u/ThiccBeans__69

Inspired by the painting "Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow" by Piet Mondrian. It's one of my favourites since childhood, and I specifically picked a 'Mech with the most amount of geometric panels, since I wanted to use this color scheme for awhile now.

Did the panel lining manually, intending for it to be thick, but my 2$ chinese brush and basic art acrylic paint made it turn out a bit sloppy + I did it in just two sessions. Also it's my first time trying to make coil glow and freehanding the danger pattern, so that's that. And all of that on top of me taking a two month break from mini painting and this being my second painted 'Mech mini ever lol. (All of this is cope and I just have a skill issue). Jokes aside, I'm more than pleased with the result :)

What should I name this fella?

So me and my buddy decided to play classic after playing alpha strike only for the last half year. We picked a scenario of three goons vs a damaged battlemaster, hence the blue dots.

After a couple of turns of just positioning, he sent his commando up close to me, while setting up his wolverine as a sniper and a locust on the flank. I shot the wolverine with a ppc, and obliterated his commando with remaining weapons - I got a crit there, and decided to destroy his gyro instead of reactor (for fun + to test making those infamous PSR's).

For his literal first shot ever in this game, he hit me in the cockpit with the wolverine's large laser. Immediately after, he shot my cockpit again with one of two of his medium lasers, destroying it and ending the game.

I'm not even upset at how ludicrously insane this is. I've spent 5 hours reading the rulebook out loud non stop to him, while he was just playing fucking factorio on his laptop. Now I'm actually scared of doing a rematch...

Late night walk in my local suburban park... It is a place to exist.

After recent spell nerfs, it got me thinking - spells are unavoidable, can completely determine the result of a game, just by getting a correct matchup, and basically guarantee value, since there are only two skills required to use them: placement and timing. Both are very intuitive, and you have to be a very special person to not to develop these skills by reaching midladder. After that, they become very one-dimensional, with the exception of using them in prediction strategies - still timing and placement, but requires knowledge of card interactions, and opponent's playstyle and deck.

To spice up the "spell economy", I came up with The Counterspell™ - A spell that will protect an area from spells. Additionally it is a first Champion spell - champions deserve some love, since due to heroes they're no longer that unique. Plus, since it's a champion, it will be unlocked at later arenas, where players are already experienced with spell play, and understand the basics of common strategies.

How it works:

1. Spell (2 elixir) is placed in an area that you are think will be attacked by a spell (e.g. your gob barrel on enemy tower);
2. It is deployed in a "passive mode" (2nd pic, left side) - it does nothing in this state, except showing you and your opponent the area where you placed it and it's lifespan (decreasing white rim, like the rage spell). This can be used to bluff or intimidate, but will also give the enemy a heads-up on what your plan might be.
3. As any champion, it has an ability - upon activation (2 elixir and some delay) it shields the area from spells for couple seconds (or maybe completely negates the spell, if it touches the protected area), then just disappears. It might have different animations, depending on spell - basic spells like zap/arrows/fireball will hit something like storage shield from CoC. But more physical spells like log, gob/barb barrel, etc. might require a unique effect of being broken upon hitting the shield.
4. If the ability is unused, nothing happens;

This way your opponent may hesitate to even play the spell, if he sees your placement. But if you don't activate it in time, it was all for nothing. Additionally, it will require you to juggle your inputs, since strategies that are most countered by spells require strict cycle management for placement of cards.

Alternatively, it can be not a champion, and work like this:

1. Upon placement, it shows up immediately in it's passive state, but without the timer.
2. After a considerable delay (kind of like royal delivery) it enters active phase and disappears.

This way It will require a lot more skill, since you're basically just predicting enemy's spell. But you'll have shorter window to do so, and will not be able to intimidate/trick the opponent by playing it without ever activating the shield, essentially trading a whole layer of the card's depth for higher skill requrement.

Evolution (2 cycle) (if it will have one) will simply deflect the spell, like monk does. This might provide actual physical value, and replace monk in some decks (but not all, since monk is also a good troop by himself).

This card will allow to use swarms more offensively, protect your buildings from eq, troops from spells with damage/stun/push/slow etc. but will be limited by it's radius (maybe like zap), total cost of 4 elixir (medium spell-ish), activation timing and window and while it will protect from zap, it won't protect from e-wiz for example, so it is not a panacea.

As it might sound, it will not buff logbait or other spellbait decks, since it will have medium cost, will take up a card slot and will actually require skill, which these decks' players obviously lack /j

I am not a pro player by any means, so stats like cost and timings are rough estimates, and the whole concept definitely requires polish (well, duh, this is just a concept). Idk if this was suggested before, I just had this Idea, and it felt like something truly unique, that I haven't seen in 10 years of playing.

TL;DR: Place the spell, activate it to protect from enemy spell for a short time. Or bluff and don't do that to save elixir. But watch out!

Color palette inspired by my company in the 2018 video game, which is also why my first choice was the blackjack from the alpha strike box.

I've only used basic cheap art paints (you can see some in the background) cause I'm broke, no miniature-specific products were used, except black wash which i bought separately lol

Also decided to skip the base painting, because I'm planning to get some clear acrylic hexes, as i've seen some time ago somebody do it here