High value dudes do not counter Paralysis Mark. They are resistant or even immune to it, but that only means that other dudes will get booted. And you only have so many dudes. The point being that PM provides a very strong advantage on the board. Few cards are as strong or meta-defining.
Not sure what Jaq with a Shutgun can acomplish, other than kill Freddy. Hardly anyone plays Micah or Mongwau these days.
I meant that high value dudes are shotgun resistant - that’s a meta shift unto itself - e.g. fewer shotguns as fewer targets are around these days.
I like that when they first released doomtown reloaded they made comments about how when they changed it from the original doomtown they wanted to focus on what they felt made it fun, which was movement and shootouts. Then they released a spell that checks off value at noon that stops movement. A value check was a mistake on that spell, and there aren’t enough counters to spells cast at noon. The fact that people think that a counter to this spell is to drop more dudes so they get booted instead shows quit frankly how stupid the spell is. Kung Fu will do a lot to fix this. Wanna boot my dudes? I’ll drop chow and unboot them. Chow can be a reasonable cost with the reduction also unlike Louis. They need to introduce more counters to noon spells and miracles need more direct counters to hexes. Miracles are the equivalent or curling up in a ball to protect yourself while someone beats you with a nerf bat. The design team needs to introduce some old world testament to miracles.
However paralysis mark is not the reason why clowns are winning. It’s 100% hex slingin and It’s not what you know. All the stuff prior to drawing cards just changes the odds of your best possible draws. And unless you cheat once jokers are discarded for most decks it’s just a matter of a full house or four of a kind. Really it’s just about drawing enough cards so you don’t cheat and can form a decent hand. No other card in the game works like hex slingin, you can have a booted card that you used and discard it for 2 hand ranks? That’s just stupid. At least if you had to discard a weapon it would be a tradeoff for effectiveness now vs the next round of the shootout.
Maybe I’m out of line with this thinking, but Sloane is likewise able to field a pretty strong huckster deck, if hex support like Paralysis and Hex Slinging are that strong, shouldn’t Sloane Hex be as prolific as Clown Control?
Sloane hex is a shootout based hex deck, all their bast hucksters work at the optimum in a shootout = Antheia, Jose, Maria.
So they don;t really mesh well with Para Mark - it’s doable, but the clowns are better at it - coupled with the fact that the orginal 4R outfit has the best synergy. Card cycle AND cash AND 19 starting rock AND 3 2 GR starting dudes
The strongest clown player I know doesn’t even play either of these cards. He just paralyzes and curses my dudes and shadowwalks all over town to some isolated chump to soul blast him, and builds more deeds. Discards his hucksters to Kidnappin’ without opposing and still wins.
The first deck I ever published on dtdb was a Sloane Hex deck. Same principle as regular clowns, but you accumulate control points faster, and you have to fight right away. With all the new cards, it might work now. Only, it doesn’t have three stud hucksters with no upkeep like 4R does.
I find the Shootout ability on Blood Curse more annoying when playing against Clown Control.
I am genuinely surprised with the amount of people saying that you can play around this card. For me it is the most OP card in the game.
Is anyone of you who chose this option playing on OCTGN? I would gladly arrange some games against you to find out how are you dealing with it.
After reading some comments here I would like to add that having an OP card in your deck doesn’t guarantee you a win, it just gives you higher chance of winning. Also PM isn’t a huge problem if you have only one of them in play, or you start drawing them in mid to late game.
It is a very good effect. Running anything that gets you a tempo boost as powerful as a boot effect in this game is will make the game difficult.
I really think that if you want a healthy competitive environment, this card should be Restricted. Not banned. A banned list is too much. In our light super casual meta if a card gets too powerful, we try and see if the player will restrict it to a one of.
I for one hope AEG never uses a restricted or ban list. I hated that every time I had a deck that was tweaked and ready for a major event the FAQ got updated and boom! I was back to building another deck and it was discouraging. On PM yes it’s a good spell and there really isn’t much to say bad about the spell. Is the card needing to be restricted, banned, or errata? The answer is no IMO. Why do I say that first if it was OP every deck would run the card because it was so OP, since every outfit has the option to go with a starting huckster. Steele has huckster 2 or 3 and Wilbur has huckster 1 with no upkeep, and you can play the new micah and/or Valeria since they they have such a small upkeep to keep them in play. I remember when ppl cried D&D where OP, then it went to 4th ring, then to Sloane, and now we are back to 4th ring. It’s a cycle I am just waiting for ppl to start a lynch mob going after the Law Dogs for being to good.
Just because every deck CAN run it, does not mean that it is a good idea even if you assume that it is in fact OP, which is clearly debatable. A card can be OP and still restricted by deck choice, general gameplan, and even more so in doomtown by values you need to run for it. OP does not mean universally usable
Nobody said SG was op. It was discussion about desolation row if I remember it right. And the problem was that it forces first turn all-in shootouts, and it is not really intresting.
4r op sinse ntnr imho.
I think we need a hard counter to PM. It’s not the most elegant solution, but if we get a card that is generally useful and messes with PM, it will force a change in the meta. In this way, playing PM would be still useful but a risk, since your opponent may play its counter.
This design solution has been used in Netrunner quite successfully IMO.
Paralysis mark with booting at noon was a bad idea. If anything what it should be is when a dude is hit by paralysis mark nothing happens but it forces them to boot if they move anywhere. That would offer some strategic decisions and there would still be a control element. Now dudes in town square couldn’t move to deeds without booting but they could move. Also you could move from your home but you would end up booting. It would add some strategic depth to movement rather than eliminating it. Paralysis mark should also check off of grit. I also think all noon hexes if you fail the pull it should affect the caster instead. They also badly need some counters to noon based spells.
Yes there are always going to be things that are powerful at certain times but this is clearly out of balance and not a fun spell. I don’t think it adds to the game.
As far as hex slingin yes you can win without running it I’m just saying the fact that hex slingin can be used on booted hexes is a huge mistake. It eliminates a bunch of counters and also eliminates the choice of using a hex at noon or during a shootout vs saving it for hex slingin. Also it makes no sense that cards can alter hand ranks dramatically with zero repercussions. Although certainly paralysis mark has issues there is a reason if you look at the gencon 1st and 2nd place they have hex slingin and the first place winner also had “it’s not what you know”. If you’re going against a hex based deck with those cards you have to assume you will lose any shootout if they have those cards.
So, errata Hex Slingin’ to discard unbooted hexes only then? 
Something like this should be enough:
Deed, Value 7
Cost: 3
Income: +1
CP: 1
Private
Controller’s dudes cannot be affected by spells cast from a different location to where they are.
Its effect affects mostly hexes, which are the problematic spells. It’s a 7, which is a middle value, which almost any deck can run even out-of-value. And most important, it’s a deed, so it can be countered by controlling it, and it will force conflict.
I would say at the very least hex slingin should only be unbooted hexes. Cheatin Varmit is the only other card in the game that alters hands by 2 ranks on a single card and it costs 5 GR. There are plenty of hexes that cost 0 GR and 1 GR. It’s just totally out of whack for the cost vs risk/reward.
I think they also need to address cards that alter hand ranks as normal resolutions having no repercussions. That would also change the dynamic on how powerful these cards should be in relation to the cost. It makes no sense that artificially raising your hand rank can’t trigger some sort of negative reaction.
Lets take a look at the top performing decks over the past week:
Sacramento - 8+Q Morgan Hexes
Sacramento (2nd place) - 8+9+10 Clowns
St. Louis and Kalamazoo (two events?) - 8+J+Q Clowns
Brisbane - 10+J+Q Clowns
Warren - 8+10+J Clowns
Tyler, TX - 8-J-Q Clowns
Sydney - weirdass 3+6+scatter Oddities (no hexes!)
And remember folks, you just need to learn to play around Paralysis Mark and you’ll be fine!
Brisbane - 10+J+Q Clowns plays only 2-of (and last decklist even doesn’t use them). It’s definetly marks the card’s balanceness.
I like how multiple people have laid out pretty big logical detailed arguments and the counter has been lol learn to play around it or that some people are only running 2 copies or OMG someone won without running it so it must be balanced. And BTW the deck running 2 copies of paralysis mark also has 2 copies of shadow walk which is probably the best movement card in the game. The deck without it at all runs Hot Lead Flyin. Please name another card that can be played and cause anywhere near that many casualties. It’s a card you play losing with no cap on the casualties done. Don’t get me wrong, Paralysis Mark is not the sole reason 4th Ring/Hex is so strong. That also doesn’t mean a card that totally stops movement that’s easy to use over and over is a good design idea for a game the designers themselves said movement and shootouts were the fun part.
It’s a card game, no deck or card means 100% guaranteed wins. And if the argument is that something is balanced unless it guarantees a win or it must be run to win then you might as well say nothing in this game will ever be unbalanced.