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What makes Teeth competitive?


dboeren

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Quick update guys I just finished turn one of the game I started with the skeeter horde 11 days ago. It's a 25SS scrim with me having Somer, 3 skeeters, a whisperer and 2 Bayous vs LJ, the exe 2 marshals, and the Judge.

First turn consisted of me moving somer up, summoning another gremlin and taking the next 11 days to figure out what I was going to do, I drew 53 cards, moved teh skeeters in for the assassination, decided not to and did this till the first night was over.

My opponent had just watched Rocky and didn't want to give up after a mere 6 hours so we reconviened the next night for more of my indisions. I could make up my mind so I just kept summing mosquetos waiting for my opponent to counter it. I figured by showing him this maneuver repeatedly it wouldn't just buy me time buy help my opponent get used to it and come up with a counter.

Long story short 11 days later I have a plan and finished my first turn. I'm just going to wait till one of the guild gets close enough for Som'er to discard their hand than send in the skeeters.

Will update when turn 2 ends!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wait, so a hyper specific build using an alreeady underpowered master is somehow threatening to break the game?

Imagine that card draw in a cycling deck format proves to be over powered. Man, I'd have never seen that coming if I'd... ever... looked... at ...ccg... design...

Okay folks here's the thing recursion combined with card draw= busted.

The break point here isn't simply Teeth. An identical example can be made any time you use the Hog whisperers. If you're drawing 8 cards every time you meet a condition, that means it will only take you 6 recursions to complete drawing your deck into your hand. This can actually be done with Zoriada as well.

Incidentally, you can also use "git yore bro" for this combo as well. It's not as efficient as using the skeeters (since the skeeter larva has no casting cost) but all you need to be able to do is pull a 13 into your hand and presto, insta loop thanks to the fact skeeters can cast "Git your bro" as well.

The larva loop isn't the problem. The no cost card draw is.

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I think without the card loop Som'er is very competitive. The Dumb luck ability can potentially double his and other gremlins damage, the pigs can throw out quite a bit of damge for their point cost and having the pig whisperer makes quite a bit of difference.

With Som'er and the whisperer making more troops for you, a smart player can balance his troop losses with those of his opponent. It may be a battle of attrition, but Som'er is equiped to come out ahead!

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I definately think Teeth is competitive without the card loop. The difficulty in resolving this issue is to make sure the right fix is enacted without hamstringing something that he may have been designed to use to offset the "Ill fated" rule and the awesomeness that is the Gremlin Stat line (I am not talking about the loop hole that has been described). Remember the law of unintended consequences in this situation, any decision could greatly affect the game now and in the future.

P.S. I think the card generation loophole as described by WombatCowboy earlier would lead to the second most boring game I've ever played (the first being the PHaley turtle vs my HR turtle). At the point where it takes you 11 days to decide what you want to do, 6 hours to complete your turn, and your opponent is doing something else during your turn, why even play.

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Yeah but the issue with the loophole isn't that it requires a great deal of time to execute. You can complete it in 5 iterations if you run 4 hog whisperers and 2 mosquito. Think about that. In 5 actions, I can draw my entire deck into my hand AT NO COST. And there's almost nothing my opponent can do to stop it unless they're built specifically with stopping a solitaire game in mind. Even then, stopping it will likely entail them feeding me their army piecemeal anyway.

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I dont see how they will have to feed you their crew piecemeal to win. The list that you presented is really only good at cycling cards. The whisperers are 90% worthless without any pigs, the skeeters are half dead (and because of insignificant cant claim objectives or contribute to scenario win conditions), and only So'mer has a gun (with no way to bring out Bayou Gremlins with "git y'er bro").

They can just stay clear of you and complete their strategy and schemes, while you have to keep the group tight (within 6 inches) and complete your activation pretty much the same way each time. If they feel like taking the fight to you, then they can have their master use some of the soulstones they have cached and start killing off your skeeters with spells or ranged attacks (21 DF is not that difficult to hit when you can add two cards and the stat of the master which is usually 7 or 8). Once the skeeters are gone the whole house of cards crumbles.

A balanced Gremlin list might fair better because of increased options, but once again the skeeters are priority targets and once they fall the trick is done.

I think it is the potential of what the skeeters can do unchecked that is their real strength. As soon as you place them on the board you know that your opponent is going to have to focus a lot of energy into them and going to want to win the initiative right off.

In the end though, this loophole will be closed and I wouldn't miss it at all, as it never occured to me that you could use an All action on a model that is suffering from slow. The only caveat to this being that it doesn't completely hamstring a model that already has his fair share of disadvantages.

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My point here is that even spending 19 points on this set up 3 hog whisperers, 2 skeeters, I still have points left over. If I drop 2 more points for a single gremlin, I can add 2 gremlins a turn once I cycle my deck into to my hand (Summon, heal, summon)

The Hog Whisperers don't do anything? I dunno, I think no cost card draw is pretty powerful myself. But then again, as stated, I'm approaching this as a ccg player. A utility that starts in play and is ALWAYS active.

Oh yeah, plus the way the rules are set, once I put this engine into play, I ALMOST ALWAYS go first (the only time I wouldn't would be if after discarding down my opponent also flips the red joker for his initiative pull).

So I get no cost card draw and I get to go first each turn. For free. Yeah, I can live with a diminished number of pigs for that.

Given the alternating turn sequence, in order to strike at the Gremlin card draw machine, the opponent has to telegraph intent by moving a model into a threat position (given that this combo will likely as not be masturbating wildly in the corner of the table) thus granting the chance to strike either directly or in response to the opponent moving up.

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First, you cant cheat the initiative draw except by spending SS and re-flipping (you cant cheat from your hand page 43). So you wont always be going first, in fact by having the 5 best cards in your hand you are actually increasing the odds of losing the initiative draw.

Second, look at the abilities of the Whisperers, they are all geared toward supporting the pigs. On their own they are fairly worthless for winning the game.

Third, if you camp in a corner, you can (and probably will) still lose the game, you only win by completing the strategy and schemes you have drawn and chosen. Stalling, for the most part, gets you no where in this game.

Fourth, telegraphing or not, each faction has plenty of ways to get at you from beyond your threat range. Also remember that the Gremlin crew isn't very durable to begin with, they have none of the neat abilities to counteract damage (Armour, Hard to wound/kill, regeneration, decent defense) and for the most part skeeters are going to have 3 WDs, while healthy Bayou Gremlins have only 4. The only real damage producers you have are So'mers' or the Bayou Gremlins' guns and neither one of these are super great even with "Y'all watch this" and "Dumb luck" in effect (even the warpig doesn't do that much damage).

I still say that the trick is neat but not quite as powerful as it may appear in theory. The true power in this game is the SS that the masters can use. As mentioned in a previous post, the skeeter has the best Df in the Gremlin crew and a master using SS isn't going to strugle that much to beat it. And with the exception of the Outcast Masters, all others start with at least 2 SS cached.

This is not a CCG.

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I don't have to cheat the initiative draw. If the last card in my deck is the red joker it will be reshuffled into the deck of 1 card, BEFORE I have to discard down to 5 cards at the start of the turn, meaning I discard 48 cards, flip the red joker for initiative, secure the first action, and then reshuffle my now 49 card deck.

I understand it's not a ccg, however the game theory that underlies ccg design is evident in how the decks are utilized, especially given the mechanics of card draw and that you and your opponent are always drawing from completely independant decks.

(Aside) People assume that the only mechanic behind how ccg's work is how much money you dump into them, this is completely untrue. Consistency is much more signifgant than one would imagine. Consistency is all about optimizing your capacity to use your resources. That's why the cards that most frequently break ccg enviroments are ones that allow you to tutor your deck for a minimal cost or draw cards with little to no cost. (End aside)

Additionally, yes, in low point games, the fact you're dumping 19 points into drawing your hand every turn isn't that hot. How about at 35 points or 50 points? Then I've got warpigs rampaging across the table that are hitting anything that's not a master and inflicting wounds left right and center. And that same 19 points is still drawing me my deck, EVERY TURN

So if my pigs are running around hitting a defense of 18 everytime they flip, and triggering squeal how many models can stand up to that, reliably? I don't even have to bother going after masters until I've killed off the rest of their crew. Even then, I force them to burn soulstones or eat 6 damage a pop everytime a warpig looks at them.

Or even leaving aside the warpigs, what happens in 50 point games? I leave 19 points to play solitaire in a corner every turn while 31 points of "I throw 14(suit of choice) for every test, including defense" murder runs around decimating the table.

That's the issue. Sure it doesn't create a win condition. It just breaks the mechanics behind the game of "random draw"

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As a recent "victim" of the draw the complete deck into hand with a 4 mosquito, 2 Hog Whisperer, Warpig 25SS list, I must say this was rather disheartening, even when I ran a mostly construct list with Rasputina.

Turn 1, during all my activations, he just kept sacraficing one mosquito to another generating cards until all my activations were over, then proceeded to draw his entire deck. Then using the mosquitos to basically pull themselves across the board (using the combination of Summon and the fact that an All action can still be done if you are slowed), "moved" his 4 mosquitos across the board, then "moved" them right next to Rasputina, then had one attack with a red-joker, to which rasputina flipped, cheated and soulstoned to stay alive. Have a second mosquito repeat with a 13 and rasputina doing the same. Then using the other two sacraficed them away and moved, them back to the otherside of the board. Round 2 and 3 were the same until Rasputina died, having run out of soulstones.

So we meta-gamed a bit more and my only solution to this is to run with an all construct list, but even then with a Warpig with a stacked deck (by discarding all but the best, and spending the first portion of the turn drawing up the deck) he can kill most anything. If he can play the discard pile as only three cards (red joker and two 13's) card there is a 2/3 chance the attack is a 13, a 50/50 chance of the damage being red joker, and if so a warpig can do 12 points of damage in a single hit.

So I do hope there is a fix for this card draw engine, as it does make for very long and one sided battle.

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I played against this combo, and above anything else it just wasn't fun to play against. Yes, I nearly pulled victory - in order to do that, I had a ridiculously lucky card draws (I was soulstoning Kings on top of Joker draws) and still I lost. But the most unsatisfying thing about playing against it is that I ended up playing against the combo, not the game itself. Every action was predicated on dealing with this tactic, rather than having my own plan of action or ways of threatening the opponent. That wasn't fun to play. I like a challenge but I like to be a challenge too.

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Drop the cost on the Hog whisperers to 3 points each, give So'mer a 2 stone cache and change the wording on SotF to add "once per turn." Change the larva action to (2)

Bam fixed.

Keeps the card draw intact, but disallows the huge cascade, and it fixes the recursive summoning loop.

I'd say just make (ALL) actions impossible when slowed.

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Those are all great suggestions but you have to realize that part of the reason the FAQ and this fix is taking this long is because the guys are most likely testing these combos to make sure these changes don't break anything else.

It's easy to say "Do this, bam now its fixed" without considering the bigger picture(IE Model intent, point balancing and possible interaction with models not published yet). Eric and team are making sure how ever they fix it, it will be fixed right and fair and hopefully not to complicated.

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Im going to start playing a teeth crew as soon as mr posty gets the stuff to me. Till there is a fix for this, im going to use my own gut feeling I will use skeeters sac and resac to gen cards a fair bit to get an edge in combat but im not going to go for the full deck in my hand kinda game as its dull for me to play.

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