They are unplayably bad once your deck starts rolling. Initially they’re no worse than Attack I, but that’s a rather low bar. And the high level ones aren’t very good either.
I also find Traps pretty bad in general. I appreciate that they do damage and replace a draw for the opponent, but the number of turns it takes for them to pay off can get you killed on harder levels.
I had a lot of fun with a trap-heavy deck and a bunch of the card that makes your opponent discard and re-draw 3 at a time. It fizzled against the Harbinger (too much Enough!), but it cleaned up everything until that point.
The Necro summons are just bad.
The summons are useful for getting some more cards into your deck when you have leveled-up Bury cards (which you should). They’re not a priority to upgrade or anything (that would be Bury) but they’re hardly horrific.
I played a lot of Agricola on the phone against the AI, and I was aiming for a similar design philosophy in this game: certain GENERAL strategies will always be viable as a fallback, but niche strategies like Heavy-Traps or Recipe-Elemental-Manipulation should be possible to win with as well (and classes that have them should feel distinct to a certain extent).
Of course, it’s extremely difficult to balance the strategies to be equally easy to achieve, but I do try tweaking key cards to make the niche strategies fun and viable. I’ll be boosting the Undead Minion damage in the coming update to compensate for their deck clogging tendencies.
The necromancer minion cards are fantastic once you can reliably cast the summon army spell every turn that adds “draw 1 card” to the text of every necromancer minion. But yea, you’ve basically got to plan your deck around having 2 of those, forgive me for not remembering the name.
Agreed, both the Necromancer and Beastmaster are below par at the moment, and I will be addressing them in the coming update. The Assassin’s Hook Shot was changed earlier to support the Trap strategy (by drawing them out earlier), and I feel this brought the class close to the base viablity line.
Necromancer’s Summons should not feel weak, since he’s a freaking Necromancer… I’ll start by boosting the summon damage to 9/18/27 Physical from the current 6/10/15, and testing this change.
Beastmaster will be getting special active Talents on his Wolf, similar to those that Companions have.
Updates will be a little slow this week as I prepare the new levels/cards for the DLC, which will bring Dragons as a playable class!
Undead Horde. And yeah, it’s great fun ;)
@nerdook - I don’t think the Minions need more damage - they do plenty as is, at about 50% stronger than equivalent Attack cards. The Necromancer already has great burst / alpha-strike capabilities.
I’d personally love to see them do something like:
Delete this card and deal 3/5/7 Physical damage
if this card is discarded by another card's effect
to mitigate the clogginess, synergize better with existing Necro cards, and be a little more unique and flavorful.
I’ve won against the Harbinger now with the Cleric, Apothecary, Knight, Wizard, and Rogue. None of them was too troublesome to get a workable deck going. I’ve been trying for a Barbarian win most recently and I just can’t seem to put together a winner. With all the others I could pick together a deck that would win in a few turns at high level or else give me enough healing/defense to survive a longer fight. I can’t seem to do either with the Barbarian. Maybe I’ve just had bad luck on Harbingers getting Enough/Fortify cards at just the wrong moments, but I can’t seem to crack it.
Anyone have tips on how to put together an effective Barbarian deck?
I love the bonebreaker cards. My best success came with a thorns build, but the mechanics of that have changed now (equip gives you a card now that applies the effect during the turn vs working all the time). Might still work, but haven’t tried it.
Edit: expansion is out, with new locations, new classes, new monsters
Purestrike is a pretty infuriating mechanic.
Better than shield breaker! I lost a great cleric run to a very RNG-blessed barbarian.
After some very obsessive play sessions, I’ve beaten the game on Normal mode with all 12 classes. But now there’s an expansion and there are two more, so I’ll have to do that as well.
I also got my first win on Legendary mode using a Wizard, but I consider Wizards and Necromancers the easiest to play. Something about my preferred approach to deckbuilders seem to mesh with the magic cards available to both. In both cases I build up huge hands and mana totals via Mana Charge + Time Stasis or Bury+Raise Dead. Then I just unload on the opponent. No finesse required!
Wow okay, the damage boost to the Necromancer’s Summoning cards.
Undead Horde is now basically:
15 Mana
Deal 54 damage.
Draw a card.
Plus the obvious Summoning card synergies. Playing the necro “straight” is fairly absurd now.
Summoning necromancers are great, the real problem is that they alone amongst the casty types are reliant on “attack” type physical-damage cards. A wizard or apothecary will probably have multiple elements represented in their spell portfolio so resistances/immunities aren’t that big a deal. A necromancer can get in a bind when they run into someone dodgy, physically resistant, or with retaliate cards.
If you didn’t level the dark spear or whatever like a fool, sure.
I typically level at least one dark spear all the way, while ditching the rest. Dark spear is not a good damaging spell due to the nasty variability of the damage based on discard pile. Yeah, it’s manageable with judicious use of bury but a maxed out dark spear III hit is really hard to land. Plus a summoning necromancer is quickly going to clutter the deck with minions meaning that dark spear becomes a rare draw. Hence summoning necromancers run into trouble with physical resistance and dodge.
A necromancer that wants to just burn people with spell damage, on the other hand, is quite viable as well. But it’s not about dark spears in that case. A blasty necromancer is much better served by just buying some meteors or ice blasts or similar at a merchant. The combo of bury + raise dead can raise mana and build a big hand of spell cards arguably faster than the traditional wizard/apothecary route of having a “+1 card draw on mana charge” item. And it doesn’t require a special item.
I really want to try a gambler necromancer some time, where the core idea is to slim the deck down to just the buries and the raise deads and then toss in a resurrection or two to just steal the opponents deck and play it against them. Not quite as easy as the gambler rogue, but might be a giggle if I can get it to work.
It’s the Daily Star Deal on Bundlestars (https://www.bundlestars.com/en/bundle/monster-slayers-complete-edition), complete edition for 4.99€.
Thanks very much; a bargain at twice the price!
I grabbed this from the Steam sale and I’ve put quite a few hours in already. It’s perfect for me. Easy to learn, plays fast, but difficult to beat. Can you even beat this game? I got to level 15 with a character and I was capped, but I died before I beat the dungeon. Couldn’t get my hero healed up between battles. I’m guessing this is what does in most people.
You used to be able to. I have two or three wins under my belt. With recent tuning I have yet to make it to the final boss.