Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Tournament Goodies

People keep asking me why the Tournament Goodie characters aren't tournament-legal.

"They don't seem that unbalanced to me," seems to be the usual response. And it's true - not all of them are that badly unbalanced. I'm going to use the term "broken" rather than "unbalanced," here. The two terms are interchangeable, but "broken" is easier to type.

These three are available in English:
Goodies

Those of you who complain about the goodies being non-legal will usually use the beggar as your example. And you're right: The beggar is not broken. He may even be a bit underpowered. When facing a Beggar, just wound him and move on. You can spend the AP to wound him if you want to, but I wouldn't stress too badly about it unless your opponent is using a Cleric or he's within a few squares of a Fountain of Youth. Just make sure he doesn't escape, and you're good.

The Disciple isn't badly broken, but you can use the Disciple to hide a room and then another adjacent character to re-reveal that same room completely re-arranging the room. Or use the Disciple to keep your opponent's favorite character out of play for a turn or two. he's a frustrating character.

The Ogre, on the other hand, is broken. Very badly broken. Especially in combination with certain characters. These "certain other characters," include (but are not limited to) the Ghoul, the Necromancer, and the Specter.

Think of it this way: Normally, you walk your Mummy up to your opponent's Troll, and you spend 1 AP and a combat card for the possibility of wounding the Troll. If you have the Ghoul handy, he then picks up the wounded Troll and makes a run for it. This keeps the Troll from regenerating, and effectively removes it from play. Suddenly, I'm down a Troll, and you're down one Combat Card and one Action. You can theoretically repeat this three times with the Necromancer to make Zombies, and once more with the Specter to reincarnate. Each time you take a swing at me, I get to spend a combat card in defense, so it's a risk on your part because I may win a combat, costing you your Hitter.

Now replace your Mummy with your Ogre. Now there is no risk of losing the Ogre unless I manage to hit it on my turn. Instead of spending an action and a combat card for the possibility of making my character vulnerable to your Ghoul/Necromancer/Specter, you spend just the action point and I don't have the opportunity to fight back. This makes it significantly more probable that you will take out more of my characters than if you were doing it the standard way with combat cards.

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