Game balance changing at lower points?

[Meliondor]

Would you say the game is less balanced at 35 points then at 50? I feel like especially summoning masters become much stronger in smaller games...

[Maniacal_cackle]

Yeah, definitely less balanced. It's fine for new players learning with less stones, but at a competitive level you'll have stuff like:

• Summoning distorts the game.
• You have 6 cards for master + 35 stones, instead of 50 stones. So card hungry crews get stronger.
• Relatively more of your points are in master, so crews where the strength is front-loaded on the master (like Seamus) get stronger.
• There's less room to snag synergy models, so you're more likely to have games dominated by individually strong models rather than synergies.

Probably lots of other things! The hand size pressure is probably the single biggest factor after summoning, IMO.

[MrPieChee]

I guess it's not tough to fix those issues though:

Play with a smaller hand size.

Don't make leaders free.

Put some sort of limit on summoning <- this is the tough one!

 

Not taking a master means you have more space for that synergy. But, you might want to play 40-50 stones if you have to pay for the master to get the same size crews as straight 35ss. For summoning I can't think of a simple way to solve it - a more complex way would be to have a secondary SS pool which starts at the value of the models who can summon and increases by some fraction of that each turn. Each time you summon you have to buy the model from that pool. It would require tweaking for every summoning instance though - "demise (I'm done with this)" probably shouldn't be counted in this pool for instance.

[thatlatinspeakingguy]

this game is completely broken at smaller points. masters with huge damage output can wipe out enemy crew really fast. summoners have obvious advantage. this format is ok if one person is a newbie and the other adjusts his crew for a balanced game.

[Adran]

The game works at smaller points, but as said, some models and styles have a big advantage at those sizes. I'd play games at those levels, particularly with newer players with smaller collections,  but I wouldn't enter a tournament 

[Maniacal_cackle]

I think the biggest thing is just if both players are aware that the game can break a bit if abused at that level, and work to not have crews that don't work at that size (probably shouldn't take a Dreamer crew for example).

Although Dreamer might be a bad example, he's broken at 50 stones too 😜

[solkan]

Trying to balance summoning at smaller game sizes is tough.  It seems like you'd need to add a "game size tax" (so that a model of X SS is treated as X+tax for summoning) to the cost of summoned models, and reduce the hand size (like Henchman Hardcore does), but lowering the hand size is going to make summoning more difficult, too.

As far as paying for leaders goes, I don't think that should be an issue.  Although I could see giving henchman led crews another bonus if they're facing a master led crew at 35SS.  If you do try the option with leader models not being free, I think the M3E Henchman Hardcore is a good indication that you'll end up with effectively "You pay for your leader, but here's a X SS subsidy for it (so it's partially free)".

 

[MrPieChee]

Reducing all model specific upgrades from plentiful 2, to 1 and 5 to 3 would help balance a lot of summoning in smaller game sizes. It might balance other masters as well, although not sure Marcus, for instance, needs any nurfing!

It's difficult to balance summoning a bayou gremlin Vs jorogumo with a simple rule...

[Adran]

On ‎7‎/‎19‎/‎2020 at 8:25 AM, MrPieChee said:

I guess it's not tough to fix those issues though:

Play with a smaller hand size.

Don't make leaders free.

Put some sort of limit on summoning <- this is the tough one!

 

Not taking a master means you have more space for that synergy. But, you might want to play 40-50 stones if you have to pay for the master to get the same size crews as straight 35ss. For summoning I can't think of a simple way to solve it - a more complex way would be to have a secondary SS pool which starts at the value of the models who can summon and increases by some fraction of that each turn. Each time you summon you have to buy the model from that pool. It would require tweaking for every summoning instance though - "demise (I'm done with this)" probably shouldn't be counted in this pool for instance.

Not making leaders Free makes almost no difference to the game balance, you just both need 15 more stones to play the crew. (There are a few masters that cost different amounts, but not enough that I think this will make much difference).  Not making Totems free probably has a bigger effect, but I have no idea how that would affect the crews balance. People seem to miss that Henchmen picked as leaders are much better than they are when picked as a henchman, so if you are making people pay for leaders then henchmen leaders suddenly become a lot better as you're giving them fast for free every turn at no extra cost.

Reducing the hand size will certainly change the game, although I'm not sure how it would change the balance, because I don't think it would affect all crews equally.  It probably affects Summoning masters more than combat masters would be my guess.

One option for summoning is to not increase the plentiful values on the Summoning upgrades (or reduce the increase) for being leader. This will reduce the amount of summoning as I think all masters that summon currently do increase the plentiful value on their upgrades. This might be enough to lower the power that the extra models bring to manageable levels.

[Maniacal_cackle]

I don't think 2-3 model summoning caps would do it.

Kirai could still summon two Goryo, her totem, and another model.

Dreamer could still summon 3 models, + widow weaver could summon extra stitched.

Dashel could still summon two executioners

I don't think any hard rule could fix it. You probably just need two sporting players, and some agreed rules for the specific setup.

For our intro series we often say "no summoning anything outside your core box" and it seems to work okay.

Edit: another option is "only resummon stuff that died."