MArcomage

Very cool. A few cards that it summons don't really work with the theme (Globe of Myr, Wind Witch, Danai Present...), but overall I think it's an awesome concept.

I don't really agree with it. There's a reason Rare Army Summoning cards are Rares. Because 90% of the cases they can finish the game the turn after they are played. Imagine an alliance deck having the ability to summon Dark Horde or Barbarian Army or General's Hand or the Aqua Army (don't remember the name) with only 15 resources. And let's be honest, uncommon cards are not hard to summon. Sure it can bring Danai's Present or Elven Army in hand, which are overall not great army summoning cards, but most of the cards this card can summon will finish games in 3 turns, unless the enemy has Purifying Fire, which is not always the case. This card, basically forces everyone to put discarding cards in their decks. Personally, I retain some of my decks without discarding cards to maximize their attack capabilities, but that's just me.

If you think this card is overpowered, then I have some bad news for you. You can already simulate it by taking all replacing rares in your deck, and using scepter of summoning (actually, there are 16 replacing rares, so you get the added benefit of throwing out one you don't want like Necropolis or something). This doesn't seem to have broken the game, though.

You could argue that this card tips the scales because it's 5/5/5 instead of 0/15/5, but I don't think that holds water. Most of the cards you're mentioning (general's army, dark horde, etc.) don't use gems.

Another thing to think about: look at the full list of cards that this card can summon. You may be surprised at how few of them are actually game-enders. Dark horde, reunion of the tribes, Atlantis... yes. Wind witch, Mountain of faith, Market week, Plan of salvation, no... It's close to an even split.

If anything, I'd call this card slightly underpowered. I can already use a common to summon good rares for 5/5/5 :)

"Summons a rare, no keyword, replacing card"

So the list is actually: Architectural improvement, Atlantis, Danai present, Dark horde, Elven army, General's army, Market week, Mountain of faith, Myr's academy, Necropolis, Plan of salvation and Reunion of the tribes.

I think it wouldn't be overpowered.

Mojko wrote:
"Summons a rare, no keyword, replacing card"

So the list is actually: Architectural improvement, Atlantis, Danai present, Dark horde, Elven army, General's army, Market week, Mountain of faith, Myr's academy, Necropolis, Plan of salvation and Reunion of the tribes.

I think it wouldn't be overpowered.

as you can see many of these cards are in the bottom of the statistics section, so I don't think that this card is overpowered.
Sure, you can draw a game-ender but the same goes for every rare summoner (scepter of summoning, scepter of evolution, barbz's legacy...).

P.s: I think that wishing lagoon is way more overpowered than this one

wishing lagoon doesn't give you the cards with the resources to play them, like Architect Academy or Dark Horde would

Scepter of Summoning can summon ANY rare, not a specific pool of rares. It can summon things that are useless to you and things that are useful to you. It costs 15 Gems by itself. 5/5/5 cost means you can play it right away as soon as the game starts and you can play it multiple consecutive times. Imagine playing that and having Market Week in your hand, or Reunion of the Tribes or Plan of Salvation. You won the game from the start basically. Furthermore, this card saves you from putting 2-3 rares in your hand. By having this you free up Rare slots in your deck for more rares. Evidently Scepter will do the same, but again, it can't be played more than once and you have to wait for it to play it again. Furthermore, you summon rares you already have in your deck. Do you put Dark Horde in your deck cause you'll need it? No, you put it because it can come in handy. So now, instead of putting Dark Horde in your deck, you put this and you can have any of the Army Summoners come at your command any time, while having an additional Rare slot in you deck builder. I wouldn't have a problem if it summoned any rare cards. But it summons rare cards that either boost your economy when you play them so they give you free finishers, or they will lead you to certain victory types much easier. It's a gateway to having the "perfect hand" and it's an Uncommon. So let's look at what it brings, shall we?

Architectural improvement -> Easy +Tower victory
Atlantis -> Leviathan, Sea Queen, admitedly you need the resources for this so let's put it as smth Medium
Danai Present -> Doesn't hurt either other than ruining your opponent's strategy
General's Army -> Finisher
Dark Horde -> Finisher
Market Week -> Easy Economic Victory, all you need is Bank, 16 Bricks and 30 recruits to start with and you can finish in 4 turns
Mountain Of Faith -> Medium Damage
Myr's Academy -> With a few gems to start with plus the bonus you get the strongest Swift combo in the game and you empty your hand pretty quickly from what you summoned.
Necropolis -> Finisher
Reunion of Tribes -> Finisher
Plan of Salvation -> No harm

So we have 4 finishers, 1 economic finisher, one tower build finisher, 3 Mediums and 2 No harmers, but with their own uses. In short, you get a pool of very good, or averagely good cards to summon, but no draw-back cards. It's the same case as the one we had with Nature after it got tweaked with all those rares. The idea was to put more lame rares in the pool to reduce the chances of getting smth good so easily, but we ended up with a pool of very good rares. The same will happen here.

Statistics for certain rare cards are not so reliable, because they don't consider certain factors. Rares get summoned rarely, so you are not gonna put something in your deck that you might not be able to use and discard it (as is the case with Commons and Uncommons). Furthermore, because rares get summoned rarely, the chances of them getting all summoned equally are reduced. I have rares in my decks that get summoned all the time, and rares that get summoned once every 10 games (e.g. I'll always have Prince of Thieves in my hand, but I rarely get Word of Power, and that's mere chance). Furthermore, some rares are not played so often due to their cost. They might get summoned, but not necessarily played. The game might end before they get played. It's the same with when comparing Fairy with Knight Templar. Both will theoretically be on the same deck and they are of the same rarity. Fairy is played more often because it's cheap, while Knight Templar is more expensive and only needed to be played once. So Fairy appears higher on statistics than Knight Templar, whereas both are useful. So Statistics for Rares are kinda meaningless. If you seen these cards been played at least 10 times in a month, then that means they are widely used in decks.

For what it's worth, I tend to roll my eyes at any new card with the sole function of summoning specific cards with no dependencies. I feel that this concept, if implemented, would make the game far less fun.

Lord wrote:
Scepter of Summoning can summon ANY rare, not a specific pool of rares. It can summon things that are useless to you and things that are useful to you.

Scepter only summons rares in your deck. That makes it more powerful than this card, not less. Like I said, if you like the replacing rares so much, use them to fill all your rare slots. Voila, you just turned Scepter of Summoning into this card! Enjoy your super-overpowered insta-win victories!

DPsycho wrote:
For what it's worth, I tend to roll my eyes at any new card with the sole function of summoning specific cards with no dependencies. I feel that this concept, if implemented, would make the game far less fun.

May I ask why? Do you think every summoning card should be synergistic with a particular keyword or deck-building style (zero-cost, keywordless, rainbow, plague, etc.)? Do you think magic lamp, scepter of summoning, lost city, messenger, mysterious egg, wishing lagoon, last order, revolt, and war preparations make the game less fun?

dindon wrote:

Scepter only summons rares in your deck. That makes it more powerful than this card, not less. Like I said, if you like the replacing rares so much, use them to fill all your rare slots. Voila, you just turned Scepter of Summoning into this card! Enjoy your super-overpowered insta-win victories!

My mistake there, apologies.
Anyway, what I do with rare cards depends on the deck. Some decks don't really rely on rares, so I can fill them up with supporting rares instead of keyword rares. It depends on what you build your deck around. But the problem with what you suggest is that if I do it, I'll have to expend 8-9 rare slots to turn Scepter of Summoning into this card. With this card, I can do it for less resource cost and without expending any rare slots. If anything, I just added 8 more rares in my deck for the cost of an Uncommon slot. The other cards you mention, don't do the same job as this card does. They summon rares or uncommons that are powerful, but they have their own drawback system set in the pool or they function under specific situations.

On the other hand, this card here, let's you summon 8 very good to moderate rares, almost for free, without having even the chance of summoning something bad

dindon wrote:
May I ask why? Do you think every summoning card should be synergistic with a particular keyword or deck-building style (zero-cost, keywordless, rainbow, plague, etc.)? Do you think magic lamp, scepter of summoning, lost city, messenger, mysterious egg, wishing lagoon, last order, revolt, and war preparations make the game less fun?

No, I don't feel that all the ones you named make the game less fun, and I don't have qualms with cards that summon one of a keyword/rarity or replace your hand with certain kinds of, but unspecified, cards. However, some of those that exist now and replace your hand with a specific configuration alter the balance of a match in ways that are sometimes exciting, but often, to be blunt, rather lame. This is compounded by people's tendencies to propose similar cards for every keyword in the game, creating dream hands and putting a price to them. This is especially true if a Rare is included that benefits from having several of a keyword -- that Rare isn't overpowered when it's drawn at random, but when it's guaranteed to have optimal conditions as the result of the play of a single summoning card, problems arise.

I feel that, if they're going to dump your entire hand for eight cards that were hand-picked to go well together, there should be some additional condition or penalty in place. I'm not going to discuss specifics or rebalancing as that should be (and currently is for some) done for each of those cards in their own attached thread. Also, some of them are fine as they are, in my opinion.

Part of my dislike may stem from the impossibility of these cards in a physical CCG. Replacing your hand entirely with cards that don't exist in your deck can be kind of hard to wrap your head around. Not a point I want to debate, just one possible reason I don't care for them.

Also, I do use one such card in one of my decks, I may as well mention.

@DPsycho: Ah, I get what you mean now. Yes, I agree that the 'rare that replaces your hand with x, y and z' genre is probably saturated by now. This isn't one of those cards though - it's a card that summons them. I think it has a certain whimsical flavour, and I like that it's a bit risky and unpredictable (you might be flush with gems and get Dark horde, or have lots of recruits and get myr's academy - you might be on the brink of destroying your opponent's defences and draw Architectural improvement).

Anyways, I've probably defended this to the best of my ability by now, so I won't blather on anymore. :)

Actually i don't like this card, I just proposed it because I wanted to help some rare cards that are very low in the statistic section.
I would not use it in any of my decks but I think somoeone could like it
the card is ok in my opinion, if you thimk it's overpowered it's because (some of) the cards it summons are overpowered (general army/reunion of the tribe/dark horde) and should be revised.
by the way, if 5/5/5 is too low, what about 8/8/8?

Is General's army really still considered overpowered? At this point, with the dragoons nerf, it seems quite milquetoast.

Two words. Purifying fire. I'm surprised that nobody mentioned this card in this thread.
Only Atlantis can't be countered with Purifying fire effectively because Leviathan and Ocean Queen don't need any other Aqua cards in hand. Well, maybe Market week with Bank/Prosperity can be still effective.
Three finishers - Necropolis, Dark horde, General's army (in fact, pretty weak finisher) - can be completely destroyed by Purifying fire. Especially Necropolis that is pretty expensive and doesn't return any resources.
The others... Lonely Urk (and good luck breaking +120 enemy wall), lonely Wind witch, lonely Angel (needs full Holy hand), Princess of elves/Elven warlock, Fortified castle, Dragon golem, Great Wall of China (last three without guarantee) - that's it. Do you really think it is so dangerous?
I like this concept and probably will make a deck based on it if it will be implemented. But it should be implemented as it is, I guess.

The problem with Purifying Fire is:
a) You need to have it in your deck, and by implementing cards like these you force everyone to have it in their decks. You can say it's just 1 Common slot, what's the big deal, but it's 1 common slot I could fill with something more useful to me in terms of resources, defence or attack instead of a specific card that can only be played in specific conditions.

b) You need to have it in hand the round after the Army Summoner is played. If you don't have it, you are screwed. Of course it's a common, so no big deal here but nonetheless worth mentioning. In other words, the penalty of this card, is only Purifying Fire (or Flare Attack in some cases), if you have it in your deck, if you have it in your hand, therefore the penalty exacted on the player who uses Incoming Army may or may not apply, depending entirely on his opponents deck and luck.


My point in all this is: If you are gonna make this card, either make it quite expensive, or put a penalty in its description (Wall = 0, Stock -10, Facilities -1 or something like that) or make it bring cards from a bigger pool containing both useless and useful cards. The ratio of useless:useful depending on how big or small the penalty and cost is for playing this card. You could extend it into summoning any Replacing no-keyword card existing in the game. For me that would be a very good and balanced form of this card.

Well, you are always saying that if someone need to counter something - he should add some cards in his deck and don't wanna listen that this place can be used for cards that are more useful in that deck... but okay.
How about Intrigue, Mediator, Lich, Sphinx? Don't tell that they are ineffective in hidden mode - they can work against summoners as good as in non-hidden games.

Yes they work, still you have to consider, how often is the card to be countered used in decks? Is it used in all decks? One type of deck? No decks? This card, if implemented, will be used by everyone in all their decks because it has no heavy penalty for summoning strong rares, it's cheap and it's an Uncommon. So having Purifying Fire in your deck will be mandatory if you want to survive any game with anyone.

Let's take Undead Host on the other hand: Undead Host has been argued to be overpowered because it's an Uncommon finisher. However it functions under specific conditions, it's expensive and it can be discarded with Holy keyword, otherwise if not with that, with discarding cards, otherwise if not with them, you can do prevent the enemy from playing it by keeping him with low resources, or you just build high defenses so that if the enemy plays it he can't win the game and he has low resources. Also it's easily spotted because the opponent will play Undead deck and will try to rise his/her stock and Undead cards in hand.

Incoming Army though: Cheap, no penalty, can be played over and over again due to its cost and rarity, no warning to the enemy that you have it. As soon as you play it the enemy has 2-3 turns to prepare for the big strike. Plus it summons the perfect hands for specific keywords, without having the need to include these cards in your deck. Because there's no warning to it: you can't build a high defence, you don't strive to discard it before it's played and you need to have the necessary cards to discard the strong cards from the Army Summoner. So basically, it can be countered but it's harder to do so, compared with the ease that it can summon finishers in your hand.

And find me a thread were I said that you shouldn't maximize deck efficiency by not putting in the deck counter cards. 8 out of 11 decks I have are based on not having counter cards to maximize their efficiency.

What if this card, rather than just summoning one Rare, summoned the Rare and replaced the rest of your hand with Purified ashes or something equally benign? That way, the risk you take in possibly drawing a Rare summoning card you can't really put to use becomes significant.

That way you'll be playing whatever Rare comes along, but chances are you are gonna play it either way, and the penalty is null if the Rare that comes is a good one indeed.

A more potent penalty should be in effect. Maybe reduce your highest resource by 10-20%?