17th Rifle Regiment

[Lost Latios]

I'd like to request that the devs look at the 17th Rifle Regiment for review.

It starts with smokescreen.
It heals every turn.
It has free mobilize that you can't stop.
It's only 6K, and it has Blitz on top.

I know there are many ways to deal with said card, but as it stands this is a lot of bonuses for what you get, and it just gets stronger each turn with healing. My suggestion would be to at least get rid of it's smokescreen, as it is already a beefy card with free mobilize that heals. It doesn't need the extra protection.

[romy]

You are right that this unit is indeed very strong and can easily become an unstoppable monster without a specific counter.

[puschit]

It was very good and on the edge of broken but after the nerf it's just one of many string cards. You have to realize a few things here:
A) smokescreen and blitz have bad synergy, you can't make use of both
B) 6K is still alot considering that you might already be dead when you are able to play it (arty dec, Jaggro, Blitzkrieg nonsense etc.)
C) If you want to make use of Blitz you actually need 8K
D) the mobilze part may be free and unstoppable but it is still just +1/+1 per turn.

See, the 17th just needs a long time to get dangerous, compare that to a Counter Offensive, where a random 1/1 infantry can become 11/11 or bigger in an instant.

My main deck is a rus/uk control deck where I play a single 17th. It's a good card but many times I am forced to blitz something as soon as they are ready and the opponent is able to kill it while they are still damaged. It's actually a rare case that it can do it's full trick where it kills several units in a row and fully heals each time. They are good and solid but they rarely decise games by themselves. I could easily name a dozen other units that need revision before I would even consider 17th.

[CatGrenade]

It takes a few turns to become big positive value. If used immediately there is a high chance of losing it and thus being below par value:kredit. Its a slow card in a slow nation. Not that it can't get out of hand, but its mostly at the mid to low end of the ladder and draft where it has a reasonable chance of doing so. Simply fewer threats against it at that point and players with less tools or skill to either counter or have enough pressure up to force its premature use.

It probably is overpowered at lower levels of the ladder. Its simply strong in draft. Its not so grand anywhere else. Nerfing it will result in it never ever seeing play past low-mid tier ladder players and it will fall out of favor in draft to an extent.

It depends where you are at as a player if you care at all about this card. Is that a problem? No idea. There are much harsher cards against less complete collections or in draft.

[romy]

Originally posted by puschit:

See, the 17th just needs a long time to get dangerous, compare that to a Counter Offensive, where a random 1/1 infantry can become 11/11 or bigger in an instant.

You can play counteroffensive on the 17th though. Making it a 15/15 (just using your example even if I know the numbers are wrong since counter offensive gives a +2X/+X bonus) that heals and gets free buff every turn.
Having blitz means that monster can get to the frontline in the same turn it is deployed. It is a battle ender Card if you don't have something in hand to deal with a monster since you can't deal with it with standard units because of its healing.

And I don't understand the "smokescreen and blitz have bad synergy, you can't make use of both", I mean of course if you blitz you lose smokescreen, but having both means you can use either of those which gives versatility to the card.

But then I never used that unit so maybe I am missing something.
Like every card it is situational, I guess.

[puschit]

Counteroffensive is cheap burst damage that can kill you instantly. I was contrasting this to the slow pace that the 17th needs to kill. And it can be played on anything many, many turns before 17th hit play. And if I was to abuse the repair ability in combination with Counter Offensive, I would use 42nd Rifles instead beacause those guys enter play 3 crucial turns earlier.

About blitz and smokescreen having bad synergy: As you said you can't use both. Yes, you gain versatility. My point was just that while 17th has essentially 4 abilities, they don't work as well together as they could. Smokescreen + blitz in the same card just isn't as strong as, say, guard + ambush.

CatGrenade summed it up very well. 17th has potential but the better your opponents are, the less time you have to make use of them. In high ranks you are mostly forced to make use of them in risky ways because otherwise you'll lose.

[binhpac]

The card was nerfed in january.

This is the Dev commentary on the nerf in january.

This card is very powerful in the lower brackets of the game and in draft. Slowing it down takes the sting out of it a little bit while maintaining its powerful abilities. This should still be a popular choice for newer players, just not as oppressive.

Tbh i havent seen this card being played in any metadecks since then.

Maybe if this card will be played in a meta shifting deck like soviet/artillery right now, it will be touched. But if you dont see this card being played in any tournament, it is highly unlikely it gets nerfed again.

[romy]

If he has troubles with 17th, talking about high ranks is probably not helpful.

I sincerely thinks that it is the free repair+buff every turn that gives newer players with small collection a hard time, not the bad synergy of having versatility. The fact that blitz is irrelevant doesn't change the problem caused by the smokescreen (which is what OP is talking about, not blitz), first airborne can be killed with any ping just after deployment or at least stop its growth whenever after, but 17th begins with 5 HP without buff, you can't attack it with units and it heals every turn meaning that to get rid of it you need a oneshot that increases in cost each turn, so some players just have no solution against it (it survives the cheap pings), especially considering that the decks using it will generally use other cards to boost it further (like give it +4/+4 and guard once it is strong enough to resist incoming unit damage if I remember correctly).

I can remember myself having to face a 17th on turn 4, with a From The People and 2 Bloody Sickle in hands, enough to kill it but I just didn't have the Kredits to play all of those, and each turn it gets +1/+1 meaning the turn after it was too late. I don't remember who won that game but I suppose it is irrelevant.

I am just saying that I understand how this card can seem boosted if you have literally no solution for it. a 15/15 you can just wear its HP by throwing units at it, but a strong unit that heal every turn you have to kill in one turn, if you can't do that then it just kills your units and gets stronger, I understand how it can be frustrating, ESPECIALLY because it is slow. Getting killed quickly by a well played insane boost is fun, spending 6 or more turns losing just because you can do nothing against a single unit can be less fun. It is not like "gets +1/+1 and fully heals every turn" is a very common trait on units.

By the way, I don't think any of this necessarily goes against anything you said.

[binhpac]

Yeah, but if you nerf it for lower ranks, you wont see the card played at all on ladder.

It might be a card strictly only used in drafts then, if people even chose to draft soviet, when it becomes weaker than it already is.

I think its good that every card has a niche, where it is at least played or used ingame on ladder. Im totally fine, that there are cards that exists only on lower ranks and not on higher ranks. At least this card has a purpose.

A nerf could potentially kill this card for all ranks then.

If you want to start with nerfing soviet cards, start with katyusha. A card, where people dont have to think about, if it fits in the deck or not and is an autoinclude is a target for a nerf, not a situational card.

[romy]

Originally posted by binhpac:

I think its good that every card has a niche, where it is at least played or used ingame on ladder. Im totally fine, that there are cards that exists only on lower ranks and not on higher ranks. At least this card has a purpose.

This guy gets it.

Originally posted by binhpac:

If you want to start with nerfing soviet cards, start with katyusha.

Katyusha was already nerfed last summer. And I don't see mass complaints about it since then. It is very popular indeed but the devs said they want it to be popular so it seems fine to me. Everybody loves Katyusha !

[puschit]

"Katyusha was already nerfed last summer. And I don't see mass complaints about it since then."
Erm, Katyusha is an essential card in the arty.de and there are tons of complains.
And no, not everybody loves Katyusha. It'*s not just iof the card is too strong or not, just the random element of it is something to hate. Way too many games are decided by sheer luck. The random decision if that extra damage triggeres or not can cascade into a huge losses or huge gains. There are some other random effects in Kards, too, but Katyusha comes so early and is so widely played that it creates more frustrating moments for one side or the other than any other card with random effect. You can't even fight the odds like you can with Death from Above.
I don't care how many times they have nerfed this already, it's not a well desigend card and can go to hell (or the gulags in this case) if you ask me.

[romy]

I was just pointing out that you can't "start" nerfing Katyusha since it is the single most nerfed card in he game already. Cheers.

Sorry if my english capabilities didn't make the joke more obvious.

[puschit]

I just had such a game where my 17th grew dangerously big. It was pinned once or twice, killed a chump blocker and then, when the path was finally cleared and a proud 10/10 was ready to march (I even got a counterspell ready for targetted removal!), I got blechtlyparked ...
... which is the thing. You have the feeling that the 17th is keeping the opponent on the watch and busy, wasting resources, but all the time it was ME fiddling around and trying to make it work while he got all the time he needed to start a research ultimate.

[Sir Clavius]

Im new player in this game - and yes, this card is just stupid. Would be enough if this card could get one repair or only buff until damaged. But not both good things.