Age of Strategy Forums

Foolhardy and childlike, one can hardly tell goblins not to play with fire before something burns as soon as your back is turned. Rarely, a goblin has enough magical talent to have some real fun. Even more rarely, some of these live long enough to "master" their powers and turn them to the battlefield.

Build time: 3 turns, shaman hut
Hp: 12 (barely out of kill range of his own fireball)
Attack:3 (flame weapon)
Armor: 0
Spell resistance: 40% (unlike most casters, he knows nothing about stopping other mages beyond setting them on fire.)
Movement: 3
Spells: Fire blast (no cd. arcane bolt, but also inflicts fire. The heat is intense enough to ignite even ordinarily non-flammable material, like flesh, and melt metal, so anything can catch fire, even flesh and blood units.) Fireball (range 2, so he's going to burn himself. At full life he should barely survive.) Summon fire elemental (sacrifice an adjacent unit to summon a fire elemental)

Fire elemental
Hp: 40
Vanishing 3
Attack: 5, burning weapon
Actions: 2
Movement: 3
Armor: 0/5
Spells: fire blast (cd 4, so one shot per elemental)

Unless you are deaf, you can still hear the unfortunate sacrifice's screams through the flames as his body burns to sustain the existence of the elemental in our world.

I see what you did with the connection between fire elemental and pyromancer, a good one . Though honestly i thinks every races should have their own kind of elementals, same elemental with different summon requirements and a little different stat. (So i already request it in the first place http://www.ageofstrategy.net/posting.ph ... =86&t=3973)

I honestly forgot about that topic. Might have to look into examples for other races. For discussion on this, I must point out that any summon for orcs can be used to attract green dragons, so there should at least be a cooldown, if not keeping it in the goblin sacrificing theme.

Given the card ability i would give him an aura that gives some bonus damage and fire weapon to other units (don't know if only goblins since there are few goblin units)

Tech: goblin tenacity
Effect: goblins gain +1 attack for each negative status they are under. They also inflict poison and burning effects on attack equal to the amount of those effects currently on them.

Aura for pyromancer: "Everything Burns"
Can be toggled on/off. Radius 3, inflicts 2 instances of burning on EVERYTHING​ (flammable or not) in range at start of turn. Goblins gain a stackable +5 attack for 5 turns when effected.

I think that, even if appropriate, that might become too powerful. I would go with a simpler effect like a fire weapon aura on all goblins and, maybe, a +2 or +3 to attack (cause it would sum up with the strength aura of the orc leader) without a side effect.

Heh just trying to keep the idea to the card, where it had the downside "destroy all goblins" part. Maybe have it give fire weapon, remove all armor, and give additional attack equal to the higher armor value. For example, goblin has 1/3 armor, it gets +3 attack, armor is 0/0, and it has fire weapon. This way it preserves the downside end of it, since I kinda like the crazy, reckless feel this gives goblins. Especially if goblin grenade makes it in.

I understand but i think that we should avoid unnecessary scripting (since Daniel recommended this more times) so i think we might just reduce the bonus that other goblins receive (in mtg goblins are generally 1/1 creatures and this would simply quadruplicate their damage and kill them at the end of the turn, also consider that a player has only 20 hp so you can basically win a game in one turn with 5 goblins) or adding an easy to make downside (for example a fixed maxhp or armor reduction).

Another options might be a fireball on hit (that would also hit the goblin itself) but it would just become too similar to the goblin grenade effect.

Another one might involve the goblin grenade itself (since it would be a brand new script) and might work this way:

the goblin have a certain fixed bonus to damage and the fire weapon effect and when they activate the goblin grenade effect they deal double damage (so they also receive double damage from goblin grenade, bringing them to certain death). What do you think?

Interesting. Maybe have it an active spell, gives all goblins in the area +5 attack, fire weapon, and automatically triggers goblin grenade on all of them at end of turn. This pretty much mirrors the card exactly, down to death at turns end. It also probably ends with the pyromancer and all non goblin troops running as far away as possible before you leave a crater in the landscape from 5-6 exploding goblins.

I think that the automatic use, although fun, might become a bit out of control

That's the point. It's a good way to empty a section of the map, at high cost to all sides.

I see, but you generally want to empty the map only of your enemies units xD

I know, but 3-4x 2 cost goblins to trade for say several quick archers and an elf dragon? I'd call that a fair trade

Goblins will never reach elven archers, they will die long before approaching them.

True. But the idea remains, that a few exploding goblins can cost your opponent far more than it does you.

You probably will kill more of your units than enemy units... this isn't a ranged fireball but just hit nearby units. Unless your enemy is another orc player you are going to shot down goblins before they can reach you.

Goblins have a low hp and wouldn't last enough to explode where planned if the explosion triggers automatically.

Alright fine. I was kinda looking forward to seeing little goblins rearrange the map in a single turn too

You can do it, but only if you want xD

image (i'm going to animate the fire and the ruby on the staff)

Ooh. That's probably one of the coolest unit artworks we've seen.

Thanks, i've started from my goblin shaman and changed it to resemble more the card image.

Looks good.

animated version

Cool. Can you add some gleaming action to the staff? Make it glow a little. Great job on the fire.

I limited myself to a really light glowing since a better animation would become annoying to see on several units.

Daniel generally wants me to avoid that.

Ok. A case of really nice if it's the only one, but I hardly expect it to be a rarity. Likely we will see several close together, since the whole idea revolves around fire damage.... which means it's a cheap siege unit that deals damage by magic instead of force.

I tried to make a bigger effect on the ruby. It should be acceptable

Perfect

I like that goblins are fine addition to orc army not only as slaves but also as archers or mages