't complain at all, if the scroll ends up getting changed like that.

Thunder Surge also have a high cost to it. Just wanted to point that out. If the scroll was to change, the cost should be reduced as well. Maybe 4-5?

There are no OP cards. Only bad players who can't handle them. (Medium AI is a joke lol)

Okay, thanks for the feedback! You're right, of course it's not 30 damage every time, but it's not exactly encouraging that the first use we got to see dealt 28/30. Refer to the chart below to see how quickly the damage ramps up as the board fills up.


6 doesn't exactly strike me as a 'high cost', given the amount of damage it does in the majority of circumstances. Even if you only get 6 damage out of it, that's an okay investment given it only took 1 scroll, with damage dealt immediately and no way to mitigate it.

Here's an interesting chart:

Pieces on Board - Min. Damage Done by TS

1 - 2
2 - 2
3 - 2
4 - 2
5 - 2
6 - 2
7 - 4
8 - 4
9 - 6
10 - 10
11 - 12
12 - 12
13 - 26
14 - 28
15 - 30

It's okay if people don't agree with it being overpowered - - that's why this is a discussion/poll.

Wouldnt 1 be 2 damage?

I had it like that at first, thought I had 'fixed' a mistake, but it was right the first time. Thanks!

Have we already taken card limitations into consideration? Well, in my opinion that card is a little overpowered, too! And I would agree with ShdwFlm's fix to reduce the maximum dealt damage from 30 to 23. But further more it would be a nice move from Mojang to limit the amount of Thunder Surges in one deck to "1". I played some Yu-Gi_oh and I remember card limitations like that within this game. Normally you were allowed to use 3 copies of a card in 1 deck. However there have been strong cards, which were limited to 1. I could imagine to include some restrictions like that.

Kind regards,
Vio

Another thing to take into account would be the rarity of this scroll. This scroll is very very useful so wouldn't it make sense if the rarity of this scroll was high? The stats may not need to be nerfed/changed if the scroll was hard to get, but we will have to see......

Yeah, that's the stipulation I gave in my post. As long as it's not common, it should be okay.

The more uncommon it is, the less it needs to be nerfed.

Maybe Thunder Surge could be limited to one per deck?

Rarity - Rarity in That Category

Rare - Rare
Rare - Uncommon
Rare - Common <- Thunder Surge?
Uncommon - Rare
Uncommon - Uncommon
Uncommon - Common
Common - Rare
Common - Uncommon
Common - Common

It could count as a rare, but one of the more 'common' rares.

Also, maybe 1 / deck is a little low, what about 2?

Rarity is not a criteria for balance in a card game.
It's not that it is rare to obtain in every game, once you have it, you can use it constantly (given that you draw it, but the chances of drawing one card over another are the same)

With that being said, I think the costs have to be increased significantly. Let's say to 9.
This would be my approach of handling this. Instead of this kind of cascading damage structure.

I'd understand if the scroll had a designated area-of-effect, but it simply spreads from unit to unit. This allows for a rather cheap way of dealing with many units, as evidenced by the gameplay preview.

I agree with ShdwFlm; they should either make its damage decrease as it spreads from unit to unit, similar to lightning or the Mutalisks' Glaive Wurms found in StarCraft II.

In its current state is much to effective and much too cheap, so either they increase its cost to something like 10-12 Growth, or they reduce its effects.

Of course, it could also be argued that it's a more situational scroll, and that it's only good if your opponent manages to amass a great army. So, you could wait until they have amassed everything on the battlefield and then use it. But this reminds me of Yu-Gi-Oh's black / dark hole card. Which was the most annoying card in the entire game. Cards like those just feel silly and seem like a way to easily sneak out of difficult situations.

The simple reason why this scroll needs to be weakened is because there simply is no way to predict it or defend against it. If your opponent was given some warning before you cast it, or maybe a turn to respond, in the same vein as Solar Beam in Pokemon.

Tl;dr, maybe utilise one of the following changes:

• Make the damage dissipate as it spreads from unit to unit.
• Make it cost much more, such as 10-12 Growth.
• Make it only damage a selected location on the battlefield instead of spreading from unit to unit.
• Make it take one turn before the spell's cast, so your opponent can spread out his army and try to minimise damage.