Are the IOS factions stats a good representation of the balance?

[joepinion]

I'm just surprised at your attitude toward enemy Fighters... I smile whenever someone summons a Fighter, because I feel it increases MY chance at victory, not theirs. Yay, easy magic with very little threat.

Keep your summoner in the back row and kill Fighters immediately during your turn. That way they'll have to come the long way around. 5 consecutive successful Fury rolls is unlikely at 0.4% (and who knows how many hits the Fighter got during the run). I take way bigger game-ruining risks than that all the time, such as risking that a Cloak player has a Thief and two Raids and will use them both on the same Thief to discard my champ, or taking the risk that a Jungle Elf player will have a Lioneer and Chant of Haste (to use on another common) and Chant of Deception all at once (and they can use Chant of Salvation to make it more likely). Either of those scenarios is way more likely and way more dangerous, yet people risk stuff like that all the time. The same kinds of combos can be feared from the Deep Dwarves. Heck, I take risks that a Vanguard player simply doesn't have Archangel in his deck and in hand, and VG even has summoning surge to surprise with him.

Those kind of risks sometimes kick you in the face but the other 99% of the time, the Fighter never makes it all the way across the board and you're better off that he was summoned for the easy magic. Yes, we laugh off freak occurrences, those are part of Summoner Wars but it's not bad design and it's not unique in the SW world, either.

[onlyphoenix]

So just more tips on how to manage the ability in its current state and no recognition of the fact that an uncapped ability which gives you 3 free actions per success PER UNIT in a single turn at a 33% success rate is not particularly good game design.

Not that I expected any different, obviously everyone is already reconciled with Fury.

[PePe QuiCoSE]

Hey, if you want I can make a session report on how a lowly furious fighter killed your mighty summoner with pure skill!
To be honest, I'm not taking your point seriously because I don't feel you are making a good argument out of them. Basically Fury's streak odds are above your luck threshold and thus you are calling it bad design before crunching some numbers. Let's see:

Chances of Fighter doing 0 damage and 0 fury: 0.33 * 0.66 = 21%
Chances of Fighter doing 0 damage and 1 fury: 0.33 * 0.33 = 10%
Chances of Fighter doing 1 damage and 0 fury: 0.66 * 0.66 = 43%
Chances of Fighter doing 1 damage and 1 fury: 0.66 * 0.33 = 21%

so chances that the fighter does 0/1 damage and then it's a sitting duck is 64%. Totally broken.
But your problem is with the unlimited furies. What cap would you put? 2? 3? 5? (tip: I would go with 25, 26 Fury's in a row is broken, believe me). What I mean is, I could go on with the odds of a streak to happen, but yes, there will be always a chance of that happening and so there will be always an argument against it, it's just a matter of % tolerance of it happening. What I see it as, is a risk/reward management: summoning lot's of 1/1 commons that do nothing is losing the Magic war (another tip: on average 64% of your fighters will do nothing). Each Fighter you send will have to make it up for the others that you sent before too, so having 1 Fighter go crazy, and 5 do nothing, and all of them end up in your opponent's magic pile is probably getting less out of your units than you would with other commons. So the lack of cap is what actually makes them a viable gamble. Thwarters, Shamans, Smashers and even Chargers have a better return value on average than fighters. You are just working from impressions from games and not from real analysis of the stats and even calling it bad design, and disregarding responses from people that are putting up with you. Good job sport! I like to have more people like that around here!

[onlyphoenix]

But your problem is with the unlimited furies. What cap would you put? 2? 3? 5?

I already suggested how the ability could be altered to have a swing effect as well as a base effect by making any successes beyond the first Fury require 6+ instead of 5+, thus making it congruous with other dice based swing abilities which activate on 6+.

[PePe QuiCoSE]

I already suggested how the ability could be altered to have a swing effect as well as a base effect by making any successes beyond the first Fury require 6+ instead of 5+, thus making it congruous with other dice based swing abilities which activate on 6+.

Cool, have you run the odds on how that affects Fighters return value on average?

[onlyphoenix]

No, but from your numbers earlier the first Fury is still at 31%, successive rolls beyond that coming at 17% per roll allow a Fighter to move and attack thrice or more using up only one attack and move from the allotted 3 per turn. I would say that is a fair return, for a 1 cost unit. I'll crunch the numbers to compare both models later in the day, but I doubt reducing the probability of successes for 2nd Fury and beyond will diminish their value immensely. It should only diminish the possibility of 4/5/nx Fury significantly, which would make it a swing ability on par with Fatal Slash.

[Serenity]

Onlyphoenix, the consensus (which I agree with) is that the possibility of fighters furying multiple times is what makes them at all useful. Even though I like fighters I still don't include many in my TO deck and end up building most of them. I view them as a situational unit only, because they're too fragile and don't do enough damage on average.

[onlyphoenix]

I get that and it's why I'm saying that if that uncapped state has to stay at least tie it to a higher die result on 3x or 4x.

Never mind, there's no point discussing this anymore. The designer knows best.

[killercactus]

Ditto. I don't play Fighters at all now - if Fury was capped then I'd just throw them all in the furnace.

Can unlimited Furies create an NPE? Probably, but so can 100 other things in this game. Should we not allow Magic Stasis to be played twice in a row when the opponent has no units out, because I guarantee that's not fun. Tacullu can just counter summon anything - no cap, and he doesn't even have to roll a die! Mimic is completely unfun IMO.

And honestly, I find that ability (Fury) a ton of fun. Instead of getting mad when my Elien gets furied to death, I'm like "Remember that time when I was owning you and that Fighter got super mad?"

The point is that the Fighter (and all of the other dice-based TO units) has the possibility of that happening built into his cost. The TO have to pay extra for that possibility that could break the game, but usually doesn't, and normally they lose out because of it.

[joepinion]

Most people think Fighters are crazy at first but over time come to see them as weak. I don't know how long you've been playing so your experience may be different. However it is mostly veteran players here, that's why people are defending the ability and even saying Fighters are a bit weak.

I wish you wouldn't have used the sarcastic comment "designer knows best"... Dude, we all just like the ability as is. All of us have various things in the game we wish were different but Fighters are not on that list of problems. We've explained why: it's not overpowered--in fact most good players don't even use them--and for those who do use it, it's FUN. Sheesh.

It's funny you compare to the Gorilla and say the Gorilla is fine... for 2 magic, a Gorilla has like a 20% chance to do 4 damage. The odds of a Fighter doing 4 damage in a turn is tiny (edit: just calculated, it's 0.88%). You can even use a Chant of Growth on a Gorilla giving yourself a 9% chance to do 6 damage (for a Fighter it's 0.05%, and that's assuming it starts its attack phase next to its target). The Fighter's advantage is he can move around a lot, but all that does it put him deeper into enemy territory to get killed during the opponent's turn.