Duelyst Forums

Nuetral spells/Generals; yes or no?

#1

I’ve been playing around with an idea in my head for a few weeks now. What if they added nuetral spells? I’m not talking super broken spells that would fit more for one faction or another. Just general support spells that would assist all decks for their weakpoints (maybe even make their mana costs higher than what a faction specific card with the same effect would be) and better yet add some nuetral spells to assist the factionless “archetypes” that exist. Give us some arcanyst spells, mechazor spells, golem spells, etc.

Another Idea i’ve had is the idea of nuetral generals. They would only be able to play the nuetral minions and spells but maybe they’d have more powerful BBS skills (for 2+ mana) if you guys think they’d be too lackluster with access only to nuetral card pools. Maybe a general able to synergize with arcanysts. Or a general able to synergize with mechazor. A golem nuetral general that summons a golem for their bbs? The possibilities are almost endless.

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Neutral General
#2

Wouldn’t a neutral general either be too OP or just weak because either it has access only to the minions in the neutral pool or it can access all faction minions and if can only access say Magmar then it would be a Magmar general not neutral. Making the generals only acess arcanyst from any faction would still be too OP and only golems from any faction would also be OP.

Factionless archetypes don’t exist, you can say that arcanyst are their own faction, but one, they can’t survive only on arcanyst minions and two, every faction with an arcanyst archetype plays differently from others like Songhai arcanyst is more bursty and Vanar arcanyst is swarmy taking advantage of prismatic illusionist along with Kinetic Surge.

Neutral spells is an idea that some people have been playing around with but the possible synergies across factions for any spell you can create would be hard to avoid.

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#3

The way i think it would work is if there was a nuetral general they would only be able to use nuetral cards. I already explained this in the above post. This would only work if they also made nuetral spells. They also obviously wouldn’t have access to the golems and other minions from other factions since it was already stated that wouldn’t be the case.

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#4

also factionless “archetypes” do exist. Golems, mechazor, arcanyst all have loads of minion support. In the terms of any other card game they would be considered archetypes.

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#5

1- there is no point in adding a neutral general. You can literally do that now and make a neutral only deck with insert existing general here. What you really want is new generals. Though why ask for 1 when you could get 6

2- neutral spells are a thing, but the effect is tied to specific minions to keep things from getting out of hand. Just look at sphynx, trinity wing, and rokadoptera. If songhai could maindeck boulder hurl, it would make mantra that much more powerful. And if everyone has access to the lesson of courage(+1 general attack) then having 3 health 2 mana minions suddenly becomes irrelevant. I.e. just as bad as 2 and 1 health 2 cost minions. It would throw the game into chaos.

on second thought having 3 attack generals seems pretty interesting. It would give a good reason to go for artifacts and if they tied the effect to the tiles, it could bring creep (and other tiles) to the fore. Sajj and vaath would benefit immensly from doubling their attack. Not to mention how much it would speed up the game… i might need to make this thought a post of its own.

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#6

Perhaps neutral Spells can support neutral minions, but if so, there isn’t much point for a neutral general, is there? Sure, the neutral general’s BBS can support neutral minions and spells, but it can only be so powerful as faction generals would also be able to use such neutral cards. It would also blur the archetypes and gameplay options as I see no strategic consistency among neutral cards. At most, the decks of a neutral general would just be an arbitrary good-stuff deck exhibiting no uniqueness or tactical depth at all. It would probably underpowered as well.

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#7

  1. i mean nah. I want nuetral generals that support nuetral minions. So far the generals they’ve made for each faction out of all of them I only find a handful of them genuinely interesting. I don’t trust them to make generals that are actually interesting to my playstyle.

  2. I meant just straight up nuetral spells. Spells that have generic effects that don’t do a whole lot other than cover certain bases that different factions cant for certain reasons.

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#8

Give an example of such a spell and someone tell you how it can be abused in another faction. I mean look at the debate going on right now in the T-horn salt thread where they are trying to nerf his stats but anyway they do it makes him too weak or too OP.

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#9

But imagine a general that supports golems. Or a general that supports mechazor. Or a general that supports arcanyst. The developers are likely not going to add generals from factions that would support them but these are cards I would love to see get genuine support to the point it’s not just “pilot X deck and do that faction’s things along with whatever nuetral card type you wanna support” and in my experience most decks focusing on those card types are clunky because there aren’t generals that support them.

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#10

Exactly. All factions have weaknesses and strengths. Besides, any cheap spells at all could be abused by songhai

Also, that has happened. The strongest cards in magmar are golems such that playing golems is standard magmar playing. And when circulus came out vanarcanysts was so powerful it was nerfed and its still competitive. Archai is pretty powerful right now. And lyonar swarm golems are severly underestimated.

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#11

example of a nuetral spell: 4/5 cost “destroy an enemy minion”

example 2: another 4/5 cost “dispel an enemy minion”

if they can make nuetral minions work nuetral spells shouldn’t be too much different.

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#12

sure they can be played to support other factions but as a standalone card type they don’t really hold their own. The generals aren’t made to support those play types. The generals are made to support their own faction.

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#13

Then why do they necessarily have to be neutral? I can imagine a Lyonar golem general slinging Warblades and Vanquishers, or an Arcanyst Abyssian General using Death Knell in the late-game. Granted, the chances of fourth generals seem pretty unlikely, but at least they’ll more practical and consistent than neutral generals whose entire arsenal would also be available to faction generals.

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#14

If they’re neutral spells, every general should have access to them. Is there a way to ensure that these cards would be exclusive to neutral generals only?

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#15

Exactly. Cause there has to be room for player creativity in deck building. Do you know how boring it is to queue up to a general and before turn 1 know every card in their deck? Cause thats whats gonna happen if they make a neutral general with “bbs: give +2/1 to mechs”

And halcyon, the only way to do that would be to have an awkward and terribly undescriptive bbs like “upgrade the neutral cards in your hand” turning certain minions into spells like reliquerian or monolithic vision

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#16

But at that point you’re just creating a new faction.

Every faction has better removal at the 4/5 mana cost than that so why would anyone play neutral exclusive when other factions have holy immo, OBS, BoA, Dark Transformation, etc.

Why even have this with the existence of lightbender and shroud who can also leave a body on the board?

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#17

That could work. I just think that decks like mechazor, golems, arcanyst, etc. Are less immersive when the generals don’t fit the part. I want a giant robot mech general. I want a giant rock golem general. I want a warlock type general. It’s weird to me to play certain generals with certain nuetral types when the generals look nothing like the cards in the deck. Again this was just an idea in my head and I wasn’t really looking into the very core specifics of how it would work. But I think it would add a fun dynamic. The nuetral generals could also be like the “rogue” generals. Where they don’t have to look the part of other factions because like nuetral minions they can look like anything. For me the idea is more for immersion and more deck building possibilities rather than “this will change the competitive game forever” which is what everybody commenting is talking about. I’m honestly starting to think that this community just doesn’t like change because every single idea I bring up is swiftly answered with 100 no’s.

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#18

Then create a new faction? I mean we’ve had about enough time to make a new faction. I was honestly surprised that there wasn’t a new faction when I came back after like a solid year of not playing.

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#19

It’s not that no one likes change, but we just don’t want ideas to be put into the game without serious thought otherwise you get things like October Reva or Control Vanar metas.

For another example, look at Yu-Gi-Oh and the many, many new mechanics they are adding to the game specifically the extra deck. Not all change is good.

The kind of generals you are suggesting are just too specific to be fun and oranos is right, if I see you play Shidai for example I know you are playing a deck with a shite ton of spells which makes it boring regardless of the outcome.

Maybe create a mechanic similar to the Lyonar Grandmaster or a mechanic similar to Geomancer to transform your general or its BBS, but I’m not the creative type so I dunno.

I am ambivalent on the point of creating a new faction mainly because it could become too much for CPG to manage making the game very unstable and also consider the lore part of it. I also wonder just what niche could this new faction fill to make unique from others, this can only be done if they introduce completely fresh mechanics making the issue even more complex.

If it can be done, great! But I don’t know for certain, until then we can all just keep suggesting faction ideas and the others can just “NO” us into submission.

Also, if you want to see some faction ideas other people have had I think @thefirstgokun had one in a dedicated thread for card ideas called the Unami Coven or something like that.

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#20

Pretty much, and that’s why I’m against archetypes that support neutral cards. With the existence of specific factions and BBSs, neutrals can never be an archetype. Games like Yugioh are able to print supports for vanilla cards because deckbuilding is so much more flexible there.

Not all change is worth praise. There is a distinction between change for the better and change for the worse. As for this idea, it’s simply unexecutable.

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