(Voodoo) Proposed tweaks +discussion +Feedback

[Captain Jack]

Hi,

I have spent some time reading your opinions on voodoo. Voodoo is still a new feature and it is going to need support and some tweaking.

I agree that Call Leviathan is a powerful card but I believe that it's is more than mandatory:
-It is needed to counter a very well built ship, a result of Master Craftmanship or just superior ship type.
-It is now easier to protect yourself from any sort of voodoo, including leviathan and the solution is called mindbar. After we fixed an issue with Mindbar, it is now working very well, making it perhaps the best card in the game.

This also means that any duplicate cards will have even more possible targets, thus limiting the usage of Duplicate on Leviathan.
Moreover, let us not forget Expedition Journey which does the exact opposite thing Leviathan does. And it does not suffer from Mindbar either.

We have thought of a solution to somewhat limit (especially the strategic advantage) Call Leviathan. We could do this through boosting another rare card which is now unimportant.

Proposed Tweak #1: Thieving Magpie can now target specific cards

Onwards to other issues,we have noticed a shortage of curse removal cards (purify + serenity). We issued a small tweak on them to use less turns but it seems that further tweaking is needed. There are a lot of good strategic cards that can be used prior to the real offensive cards. These are often skipped because the defender does not have enough serenity or purify card, therefore the attacker has no reason to fight a slow, strategical war and instead prefers to attack at full scale from moment #1.

Also, it is really difficult to break a Mindbar card. Casters do not even get the chance to choose if they will attack or defend with their Serenity/Purify cards due to limited number.

Another point to take in mind is the sheer number of cards that are left unused, always according to the style of play. We also need a solution for this.

So, we propose to replace Piracy card (there is a thread about it and why it should be replaced) with a new card.
This new card can be as follows:

Proposed Tweak #2: Replace Piracy with (name needed - feedback welcome); Consume 10 cards of your choice: 45% chance to get a Purify card, 35% chance to get a Serenity card, 20% chance to get a Duplicate card.

Another issue we have spotted, is the shortage of fleet/ship battle beneficial cards. Currently, if you want to support your fleet in battle, the only choices are bless and Drums of war. Perhaps creation of more voodoo cards that will help/mess during battle (enchantments) will be a good idea. I spotted some of John Rackham already.

There is also a shortage of cards that can be used by peaceful players or merchants or players that do not want to mess with other players. There should be more cards for them too. This would also boost the trade market. So if you have such cards in mind, please share.

Finally, I should throw on the table the idea of a scripted counter/revenge for voodoo casting to avoid ending up with spoiled gameplay from haters. An implementation idea could be the following:
-Every player will need at least 1 ship/fleet to cast voodoo and this is where "scripted counters" (+1 to +3 fleet danger per counter) will be registered.
-Every player with more than 1 fleets will need to select his Flagship. The Flagship's fleet will be the one to receive the "scripted counters".
The amount of counters and the amount of danger of each counter can be controlled through:
-Amount of voodoo used
-Amount of fame difference
-Amount of ships
-Voodoo cards
This is just a rough idea. It includes limits which is not a good thing but hopefully we can use it as a starting point and come up with a better and meaningful (realistic too) plan.