The Book of Beast Riders

[Infection Reflection]

Yeah, you could zip right in, Sneeks uses Sly, and then you summon Naan? 5 hits, added to a potential 4 previously, means no one can withstand you!... If you're lucky enough to have both Riders still alive, though GI helps with that.

[bmwrider]

Why so many of these and the climbers they seem to mess up the events, the pack has a lot I would assume you can use them all but how do you make up for the lost events when you don't have enough 0 cost gobs

[darkbladecb]

Why so many of these and the climbers they seem to mess up the events, the pack has a lot I would assume you can use them all but how do you make up for the lost events when you don't have enough 0 cost gobs

You build those events to have the Magic to pay for your now 1-cost Goblins.



It's just... different. I'm pretty fond of playing 0-cost CGs. I know a lot of people are. But investing heavily in the 1-costers isn't bad, per se. It's just a completely different deck, which I think is the genuine idea behind the Reinforcements. It's just as much about creating a whole new way to play a deck as much as it is augmenting the original.

[Tisroero]

I don't think there's a simpler answer other than: easily. Nobody is gonna cut all of their 0 cost units; well maybe they would but even then there isn't much loss.

Climbers have an innate bonus to movement, as do riders. No loss there in terms of events. Build them as magick to fuel the army. Same as the rage event. The other events are easy to use with riders and climbers, especially the gang-up event.

Despite having to build magick, use of Sneeks and judicious use of fighters/slingers will keep your pile large enough to support the change of style.
Personally, I suggest removing berserkers and slingers to fit the units in.

And dammit darkblade... beat me to it.

[bmwrider]

I don't think there's a simpler answer other than: easily. Nobody is gonna cut all of their 0 cost units; well maybe they would but even then there isn't much loss.

Climbers have an innate bonus to movement, as do riders. No loss there in terms of events. Build them as magick to fuel the army. Same as the rage event. The other events are easy to use with riders and climbers, especially the gang-up event.

Despite having to build magick, use of Sneeks and judicious use of fighters/slingers will keep your pile large enough to support the change of style.
Personally, I suggest removing berserkers and slingers to fit the units in.

And dammit darkblade... beat me to it.

Yeah thats the route I choose, slingers and berserkers, I have good luck using the berserkers though and will miss them but I'm gonna give it a try, I guess the abilities of the new commons make up for the loss of the events

[JanE]

"Zero-cost Beast Riders would run into similar issues as Hasty Lioneers (which I'll discuss here next week), although I do think they might have been okay as a 1/2 for 1. It was our first exposure to the Rider mechanic, and we erred on the side of caution."
-James Sitz


Beast Riders would have been okay like this.


A bit shame that they turned out to be 1-1-1 instead of 1-2-1. Now that Frick also prefers 0-costers and we'll have more CG commons, hopefully these are not in the bottom of list when picking commons.

If these would be 1-2-1, then 2-2-2 (Cavalry Knights) and 3-2-3 (Lioneers) would follow the same pattern. +1 attack is +1 cost.

Well, in 1-1-1 format they are still used a bit, but as James said, maybe they erred a bit downwards...

So what do you guys think about 1-2-1 Beast Riders?

-JanE

[Olivier]

Well at least like that, they're properly costed. However the change is not as crucial as for the climber. They are still usable at one life with Sneeks, just because of how well they synergize with him. At cost zero, definitely they would have been too strong.

[Jexik]

Well at least like that, they're properly costed.

Heh. I didn't generate the idea of the SSCF until after Master Set testing was complete.

Until then it was play the cards and bump them up or down based on player experience and data. Sometimes an ability would be reworked if none of the splits we could come up with made sense. Look at some of the early stuff: Engineers, Guardians, Shamans, Fighters, Smashers, Priests, Zombies, etc... hardly any early units strictly follow the formula, because it didn't exist. The formula was created in response to trends I saw, not the other way around.

Beast Riders made sense in a world of Engineers, Vermin, Fighters, etc. Their ability seemed potent enough to us at the time to warrant their price. Beast Rider came out 2.5 years ago, long before the collected knowledge and data we have now.

The weird thing about a game like this is that pricing individual units gets easier over time while understanding all the match-ups gets harder.

[Olivier]

Jexik, it's funny how most of these weirdly priced units that you cite are the ones I actually find weak. Maybe it's because i discovered the game with the master set. Fortunately, it's not all about the cost and sometimes the synergy with the summoner can make up for the high price of certain units. This is particularly true for priests, zombies... and beast riders, whom I find more useful to Sneeks than cavalry knights to Sera, even thought knights are better priced than beast riders!

[sitnam90]

Thats the reason I think BR are more popular then Climbers is that they synergize so well with Sneeks, which justifies the cost. Climbers are actually costed perfectly for a 1/1R unit but dont do much ffor 0coster happy CG