Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tombolo]

I found Thunderstone on Kongregate, and thought, hey, deckbuilders!  I am pretty sure I grasp the rules and stuff, but there's a campaign mode, and I am stuck on the very first level.  With Ascension, I was able to reliably beat the hard AI within a few games, but here I am doing well to get a competitive loss.  How does basic strategy work?  Isn't the elf mage basically superior to the amazon archer for less cost?

[Kuildeous]

There are a few different things to consider. The Elf Mage is indeed pretty strong, and he provides light. Awesome.

The archer, however, not only has a decent punch at ranks 2 and 3, but she has a higher strength, so you can assign heavier weapons to her (one may wonder why she gets a bonus on rank 2 and 3 if she's using, say, a warhammer; I think the correct answer is shut up, but I could be off on that).

Then there are also monsters that are immune or resistant to magic attack, so the Elf Mage may not be as useful in that fight. This is actually kind of rare. I definitely remember the Noxious Slag taking 1/2 damage from magic attack. I'm pretty sure there's a dragon that is immune to magic entirely. If you know the composition of the monsters, then you can plan ahead for that. For example, the Sphinx can only be harmed by magic attack and has a toughness of 8 (I believe). So, if I know she's in there, I'll try to build up my magic attack so I can take her out when she comes out.

I rarely pick the Amazon, though. Her increased attack is nice and all, but I kind of prefer having a uniformly good attack.

[Lekkit]

I went over to Kongregate to play it. It is fun. I've only played a demo game before. I'm thinking about buying it. However. One thing I noticed was that it didn't take very long until I got bored of the few heroes, weapons, spells, food and monsters there were. Is what you can play on Kongregate for free what you actually get in the base set? I remember there being spoiled rations and such when I tested the game IRL. It could come from expansions, though.

[Kuildeous]

If I count correctly, there were 11 heroes in the base set. Looks like a grand total of 39 monsters, village cards, and heroes. I don't know how many were in Kongregate.  Obviously, the more sets you have, the more variety you have, but because you always pick 4 heroes, 8 village cards, and 3 monster types, you don't have the same explosive variety that you get with Dominion.

I played a demo of Thunderstone Advance, and it was a pleasant experience. The storyline advances, and there are some new things. The Militia cards are replaced with Regulars, which are stronger and have a special ability with polearms, so they're not as useless. Advance also introduced something to the go-to-village, go-to-dungeon, or rest options. You can prepare, where you put any number of cards from your hand on top of your deck and discard the rest. It's like a perpetual Walled Village/Scheme for those hands where you draw dead. I'm considering getting Advance, especially since it apparently can be played with the original set, though the card layouts have changed.

Also, Advance now has rules where you diversify your village some more. You haven't more than X weapons or spells or mercenaries. This further reduces the variety, but unlike Dominion, it's possible in Thunderstone to get a combination of cards that are utterly useless and REALLY drags the game out. At least Dominion can always fall back on Big Money. There is not such thing in Thunderstone.

[Lekkit]

11 Heroes is a LOT more than the 5 on Kongregate. It's not at all impossible that I'll get it sometime soon.

[Kuildeous]

11 Heroes is a LOT more than the 5 on Kongregate. It's not at all impossible that I'll get it sometime soon.

Oh wow. Only five? Yeah, that'd get old really quickly.

I play the campaign on the Facebook version of Thunderstone. Even though I purchased some of the mini-expansions, the campaign generally presents the same heroes over and over again. I'd be getting really sick of it if I played it more frequently than once every few days. Between rehearsal for three shows, reading up for my Legend of Five Rings home game, and playing Team Fortress 2, I don't have a lot of time where I sit down and think, "Let's see what I can play on Facebook." But I do squeeze a game every so often. It's faster than hunting down human opponents and physically setting up the cards (which I think is even more onerous than Dominion's setup). 

[Kirian]

The best way to deal with Thunderstone is to not play Thunderstone.  Much like Tic-Tac-Tow, or Global Thermonuclear War.