Up-front, I'm always super interested in ideas for cards, including Railbeater! His current setup is an interesting scaling interaction where he's a defensive unit that really wants Multistrike. This means that he primarily plays nicely with backline units that can't also take Multistrike, like Rally Queen or Reaper Prince. If your front and backlines are competing for upgrades you're probably having a bad time. It's an interesting interaction that I do like, especially since an offensive frontline that takes Multistrike plays very nicely with the clan's Rage synergies.

As for Steelworker, Armored as a trigger is interesting and I considered consolidating his ability under that once the DLC comes out. Something like "Armored: Double the amount of Armor gained." would work pretty well. In testing, while the numbers you can achieve with Armor can be high, they're pretty competitive compared to things like Lifesteal, Damage Shield, or Regen stacking. I can theoretically change the multiplier even today if things get out of hand, so I'm welcome to more high-covenant feedback on it if you have more runs to share!

Morsel Summoned is a very interesting trigger for Shadoweater... I hadn't really considered it, but it could work. One thing I really like about Shadoweater in his current form is that he is actually a pretty good candidate for boss killing plans as-is because with Shroud Spike you can give him a lot of survivability Morsels and he converts them into damage with his ability. Once the DLC comes out, I will 100% test some variations based on your suggestions. There could be something really cool there.

Thank you so much for the ideas! I always love chatting about this stuff, and you've got good things here that have definitely given me ideas to test once the DLC hits.

Originally posted by Rising_Dusk:

Thank you so much for the ideas! I always love chatting about this stuff, and you've got good things here that have definitely given me ideas to test once the DLC hits.

Aw yay thanks that's very wholesome to hear. I also enjoy thinking about these sorts of changes, but don't have the outlet of implementing them in a mod, so my outlet is either daydreaming or telling you about them XD I'm glad you're interested. I took some notes, I'll post them in a separate comment.

Originally posted by Rising_Dusk:

One thing I really like about Shadoweater in his current form is that he is actually a pretty good candidate for boss killing plans as-is because with Shroud Spike you can give him a lot of survivability Morsels and he converts them into damage with his ability.

I agree that current mod Shadoweater has boss-kill potential, which I actually really didn't like. I was doing a Superfood Primordium run with multistrike Brandon Warrior as the eater/boss-carry and 1-3 2-energy holdover Ritual of Battles for bonus rage generation. I took Shadoweater to handle backline clear, but around ring 5 I started to ask myself "Why bother with Brandon? Shadoweater is such a chad that he could easily replace him and answer literally everything on his own." I didn't like that moment, because it made me realize what an absolute badass new Shadoweater is. I think that's more potential than he's meant to have, like that's Shadowsiege's job. But maybe Umbra has room for a unit like that, or I was overestimating him because my situation happened to be well-suited for him. That's my take from one run, though.

Here are my notes on Railbeater ideas.

Problem:
* Per-strike armor gain is a static number, which causes:
* If armor gain is higher than the boss's attack, wins infinitely for free in relentless (boo)
* If armor gain is too low, becomes useless in late game (boo)

Proposed fix:
* Make the per-strike armor gain amount dynamic
* It should go down during relentless, so that Railbeater doesn't defeat infinite bosses with no build-up
* The player should be able to make choices during combat to make the number go up, so they feel responsible for his success

Possible Implementation:
* Counter increments on revenge, grants benefit and reduces on strike
Armor 25
Strike: Gain armor equal to your [counter] and reduce [counter] by 1
Revenge: Gain 1 [counter]

Possible counter names:
* "Shard", ala Solgard
* "Soul", ala Devourer of Death
* Something new, like "Stock"

Side effects of this implementation:
* This would make Railbeater better vs. bosses with more multistrike than him, like Self-made Harpy and Seraph, and worse vs. bosses with big single-hits, like Living Armor, Stealth Boss, and Patient Seraph
* It also means multistrike increases his armor generation, but also makes him spend his stock faster. So the more multistrike he has, the more you have to micromanage to ensure he gets his revenges in.
* He would have to ramp up by taking damage before he would start making his own armor, so it's a good thing he starts with a lump sum of armor to tank that initial damage

Other implementations could easily be better. I don't have a firm grasp on how to balance the numbers here. But I think the goal of making the armor gain number dynamic would be one valid way to make Railbeater a more compelling unit through an entire run of C25.

On a totally different line of thinking, it could be really cool if there were some way to incorporate Rage into the Railbeater system. Like take current mod Railbeater and give him "Armored: Gain 1 rage". Doesn't change a ton, but makes a multistrike on him a bit more efficient.
Or like making him spend rage to get armor, or making armor gain give him rage or something. I couldn't think of a way to balance that, but it could be pretty rad. Maybe strike: gain armor equal to half your rage and lose that much rage. That would turn Railbeater into a machine that lets you situationally transform your damage generation spells into defense generation spells. So if you rolled a lot of rage generation but no sustain, Railbeater makes that work. That's a pretty cool unit. Just spitballing here. Railbeater's aesthetic is basically "I'm tough like steelworker, BUT I also bash skulls in," so making him a hybrid tank/damage-dealer could deliver on that aesthetic in a very satisfying way.

That's an interesting idea!

Monster Train has pretty stringent design requirements to keep things "simple" on the surface with deep strategies underneath. That is always something I have to be careful with during card redesigns.

I actually think based on the concept for Railbeater you provided, he'd be weaker than he is right now. Him being a strong defensive unit into Relentless is actually one of the strongest parts of the unit compared to other units like Steelworker. With his Relentless scaling diminishing in most fights, that would make him a much weaker tank overall.

The idea of spending Rage to get Armor is actually a really neat idea, though. Something like "Strike: Gain Armor equal to current Rage, then lose all Rage." is actually very strong and has very interesting synergies. It can also get a little crazy, but it runs itself out so that's not bad.

Thank you!

Originally posted by Rising_Dusk:

That's an interesting idea!
I actually think based on the concept for Railbeater you provided, he'd be weaker than he is right now. Him being a strong defensive unit into Relentless is actually one of the strongest parts of the unit compared to other units like Steelworker. With his Relentless scaling diminishing in most fights, that would make him a much weaker tank overall.

It would be like Crucible Collector's Lifesteal, in that you have to build it up leading into relentless and then if you have enough stacks, it lasts long enough for you to deplete the boss's health. He would be weaker than he is now, but only when you don't build him up enough. When you do build him up enough, he could be much stronger. That makes his strength kind of a Bell curve that the user has more control over, rather than a constant that the user can't change, which I think is what made mod Railbeater feel so much different from other boss strats.

It's possible that building 1 resource on revenge would be undertuned, making him functionally weaker than the current constant of 3. In that case it should be a different trigger, or revenge should give more than 1. Revenge lets you hit him with torches or micromanage enemies so that his resource gets far enough above 3 that he can outlast the upcoming boss. It would also get boosted back up by the boss's hits.

But the rage => armor design might end up being more promising anyway, so I won't defend the other implementation to a fault.