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Checksthesky

I love playing games I played as a kid. Sopwith, Lost Treasure, Sinking of the Titanic, Wizard’s Quest -for the most part, I play them now as an adult and I have just as much fun. Then there’s Battle Masters.This game is just excellent in every regard. A classic battle between good and evil. The rules are simple and clean, the strategy is tenable, the suspense is palpable and the variance is just right. Plus, you play on a 4 ½ x 5 ft. playmat. This game is a visceral explosion of gaming joy. There’s just no other way for me to describe it.

      
The calm before the storm (those are Imperial Prince Patrick Sullivan's feet as he surveys the field)

The thing I like the best about Battle Masters is its ‘imbalance’. Each army has its strengths and weaknesses (the Chaos Army has more units but the Imperial Army’s units are better pound for pound). This plays well with the movement and combat system (you flip a Battle card and it tells you which units in which army can activate) because the Chaos ‘nincompoops’ (not an official game term – what I call the weak Goblins, Beastmen and Orcs) often move and attack together, allowing their swarm attack to compensate for their low power.

Each army also has a special unit – the terrifying Ogre Champion for the Chaos Army and the Mighty Cannon for the Imperial Army – each with specific and unique attacking rules. The units are not really comparable on the same axis, but both are powerful and rule-breaking.

      
The Ogre signals "Touchdown" while the Mighty Cannon gets ready to do its thing

The armies both feel very different. The strategies for each are very different. It’s the distinction that grows from these imbalances that I want to relate to Wow TCG.

Players ask us all the time things like “Why can’t Hunter destroy abilities?” First of all, they can. But that’s not what they’re asking. They’re asking, “Why can’t Hunters get Dispel Magic?” The real question you should ask is “Should every class be able to interact with abilities? If so, how?”  The answer to the first question, for us, is “In a perfect world, most classes, yes, somehow.” And for the second question “Each class in a way that makes sense thematically, and at varying power levels.” There are lots of ways to deal with abilities; interrupts, discard, destruction, attachments, taxing, bounce, keywords, cards like Bombard. There are also allies and equipment that do it. But if we gave every class straight Dispel Magic, the game would suffer. Just like if we gave every class Traps.

Creating and maintaining each class’s strengths and weaknesses allows us to not only sustain the feeling of distinction the MMO gives players, but to reward innovative deckbuilders and top technical players as well. Have we done it perfectly? Of course not. But we do keep a close eye on it, and consider it of the highest importance, as we make this game.

We have ten classes in this game we love. It can be challenging to make them all feel powerful and unique. But I bet if you thought about each class, one at a time, and wrote down the first thing you thought of for each, you would write down ten very different things.

All I am saying is give Hunter, and Battle Masters, a chance.

Patrick's forces have dwindled, but they refuse to surrender

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