Balance problems?

[Attackmack]

5 hours ago, Keldaur said:

The reason is because it does nothing for the game and it only works to give a false sense of control on a competitive setting. In a competitive setting you are expected to know how to play the matchups. If you want to create a bottleneck and your opponent wants to stop it, it's a 50% way, no matter if you can choose or you cannot. If your opponent wants to create a bottleneck and you want objective, it's still a 50% you both get what you want, or you both get the oppossite. And so on and so on. 

In this sense, it's useless to let the player choose except if you want to give your players a false sense of control. 

 

3 hours ago, Rhellion said:

So "losing" the roll is winning the roll for you. No different than if winning the roll gave you the choice. Since you would choose to place first.

I guess youre right, I must try and look at the initial roll-off not as a win/lose situation but simply to get things started.

[Keldaur]

To be honest. We won't be able to say if the game is balanced if there isn't a large data sample to look for. Most of the arguments in here  are based on anecdotical evidence.

The only useful you can get is what Fredster said. To continue to play the game and look for things you could had done differently to gain advantadges will be way more productive than thinking about balance, specially since it is too early too tell.

[CJPT]

1 hour ago, Keldaur said:

The only useful you can get is what Fredster said. To continue to play the game and look for things you could had done differently to gain advantadges will be way more productive than thinking about balance, specially since it is too early too tell.

This is a good point. At the moment it's worth assuming that the game is balanced and focusing on your own decision making - because if it IS balanced then that will make you a better player overall, and if it ISN'T balanced then that will become clear eventually anyway so there's no point going looking for it.

[Mrmattywoodz]

At our store many people are actually worried the balance is problematic the other way around. We have seen that the bloodbound are winning 2/3-3/4 of the matches we have played. After looking over forums i have seen people lean both ways, which tells me that the game is probably pretty balanced. (by the way, I am undefeated with bloodbound and have only won 2 or three games with stormcast out of the 6-7 i have played).

 

[gorthorbeastlord]

Bloodbound are by definition much easier to play: You have much higher movement so you can react much easier, using movement or charge actions to maneuver onto objectives, into supporting positions, or capitalize on a stormcast moving forward and you're guaranteed to inspire which gives you move movement.

On the flip side the stormcast eternals are very slow and can't react to unexpected plays, you have to plan your moves carefully and you only ever get to make 3 movements per turn. You're also at the mercy of the dice to inspire your models. Couple this with your reliance on action cards to help you squeeze a little more movement and off the bat you're at a severe disadvantage.

It seems very cut and dry, stormcast require a lot more planning and careful play than the bloodbound who can sacrifice pieces to inspire, pressure and if you manage to remove a liberator early you're laughing.

 

Even things which you say are too strong such as scoring objectives by taking no damage is extremely random. You only have that one defense die early on and if they flip a crit into your face goodbye objective.

Nevermind that the game is heavily weighted to be offense oriented given how many attack dice are chucked.

 

As everyone's mentioned it'll take many thousands of games to wager if it's balanced, and this isn't taking into account the strengths of individual cards, which objectives are better for which warband and everything else.

 

It's a very deep game with a lot of player skill and decision making. Writing it off after 5 games is a grave mistake.

[Elodin]

12 hours ago, Lazaris said:

I'm actually quite happy about some of the answers I got. I'm just a bit puzzled by the fact that reavers require so much planning while a braindead stormcast has so many tools available to cancel those plans on the spot.

Edit: I realise I may sound stubborn and I apologize for this. It's just that I played both warbands and in both cases the reavers were nowhere close to a victory... quite the opposite actually. I'll play more and follow your advice to see if it gets better!

It’s alright, I was in a bad mood when I posted (Blood Bowl online can be a terrible experience, mostly because of the community) so I was more abrasive than necessary. 

I’m sincerely hoping I’ll be able to get a number of games in this week to solidify more tactics, so if new ideas come to mind I’ll be sure to put them up. 

[someone2040]

12 hours ago, Lazaris said:

 I'm just a bit puzzled by the fact that reavers require so much planning while a braindead stormcast has so many tools available to cancel those plans on the spot.

I can't comment on the actual balance of the game, but thought I'd chip in on this point in particular.

I think any game that doesn't involve identical sides is going to have this. Perhaps not to extreme extents, but there'll always be some kind of faction or army that tends to have a more straight forward game plan. It's important that these factions exist, because these tend to be the 'newbie' faction, which allows people to get into the game and be half competitive without figuring out all the ins and outs of the game immediately.

As long as these strategies aren't overwhelmingly the 'top strategy' it's fine for the game, because there will be other more 'interesting' factions that other people will gravitate towards.

What's also interesting is that since each warband is going to include new cards for all factions, what may be a good faction today might fall behind tomorrow or may have to change up their tactics to account for new cards in the system. Maybe the Ironjawz boxed set will include a bunch of super aggressive neutral cards that push out a super defensive Stormcast list, who knows.

 

Overall, it's probably far too early to tell (The games been out for a few days!).  Blood and Glory looks to be the first big event coming up, and even then, people will be using the Ironjawz and Sepulchral Guard for the first time on the day of the event, so it'll be particularly hard to determine what the results of that even truly mean. Overall, I suspect we won't know if there are any true balance problems until towards the end of the year.

[CJPT]

It bodes well for Shadespire that there's so much disagreement about which faction requires more strategy/planning. Not that arguments are the goal, but if the answer isn't obvious then it suggests that the game is in a decent place.

[Gaz Taylor]

1 hour ago, CJPT said:

It bodes well for Shadespire that there's so much disagreement about which faction requires more strategy/planning. Not that arguments are the goal, but if the answer isn't obvious then it suggests that the game is in a decent place.

I think it also depends on your playing style. I personally would say the Blood Reavers are the 'stronger' faction but that's because they are faster and suit my playing style. Another player may think one of the other warbands are stronger due to how they play. It's all about how it clicks in your head.  

[Killax]

Yeah so far Ive seen 50/50 results pretty much everywhere, in my real life games, in starter vs starter games, TGA page and Facebook. Based on that visual I think there is enough balance to not really have any Warband come out on top from the start.
However it should also not come as too much of a suprise, it's the advantage of having a dice system and card system like this. What I mean by that is that everyone basically has a "5+ Ward save" and the damage outcome is set. Then there are cards who do tinker with saves and damage outcomes but there are just as many cards who provide defensive bonusses that more or less thake away such boosts. 

In the end a good portion of luck is still rewarded in Shadespire but it's less dice based as Age of Sigmar or 40K where dice are rolled in such massive ways the average outcome becomes very predictable. E.g. there are units who hit and wound with 66,66% succes, if these also make a ton of attacks you know that an oppossing unit/model that is cheaper will usually fold to the pressure. In Shadespire these models excist but still can only charge and move once, dancing around them is what you want to do.
In Warhammer Underworlds a lot of designs lead to a 50/50 outcome, again you can thinker with this through cards but you also only have 1 specific card to do this once. Being prepaired for the game by playing a lot is the only thing you can do to figure out on which losing or winning side you are. However if one assumes Stormcast play "easier" the only conclusion I can draw from that specific player is that he or she isn't well informed enough.

In order to be succesful with this game you want to know what you can do but even more importantly want to know what your opponent can do. Understand which tricks might be ahead, understand that certain board positions mean you should play on Objectives (at least turn 1) and lastly but perhaps most importantly see the flow of the game as your hand unfolds into the 'best' strategy. If you are Upgrade heavy or Objective killed model focused from the start it's much better to mulligan that hand, afterall if you do play on Objectives it's unlikely you'll land on 5 Glory at the end of turn 1. Where in turn 2 and 3 that possibility is almost a given.

[CJPT]

A really big deal for Shadespire in terms of balance and 'feel' is that damage values aren't determined by a dice roll. You have all the information you need, most of the time, to know whether or not one of your characters is in danger of being killed during the enemy's activation. Upgrades and ploys can sometimes surprise you in that regard, but it's up to you to figure out if your opponent is trying to set up an obvious combo (it's really obvious when a Reaver player is trying to trigger Final Blow, for example.) And if you're holding useful defensive cards, you can usually react: if your opponent plays Final Blow and now your Stormcast is in danger of being killed on the next activation, you can play Sidestep or another card to get them out of dodge. It's much less common to feel like you've been 'gotcha'd' by a dice roll or card.

I really like this because it offsets the fact that the dice are (generally) weighted towards offense: you might get hit a lot, but generally speaking any losses you take are completely under your control. There's no scenario where somebody just happens to roll amazingly well on mortal wounds and swings the game in a way you couldn't account for.

[Dave Fraser]

I’ve only played 6 rounds so far and all with stormcasts.

I found the biggest decider was what objective cards we each picked up. 

I think I wiped my opponent in 3/6 rounds and 2 of those came down to last activation & the ‘do over’ attack card for stormcasts. 

Had I failed I probably lost both those rounds as he had the ‘champion of khorne’ card

My other win was due to bloodbound stalling out for too long meaning I could win a low score game due to externals. 

 

 

[Auretious Taak]

I've only played 2 games so far, one as Stormcasta nd one as Blood reavers and there are a few stand out things others have not touched upon in this article.

Firstly, Blood Reavers all inspire at the same time once 3 fighters total are knocked out and 'dead' (as much as your soul is trapped in Shadespire for eternity because Nagash is a Boss!). In your first turn, you could, depending on how close the Storm Cast deploy their fighters, feasibly get multiple charges off. You have 2 guys that get one shotted from the get go but between them they have the potential to also kill a Storm Cast. So if you focus your attacks with those two and bait a counter attack, it is feasible that you lose your two red shirts with their 2 wounds and also take out one of the storm cast eternals in your first game turn, and whilst it won't always happen, it is reliable enough to work in as a general strategy to vastly improve your abilities whilst also working towards specific objectives.

As mentioned above, glory for the Blood Reavers should be viewed more as upgrades more so then the storm cast because once they start getting upgraded, they start to powers pike significantly.

Another aspect that one' has to consider is that the opponent has 3 objectives, and they could be any of a large (but not so large yet) number of objectives, so knowing what all the objectives in the game could be and planning around how to minimise some easy objective scores through basic activations is a must. One of the objectives you score for having no enemies in your deployment area, so as a player, if you ensure at least one of your fighters is in your enemy's deployment area (or their half of the board, I forget the exact wording) you are potentially denying them an easy glory point/upgrade point. Right now there aren't that many cards in the set, and as a whole, even once the expansions coming (ironskullz, sepulchral guard, skaven, fyreslayers, the armoured chaos warriors and the other stormcast eternal warband) are out you'll still not have an insane number of cards to know - a couple hundred cards max is not that great a number, consider magic the gathering, card sets and blocks of 2 card sets have several hundred cards and they are relatively easy to know as a general overview what to expect potentially. As the objective cards for Shadespire are what we are looking at you're not even needing to know every card in all the sets, just a small portion of them and then identifying the easy to score and just as easy to counter objectives is not going to be too hard to manage.

Finally, movement is a huge factor. Blood Reavers are faster then Storm Cast by an extra hex prior to inspiration and post inspiration, 2 hexes. Then of course there's ploys like sprint that doubles the movement of a character for their activation. Yes, you're gonna need to plan how you are moving, but it's relatively easy to look at the stormcast and know as a rule how far they need to move to engage you. You could, literally, avoid combat with them for the entire first turn and use it to set up a stronger second turn.

I found with my 2 games that the way your objective deck is built is going to be a huge factor - I scored 6 glory in my first turn as Storm Casts vs the 1 of my Blood Reaver Opponent, I steam rolled it from there. The Blood Reaver game I lost because I could score 1 or 2 glory only and there was no real way to capture the objectives I had. There were common objective cards that would have helped more, but as it was I scored my first glory at the end of my second turn. I know there are ways to cycle through cards but we weren't using those rules just yet. The point is, deck building is a skill and finding the balance is going to be a skill in many cases, and if you end up sucking at that, the internet exists and I'm sure you'll be able to net-deck a decent deck soon enough.

[Thor0298]

I’ve played quite a few games so far. Four as stormcast, three as khorne, three as skeletons and one as orks. I found stormcast and khorne both to be straightforward and  both very solid. I won all three as khorne. The expansions seem to be requiring way more tactics/strategy especially the skeletons. Skeletons I went 0/3. Orks I won my only game and stormcast I am 3/4. 

[Attackmack]

On 26/10/2017 at 12:06 PM, Dave Fraser said:

I’ve only played 6 rounds so far and all with stormcasts.

I found the biggest decider was what objective cards we each picked up. 

I think I wiped my opponent in 3/6 rounds and 2 of those came down to last activation & the ‘do over’ attack card for stormcasts. 

Had I failed I probably lost both those rounds as he had the ‘champion of khorne’ card

My other win was due to bloodbound stalling out for too long meaning I could win a low score game due to externals. 

 

 

But "Champion of Khorne" requires him to kill all your fighters as well as have only a single fighter alive. Are you that sure he would have managed to kill your remaining fighter(s) if you had failed?

[Malakree]

So as a bit of information here.

Blood and glory had just shy of 90 players. The top 4 had one of each warband, with undead/khorne as top 2.

Plus the glory points difference between 2nd and 3rd (stormcast) was 1 glory point after 3 rounds(2/3 games per round) and the difference between 3rd and 4th was 2 glory points.

That is an amazingly balanced result imo.

[Killax]

Seems good to me, as before, we have 400+ cards, partial spoilers cant really give a good balance indication.

Looking forward to hear who won though.

[Urbanus]

7 hours ago, Malakree said:

So as a bit of information here.

Blood and glory had just shy of 90 players. The top 4 had one of each warband, with undead/khorne as top 2.

Plus the glory points difference between 2nd and 3rd (stormcast) was 1 glory point after 3 rounds(2/3 games per round) and the difference between 3rd and 4th was 2 glory points.

That is an amazingly balanced result imo.

This is excellent news! But it might be that the meta just havnt had time to form yet. But for now Im hopefull.

[Sleboda]

On 10/23/2017 at 5:14 PM, CJPT said:

it's worth assuming that the game is balanced and focusing on your own decision making -

 The GW player-base has never been good at doing this. It's always the game's fault, or their cheesy opponents finding loopholes or "power gaming." 

Gamers don't like being told to get better at their games.

[Dave Fraser]

On 03/11/2017 at 2:46 PM, Attackmack said:

But "Champion of Khorne" requires him to kill all your fighters as well as have only a single fighter alive. Are you that sure he would have managed to kill your remaining fighter(s) if you had failed?

We played that wrong then!