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Faction Concept: The Gruvolm Conclave

#1

The Grouvolm Conclave

Hello, seen afew faction ideas and decided to give it a shot myself so hopefully it doesnt turn out too bad. :sweat:

Lore

(still a work in progress but i imagine them to be a barbarian like people deep underground who have mastered there pitch black enviroment having taken control of the wildlife below the surface to further there conquest.) the factions themes are earth and sound (as for faction color im unsure)

Generals

Bacchus the Thunderous

BloodBound Spell: Piercing Pulse
Place an Echoing Tunnel near your general. your general gains Echo this turn.

Ujarak the Catapult

BloodBound Spell: Unearth
Summon a Large Boulder near your general.

Large Boulder

Structure
0/3
Dig
this structure may move.
when this minion moves next to an enemy destroy itself and deal 3 to an enemy.

Hildeguard the Fortress

BloodBound Spell: amalgamate
Destroy a friendly minion, increase your general’s healthpool equal to the minion’s cost, it becomes permenant every 5 gained.

Mechanics

Echoing Tunnel
minions with the echo keyword may use these tiles to redirect there attacks to targets that are out of reach.

Dig
units with this keyword may only move any space vertically or horizontally of there position, the space they moved from and the space next to where they moved to become echoing tunnel.

Echo
units with this keyword may attack the first enemy unit in any direction.

Healthpool and permanent health gain
when healthpool is used in a card’s discription, the target’s maximum health is increased, it may be dispelled. when the word permanent or permanently is used health cannot be dispelled.

Core Set
Basic

Crystallize
1 mana Spell
give a minion +3 health, if its a golem also give it +1 attack.

Mineralite
1 mana Golem
1/2
Dying Wish: Give a nearby Golem +1/+2.

Seismic Toss
2 mana Spell
move a minion nearby your general, it cannot move or be moved till your next turn.

Tumult
2 mana Spell
dispell and stun a minion.

Shrill Shrew
2 mana Minion
2/2
Echo

Stalagmite Lance
3 mana Artifact
Your general gains +1 attack your general may attack minions one space away, your general moves next to them.

Shovel Worm
3 mana Minion
3/3
Dig
this minion may move immediately when played.

Quaking Battlecry
3 mana Spell
Enemies near your general, friendly minions or near friendly Echoing Tunnel tiles take 2 damage.

Fossilize
3 mana Spell
choose an enemy minion, it becomes a 0/1 and tribe changes to structure.

Common

Berserkers Charge
0 mana Spell
Choose a friendly minion, move it anywhere in a cardinal direction from its location,

Buried Relic
1 mana Spell
place an Echoing Tunnel near your general or a friendly minion, draw a card.

Vengeful Strike
1 mana Spell
if you’ve taken damage on your enemies turn, remove the amount of health taken from your healthpool permanently and deal it to an enemy minion.

Tunnel Colapser
2 mana Golem
2/3
Dig

Harmonious Wisp
2 mana Minion
2/1
Opening Gambit: Gain +2 health permanently.

Bloodetched Ward
3 mana Spell
-3 from your healthpool Permenantly, give a friendly minion Barrier and it cannot be targeted by spells.

Stoneform Artisan
3 mana Minion
1/5
whenever this minion takes damage, summon a Mineralite near it.

Boulder Transporter
4 mana Golem
3/5
when this minion moves, all nearby friendly units move with it.

Rare

Golumize
2 mana Spell
change a friendly minions tribe into golem, give it 3 health, give it 3 attack instead if the minion was a golem.

Soulore Golem
3 mana Golem
2/6
bond: add +1 to your generals healthpool.

Earthfall
4 mana Spell
deal 4 damage to an enemy minion, if it dies summon a large bolder in its place.

War Chant
4 mana Spell
Draw 2 cards, add +3 to your healthpool for each minion drawn.

Cave Bellower
4 mana Minion
4/3
Echo
may move to any echoing tunnel on the battlefield.

Vicious Moleshark
5 mana Minion
5/4
Dig
Opening Gambit: Destroy an enemy minion near an echoing tunnel.

Epic

Symbol of Exaltation
2 mana Structure
0/3
you may transform this structure into a minion from your hand instead of summoning it, it costs 2 less.

Silent March
3 mana Spell
Dispel all minions and generals, give your minions 2 health.

Onslaught
4 mana Spell
choose a friendly unit, deal 3 damage to the first enemy minion in all directions from it.

Ancient Drill
4 mana Artifact
Your general gains Dig.

WorldShaking Might
6 mana Spell
give a friendly minion +8 attack, it cannot be dispelled

Shrill Brood-mother
6 mana Minion
Echo
2/8
when this minions attack passes an echoing tunnel to hit a target, it hits the first enemy in all directions of the first tile it passes through.

Legendary

Skill-Eater Bowyn
3 mana Minion
1/3
opening Gambit:choose an enemy minion, dispel it and add any keywords it had it to Skill-Eater Bowyn.

Sound Sister Runa
4 Mana Minion
4/4
whenever your generals healthpool increases, give your minions +1 health.

Call of Savagry
5 mana Spell
choose an enemy minion, take control of it this turn.

Golem Core Rune
7 mana Artifact
Your general may attack friendly minions, friendly minions heal your general when attacked enemy minions destroyed by your general increase your healthpool +3.

Phoenix Gem Golem
7 mana Minion
4/4 Golem
when this minion leaves the battlefield put a Phoenix Gem Core on this space.

Phoenix Gem Core

0/0 Structure
Invulnerable
Build (1)

Aria of Rejuvination
9 mana Spell
Fully heal your general.

Grandmaster Meitheal
9 mana Minion
3/10
your general becomes Grandmaster Meitheal, your original generals attack and health are added to your new general,your bbs costs 0 mana.

Edit: Core set epics added, core set complete.

5 Likes
#2

Urjak sounds horribly unbalanced. Being able to summon a 1 mana 0/5 that can both destroy an enemy AND deal an additional 5 damage is horribly unbalanced.

Echo seems like an interesting keyword, but would allow for more (fair) card design if it simply “extended” the attack capabilities of a unit rather than also adding to the damage a unit would take.

Change Hildeguard’s bbs text to: “Destroy a friendly minion, increase your general’s healthpool equal to the minion’s cost.”

Interesting faction concept so far, can’t wait to see how you expand it

2 Likes
#3

woops i meant urjaks minion destroys itself lol not an enemy minion.

fair enough about the 1 extra dmg on standing on echo tile

ill do some changes real quik thanks for the feedback :>

2 Likes
#4

The additional damage could be tied to a certain card, but at that point it’s basically shadow creep(?), but better

1 Like
#5

i changed the three things from your feedback im sure your right about the 1 extra dmg on tile so i removed it,

2 Likes
#6

Dig and Echo seems really cool. Keep up the good work.

1 Like
#7

update: added afew cards :v

1 Like
#8

Given how many cards increases your General’s Health, you have to have a spell that fully heals your General. (It should be really expensive though.) Good work so far.

2 Likes
#9

update: added more cards, heres the cards that have been added.

new cards added

Basic

Crystallize
1 mana Spell
give a minion +3 health, if its a golem also give it +1 attack.

Miniralite
1 mana Golem
1/2
if this minion dies near a golem, give it +1/+2.

Seismic Toss
2 mana Spell
move a nearby minion, it cannot move or be moved till your next turn.

Quaking Battlecry
3 mana Spell
enemies near you, your minions or echoing tunnel take 2 damage.

Fossilize
4 mana Spell
choose an enemy minion, it becomes a 0/1 and tribe changes to structure.

Common

Tunnel Colapser
2 mana Golem
2/3
dig Frenzy

Legendary

Aria of Rejuvination
8 mana Spell
Fully heal your general.

Grandmaster Meitheal
9 mana
3/10
your general becomes Grandmaster Meitheal, your original generals attack and health are added to your new general,your bbs costs 0 mana.

1 Like
#10

Great cards so far. The Grandmaster is really cool, and Aria of Rejuvenation is the best card name I heard in a while. (Maybe it should be 9 mana? I’m not sure.) As for issues, I think Crystalize is a little too similar to Frostfire, but I guess it’s fine. Balancing could use some work, as Fossilize is the best removal card I’ve seen in Duelyst so far.

#11

Fossilize Is not really strictly better than anything. 1 less than boa, dodged dwish, takes care of big bodies, but it is also twice the cost of punish or daemonic lure, and leaves behind eot or start of turn effects and can be hard to reach if it was placed back already.

Its really strong, would be a staple, but idk if its that op.

1 Like
#12

I compared it to Entropic Decay, but on a second thought, I suppose it’s fine.

#13

Yeah, entropic decay is trash xd.
All the general bbs’s look slightly overpowered to me though, but I realllllly like em.

1 Like
#14

The removal actually looks really cool as a targeted minion would still have its abilities and would need general attack or ping to get fully get rid. Makes getting rid of cards like Drogon or Aymara still difficult. In that sense though, the card is a somewhat cheaper single target enfeeble which is why it might be better off as 3 mana.

I haven’t read the other cards yet so I don’t know if this 3 mana highly efficient removal would be balanced. Things that would make it OP is lots of removal already in faction, lots of ping, easy dispel cards, or some ability that takes advantage of the structure keyword.

#15

Maybe they’re overpowered or maybe every other general is underpowered (except for Magmar because who cares about balance).

#16

You could have it either way tbh. Youd just have to rebalance all the other generals
or rebalance only this one. Also raising general bbs power level instills powercreep on a large scale.

#17

I would honestly prefer if certain generals had their BBS toned down as they are not very in line with other generals like Kaleos or Sajj. And then other other generals should just be deleted entirely in my opinion as they can only be played in a very specific archetype.

Furthermore, some generals need their BBS switched such as Sajj having a BBS that encourages SMorc but is in a faction with no healing.

Honestly, I have very controversial suggestions to better balance the game such as getting rid of the neutral faction but I’m not willing to get into that.

#18

love it :smiley: i really like the whole dark underground type thing

#19

This post will be either asking you to clarify somethings about your cards, suggesting better wording (or names because I’m feeling creative today), or suggesting better mana costs/abilities. Keep in mind some these suggestions are simply for you to consider based on your vision of the faction and others might be so that the cards are better balanced.

First, some comments on the overall faction and its mechanics:

  • The keywords Dig, Echo, and the tile Echoing Tunnel are some really cool ideas because they are not wincons in and of themselves like creep nor do they have a direct effect on the game like hallowed grounds acting as a heal proc and healing the general.
  • However, I am concerned about whether they are even worth producing since they have no direct effect on the game let alone worth building an entire faction around. At best, they are of lower quality to the spells Juxaposition and Mist Dragon Seal and at worse they do absolutely nothing since you need a board to start using them. The general that can give itself Echo somewhat circumvents this, but I think a general like Vaath who can go for face by itself would better appreciate this.
  • As it stands, there are tiles that can do one better than Echoing Tunnel by either producing a minion or healing or dealing direct damage, damage that can even be multiplied. You have to imagine someway for this tile to affect the board or significantly
    support your gameplan and it has to be something that is fast. I will be going ahead with this post assuming the tile Echoing Tunnel is good, but it needs a tweaking to be on par with other tiles since this tile is what you have built your entire faction around.
  • Alternatively, you could also just forego creating an entire faction, promote this as more of an addition the golem package and this tile concept you have could work a bit better though tweaking is still needed and the number of cards you have here could be reduced. You could also promote to the community and devs a concept I call “Sub Factions” which is a faction within a main faction. Similar to how the Ancient Bonds expansion gave three factions arcanyst and the other three golems, you could give one particular faction these keywords, preferably one that doesn’t have golems (Songhai, Abyssian, Vanar) or tiles (Songhai, Vanar). And then the remaining five can also receive something similar.

Alright, moving on, I will be looking at each individual card although I will skip those that I think are fine the way they are. Forgive me if my reviews seem cold and quick, I’m doing these very quickly so I won’t be able to edit it to sound more polite or articulate (EDIT: I have no life and am too polite so for my delight I present just for tonight) Since I am doing these very fast, I might be objectively mistaken on some things that I say so anyone including the OP, please feel free to correct me.

Also, I will type this “NOTE” on certain reviews, these are meant to show better wording.

One more thing, I would like to suggest a new keyword that I think would really up the viability of this faction which is Tunnel (I can’t think of a good name at the moment): Can move between Echoing Tunnels.

One more one more thing, I won’t be commenting on your generals and their BBS’s. I don’t really like any of them except for the second one as I think making their BBS’s into artifacts (which I have suggest below) would be much better. Best thing I can suggest there is entirely reworking them with some synergy with the golem keyword. Maybe you should even forget about golems and think of a new tribe entirely as in the lore you described the factions to be barbarians rather than golems.

This card seems very much like filler. There exist cards that can do this better most notable one being First Wish. Maybe this could be worked into a deck with good draw but I don’t envision such a deck that would also involve golems.

This could be decent with the 7 mana artifact. Honestly though, this feels more like something that is good on paper rather than actually being good. A +1/+2 buff isn’t a big deal and its already difficult enough to proc dying wishes if you are not Abyssian.

NOTE: Dying Wish: Give a nearby Golem +1/+2

You have to clarify what nearby is, nearby your general, a friendly minion, the enemy? Also, how far can it move? Assuming only one space, the card is mediocre even for 1 mana. If you meant anywhere, the card is slightly better but it’s still two mana so probably not by much. The existence of this card in this faction seems contradictory though since the Echoing Tunnel tile should be more than enough mobility.

Pretty strong card, doesn’t have much synergy with the faction itself other than keeping a minion in place near a tile. In a vacuum, chromatic cold is probably better, but it’s still a decent removal card and can hold at bay vanilla stat sticks for a one turn

Because your tiles absolutely need board to be effective, I would suggest over statting your minions just a bit, if Magmar can do it why can’t you? I would suggest this minion to be 1/4 or 2/3. Since this is an early turn minion, you probably want this to have Dig since it will die quickly and has no attack to benefit off the Echo. A problem here, what does that (1) mean next to the Echo keyword mean?

This is a cool artifact. I would rework to have synergy with the faction’s keyword so I would reword it as I put in the “NOTES” section. In addition, the mana cost should be little higher because of how amazing this is, would probably make it minimum 3 mana, possibly 4 mana.

NOTES: Your general gains +3 attack. Your general gains Tunnel.

Make the heath a little higher to 4 mainly because you want stickiness and the attack to 1 because this is also a rush minion.

NOTE: Dig Rush

I would lower the cost to 2 mana assuming the max damage this can do to one enemy in a single cast is 2 damage.

NOTE: Enemies near your general, friendly minions or near friendly Echoing Tunnel tiles take 2 damage.

I would make this 3 mana seeing how it’s the only removal and still not that good as the target minion will still have its abilities.

I don’t think this should have frenzy as a 2 mana 2/3 as we have seen in the past with the card Piercing Mantis. Otherwise, this minion is too similar to Shrill Shrew assuming you do implement the reworks I suggested (which I highly suggest or you can just delete Shrill Shrew and keep this guy).

Too similar to Ragebinder but not as good. Would get rid of this card’s current ability entirely and come up with something new. Preferably, you can design two three mana minions if this is going to be its own faction.

I would make this 1 mana as the effect is not that big of a deal although I don’t know if you would want to risk slowing down your general like this unless you have the Lance artifact on in which case… wowza.

NOTE: Your general gains +2 attack. Your general gains Dig

I can’t see why you would want to play this. Killing your own minions when you need a board to actually win as the tiles are pretty useless by themselves is not a good game plan. In addition, the healing theme seems unnecessary here, the best move here seems to be cutting it and stick with the Aria of Rejuvenation as your only healing. Remember, healing is great, but unless you are healyonar who can use healing of any kind to damage you and your board, just healing forever will not win you the game. You can even forgo healing almost entirely if you use the keyword I suggested which was Tunnel allowing your general to run around everywhere.

As long as you cut the other healing stuff, I am perfectly fine with this card existing, but the cost should definitely be 9 mana. You can do janky things though with this and the other artifacts which is why I suggest:

NOTE: Fully heal your general and fully repair your general’s equipped artifacts.

Too much like the Lyonar Grandmaster to be honest, I don’t like it all. The Aria card should be all that you need for late game survivability which seems to be all this card does for the most part.

Overall, I think you need to do a lot of revising and need more bulky minions. In addition you also have some really powerful artifacts so when revising your faction concept in the future, think Magmar+Vetruvian.

I might suggest some cards of my own but maybe also not. This post already took a long time to type out. Hopefully you could read this whole thing out and it was somewhat helpful. Feel free to open up a discussion about this but beware, I am of the opinion that the way Duelyst is now, there are too many factions so take that as you will.

1 Like
#20

Another thing I noticed in your faction concept is that you seem not to know whether to focus on your keywords or on golems and if you are going for a hybrid, it doesn’t seem very viable rather it resembles trying to eat a sandwich and ice cream at the same time. Focusing on blending the two together more.

A suggestion could be reworking the lore to make the barbarians also have shamans who possess ancient magic that can summon golems from the earth. You could make spells that can control/hinder the enemies golems or disrupt arcanysts as well.

In fact you can create a duality in the Guvolm Conclave society where one half of it is the elite filled with magic users or shamans and the other half which are the physical labourers, the fighters or the barbarians. The shamans specialize in golems as well as disrupting arcanyst magic and the fighters specialize in fighting underground and digging.

They (barbarians) also have small pets that can dig for them like the Shrill Shrew or Shovel Worm. The shamans could have pets as well that are uncontrollable but very powerful (cough battle pets cough)

Just a minor suggestion to get your creative juices flowing.

2 Likes