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Author Topic: Turning Champion upside-down  (Read 1509 times)

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Accatitippi

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Turning Champion upside-down
« on: September 20, 2016, 11:55:00 am »
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I've now played at least a couple hundred games with Adventures. I like the page line. I've yet to witness a game where "the Warrior Strategy" dominated, but I've seen several games with strong, chainable attacks (Torturer, Rabble, Witch, Giant, even Saboteur), where the game was a race to get a Champion in play and wreck havoc for as long as possible before the opponent managed to play their own Champion, or resigned. All in all, I feel Champion becomes way too good with that kind of Attacks, and it comes with a weaker version of them built-in (but I feel it's Champion's fault, not Warrior's).
It's probably important for the Page line to provide some form of defence from attacks, given the potential pains caused by Champion and Torturer together.
Here's an idea for a different, probably somewhat more balanced, Champion:

+1 Action
For the rest of the game, when you play an Attack, it doesn't affect the other players, and when you play an Action, +1 Action.
(This stays in play. This is not in the Supply.)

What do you think? Are there any changes you would make to the Page line? (I suspect a favorite is to have Warrior leave Travellers alone).
I don't own Adventures IRL, so I don't think I'll test this any time soon, I just wanted to hear what you thought.  :)
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faust

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Re: Turning Champion upside-down
« Reply #1 on: September 20, 2016, 12:19:36 pm »
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I don't really think Champion with strong drawing attacks is any worse than Village really. Better even because it gives your opponent an effective way to prevent your attacks.
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Accatitippi

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Re: Turning Champion upside-down
« Reply #2 on: September 20, 2016, 12:25:12 pm »
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I don't really think Champion with strong drawing attacks is any worse than Village really. Better even because it gives your opponent an effective way to prevent your attacks.

I don't quite agree. Champion activates all of a sudden, while you have to buy villages and attacks incrementally.
Also, Villages don't protect you from opponent attacks, while the first player to put down a champion suddently has a running engine, and he's also protected.
Champion's Lighthouse effect makes it more nasty, not less.
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Chris is me

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Re: Turning Champion upside-down
« Reply #3 on: September 20, 2016, 02:50:28 pm »
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The thing about Champion is that it's a race to protect you from awful attacks. I don't really think Champion does as much to facilitate those attacks as it does protect you, unless you get Champion up more than 3 turns ahead. Losing this benefit of Champion would make me skip it much, much more often. If it's going to nullify Attacks you use, it should also shield you.
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luser

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Re: Turning Champion upside-down
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2016, 01:25:09 pm »
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No, champion is fine as it is. You are overrating its usefulness a lot, it doesn't protect you from these attacks so most of time it doesn't matter.

1. Witch+rest of unconditional junkers (always +1 junk  per play). Champion is too slow. In mirror with double/witch both players deal five curses about shuffle or two before one could play champion. In some boards with good trashing but bad village support it helps you, with good village+trashing you trash curses and get champion just to prevent warriors to trash villages. Without trashing most of time correct strategy is to open silver/silver and going double-witch bm, unless there is great engine payload like goons. Page on turn 1 will cause you to lose curse split and trying to get terminal draw cards and lot of terminal collision in shuffle before you activate champion slows you down.  Only exception here is ambassador where champion helps quite lot in ambassador war.

2. Conditional junking. With torturer this depends on quality of village. With cotr/fw/wm curses are taken before champion gets active or one player locks second by reliable 3+ torturers/turn, with strong trashing attack one often trash curses directly in hand without damaging deck. So champion is good for unreliable torturer chains. For swamp hag/giant it isn't much race due their slowness, both players will likely get champion before it starts damaging deck.

3. Rabble, haunted woods - race there is at snail's pace. Without junking rabble becomes essentially 5 cost smithy. Rabble is quite weak attack if only green are  starting estates and both players get champion several shuffles before they start greening so it isn't problem.

4. Discard attacks. These make champion most useful.

5. Card that champion counters best is saboteur. Most of the time one could get champion before opponent starts playing 2+ saboteurs/turn with his engine. For knights/fast sab deck while champion is valuable its also hard to get as opponent has several opportunities to trash hero/champion before you play it. Then there is warrior that is good in one of 20 games with page when there is bridge troll or other cost reducer and engine potential where you aim to destroy champion.
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