It was actually toned down a bit during the beta, if I remember correctly. If you go first and you have it in your deck, it's a definite first turn cast.
That's why I listed Darklord as UP. Paladin is just SUCH an efficient, easy-to-access way of dealing with undead. Something as good as Lich or Vampire makes up for the inherent weakness of being undead, imo. Incidentally, my list above is based on campaign mode and DOES factor in card purchase cost. Satyr is really cheap to play, but comes with a hefty price tag. For that reason, it doesn't strike me as overall OP. Plus, is it me, or is its ability almost never useful? Maybe once every 5 castings at best. Good point about Pacify, though. It's pretty strong in just the right conditions. But those conditions are rare even when you're intentionally trying to abuse the card. Actually the imbalances that bother me most are the card purchase costs. They're...well, pretty random. Some of the very best cards cost only blue crystals, or blue and green. And some of the worst are extremely overpriced either via yellow and red gems or just flat out require stupid amounts of blue/green.
Since we're kind of off topic anyway (tick tock tick tock!)... What are some of your most relied upon combos or strategies? A few of mine: - Forest Spirit + Bless - Chaining Dryads in the center three slots - Nymph > Fairy > Fairy (dying fairies power up still-alive fairies, nymph allows multiple castings per turn) - Forest Spirit + Restructure - Satyr > Satyr > Satyr > Earthquake > Dryad (powering two satyrs) - Forest Spirit + Earth Elemental stoneskin - Enemy plays Manticore > You play Manticore + cast! - Poison > Plague - Vulcan + Restructure (heh) - Vampire + Firelord's fire shield
Not most used but probably the most enjoyable has to be Plague with a mass 1 pt damage creature skill like the Ent or Leviathan.
Well, if we're talking about combos, I've got a few goodies to share Forest Spirit + Bless/Stoneskin and Spellbreaker = very hard to kill (I think only Chaos Vortex can) 4 Ice Wizards => Acid Storm spam - you gain enough mana for an Acid Storm each turn and they only take 1 damage from it 2 Ice Wizards + Chimera => Paralyze spam, instant win Demons/Priests/Nymphs + Spellbreaker - in a lot of cases, they will survive for a surprising amount of time if they cannot be cleaned up with a spell Ent + Dryads/Salamanders/Firelord's cast - Ent deals his damage to opposing player as well. There is a surprising lot of ways to exploit this. Leviathan + Darklord => Plague - cleaned up board and a hefty amount of healing for you. Effrett vs Elemental - I can't remember if that's the case or not, but I think that an Elemental attacking a creature with Effret's Shield will take 10 extra damage, making Effrett a crazy effective counter. Satyr/Dryad/Satyr/Dryad/Satyr - Extremely strong early game combo, if the opponent doesn't have Fireball/Quicksands, it's almost an instant win.
Mine doesn't - I only speak of duels. (It was only once that I've played throuugh campaign mode.) Its ability is extremely useful if you need to quickly kill a card with 5 HP (or less; in O2, the damage has been raised to 10 HP) and has an empty slot. I use it quite often.
10 HP?! wow, that sounds like a lot, especially given how cheap it is and its other nice use as a mana generator. You can almost always find an empty slot at some point so its like a 10pt direct damage spell in addition to all the other cool stuff. Compare that to, say, Fire Arrow, that hardly ever does meaningful direct damage, gives you no board presence, and doesn't generate mana....
I'm glad to hear Satyr is going up to 3, he was way too cheap for his effect in O1. Even without a cast he was always worth having, if I had one in my deck he was always my first cast and possibly the second as well. Quite a few cards seem to have disappeared in O2 from the sound of it. No Paladin, no Sea Justice, etc... I'm really looking forward to seeing the new stuff though if the dang game would just come out finally.
If these guys keep talking about card combos for a vaporware game, the only question will be if the thread reaches 2,000 first ...
Actually, I think we were talking about O1 combos. Just something to do that's vaguely related while we're waiting/wretching.
Orions for WinMo came out long before Spectromancer. I also tought about suggesting Spectromancer to Orions fans in this thread but I personally find it somewhat inferior to it. Got bored of Spectromancer pretty fast. However, if you want to play something very Orions-ish for free (the demo has a lot of content), than by all means go for it.
Looks nice, wonder why it never got to IOS. I'd buy it. Meanwhile, the animation, sounds and music for O2 are worth the price of admission. In particular, pay some attention to the animations. Some of them are startlingly excellent, above and beyond the call of duty, as it were. If they are not the sign of developer passion for their creation, nothing is. Sadly, Chillingo is another matter entirely.
Ok so spoing gets released in 1 day! its a long shot for O2 to be released the same day, but lets hope so! it would be awesome
Orions, Spectromancer and Kard Combat Spectromancer was released back in October 2008, quite a while after Orions made its debut on mobile back in early 2007 (I think). But Spectromancer is the spiritual successor to Alexey Stankevich's Astral Tournament, which released way back in 2002. Long story short, Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering and his friend Skaff noticed the game and got together with Alexey to release Spectomancer, which was originally going to be Astral Tournament II. I've been working with Richard and Skaff on a spiritual successor to Spectromancer, tailored for IOS, known as Kard Combat - http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=93247 It has a very different tone to Orions and Spectromancer, but hopefully fans of those games will really enjoy it. I'll try and post some game footage soon. Needless to say, playing Orions was mandatory research so I had some fun with that.
Wow - glad I asked the question. Kard Combat looks very cool and interesting to hear the back story to Spectro. I bought Spectromancer a few months ago and like the variety of magic schools and little back stories in the campaign. The mechanics are so similar to Orions and even some of the cards that sometimes I'd get confused when I was switching in between them (e.g.the Phoenix in Spectromancer stays alive if you have over 10 fire, whereas the Phoenix in Orions stays alive if killed by fire).
