Tuesday, August 22, 2006

More Information from GenCon

PegasusKnight posted on hordelings.com:

- In Blood War, CG is currently slated to get a few pieces in the "20 to 39 point range" that "fill some roles the faction has been genuinely lacking." This is somewhat paraphrased quoting of Shoe, since I don't remember his exact words. As a CG-main player, I'm going to guess this might include any of the following:

* A 36-ish point Humanoid beater that does 15 damage a hit, be it 15 Magic or 10 Magic + 5 Element, or some other arrangement to let it do two 15 damage swings. I think this is the most likely to happen. CG's current batch of 30-39 point beaters are considered non-functional since they generally lose to, well, any other faction's 30-39 hitters either on damage output or morale. Giving us a Speed 6, 17-18 AC, Level 9-ish Fighter of some kind would work out quite well.

* A functional ranged attacker other than the Xen'drik Champion in the 20-29 point range. The Xen'drik is a great piece, but it's more of a generalist/versatility one than a pure ranged-support creature, and most of CG's ranged options are either 15 points, or 30-33 points. There's a definite gap in the 20-29 area that could be filled.

* A "blaster" mage actually worth playing. Perhaps an improved Warlock, or a Wizard/Sorcerer loaded with 5-6 damage spells like Acid Arrow, Scorching Ray, Magic Missile, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, etc.

* We might see a few new CG Outsiders in the 20-39 range, all of which will be better in LG due to the Couatl. This would be in-line with the Outsiders theme the set has, and in line with the history of LG.

- As a follow-up to the above, Shoe did confirm CG will get some more 'blaster mages' at some point in time, but would not specify which ones or in what sets. This is probably such a broad piece of Shoeformation that it could be filed in the "Pretty Darn Obvious" category, but it was nice to see they'll continue to take a look at offense-oriented spellcasters.

- There are currently NO plans in Blood War for minis that have class levels in the new PHB2 classes: Knight, Duskblade, and Beguiler. Shoe suggested there might (I repeat 'might'; he gave no specifics on even this much) be some pieces that have functionality similar to what these classes do, but this is such an open-ended hint it could mean just about anything.

This of course does not rule out their appearance in later sets, but Shoe noted their omission in Blood War was partially due to the fact you can find good RPG proxies for all of them already; Knights have tons of guys in heavy armor to pick from (Aasimar Fighter and Mounted Paladin being obvious choices), there's several medium/light armor sorts that would make passable Duskblades (Elf Swashbuckler for example), and Beguilers are a fairly diverse-looking lot anyway.

This is edited from the original post. Click on the link above for the full details.

- They aren't planning on making a Pegasus Cavalry in the near future.

- We discussed the standard (63 point) Griffon Cavalry at length, since I was curious as to why it turned out the way it did. He informed me it originally did have Mounted Melee Attack, but this was deemed "too powerful." Keeping Mounted Melee in would've required either a point hike, or meant the Griffon Cavalry would have had to be retooled to operate like the Mounted Drow Patrol. He noted the MDP is a harasser piece, while the Griffon Cavalry is specifically meant to be a "Crash into the enemy" sort. In other words, the DDM design team wanted the Griffon Cavalry to fill a genuinely different role than the Mounted Drow Patrol and other similar existing Mounted pieces.