Duelyst Forums

Card Discussion Sentinels

#1

Card Discussion Sentinels

Vanar Sentinels

Drake Dowager

Type: Unit

Rarity: Rare

Set: Unearthed Prophecy

Cost: 3

Stats: 1/3

Effect:
Sentinel: General attacks.
Ranged
Whenever this attacks, summon a 4/4 Flying Drake nearby.

Moonlit Basilysk

Type: Unit

Rarity: Rare

Set: Unearthed Prophecy

Cost: 3

Stats: 2/2

Effect:
Sentinel: Spell cast.
Whenever your opponent casts a spell, this minion gains +3/+3.

Freeblade

Type: Unit

Rarity: Common

Set: Unearthed Prophecy

Cost: 3

Stats: 3/5

Effect:
Sentinel: Minion summoned.
This switches positions with the minion that transformed it.

Songhai Sentinels

Mind-Cage Oni

Type: Unit

Rarity: Rare

Set: Unearthed Prophecy

Cost: 3

Stats: 4/3

Effect:
Sentinel: Spell cast.
Whenever your opponent casts a spell, put a copy of that spell into your action bar.

Hundred-Handed Rakushi

Type: Unit

Rarity: Common

Set: Unearthed Prophecy

Cost: 3

Stats: 3/4

Effect:
Sentinel: Minion summoned.
Deal 2 damage to the minion that transformed this.

Mizuchi

Type: Unit

Rarity: Rare

Set: Unearthed Prophecy

Cost: 3

Stats: 2/5

Effect:
Sentinel: General attacks.
Flying
Backstab: (2).

Abyssinian Sentinels

Bound Tormentor

Type: Unit

Rarity: Common

Set: Unearthed Prophecy

Cost: 3

Stats: 2/3

Effect:
Sentinel: Minion summoned.
Put a copy of the minion that transformed this into your action bar. It costs 2 less.

Xerroloth

Type: Unit

Rarity: Rare

Set: Unearthed Prophecy

Cost: 3

Stats: 3/2

Effect:
Sentinel: Spell cast.
Whenever your opponent casts a spell, put a 4/4 Fiend into your action bar.

Skullprophet

Type: Unit

Rarity: Rare

Set: Unearthed Prophecy

Cost: 3

Stats: 3/3

Effect:
Sentinel: General attacks.
The enemy General has -1 Attack.

I start to post these card discussions on Reddit ,I decide i will post them here as well.I thought that talking about one Sentinel would inevitably lead to talking another one which would lead discussing many bugs/issues and concerns so i put them all together in one big topic.

Questions

  1. Do you think every faction should have got sentinels or is splitting up mechanics good for faction identity?

  2. Ignoring the bugs are you happy with how Sentinels turn out? What do you think could have been done better or can be improve on?

  3. In terms of power level did the Sentinels meet your expectations or predictions? Which Faction has the best Sentinels? Which faction has the worse Sentinels? Which are the best three Sentinels ?

  4. Do the Bugs and lack of clarity about interactions affect your willingness to play Sentinels?

A lot stuff to talk about in this topic,You don’t have to talk about the questions alone feel free to discuss the cards lore, art, and fun interactions along with competitive viability in this topic

New discussion every Monday ,Wednesday and Friday, Comments with suggestions to formatting are always appreciated

1 Like
#2

  1. I feel that sentinels for each faction will just clog up the mechanic. There are only so many interesting “spell cast” or “minion summoned” effects that you can make before they start to seem similar. Besides, Magmar and Lyonar already got a few pseudo-sentinels in Rizen and Pureblade enforcer. Pure blade is subpar, but Rizen is devastating in certain matchups (I’m looking at you Obelysk Vet!).

  2. Bound Tormentor gave me hope for pushing Vaath’s attack stat even further beyond, but the mindlathe + frenzy + Apex dream was shattered. Other than that, the sentinels are pretty good, aside from bugs of course.

  3. We vastly overestimated the general attack sentinels. All of them are far more situational compared to the spell and minion based ones. General attacks usually do not matter as much as Summons or Spells in any game (unless you play Sajj, but she sucks) [CPG, you buff her… buff Sajj… you buff her right now…]. Drake Dowager, in particular is far less powerful than anticipated. Part of the reason is probably because it wants to be in the back, generating value over time, but it might not activate for a pretty long while if your opponent catches on. The best / most common sentinel for each faction are probably Bound Tormentor, Mindcage Oni, and Moonlit Basilisk. If these three, I personally like Oni the most. There are just so many good spells to steal, especially Cataclysmic rift.

  4. I’m a bit happy that the sentinels reward experimentation and testing of the rules, even though that might be wrong. I like to test weird interactions and here is a class of cards that let you gain an advantage from game knowledge. Of course, I wish there were a bit mor consistent. Also, these is no better feeling in duelyst than for your opponent to use a Lavaslasher on Bound Tormentor.

5 Likes
#3

Consistency is the sticking point of all these sentinel bugs. For example, you have a xerolath and if it gets answered by a phoenix fire, you get a fiend. (I dont remember the eph shroud tormenter interaction) But if its answered by a chromatic cold you dont. Consistency issues like this are why everyone says sentinels are bugged.

Also moonlit basilisk is the only sentinel that is basically answer or die at any point in the game and i dont like it.

8 Likes
#4

Hmm… What if moonlit basilysk was just a vanilla 5/5 sentinel.

#5

I dont really like how Sentinels turned out because of the general lack of understanding and prediction I have of them. In a board-card game I expect every calculation to go as I plan, which there is a chance not to be the case when playing with and against sentinels.
Plus, I generally feel like I am unrightfully punished by them- There are nine sentinels right now and I really dislike how I have to go and memorize what they all do- (kinda like when you’re new and the opponent plays Chrysaris Burst and deciding what to kill is a gamble because you dont know which minion is which), and consider all the possible outcomes of my possible plays within a turn.

I mean, most of the time I see a sentinel I feel like there’s a whole lot of stuff to consider and I just dont wanna make that effort in a turn’s time. In turn, I hate it when they show up, and feel unrighteously punished when they do trigger.

Again, this is coming from someone who doesnt remember exactly what each sentinel does, and Im sure dedicated players have less of a problem with the design of this mechanic right now, but it only takes a few steps for this pain to become overwhelming- Imagine if there were sentinels for every faction, we’d have to memorize 18 cards. Imagine if there were more sentinels for mechanics like Replace and BBS- the whole archetype can quickly grow to be too much of an effort to bother to study and just become a big displeasure.

I’ll be glad if I never see other sentinels released again, ever.

1 Like
#6

  1. No, if you give every faction the same thing it reduces the individuality of all the factions. Plus if you had 18 sentinels to try and remember what each one did, it could get confusing. Keeping the numbers low helps with that.

  2. Overall, I’m happy with them although I think Skullprophet should have a better effect and I would rank it as the worse sentinel because of it.

  3. Haven’t played with them all yet, but the ones I have played were pretty much exactly how I felt they would be. I feel safe in saying that Abyssian has the worst despite never played them yet. The -1 general attack means pretty much nothing, the discounted minion is nice if your opponent falls for it but you only get a 2/3 post transformation and the 4/4 fiends are good but with a weak 3/2 which can die easily.

I haven’t played a couple of the Songhai Sentinels yet, but I think Mind-Cage Oni alone means that they have the Sentinels out of the 3 factions because spell synergy is great for them.

Think the best 3 Sentinels if you get them to go off and get value from them are Mind-Cage Oni, Moonlit Basilysk and Drake Dowager. Since with each of them you could in theory get a lot of spells, stats or minions. But if you go off them transforming and then dying straight away, I would go Mind-Cage Oni, Bound Tormentor and Freeblade. Having an extra card in your action bar that you can replace or use, is almost never a bad thing. While messing your opponents positioning can be very useful plus being a 3/5 for 3 mana is quite good.

  1. Not at all, the only worry I had was Sentinels being dispel-able before getting to transformed. But since you can’t dispel them, then I’m fine with finding out how they work and all the strange interactions that are out there.
#7

so apparently this is a thing

unknown.jpg1289Ă—719 373 KB

notice the token sentinel in hand and the sand tile beneath the sandswirl
apparently the token doesnt have a trigger anymore

#8

1: nah, not every faction needs it. Would I have liked it? Sure. They’re probably one of my favorite minion types, and I would have loved to see what Magmar would have gotten. I would look forward to them returning to service the factions that didn’t get them this expansion.

2: like I just said, they’re one of my favorite mechanics. Mind games are some of my favorite things to do in card games. I love tricking my opponent, or giving them an obstacle to work around, as opposed to just dumping stat sticks into a board or aggro face to death. Sentinels perform this awesomely. As far as bugs, I think it’s just consistency. A lot of cards have several stages to their effects, and the sentinel transformation and effect procs are not in the same order from card to card. It’s weird.

3: some of them are a little weak, others a little strong. Moonlit obviously the biggest offender. If they were balanced just a bit closer together, and if the consistency was fixed, they’d be perfect.

4: not really. But they should definitely be addressed.

#9

Sentinels are a very cool concept and I love them. Having a few card whose effect triggers in the opponent’s turn is a very nice addition to the game.

Yes, they are sometimes rough around the edges and not totally clear, but the design is sound. If the bugs are fixed, I will definitely enjoy them more.

I wonder if the next expansions will introduce more sentinels and if they will all occupy the 3 mana slot…

#10
  1. Yes, i think every faction should have sentinels - but every faction should have a different trigger for them. For example, Vanar and Songhai are spell-heavy faction; as such, a spell-trigger sentinel should be there. OTOH, Magmar and Lyonar are more creature focused, and as such should have trigger-on-summon sentinels, and so on.

2-3) No.
Ignoring the bugs, they’re grossly overpowered. Mind-cage oni is one of the worst offender (the only card that kills him neatly is Tiger - and he’s in the same faction of the sentinel that COUNTERS tiger; on top of that, even by tigering him, you’re just going for mana and card parity, you aren’t gaining anything) but the other aren’t a slouch either (rakushi kills tigers like there’s no tomorrow and has good stats, dowager is a answer-or-lose card, basilysk is a beatstick of such raw magnitude that makes blast third wish looks like a balanced card, freeblade has a relevant effect AND it’s over-statted, and mizuchi is basically a 6 cost creature that comes with the element of surprise. The only somewhat balanced one are the abyssian sentinels, and even there, they’re good). On top of that, it’s very difficult to neatly deal with them, because of how stupidly they interact with the stack, because they aren’t dispellable (why? Everything else in the game is dispellable, so why shouldn’t be some 3 cost creatures that often are answer-or-lose?), and because they fully heal on trasform, which makes literally no sense.

  1. Yes. I still don’t understand how they’re supposed to interact with positional effects like those of lavaslasher/dancing blade. Are they supposed to be hit by it? Or not? What about Sandswirl Reader bounce against a Freeblade? Is it supposed to bounce itself? The untrasformed sentinel? The trasformed sentinel? Is the interaction with chromatic cold correct, or not? If it’s correct, why doesn’t ephemeral shroud dispels creature-triggered sentinels?

tl;dr: they’re bugged and unbalanced.
Edit: Imho a good change for them would be to nerf their untrasformed stats to 2/2. This way, it would be possible to:
a) hit a non-general-attack-trigger with a general and actually achieve something
b) being able to actually respond to them t1, since there is literally no way to answer cleanly a t1 sentinel

1 Like
#11

I’d disagree. Sentinels do perfrom opponent obstacles/restrictions, but I don’t feel like there’s any sense of “trickery” or outsmarting involved. The fact that enough decks usually only run 1 type of sentinel (probably just the flat out better ones) may support this, but I don’t know. It seems more of a rock-paper-scissors guessing game than a game of outplay and wit.

2 Likes
#12

General attack sentinels and minion summoned sentinels are the worst. Freeblade is the only decent one and way overstated. Bound tormentor only grabbing one minions is just a worst rngeaper as minions you get generally are on curve. Nobody ramps jugg with a sentinel just watching just like how they don’t attack. General order: summon a minion that can remove sentinel. Can’t? Use spell cautiously. Attacking a sentinel and attacking while there is a sentinel usually will never happen.

#13

It’s a difficult thing to implement healthily in a card game. I think that the balance of sentinels are the only thing holding them back.

Most often you can tell what it is due to a combination of positioning and popularity, at which point it is less “what are my best options to work around this?” To “that’s a duwanger, can’t attack with my general yet”

1 Like
#14

Hopefully we will continue to see Sentinels in the future. Sentinels become more interesting when you risk triggering one Sentinel when testing for a different one. That’s not currently possible as the transform condition on the sentinels are so different.

I’m also curious if Sentinels will always be three mana or if they’re willing to put them at different mana costs. I feel like Secrets in Hearthstone suffer from their mana cost restrictions.

Card Discussion SandSwirl Reader
Card Discussion Lavaslasher
Card Discussion Tiles
#15

Just my 2 cents.

There’s currently one safe option for dealing with sentinels - minion attack. I believe, it would be more interesting to not have such option. I hope sentinels, which trigger on minions attacking them should be added in the future.

#16

  1. I’d rather not. I don’t think the sentinels add to the faction identity, but are instead tech-like cards that behave in strange ways. Sentinel was a class of unit before Duelyst was a card game iirc- but the sentinels as they are, are more or less just HS Secrets with bodies. Wasn’t fond of Secrets in HS, and I’m not fond of them in Duelyst. On the whole I’d say that most Sentinels are just lackluster to unplayable, with very few gems- and one particularly busted standout (Mind Cage Oni.)

  2. In general, they don’t actually add tension to the game, because you wind up knowing what they are most of the time, and playing around that. Duelyst didn’t need to add ways to play during your opponent’s turns. They’re just the lamest part of UP.

  3. They’re secrets… with mostly undercosted bodies. It’s 2 different flavors of cancer that makes a lame sandwich.

  4. The bugs are mostly related to this particular subset of cards being out of line with the rest of the game’s design. I don’t really see how the most poorly received effect in Hearthstone seemed like a good idea in Design and Development.

2 Likes
#17

Why do you think most of the sentinels are lackluster or unplayable?
Oni is probably the best one as you said, due to drawing for songhai and potentially getting you good removal. Mizuchi is definitely playable imo, as if it goes off (your opponent concedes) it can snowball really hard as it can basically be a 4/5 with flying and doesnt get counterattacked. Rakushi is easily the worst out of these 3 and I agree with him being on the lackluster side.
Bound Tormentor is actually quite solid due to often being able to get a 1 mana tiger, or even a 3 mana lavaslasher (it also lives through slasher as of right now). Xerroloth is also pretty good because he gives you 2 mana 4/4s, most of the time at least one as it is very hard to remove it without using a spell. I’d again have to agree that Skull Prophet is very lackluster.
Freeblade is decent due to having a really good body, and potentially screwing up the opponent’s positioning, but it’s body is definitely it’s most valuable point. Moonlit basilysk is quite good, as the opponent’s only outs are either hard removing it, or using tiger, otherwise they risk getting killed by a huge basilysk. Drake Dowager can be pretty good as well, as you can try to force people to attack by using gravity wells.
I’d like to know why you think they aren’t very good. :grinning:

#18

Probably just me but I usually run all 3 Sentinels in my lists.

For example, in my tempo Vanar deck I run:

3x Basilisk
2x Freeblade
1x Dowager

Keeps them on their toes and guessing the whole game.

2 Likes
#19

For future sentinels, maybe card replacement sentinels would be neat:

Scornful Telepath
3 mana, 2/5
Sentinel: replace
Whenever your opponent replaces a card, steal it.

Cardinal Fang
3 mana, 4/4
Sentinel: replace
Provoke. Whenever your opponent replaces a card, summon a prisoner.

Saboteur
3 mana, 3/2
Sentinel: replace
Every time your opponent replaces a card, the card they gain from it costs 10 extra mana until the end of their next turn.

2 Likes
#20

i believe this would be brokeback as hell

1 Like