Playing Damnation is like killing all the creatures with a pile of 50 dollars. That thing is expensive.
because themes aren't really a good thing to have in tcgs. the reason why themes work for pox is because at its core pox is NOT a tcg.
This is just a lot of nonsense. MTG released theme decks every year for like 20 years then. Every block/cycle is basically just a collection of various subthemes. Modern Masters is literally them taking old cards with themes in mind and putting it together and selling as a new set. Here's an article for it: http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/mining-past-2015-05-04 Notice how many times the word "themes" comes up in this article The colors (factions in pox, whatever in other card games) are all just a type of theme anyway. The reason themes are a good design tool in TCGs is precisely so that you focus your design in such a way that stuff works together, instead of all being stand-alone cards that you just throw in every deck. And the entire concept of deck types (Aggro, Control, Mill, etc.) are generally just manifested as themes anyway. ~ In any case, the question here is that what is a clearly a tree, and is even NAMED a CONIFER isn't a tree somehow, that's all I found funny. Nothing to do with "themes" or "TCGs."
why do you suppose that hearthstone doesn't assign all of its champs a race? themes do force certain builds. it will be hard to find tomblords in anything but skeleton deck. that's ok for pox though because there is enough variety of different themes that it doesn't rankle that there is no incentive to run a tomblord in a different kind of deck. Just as it doesn't rankle that I cant run a siege tank when playing protoss. yes I suppose you can extend the concept of theme to faction if you really want to, but it boils down to how the game is meant to be played. a tcg is meant to be an ongoing experiment in deck builds with an ever changing meta. strategy games are meant to be more of a contest of tactical ability using a given army set. true pox has tried to be a mash up of both types. and in its early days when the card count was low it felt more like a tcg. over time as the army sets (themes) became more developed, players started to expect those themes to be complete and competitive. tl/dr: tcgs are about what cards you have. strategy games are about what you can do with those cards. of course high level players in pox will deny to their last breath that their rank has anything to do with the cards they own. and they are for the most part right. its when those cards become must have theme enablers that players start shouting about powercreep. that's why I think of pox more like a strategy game than a tcg.
Because they didn't want to have races as part of their design? I mean, why don't they use land? Or colored mana? Why are some of their cards keywords and others not? Why don't all their cards cost the same? And, clearly, some cards DO fit into sub-themes such as Beasts so... But anyway, how does this in any way show that themes don't work in TCGs or why the Conifer Strider isn't a treefolk as one might expect? You make no sense.
This is how I summarize the conversation: Sokolov: Why is this tree looking thing not a tree?! Ragic: Because themes don't work in TCGs, and Pox isn't a TCG. Sokolov: But clearly themes are prevalent in many card games, in particular MTG. Ragic: Yes, but some Hearthstone cards don't have races. Sokolov: WTF does that have to do with why this tree is elemental instead of a tree?
I didn't say hearthstone cards don't have races. some do. some don't. I thought you played everything. my bad.
I know what you said, and I know some of them have races. Do you have a reading comprehension problem?
this was the line that threw me. so... are you going to make a better attempt at answering the question why all their champs don't have races or do you want to stick with 'beause they felt like it' angle?