It's not good against control decks, unless theyre running 1-2 cards as the sole and only wincon. Even then, if you run this in the SB, they can just side in more win cons and its again a do nothing card. They have to have 1-2 bullets with no other options for this to be worth it. EVEN then, there is a million ways to interact that can be better than this card. If its a combo deck, then just running a bunch of discard can be better option, because a lot of them need to assemble a critical mass in hand to go off. If its a control deck you can just bring in threats that go under or through contermagic, you can just side into a faster deck and move your decks critical turn to be faster than your opponents. This card is a catch-all designed mostly to allow Crypto to sleep at night in case the format goes up in flames, not to be a staple sideboard card.
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Hex MMOTCG Kickstarter by Cryptozoic Entertainment [Complete, ~$2.5 million funded]
- Thread starter piratepwnsninja
- Start date
The problem with Omen is that it's too slow for it to work as anything more than a 1-for-1. And even as a 1-for-1 you effectively disadvantage yourself by 1 card early for some future benefit you may not even see. It's a great sideboard card for decks that rely on a specific finisher/cog to be played, and that's only if they run 1-2 copies of it normally, or require 3-4 copies in play. I don't see myself main decking an omen on it's description alone unless I'm playing a really slow control deck.
Regarding information about your opponent's deck, as you learn the meta you won't need to see the entire deck to know what to watch out for.
Do you work at fox news
Fragamemnon
Member
Likely over time there will be a combo deck, but it is likely to involve creatures and attacking, nothing horribly noninteractive like putting 12 copies of tendrils of agony on the stack.
Yeah, you're probably right. I'd think having 20 years of TCG design to look at will help to avoid some mistakes. Though if you manage to find a way to loop through some of those escalation cards...
Eteric Rice
Member
God, being at the $85 mark is killing me. I hate to miss the damn Lotus card. 
Shrennin
Didn't get the memo regarding the 14th Amendment
Nope, you're right. Although the 300 PvE cards was merely an estimate - it could be less or it could be more but 300 is the ballpark. The 350 number for PvP cards is exact, I believe. Also, 350 is actually quite large for a normal Magic set so I am really happy with that number (on top of the 300 cards for PvE).
EDIT: Actually, according to that Q&A stream, the PVP cards has risen to 360 something (CZE mentioned that they had it at a nice, even 370 at one point but pulled some cards back for Set 2).
Also, via the stream, no multi-threshold cards for Set 1. From the way they were acting, it sounded like a strong possibility for Set 2 though.
No gameplay in the stream, but it looks like a handful of new cards were revealed. I'll have to sort through it when I get home.
My man.
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
A year down the line everyone with lotus gardens are going to be rich. Lotus garden is pretty much get every card in the game slowly almost guaranteed
Ehhhh. I don't know about that. If by slowly you mean "a decade," then maybe. I don't think that it will be worth any more than a pack a week at most.
That is really only if the PvE stuff is compelling and challenging enough to make Lotuses actually worthwhile to buy at regular intervals.
Edit: One random cool thing I just noticed was that your guild can set up a "deck bank" that people can use to get decks to practice against. That's an amazing idea.
Today was the busiest so far in terms of volume, with 1070 new backers. The only day that beat it in money was the GK firesale. It looks like Primal and Dungeon Crawler are guaranteed to sell out, and with nine Producers now it's possible that we'll even see those go too.
Does anyone know if there's a record number of $10,000-tier backers on a particular KS project?
Does anyone know if there's a record number of $10,000-tier backers on a particular KS project?
Still don't know if if it's worth going higher than King.
Loot would be awesome but it is for PvE only (though PvP wildwest mode would be fun with some crazy legendary equipment combos)
The free draft would be useful to get one free booster of set 2 onwards but for an extra $130. I imagine the boosters can be from set 2+ once they are released right?
Loot would be awesome but it is for PvE only (though PvP wildwest mode would be fun with some crazy legendary equipment combos)
The free draft would be useful to get one free booster of set 2 onwards but for an extra $130. I imagine the boosters can be from set 2+ once they are released right?
Shrennin
Didn't get the memo regarding the 14th Amendment
Also, say you have one copy of Mushwocky. That single Mushwocky could go in all your different decks at the same time.
Apparently it was revealed in the stream that dungeons will ship with two difficulties, normal and heroic. Heroic dungeons require that you have only a single copy of any one card in your deck, unlike normal which allows four. The loot is not better, but apparently you get some kind of cosmetic for completing heroics.
I assume that you would be able to draft into any of the currently available formats, so yes, you will be able to draft set 2 (and 3) with your one year.
It isn't likely to be valuable, but has a very small chance of being very valuable. The only possible way for it to be valuable is if people are using them at a faster rate than they come in. For that to happen the high end PvE has to be extremely difficult, AND Lotus has to be a huge boon to beating tough encounters, AND the PvE endgame has to be sustainable where people raid on a daily basis, AND lotus has to be the best choice for beating hard PVE (i.e. better than all other options), AND people have to be consuming Lotus at a rate faster than they are generated (several K a day). That is an insane parley, even if each individual element of it is not impossible.
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Will wait for the live feed before seeing if I should up my pledge.
Hmm. Yeah, after reading some of the additional analysis I have to agree. It's sideboarded to shut down combo decks, but it's not reliable or exhaustive enough to really actually impact a Constructed deck.
Thats a whole lot of if's hmmm...still, temptation to increase pledge rising...
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
All it really takes is for the game to blow up and get huge. That alone will help the card out mixed with that other stuff.
It's probably not strong enough on it's own, but I think it could play a role in some denial / control decks - especially as a response to hand denial from your opponent.
I'm an older generation Magic player, so I still remember a lot of jank. Cards like this remind me of Jester's Cap and Browse / Digger decks.
The fact is that we don't know enough about the card pool to judge either way.
I don't know if I agree with all of your points. First, you can only get one lotus per day. If you put 4 in your deck at the start of a dungeon - you're potentially exhausting 4 lotuses PER game. That's 4 days of prep time for one encounter.
I don't think they'll be absolutely necessary, but they will make some jankier decks work faster. I don't think it's too unreasonable that some hardcore players will prefer runs with players that use lotuses over players who don't.
I think the biggest factor will be whether or not there are comparable alternatives that are easily available. If the difference between lotus and "alternative card" is miniscule - then I don't think you'll see a large demand for lotuses. Even if there is a demand for them, I don't think they'll ever cost much since they're expendables. They will probably serve as a source of renewable income, we'll just have to wait and see how much.
Minsc
Gold Member
The heroic dungeon format sounds interesting, will make decks a ton more varied. Especially in themed dungeons where certain strategies are weaker due to constant effects in play.
I think they're pretty much a staple card, if they were in PvP no one would make any deck without them.
0 mana for draw a new card means you get to have a smaller deck, so you get the combo cards faster/more often. That alone is a great value. But it also gives you 3 life ([+3/+0]?) and 3 mana. You don't have to cast that 3/1 tiger guy with the 3 mana, if you have something better. But if you don't a first turn creature 3/1 with a draw another card ability is really great.
Not to mention if you equip for the Lotus, and draw 2 in your first hand, you can potentially cycle another 14 cards in your deck, by discarding them and drawing new ones. Pretty great value all in all, doubt there's too much to match it even in MtG.
As far as depleting your stockpile by using 4 in your deck... well having them in your deck doesn't mean you have to get another 4 the next game. Maybe you only draw 1, so only need one more. Maybe you draw none, or maybe you draw 1 and decide not to cast it because you think the rest of your hand is strong enough without it.
Also, those tiger things convert back to lotuses, so you'll recover 25% of the spent ones down the road.
Edit: Under 200 Dungeon Crawler tiers left now. Probably sold out in ~24 hours.
I think they're pretty much a staple card, if they were in PvP no one would make any deck without them.
0 mana for draw a new card means you get to have a smaller deck, so you get the combo cards faster/more often. That alone is a great value. But it also gives you 3 life ([+3/+0]?) and 3 mana. You don't have to cast that 3/1 tiger guy with the 3 mana, if you have something better. But if you don't a first turn creature 3/1 with a draw another card ability is really great.
Not to mention if you equip for the Lotus, and draw 2 in your first hand, you can potentially cycle another 14 cards in your deck, by discarding them and drawing new ones. Pretty great value all in all, doubt there's too much to match it even in MtG.
As far as depleting your stockpile by using 4 in your deck... well having them in your deck doesn't mean you have to get another 4 the next game. Maybe you only draw 1, so only need one more. Maybe you draw none, or maybe you draw 1 and decide not to cast it because you think the rest of your hand is strong enough without it.
Also, those tiger things convert back to lotuses, so you'll recover 25% of the spent ones down the road.
Edit: Under 200 Dungeon Crawler tiers left now. Probably sold out in ~24 hours.
No, the game being huge is not enough, at all. The PvE game has to have sustainable end game with WoW style raiding and the Lotus has to be the equivalent of raid consumables in WoW. If the lotus isn't consumed faster than they are being generated each day they will move toward worthlessness. I would not buy King or above for the Lotus, but I would for the other stuff they are giving you. Honestly. it way, way, way more likely that every other single PvE exclusive Kickstarter card will have more value than a Lotus will.
It could be someday. Some people are betting it will be.
Minsc
Gold Member
Well if the PvE part is F2P (is it?), there's no reason you wouldn't get 100,000s people trying it out. You're right though about needing the demand. They've said the dungeons would be very difficult, and if that is the case, I don't see how you'd not want to include the Lotus in the runs.
When it comes to TCGs, I see no card better than a 0 cost draw another card for any deck you could think of. And if the dungeon had 15 battles in it, you'd probably want 60 lotus cards if you were serious about not losing.
If there are 5000 gardens at the end of the kickstarter, and 100,000 players, and only a mere 1% were serious and ran dungeons, say the above example of 60 petals in a dungeon is too extreme, let's go with 10 petals per day, that would be 10,000 petals a day, with only 5,000 a day being generated. So it is a game of numbers. You need about 1,000 people interested in the raiding/dungeon aspect, which doesn't sound like a lot to me, especially if it's F2P and in many countries.
Demand for good cards isn't enough. It has to be the BEST option. It has to be better than building a cheap combo deck for beating PvE content. The best deck for raids has to need it. They said the content is designed for you to be able to go through it without grinding. Well, now you know for a fact you don't need it to beat base game. We know that hard mode is Highlander, so you now only have a max of 1 copy in your deck. That only leaves high end optional raiding with non-Highlander rules to generate demand for this card.
Shrennin
Didn't get the memo regarding the 14th Amendment
Demand is everything. If the demand of Lotus cards exceeds the supply then they will be valuable. How valuable? Who knows at this point, but they will be valuable.
I doubt demand will exceed supply personally, simply because you can transform 3 Spectral Tigers into a Lotus (assuming you have the Garden). As for hardcore versions of dungeons - even at highlander I could easily see someone wanting to group with someone with a Lotus because that's 3 threshold for one card in a hard mode - that's not something to scoff at).
Unless WotC does something out of nowhere, I think Hex is almost guaranteed to be huge. CZE knows what they are doing.
piratepwnsninja
Member
Hm, how would I go about grabbing a tier as a gift for someone? Use Paypal but give their email address?
Minsc
Gold Member
Losing three battles in a dungeon loses all your rewards iirc, so there's a pretty big risk to skimping out if you're tackling harder dungeons.
The Highlander mode with 1 limit would down the use a bit, but only if the break between that mode and the normal is very skewed. Even still, I gave very generous numbers, numbers which you could argue equates to the game essentially bombing/failing (having less than 1,000 active players) and there still being demand for the card.
But I do see what you're saying about cheap combo decks now though, if you can just spend x once and get a deck that has let's say the most ideal chance for its cost to clear a harder dungeon, say 60%, the value of the lotus becomes the worth of what it is raising that chance to win, say another 5% (or whatever effect it has on winning matches, maybe more or maybe less) to 65%.
How much will be subconscious though I wonder? Say you win 90% of the time you draw a lotus, but only draw one in 20% of your opening hands. The hands you don't draw a lotus you win 66% of. Those matches you lose 1/3 of the time because you didn't draw a Lotus vs those matches you win when you do probably stick out more in one's memory and its effect gets skewed a bit. But I do see your point, and think I've settled back a little on them now.
The other issue being that in PVE, there will probably be less or no concern of balance in the current meta as compared to PVP so there could be other obtainable overpowered PVE cards in dungeons.
Minsc
Gold Member
Yeah, but they do sound really up on it with the "The Spectral Garden is the pinnacle of HEX card collection, plain and simple," but of course they are trying to sell it.
You do have to admit it's sorta hard to beat a 0 cost, draw a new card + get free mana & life + get a ready to cast creature card that lets you draw another card though, along with the ability to mulligan any number of cards of your choosing from the rest of your hand for free. It's possible, but the card fits in any deck, I'd be surprised if there's too many other 0 cost cards with drawing new cards and other benefits made, because then you can basically guarantee your combo every game if you have enough of them.
Who knows what they do, you're right. Maybe they make a dungeon where drawing a card causes you to lose 5 life, so you have to win fights without drawing more than 3 cards, lol.
Or program raid boss AI to rank "Spectral Lotus" as the first card to check for to remove from your deck with a boss level spell
QisTopTier
XisBannedTier
In a sense wouldn't that make it good as a safety net to protect your other stuff.
Is there any plans for a GAF guild?
Shrennin
Didn't get the memo regarding the 14th Amendment
The Spectral Lotus was also mentioned as a key for certain rare, secret puzzles in dungeons. That alone could raise its value.
I'm planning a guild with a buddy of mine so I'm locked there but if we can join multiple guilds then a GAF Guild sounds fantastic.
Maybe Chris could enlighten us on joining multiple guilds?
Is there any plans for a GAF guild?
I'm planning a guild with a buddy of mine so I'm locked there but if we can join multiple guilds then a GAF Guild sounds fantastic.
Maybe Chris could enlighten us on joining multiple guilds?
Super secret legendary dungeon boss when you have a deck of 60 spectral lotuses
We still need someone with GK or guild master for maximun benefit
The tier pic says their guild so I would assume they have to be the leader
Currently, it's believed that Spectral Lotus would do four things.
1. Play it, draw a card.
2. Exhaust it and three things happen.
a. It returns to your hand and changes to Black Tiger.
b. It gives you +3/0 mana. If you look at the dev demos of gameplay, you'll see that the amount of mana you have to cast spells in a turn is denoted by Current/Max. Based off of that, I think you can reasonably assume that it gives you +3 mana for that turn which would be enough to cast the Tiger.
c. It gives you three Threshold. Keep in mind that Threshold does not mean mana. It is just a requirement to cast spells. (ex, must have 2 Ruby Threshold to play Zoltog which is a 4 mana cost card) We can't be sure if you're able to choose which Threshold(s) you get, but considering how Black Lotus itself works, I would say yes.
With that being said, I feel like Spectral Lotus is a good card just because of that fact you get to play a 56 card deck. The added bonuses above seem to make it really strong, especially in multi color PvE decks.
Edit: Also look at Lady Cassandra's equipment. The way the text is written would imply that both Spectral Lotus' threshold ability and her's would work the same.
If you're doing hard PvE content there is literally no reason to not include four Lotuses. Even if you're not using them, it's free deck size reduction.
Edit: Damnit Arveene.
Edit: Damnit Arveene.
You could do that, or you could create a new Kickstarter account for them with their email and back it. If it's anything like any of the other Kickstarters I've backed, everything will be handled through email and you won't actually need to fuss with the Kickstarter account at all once the campaign is over.
Minsc
Gold Member
Oh that's a good point, I didn't consider the fact you can use them to draw a card without exhausting them, so you get the benefit of the 56 card deck without the need to keep replacing them.