Does anyone else feel duelyst has a ton of untapped potential?

[zenanii]

Mainly, the strategic choices when it comes to positioning. I used to play a lot of might&magic:duel of champions, and one of the main things I loved about that game was positioning around different types of aoe.
Currently, spells and creatures that require specific (not talking about blanket aoe like makantor or holy immolation) strategic positioning around:
Dancing blades
Faei BBS
Blast minions/weapon
Magnetize
That 5 mana vetruvian spell
Might have missed some, but my point is that these are all spells/minions that can be played around by very careful positioning. And I absolutely love it! And there’s only like six cards in the entire game that does this kind of thing.
So, my personal wishlist for things I would love to see in duelyst:
Spell/Opening gambit minion that affects a + or X shaped area.
Minions/spells that affect a blast like area (vertical horizontal across the board). Might even make it two tiles wide.
More area denial outside of shadow creep (which has become largely irrelevant in that regard since shimzar). Effects that last for X number of turns and either damage/cripple enemy minions or buff friendly minions. Maybe the ability to block a tile (no minion/general can step or be placed on it) for a turn or two.

I’m also going to go out on anlimb and suggest a change to the frenzy mechanic. Not because I think it’s overpowered (all frenzy minions would obviously need to be buffed to compensate) but because I think it could be much more interesting. So:
Frenzy minions only hit the 5 tiles in front of it.
It’s still a fairly respectable aoe, but it would make it possible to actually position around (looking at you makantor) and put more emphasis on strategic positioning.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts, I was slightly dissapointed shimzar didn’t introduce any more position focused cards but hopefully as the game evolves we’ll see more of those.

[raqyee]

Thing is, if there is too much minions and spells that directly rely on positioning in one way or another, it essentially makes the board and the whole idea behind positioning irrelevant since you won’t ever be able to play around everything so what you do is just stop playing around stuff and play your own game hoping you won’t get bitten in the ass before you win.

I agree there’s some untapped potential, but CPG really gots to be careful when it comes to implementing new cards that heavily rely on positioning.

[zenanii]

You have a point, but that only applies if (as you said) the effects become to numerous to even bother try playing around them.
What if we themed each faction around certain position gimicks? (Just throwing out some ideas here)
Vetruvian already has their thing where they can punish you for either stacking minions in a line or exposing the front of your units.
Songhai has their backstab mechanics which discourages you from exposing the back of your units (although the mechanic doesn’t see a lot of play).
Lyonar could be about having the front of their units exposed (conditional buffs if their front is clear, fork-like attack patterns, the ability to move additional tiles)
In vanar Faei already has the vertical aoe bbs. That could be expanded upon, walls kinda make them the perfect faction to force their opponent to line up the way they want, could add more cards that punish stacking units vertically.
Abyssian has the whole area denial deal going on with shadow creep, cood expand upon that. A card that enchance a (unoccupied) creep tile to pre-nerf status, the ability to temporarily block spaces, preventing movement etc. Would be really cool if it was integrated somehow into the creep mechanics (destroy a creep tile to prevent movement to that tile for X turns, give all enemy minions on creep -2 attack and all friendly minions +2 attack)
Not really sure what magmar could get, maybe some kind of stampede effect where you can buff friendly minions for lining them up vertically/horizontally or a alpha male that gets stronger when no friendly minions are adjecent.

[nubirak]

I think it would be enough if the majority of positioning cues came from sources on the board, like faie, provoke and blast.

Alternatively, you could have more information about your oponents hand’s with cards that revealed information about he player’s action bars.

As in all things. Balance is crucial, or it could bog the game’s decision making too much.