My issue with the new BG Chromium feature

Multiplayer Discussion
1

I really like the Chromium purchases, but I see an inherent problem that arises that can’t be ignored.

Your Chromium offers are heavily dependent on your current board state. If you want a big Naga Chromium offer, you must have Naga on your board at time of offer.

Seems intuitive enough. The offers will be based on your board state.

But this becomes a glaring problem early in the game. You absolutely must dedicate your board tribe by turn 6. This includes not having ANY mixed minion types. A single mixed minion type will destroy your offers. If you don’t have your complete tribe set up, you will essentially pollute your Chromium pool.

For example, if you have 4 mechs and 1 demon on board on turn 6, your offer will differ drastically than if you had 5 mechs on board and nothing else. And the Chromiums are extremely strong. So if you have bad luck in the first 6 turns and can’t get a complete solid tribe going, your chance of winning the lobby drops dramatically.

And part of BG strategy prior to this was the ability to shift your tribe mid game if you found key pieces to a certain tribe end game. You really can’t do that now without sacrificing a lot because other players will have dedicated boards with no shifting based on their Chromium rewards.

Essentially, you need to lock in your tribe on turn 5 for turn 6 offers. It kind of sucks if you get screwed out of tribe offers. Sometimes, you have no choice but to mix 2-3 tribes and that will completely screw you over on the Chromium offers.

2

From my experience I agree but disagree. I’ve had times where I’ve had a whole tribe of Quillboars and was offered 2 spells, a Naga and a very mediocre Quillboar on my first chromium offer.

I believe it’s more about luck. Sometimes the offers are downright nasty and other times they are worthless. I believe this is intentional.

3

According to the rules they’ve shared that’s wrong
The game only looks at your most common type : the type you have the most minions of, 2 or more for the minor timewarp, 3 or more for the major timewarp, always 3 or more of different types to be considered menagerie
You are then guarnateed at most 1 timewarp offer that is not of your most common type, at least 1 timewarp offer that is of your most common type, and higher chances of getting additional offers of your most common type
Exception : heroes with dedicated types can be offered more cards that are not of their most common type if it’s not their dedicated type

2 tribes is not a problem as long as you have a majority of one type, the other one will be ignored
You may have an issue though if you have too many dual type minions
If you really want to force a tribe you can also consider selling the extra ones the turn before the timewarp if you really want to force a type

4

This is part of what I’m saying.

If I’m 4 mechs 1 Demon, I will get offered a mech that may be a 1 cost and a demon that could be the 2 cost. It could be reversed when clearly I want the 2 cost to be a mech.

BUT, if you have 5 mechs and nothing else, you will get the 2 cost to be a mech, and/or you could get (2) 1-cost mech options. With that 1 added tribe, you completely screw your Chromium offer pool.

And if you have a mix tribe (say 2 murlocs 2 mechs) you might get 1 murloc, might get 1 mech and almost certainly will get offered a neutral that does nothing for you (for example, the 2 cost undead with avenge 6 gain 1 gold)

Having a solid tribe board is MUCH more beneficial in terms of offer chances.

But it is a problem. Go in with 2 mechs and 3 murlocs. Your 2 cost offer can very well be a mech and your 1 cost offers might be 1 murloc and 1 neutral.

It doesn’t prioritize the 2 cost minion to be your most common tribe and the 2 cost ones are almost always way better than two of the 1 cost ones.

And isn’t that the crux of the problem? If I have 3 mechs and 1 demon and 1 neutral, I am forced to sell my 2 minions, take damage, screwing my economy just so I don’t get screwed.

At this point, you are better off just keeping all 5 and settling for 4th if you can. Without a full tribe at turn 5 into turn 6, your chances of winning that lobby are extremely low. Anyone else who hit all tribes going into 6 will synergize and steamroll out of range of anyone else.

This is also making my point for me as well though. Your chances drastically increase if you have a full tribe. You might not hit it everytime, but most times you will.

And thus, your lobby is pretty much determined on whether or not you can full tribe on 6.

So many games are basically determined by your turn 6 offers which are determined by your turn 5 board.

5

Your options can be destroyed no matter what your do.

Remember the rule:no crying in the casino.

Forcing a tribe for tier3 warp is easy enough. But it does not matter. You can still get horrible options for other tribes.

Playing this way is something they want to discourage it seems. Wich is somewhat understandable.

Its probably best to not force anything. And simply buy the best cards. It does not matter that much for the options you get. There is another warp later on.

6

BGs has always been a sort of Casino type game, but you could control parts of it and come out on top by making the most of your board.

The new Chromium stuff just decreases the amount of control you have and now in order to regain control of it, you need to be specifically aiming for your turn 5 full tribe and bypass board control minions that aren’t your tribe just so you don’t get bad offers.

7

I did not read deep enough into the explanation to see this, but does it work like trinkets where not all of the slots are dependent? A pivot option or the like?

Sounds like it should?

8

I wouldn’t call them pivot options though. It’s much more harder to pivot from those offers.

If I’ve got 3 Mechs on board and 1 neutral and I get offered a 2 cost undead that is avenge 6 gain 1 gold with no undead in the pool as my main 2 cost, a 1 cost spell that makes 7 minions in the tavern and a 1 cost minion quilboar that lets me sell it to give all my minions +2 bloodgems…are any of those really pivot options? I have to sell the Quilboar…the undead is useless and the 1 cost spell for my tavern might be good, but not having that 2 cost mech with deathrattle get a randomizer is a massive, massive loss.

And, on turn 9 you get your final offers. You would have to COMPLETELY pivot your entire board to a specific tribe in 3 turns. Not easy to do.

1 Like
9

I will have to take your word for it. I have played exactly one game of the new season, go first place, and have not played since.

I have played much more standard than usual and have little interest in what the battleground mode has become.

1 Like
10

No this is in direct contradiction with the rules they have given
4 mechs 1 demon, your most common type is mech, period
that lone demon has no weight in what is offered in your timewarp
you can be offered a demon, but you could have bene offered that same demon if you were 7 mechs or 4 mechs and 1 naga

Here all the rules about minion types and offers. If you find something that constantly differs from these then you might as well consider it a bug

2 Likes
11

I think it takes about 20ish games before you start seeing the problem tbh. At first it wasn’t obvious to me. But now that I know what to aim for, it’s increasingly obvious to me that Chromium offers are highly influential in how well you perform and are highly influenced by your board state.

If I can end turn 5 with all mechs, I know I’ve pretty much won the lobby, or at very least get 3rd at worst. If I end turn 5 with dual tribes, I’m pretty screwed.

Then they are considering it a pivot minion. Point is, if you have a main tribe and a side tribe, your 2 cost offers will not always be your main tribe. There is no guarantee your 2 cost offer will be your tribe. But if you have a full tribe, it will be the offer.

1 Like
12

So is it work selling of a minion or two to get to all mechs? Is that a big enough advantage to take a hit for?

Are these published rules or your trial and error? Not to disagree or dispute your assertions, simply clarification on the intent from the development group.

13

It depends what your board looks like. If you have a strong board and need to sell 1, you’re ok.

But you know how some heroes do really well with a tempo board? Like Rafaam for example? Rafaam will always have a mixed tribe board. Rafaam usually has a 6-7 minion board on 5. So you can sell 4 minions if you want to keep 3 mechs or whatever, but you sort of just screwed your tempo…but you have to do that or else you very well may lose tempo by not getting the good Chromium offer.

I will attempt to take a screen shot to show what happens to me for offers. All I can say is that I absolutely do not always get my full tribe Chromium offers if I have a mixed tribe.

To put it this way, some of the Chromium offers are just broken. If you get them, you solidify your top 4 win in that lobby.

And the dragon offers suck, btw. They are pretty bad. Dragons are hard to win with, as are some of the Undead stuff. And Dragons and Undead are really good turn 1-4 minions. So if you are playing those at the start like you normally would, it will screw you in the Chromium offer so you have to dump them

2 Likes
14

If memory serves, they gave us information with trinkets to spell out what we needed to do to influence the pool towards our desired outcomes.

I am asking if they have done this for this gimmick because I have not seen that if it exists.

15

Literally in my reply above

1 Like
16

Frogive me for not seeing that post. I went straight to Schyla’s reply and did not see it.

Thank you.

1 Like
17

I didn’t quote all the rules, only those that were relevant to the topic
You might consider checking the original post for more details

1 Like
18

Yes, but allow me to argue the point as to why it was different for Trinkets than it is for Chromium.

For Trinkets, none of these occupied board spaces and impacted the game without doing so. Also, many Trinkets could be used for several different tribes. For example, your deathrattles trigger twice, etc. You can use that with many different tribes. So you could have a deathrattle board of beasts, and switch or pivot to undead fairly easy.

With Chromium, most of the good rewards are minions. I’d argue 70% of the rewards that are strong are minions. And minions offered almost ALWAYS are tribe specific. Leap Frogger, for example. Volumizers are Magnetic so Mechs only.

Chromium rewards are much harsher on your board state than Trinkets.

EDIT: Just had a game that 100% proves my point. I will supply screen shots and you will see exactly what I mean now. Standby as I complete my game.

1 Like
19

You might want to clarify your point because so far all I understood was “having a second type would force it into the timewarp offers”
But I just had a board with 5 elementals and a pirate (all single type), my timewarp minions were demon, murloc and elemental, and both spells were neutral
second timewarp with 6 elementals, 1 being a demon, and 1 quilboar
timewarp minions elemental, elemental, murloc

New game with 2 beasts, 1 dragon, 2 demons and 2 demons/naga
first timewarp only had demon minions for 2, 2 and 1
second timewarp with 4 demons and a demon/naga, offers were 1 demon, 1 naga with a neutral effect, 1 neutral

20

My point is that if your main tribe is tribe X with some Y, your 2 cost Chromiums (which are the strongest ones) will not always match your tribe. You might get 2 cost murloc 2 cost Undead (neither are your tribe and have no synergy with your tribe) random spell random spell and then 1 cost tribe.

But if you have a full tribe of X, your 2 cost Chromium offer has a much higher chance, if not 100% chance, of being your tribe as does your 1 cost Chromium offer.

Thus, a full tribe nets you more options for synergy with your tribe, and a non-full tribe board has a good chance to net you junk

Here are my Screenshots of 2 Games

Game 1:

My all Dragon Board with 1 Neutral - Full Tribe Board (5 Dragons 1 Neutral and the Neutral is an all tribe Neutral meaning no avenge 1 beast stuff)
https://ibb.co/MzjPQsk

My Offers on Turn 6
2 Chromium DRAGON
https://ibb.co/9Hp04SyN
1 Chromium NEUTRAL
https://ibb.co/G4LndYTb
1 Chromium DRAGON
https://ibb.co/wZVK1gL4

And 2 spells. Note. There is no Pivot minion here. There is no Pivot spell. The Spells are generic. Also note there isn’t a single non-dragon tribe here.

Game 2:

My 4 Beast, 1 Dragon, 1 Pirate board
My Offers on Turn 6
2 Chromium Naga/Demon
2 Chromium Murloc Yogg Spinning
1 Chromium BEAST
https://ibb.co/rrcr4xX

Had I sold that Pirate and that Dragon, you can bet the house that 1 of those 2 Chromium offers would have been a beast (likely LeapFrogger)

I only played 2 games just to see the outcome and it’s exactly as I predicted.

Your Chromium offers on a board containing only 1 tribe differs drastically than if your board contains more than 1 tribe

2 Likes