"You use too many spells :)"

Things is, as much as pox is about positioning it is very easy to relocate a champion with Pull to a position to cliffgib somebody so the only counterplay is not being within 3 spaces of a cliff.
And Shattered Peaks have a way to instantly grant a champion Pull so you know that's also un-play-around-able on maps with cliffs.

 

Be quiet

 

Pox is definitely a champ centric game. Most people like it that way.

Though I do often feel that the playerbase has taken this mentality too far, seems like anything which can kill stuff that isn't a champ based attack gets a stupid amount of hate.


But yeah, regarding spells more generally, I think there is a higher skill cap on effective spell use in this game than in something like hearthstone or magic. Spells aren't just thrown out there, they are used for a specific purpose.

 

Imho it all boils down to the fact that Fonts give Nora, that is the root of the problem, because you cannot afford to go behind with your Nora so you're forced to deploy champs in order to contest fonts, thus champions are more important.

Now imagine this:
1. You get Nora at a fixed rate which slowly increase as the turn pass.
2. Fonts don't give any Nora, instead they remove 1 CD from the cards you used and revel 1 more card each turn, also act as a deployment zone which is always useful (and maybe they also buff champ inside, just to be sure people fight for them).

Controlling them would still provide a reasonable advantadge worth fighting for, but without the nora production bound to them now you're free to play your deck on equal terms with the opponent without being forced to deploy champions first just in order to secure nora, freeying you to play more spell based decks and making deck building more deep than it currently is.

As long as nora production will be tied to map control, then this game will be champion-centric in my opinion.

Fix it pls

 

No ^_^

'cause there is nothing to fix. Just a developement different from what you would like.

 

But I've edited that msg and added "please", so I don't see any reason to not fix it :\

 

There is one value in this game that has the greatest impact on your chances of victory. That value is Nora Efficiency. Sometimes efficiency can be fairly straight forward. As an IS player I generally run Earthquake in the majority of my decks. It costs 45 nora. Efficiency can be calculated as [Effect]*[Number of champions effected]/[Cost] = Efficiency. There is a lot more to it then that like if you AoE a bunch of champions and then next turn they use Heal Mass it reduces your value.

Spells when used generally produce the effect and then thats it. Champions continue to produce effect for as long as they are on the board. So usually champions will have better efficiency in the long run. Spells only become efficient when they preserve your champions, or kill opponent champions. They can be efficient, you just have to consider if its actually worth using them in any given moment.

 

"Champion-centric" is a neutral quality of the game, not some kind of drawback in my opinion, hence there is no need to "fix" this.

 

TLDR

champs can potentially generate infinite value

spells can generally not

 

Historically when spells were cheap, numerous players complained about overuse of spells, referring to it as spell spam. I believe the comparison to M:tG is invalid. In Magic, you summon a champ and it's immediately in the fray. In Pox, you summon a champ, and then you have to position it, which can take multiple turns. You're not only investing the nora, you're investing the number of turns it takes to move the champ into the location of the combat. Also in Magic, your pool of resources grows every turn you play a land. In Pox, your pool only grows when you capture a font or use some sort of nora gen.

 

I would say the fact that champs are more powerful is one of the reasons why people like this game. It'smore like chess gone mad than just a TCG

 

There are two important ways of looking at how cards help you achieve victory in these kinds of games: value and tempo.

Value is often described here as efficiency, but it goes a little bit further than that. A high value rune is going to create more than you paid for in terms of board presence or raw resources (nora). Not that hard a concept.

Tempo is a bit harder to define, but it generally describes the advantage of forcing your opponent to react to you. You can create a tempo advantage by killing a champ (creating an uneven board situation where, if both players stopped making plays from their runedocks, you would have an advantage) or by holding midfont/contesting your opponent's (creating an uneven resource situation where you can outspend your opponent and slowly accrue value). In both situations you are forcing your opponent to make specific plays: either kill one of your champions right away to even up the board or deploy another champion and fall back a bit/ try to take back the font by force. A third tempo play is shifting your attention to your opponent's shrine, either forcing them to transfigure or move their army.

A typical champion is sort of neutral in terms of value/tempo, because most of that comes from how you play them. This is where matchups come to play - if your opponent plays a 70n melee champion and you also play a 70n melee champ with reflexes, you can create value by matching those two champions against each other in a fight, since your champion is likely to win that one-on-one situation. If you have a champion that costs 30n and has 0 damage, 20hp, 7 speed, and stealth, it will not create any value in a midfont fight, but it can create a tempo advantage if you make a beeline to your opponent's font and it can create value if it stays there for 3 turns or more.

Almost every champion can create a tempo advantage by killing/contesting, but some champions are built to passively generate raw value. Nora miners are a simple example of this, as are champions that can create summons or generate hp through some other means.
Xulos is a great example of a champion that does both very easily: he can create tempo the turn you deploy him if his dark favor effect kills a champ, and he passively creates value by increasing his own hp every time a champion is deployed.
Aspect of Infinity is an example of a champion that is geared to create value as a result of her replication ability, but she doesn't do a whole lot in the time leading up to her replication. Playing her from the runedock is a 'tempo hit' because she does not help your existing board in their efforts to kill/contest, while your opponent is most likely to spend their nora on things that will.

In contrast to champions, spells are all about tempo. There are exceptions such as Marsh Song, but most spells are designed to enable your champs to get a kill or contest a font. A lot of the time, this is done through raw damage: aoe spells like icestorm or tornado can shave that extra 10hp off of that one champ you want to take out while softening up nearby champs for next turn. Defensive spells such as protection or whispers of the mind can allow you to overextend one of your champs to get the kill while preventing your opponent from mounting an effective counterattack. This is an area where you can see that value and tempo are intertwined: every spell has a cost, and you want to ensure that your high tempo play is also a high value play. You can do this pretty crudely with champion kills by comparing the cost of the dead champ to the cost of the spell that you used to kill it: using a 35n Grimlic's Bane to take out a 75n champion is pretty good value (even better if it hits two champions), using two 60n Pygmy Hippo Stampedes to take out a 55n champion is a better tempo play than using two 60n PHSes to not kill it, but it is an awful value play regardless.

With enough experience, you can kind of spot how good a player is by their approach to these two concepts- new players tend to be fixated on tempo and try to get the kill at all costs, more veteran players can overvalue value (I was in this mode for a long, long time), and the really good players will make plays that maximize both. Of course, your deck and runes have a huge impact on how these decisions turn out: if you can churn out raw damage for cheap (tornado, draconic pulsar) it's easy to make a high tempo/high value play, if your spellset allows you to overextend for cheap (boundless enthusiasm) it's easy to make a high tempo/high value play, if a single spell can enable a kill and allow you to contest at the same time (swap) it's easy to make a high tempo/high value play.

Spellspam can be a mark of a more novice player, but if you can do it with a good understanding of value it can take you very far.

 

@davre thanks for the explanation, though from what there is to learn from it I'm probably getting only the 20%, I think something must be (and can only be) internalized trough trial and error, and a lot of lost games xD

 

Spells win games.

 

They also lose games.

 

And sometimes they do nothing.

 

Damn Confusion!

 

An easy exercise is to only add 6 spells to your bg.
2x Single target or AoE damage spells, one must cost less than 35 nora and the other more than 40.
1x Spell that buffs you
1x Spell that counters something specific (like killing relics or destroying equips or summons)
2x Spells that forces your opponent to change their strategy (Debuffing, CC, terrain modification, position modification, etc.)
And dont ever use a spell unless u have at least 250nora invested in champs in play.

Try that and ONLY after every 5 PvP matchs change 1 rune from the bg.

This exercise helped me A LOT when i started.

 

I ran 12 spells in my chop block bg and spammed them like crazy. I also wiped the floor with people



What is life

 

I appreciate your thoroughness, but I also hate the ascendancy of tempo/value as the evaluative dichotomy in CCGs. It's a product of the homogenizing effect of "balance" as an absolute concept.