Godtear Community Playtest Packet: Grimgut and Kailinn

Hello Champions!  As I’m sure you all know, the community is working on a balance pass for Godtear.  In this playtest packet, we’ll be presenting proposed changes for two champions. One will get nerfs, one will get buffs.  First, we’ll give you the changes themselves.  Then we’ll explain why we chose these champions, how we have interpreted the community's perspective on their issues, and how we arrived at the change proposal.

Grimgut’s Experimental Changes

Here are the proposed changes for Grimgut:

• New Spew can be used as a bonus action if Grimgut has knocked out a follower during his activation.

• Flu Spew and Goo Spew are both bonus actions.

• NOTE: As a reminder, as per the rules on p18 of the rulebook, “A model may only ever gain one bonus action per activation.”.

Kailinn’s Experimental Changes

• Impaling Horn replaced with Shredding Horn: “Move Kailinn up to 1 hex.  Then you may remove an enemy banner that is within range (1).”

• Flashing Blade changes “may target up to two followers“ to “must target up to two followers“, preventing the skill from being used on a champion.

• Justice adds “against followers“ to the damage dice increase.

Why these champions?

In the recent “Low Tier Throwdown” community tournament, Grimgut had the most votes for lowest power Maelstrom (tying with Morrigan and Rattlebones for the most votes across all classes).  Like Morrigan, Grimgut oozes (heh… see what we did there?) with flavor, and is a community favorite underdog.

Kailinn is the source of some of the most contentious discussions on the Godtear community Discord server...  Many consider her the most overpowered champion released, but quite a few very experienced players consider her completely unplayable.  There also seems to be a common consensus that Kailinn is generally unfun to play against. This combination makes her a uniquely important participant in community balancing.

What were their issues?

Grimgut has a very unique playstyle, and one of the common themes in community discussions is that it often feels “awkward” to pilot compared to more modern champions.  Some of this appears to come from the infrequency Flu Spew and Goo Spew can be used, since move + plant or plant + New Spew are often required in the plot to keep up with enemy actions.  There is a similar theme in the clash... when movement is required, it leaves Grimgut deciding between Nom Nom Nom and New Spew.  Overall Grimgut’s action economy (and/or effectiveness of Flu Spew and Goo Spew) seemed to be the most common proposed area of improvement.

Kailinn is in a very hard design space.  When she is good, she is often GREAT (i.e. problematically above average power curve).  When she is bad, she is borderline unplayable.  And there isn’t a lot of space in between... Community perception seems to echo the swingy-ness of her impact, with some calling to “remove her, she is OP and zero fun” and some claiming that she is even more unplayable with Construction replacing Quest in the latest SFG competitive packet.  However, there has seemed to be a general consensus that she is too good at champion slaying, better than many Slayers.

Why’d we make the changes we did?

Our first internal playtests were with New Spew as a bonus action.  This felt very good on average, but produced a few too many “power peaks”, particularly on objective scenarios or against warbands without direct counters (move + plant + New Spew being easily compared to Shaper level control like Lily’s move + plant + Deep Roots).  Making it a bonus action that is reasonably easy to achieve in the clash, and more conditional in the plot is intended to raise the “power average” without producing the same peaks.  There were a lot of suggestions around tweaks for Flu Spew and Goo Spew, many around increasing accuracy to make the skills have a more consistent impact.  However, our thinking is that even with higher accuracy it would be hard to find times when these skills are more useful than moving, planting, and/or using New Spew.

From our perspective, the ideal balance changes result in Kailinn being less oppressive in her ideal situations (so there is more counterplay and she is less unfun to play against), a little better in her bad situations (so it is a little easier to justify bringing her in constructed lists), and worse at champion killing.  All of the changes are intended to directly support those goals.  The replacement of Impaling Horn with Shredding Horn trades her ability to deterministically remove a follower for 3 steps (4 for a large follower) for a one time ability to remove a banner for 4 steps (similar in points, but with less disruption of opponents followers and providing more utility).  The changes to Flashing Blade and Justice are intended to reduce her champion damage potential without reducing her impact on followers.  The hope is that the combination of these changes “flatten” her power curve, allowing her to be played more often while still reducing her overall power level.

How to playtest these changes?

If you want to playtest these changes, simply play a game with one or more of the champions being playtested. Make sure that your opponent agrees on which version (original or community balance pass) of the champions you are using. If you play on TTS, use the changed cards provided by MightyFinePants. The Godtear Community page will also have an online version of the cards that you can use as a reference or if you are playing a live game:

[Images of the cards in TTS and on Experimental]

How to contribute to the project?

To provide feedback, which is essential to the success of this project, you can submit THIS FORM (note, if you are new to playing online, you can learn more from this article).  

If you want to discuss these changes with the community at large, please post in the #playtest-feedback channel of the unofficial community discord server.

If you want to help brainstorm directions for balance changes, please post your ideas in the #homebrew channel of the unofficial community discord server.

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That’s it for this playtest packet.  Check out Objective Hex in two weeks when we publish the playtest packet for Lily, Nia, and a playtest-feedback driven update to Rattlebones!

Wooloolool,

The Council of Eldritch Judgement