Disguise trickery

[FloatingToadThing]

Can we please add more than one Disguise card to the trickery deck? It's one of the most reliable ways of ensuring you don't get sniped while you're in the palace but since it's a unique card you can only ever get one when there are several cards that can kill you or stop you from trying to kill the king, which is already a hard enough task as it is.

[Amalgamdragon]

Tsss... really?

Why not making the spaces around the king immune to everything, and allow the king to take spell/trick damage if you go that way?

No, seriously, the game would just lose some of his taste if this was done. I know that a pain to be banished when next to the king, but that not your downfall yet.

[FloatingToadThing]

I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to be sniped out of the palace, i'm saying it would be nice if there were more cards that could help you prepare for the sniping.

[vindicar]

There already are such cards. Bark Skin, healing items, using Witch Hunters to drain casters' mana, -AP cards to prevent fighters from reaching you...

What you suggest is pretty much an equivalent of HRW/Strategist - deprive other players of a chance to stop you. And those cards show up in nearly every second palace breach. I don't think the game needs more of that.

[FloatingToadThing]

Unlike the AP giving cards though you are not totally protected with stealth, you can still be attacked and forced out the old fashioned way and if players can scout you out they can still snipe you. Besides the card already exists in game, and it's already possible to protect yourself with stealth once you enter the palace. I simply believe that an extra Disguise card in the deck might help balance the odds against the many countermeasures players will take once you breach the palace.

[vindicar]

Have you ever tried to oust Zosha out of the palace during the night? It's not easy.
So if the target hero has large Fight, or lots of armor (better yet, Lionheart), then it might not be possible to get them out - your best bet becomes to either Banish, or weaken them as much as possible and hope it's a mutual kill. Precisely the actions more accessible Disguise will prevent.

[FloatingToadThing]

Counting all the direct damage cards that can be played to a hero in the palace there are:

• 3 Throwing Axes
  
• 2 Aflames
  
• 2 Moonbites
  
• 1 Spirit Strike
  
• 3 Immolations
  
• 2 Lightning Strikes
  
• 3 Leeches
  
• 2 Sharpshooters

This is not including other indirect methods of stopping characters like Wyld's Warning and Banish. Compare this to only one copy of Disguise in the trickery deck, which is the only way you can prevent yourself from being targeted. The only other ways to gain stealth in the palace are:

• Zosha's hero power
  
• The Fog of War declaration (which happens relatively early in the game, usually noone will attempt a breach at this stage anyway)
  
• Yordana's Curse of Eye (which only works against a single hero)

Yes with stealth and a well equipped hero it might be very difficult to force them out of the palace but is that inherently wrong? Armello is a game that rewards both luck and preparation. I would argue it's not much different to a character stacking prestige and then sabotaging everyone else.

[Meneluma]

Actually this is the specific reason playing Zosha as the 4th player is so good.
Which brings the point that the turn order should be accounted for in some way to avoid other nonsense coming from it like the 1/4 chance of an auto RNG middle finger for Yordana.
The annoying thing is that it doesn't tell you in advance so you could use it to your advantage making character picks. Yet is also completely beyond your control where it doesn't even use the D&D styled initiative system with each character potentially having a posiitive and negative modifier to it making it more predicatable.


You get into the palace during day meaning you won't have to face guard patrols, while also getting the cover of darkness from any cards being played by the remaining three players from the moment you enter to the time you take your next turn, and if someone attacks you, they get ambushed, not to mention you get clan affinity on top for both defending yurself and fighting the king.

Sure there's scouting or the off chance someone actually is close enough to engage, but scouting at least means you won't get kicked out by Wyld's Warning.

But I didn't know Disguise was a unique card, I always expected it to be a rare card.

[vindicar]

Originally posted by INTERPLANETARYNINJAASSASSIN:

Yes with stealth and a well equipped hero it might be very difficult to force them out of the palace but is that inherently wrong?

Yes. Stealth is already too powerful. Rangers are the only relatively cheap way of countering it remotely, and they require drawing Trickery which is often useless. Otherwise, it's either wasting a slot for Lantern, or hoping to pull Divination. Both require you to be close to the target. All other Stealth-negating abilities are too rare and gimmicky to be useful.

Honestly, I thought it was much better when Zosha lost her invisibility in the Palace.

[Tei]

Originally posted by vindicar:

Yes. Stealth is already too powerful. Rangers are the only relatively cheap way of countering it remotely, and they require drawing Trickery which is often useless. Otherwise, it's either wasting a slot for Lantern, or hoping to pull Divination. Both require you to be close to the target. All other Stealth-negating abilities are too rare and gimmicky to be useful.

Honestly, I thought it was much better when Zosha lost her invisibility in the Palace.

Stealth is powerful, but so are banish, hrw, chainmail shirt, spirit strike, teleport, heavy plate armor etc. Currently, the end game of Armello is very binary in terms of cards people need to really worry about. For the most part it's about banish and ap cards, which mostly means hot rot wine.

Adding one more game changer cards in the trickery deck will just add variety. It's fair variety too because every deck has a counter to it (literally every deck has 3 scout cards at least, so you would be WAY more likely to draw a counter to disguse than disguise itself), and you can deal with it purely by positioning yourself. Instead of "I would have to be near them" it should be "All I have to do is be near them." Having a chance to stop someone without drawing specific cards is a good thing. I would much rather be able to deal with a situation with my foresight than be at the mercy of card draw alone. Plus, I'm fairly certain guards can reveal a stealthed hero at dawn, so it's still going to be timing dependant. If all game winnning cards had as many holes as disguise, there might not even be a desire for more disguise copies in the first place.

For the record, Zosha's power is nuts because it's completely free and passive. If her power required 3 gold every time, it wouldn't be very good. The heroes who are typically going to be the hardest to fight off the palace are also usually the poorest and lowest wits heroes. They'll need luck for both card draw and gold income to play disguise. Zosha is the second richest 5 fight hero, 4 is good starting wits, and she can breach the spirit peril without stat investment. She'll typically be ready and able to kill the king faster than other heroes. Her ability isn't even the only unique advantage she has in getting an easy opportunity king kill.