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Author Topic: I don't like Barbarian  (Read 681 times)

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d4mn13l

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I don't like Barbarian
« on: December 21, 2022, 01:59:02 pm »
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Barbarian is a bad card. It makes the game unfun. You build up your engine and then your opponent adds a few Barbarians to his deck. During the rest of the game, you just see your deck going downhill, important (and not so important) engine pieces and your provinces getting trashed and so on. There are other attacks who destroy your deck, but they are not as random and swingy as Barbarian. I don't like it.
It seems pretty strong to me, when your opponent can reliably hit the important cards in your deck, but I think Donald X. and all the playtesters balance cards better than me after two games.
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Wizard_Amul

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Re: I don't like Barbarian
« Reply #1 on: December 21, 2022, 02:14:13 pm »
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Yeah, those games can feel kind of random and swingy. IMO, the way to sometimes play those kingdoms is to treat Barbarian as the main payload and try to build your engine in a way so that you can play multiple Barbarians each turn. It's not always going to be better than another strategy but sometimes it is (if there are no other gains, for example, I've found that playing multiple Barbarians can be pretty strong). It still kind of devolves into a swingy game because the goal there is to try to hit your opponent's Barbarians so they can't hit you back as much--I've found there is still some skill there in building a good engine faster and using deck tracking to your advantage.
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segura

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Re: I don't like Barbarian
« Reply #2 on: December 21, 2022, 03:24:54 pm »
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The downgrade attack is unusual (well, there is Swindler and Saboteur) so people are not used to dealing with it but the card is fairly weak, especially compared to net junkers.

If you complain that your beautifully built engine could not withstand the Barbarian attacks, you did something wrong. Perhaps the draw engine was simply wrong, perhaps money was the dominant strategy, perhaps mirroring Barbarian was the right way to go. Figuring that out is more useful than claiming a weak attack is overpowered.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the other weak downgrader, Saboteur, was also hated by lots of folks.
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d4mn13l

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Re: I don't like Barbarian
« Reply #3 on: December 21, 2022, 03:53:55 pm »
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I did not say that I believe the card is too strong. I said it seemed very strong to me that my opponent trashes three of my cards each turn with no useful cards to take in exchange, but that I probably did something wrong, because the people who balanced this card most likely used it more than I.
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d4mn13l

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Re: I don't like Barbarian
« Reply #4 on: December 21, 2022, 03:57:02 pm »
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Okay I didn't say all of this, but I meant it.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: I don't like Barbarian
« Reply #5 on: December 21, 2022, 10:41:14 pm »
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I think the Knights are much more insufferable than Barbarian. The Knights can chain off each other to certain extent, making multiple hits easier, but Barbarian needs support to do that. I have played a number of games with it and I came away from none of them thinking it was overpowered. But hey, maybe my opponent and I were both playing it wrong and should have gone for it more heavily, I don't know.
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jomini

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Re: I don't like Barbarian
« Reply #6 on: December 28, 2022, 10:12:09 am »
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The problem with Barbarian is the swing. In the early game, going estate -> curse is normally a blessing thanks to cycling (as you are quite likely to trash either regardless). Hitting an opponent's $5 or greater card is typically brutal (e.g. hitting a Forge when it is the only trasher means not just downgrading to Barbarian or other $5, but also losing maybe three shuffles before thinning). And even without big disparities between card abilities, you still run into the imbalance issue where hitting a village means you also knock out a terminal while hitting a terminal means you still can do most of the work in your deck (obviously you can overbuy villages, but that often means piling and then games can be decided by who has enough villages to support draw and 2 or 3 barbs and who can only support 1)

And the effects are not even symmetric for the same hit. If I hit your province you downgrade 3 VP and take the last province. You hit my province and now I am out 5VP.

The same hit is wildly different depending on when in a shuffle it hits.

Which means that the effect of skill is muted while the impact from a wider standard deviation on luck is amplified.
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segura

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Re: I don't like Barbarian
« Reply #7 on: December 28, 2022, 02:48:33 pm »
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Sure, Swindler is also swingy (and Swindler hitting a $5 is far more nasty than Barbarian doing so). But gee, it is not as if Dominion is not a high luck game. Plenty of Kingdoms where an inferior player can beat a better player simply due to 5/2 vs. 3/4.
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