Gen Con Academy pre releases

[Puddnhead]

From the last documentation I have:

Swarm (Object Trait)
Creatures with the Swarm trait cannot be targeted or affected by non-attack spells that do not specifically target Swarm creatures. Creatures with the Swarm trait may make multiple additional strikes when attacking. The total number of attacks they make is equal to their remaining health. Additionally, they are immune to conditions and healing. Non-zone attacks do a maximum of 1 damage to them.

Killer Bees have 3 health. So that should be a total of 3 attacks; not a base of 1 plus remaining health of 3 in this case.

Also Hand, Marked, Scout, etc apply to the first attack made each round. So it will be 1 +X critical dice, then the additional strikes at 1 dice each as per normal. Life Tree would then extend the number of extra attacks.


Not that it helps the innital reaction to them, but that is the closest thing I have to official verbage at the moment.

That is not what the text of the Druid Academy Rulebook says. I don't have access to it right now, but I know it says something quite different.

[farkas1]

I have wrote this about swarms on other channels as well so here it goes.


This is what it says in the ruling about swarms:
Swarm
This creature is made up of countless Smaller creatures.  Creatures with the swarm trait cannot gaurd and Cannot be targeted or affected by non-attack spells that do not specifically target swarm creatures.  When attacking, Creatures with swarm trait may make additional strikes equal to their remaining health.   Additionally, they are immune to conditions, and have the finite life trait. Non zone attacks do a maximum of 1 damage to them.


I’m gonna break down the math and how it works with current ruling.

With the combo of scout, marked, and hand.  From the text in the academy Druid set It says you may make additional strikes equal to your health.  So the first strike with a fully healed killer bees you get 4 dice,  then you do 1 die attacks equal to the bees health.  4+1+1+1,  (+1+1 w/ life tree)

I'm not sure what the correct thing to do with swarms besides run them in every book

Options to fix

Possibly making them not being able to gain any additional dies for attack would be the easiest thing to do.  6 die critical with life tree is still pretty darn good. 

Or making it so they can not gain innate life.  Which would be also be ok it does allow it to get to 7die that way.

After looking at them and considering them more I feel this is the best way to balance them.
So the word additional was added from our last play test reading of the rules.  Let’s take the word additional out.  That takes them down one die.  I’m leaning towards no life tree bonuses because it makes them too crazy to kill and hit too hard too fast. 

IMO I don’t like that this one card or trait changes the meta this much.  Making zombies and most creatures absolete.  Yea vet belt and tons of armor gets carried in many books as well as running several more zone attacks. All that I know is that having 8+ Die with critical damage is too much and Even 6 die critical is a little crazy imo. 

[Arkdeniz]

"My Lord, a Swarm of Killer Bees and a Woolly Rhino are in the next zone!"

"No problem. My Force Wave will send them packing!"

*woowoowoowoo*

"What? The Bees are still there? The Rhino went tumbling head of heels, but the *Bees* are still there! Well, this will sort them out. Fireball!"

*ka-PHOOM!*

"My Lord, your fireball killed one Bee."

"One Bee. One. Really? Wall of Poison Gas!"

*ssssshhhhhh*

"They flew through, My Lord. You killed one again. Oh, and now some Ants are coming too."

"Well, Thorg, use that massive flat headed tenderizer of yours!"

"One bug pancake, coming right up!"

*blammo*

"Uh, boss, I think I winged one. And they just stung Talos into pieces."

"...!"  *sigh* "This is ridiculous. I'm leaving."   

[Kharhaz]

From the last documentation I have:

Swarm (Object Trait)
Creatures with the Swarm trait cannot be targeted or affected by non-attack spells that do not specifically target Swarm creatures. Creatures with the Swarm trait may make multiple additional strikes when attacking. The total number of attacks they make is equal to their remaining health. Additionally, they are immune to conditions and healing. Non-zone attacks do a maximum of 1 damage to them.

Killer Bees have 3 health. So that should be a total of 3 attacks; not a base of 1 plus remaining health of 3 in this case.

Also Hand, Marked, Scout, etc apply to the first attack made each round. So it will be 1 +X critical dice, then the additional strikes at 1 dice each as per normal. Life Tree would then extend the number of extra attacks.


Not that it helps the innital reaction to them, but that is the closest thing I have to official verbage at the moment.

That is not what the text of the Druid Academy Rulebook says. I don't have access to it right now, but I know it says something quite different.

So they added a guarding restriction and changed the bit on the number of attacks; interesting

Devil's Advocate: Zone attacks are still very effective against them. A voltaic discharge and a volley of flame gets the job done more often than not. Gives[mwcard=FWC10]Ludwig Boltstorm[/mwcard] something to do too lol

@Arkdeniz +1

[keejchen]

Oi Arkdeniz, you forgot the bees would fly over the wall

Seriously though, the more these swarms are discussed, the more I wonder how they pass through playtest. They are super cool in theory, but it feels like there are some oversights here.

Sure they can be countered, if you catch them in an AoE they evaporate, this seems like the best way to deal with them, but in arena they will likely just avoid whatever zone your mage is in. And if you spend an AoE spell on just 1 swarm creature you are losing out, not to mention you might hit your own stuff.
If you get a few attacks on them before they engage, they might not do a lot, but this way they will likely still generate more value than any other 7 mana creature.
Damage barriers will be very nice against them (or do they roll all attacks before being struck back? I always forget).

I can see that in academy they aren't as bad. Fewer ways to buff them, (almost) no resilient for bees to be silly against, and any AoE attack will always hit them (time to really spam AoE in academy).

[fas723]

By by Forcefield...

[zzzPAXzzz]

I think the swarm concept with only getting 1 dmg per hit if its not a zone attack is a bad idea. Not for acadamy but for areana. Killerbees for 7 mana with 4x1 die critical dmg AND FLYING ... that sucks ... veteran belt is a good solution but once desolved you are fresh meat for them and you can not protect your creatures.

For the fire elemental story:
The bees attack is not ethereal and fire elemental is incorporal so only 1dmgs on the dice count. So far that seems ok that it doesn’t kill the fire elemental so easily...

But:
Zombies killed by little stings? Come on ... Or an iron golem? WTF?  Can you imagine bees trying to sting an iron block?

[zzzPAXzzz]

Another one is bees hitting a Water elemental... uhh ahh that hurts screams the water elemental ... stinging water ... 22 mana vs 7 mana ... and expect for guarding he can’t do anything (kills one bee) ... ridiculous

[Arkdeniz]

Oi Arkdeniz, you forgot the bees would fly over the wall

True!

But the ants would just walk through with little trouble. The point stands.

[wtcannonjr]

This is what it says in the ruling about swarms:
[…] Creatures with the swarm trait cannot gaurd and Cannot be targeted or affected by non-attack spells that do not specifically target swarm creatures.  […]

Given the wording of the second clause in this sentence, one could make the case that Etherian Life Tree or Idol of Pestilence do not affect swarms. Spells with terms like "All Living Objects" or "All Objects" would not affect a creature with the swarm trait since they lack the specific target reference to the swarm trait. i.e. "All Living Objects" is a general targeting term rather than a specific targeting term like "all swarm creatures". Some examples in the rules would have been nice to clarify the intent of this interaction.

With this interpretation all the Conjuration spells currently in Arena would not affect a creature with the swarm trait since the trait did not exist until now. Does this interpretation help lower the OP nature of swarm creatures?

Another house rule - simply remove the 'Critical Damage' attack trait. Is this trait inherent to all swarms or just the Killer Bees? Without the Critical Damage trait a swarm drops to a more realistic power-level creature with a different type of resilience to attacks, but most damage will be done to unarmored creatures.

[Puddnhead]

This is what it says in the ruling about swarms:
[…] Creatures with the swarm trait cannot gaurd and Cannot be targeted or affected by non-attack spells that do not specifically target swarm creatures.  […]

Given the wording of the second clause in this sentence, one could make the case that Etherian Life Tree or Idol of Pestilence do not affect swarms. Spells with terms like "All Living Objects" or "All Objects" would not affect a creature with the swarm trait since they lack the specific target reference to the swarm trait. i.e. "All Living Objects" is a general targeting term rather than a specific targeting term like "all swarm creatures". Some examples in the rules would have been nice to clarify the intent of this interaction.

With this interpretation all the Conjuration spells currently in Arena would not affect a creature with the swarm trait since the trait did not exist until now. Does this interpretation help lower the OP nature of swarm creatures?

Another house rule - simply remove the 'Critical Damage' attack trait. Is this trait inherent to all swarms or just the Killer Bees? Without the Critical Damage trait a swarm drops to a more realistic power-level creature with a different type of resilience to attacks, but most damage will be done to unarmored creatures.

Sorry, man. If you interpret the rules this way you also eliminate any attacks against the swarm because no creature's attack bar specifically targets swarms.

[Parliament]

I didn’t go to GenCon, but a friend of mine did and he picked up 2 copies of each of the new Academy decks for me. I don’t play Academy often but I’ve got to say I’m really excited to use a lot of these cards in my Arena books. The Elementalist deck in particular is fun because I see many different cards that I am looking forward to using in Arena books. Also I am really interested in using the Frost spells as well as a few of the Druid’s cards in my Siren book.

[keejchen]

I think wtcannonjr is onto something!

The swarm rules specifically say that swarms cannot be targeted or affected by non-attack spells. Which is a double negative... The swarms can only be targeted and affected by attack spells. But this restriction is purely for spells affecting them directly. It is implied that they can be targeted and affected by any attacks as normal (except they take maximum 1 dmg from non-zone, and conditions won't stick).

If we accept this interpretation, then that fixes the lifetree giving additional strikes and the extra critical dice from other buff cards. But it's not perfect either, because then they are suddenly not affected by stuff like terrain (I guess ants aren't hindered by a steep hill) or possibly even other creature passive abilities (malacoda comes to mind). But I think that's a whole lot better than 10 dice killer bees.

[farkas1]

Hey keejchen.  Honestly that is how I interpreted them in playtesting with the different wording was similarly to wtcannonjr. And that is also why I did not really stress about them being OP during play testing. Wording was changed a bit during printing and I could see current ruling for them either way honestly which is pretty unfortunate.  Because I did not want them to be this strong at all. 

[Kelanen]

Etherian Lifetree certainly boosted them in testing... It was in my book (back when we had a card to auto-heal them too...)