I was playing with a friend the other day and i hashed out a new format that was loads of fun to play.  I got to thinking that the minis are great, but they dont capture the feel of the upper level characters from the MMO.  If you have Starfire and entagling roots, you dont lose Starfire when you learn bear form. You add it to your collection of other spells.  Also, i really like the feel of the card game where you have one champion vs another champion.  In the end this is what I came up with:

Battle of the Masters (aka-level 80 death match)
You pick one character.  You then triple that character's HP.  This will replace the score.  Set the score chart on the map to your character's HP.  First one to zero loses.  There really wont be a who scored more points because either you are dead or you are the last one standing.  If you want or need to time it, you can do a percentage of what they started with just like they do with the regular score.

Now for action bar cards.  You dont get two or three, making you choose between abilities/spells.  You get to play one copy of every card in that character's class.  While some may be useless, you still will get a very nice arsenal as long as you are not just starting the game.  The trick here will be keeping track of all of your options!  They will all ready at the end of turn ten (or five if stated) just like normal.

There are two last changes.  To avoid hunters dominating because they can bring pets and then shoot from the other side of the board or other non-engagement tactics, i have changed VPs a bit.  Since gaining VP points wont do anyone any good, VPs will do something a bit different.  VPs now heal at the end of turns 5 and 10.  If you are on the VP you heal 2 pts.  If you are next to it you heal 1 pt.  The second change is to the legendary characters.  You cant reduce them too much or you kill them, and most of them are not played because they award double points.  Well here they will be as they are with one restriction.  Legendary characters are not allowed to use their signature card.  Usually this is the most overpowered part of the character.  This should make epics playable without being abusive, but we havent tested this one too much yet.

We had a lot of fun playing this and the game really changed depending on what classes faced off against each other.  Give it a go and let me know what you think.  If there are any issues let me know what you come up with and i will see what changes need to be made.

ENJOY!

This is a horrible idea.

890077:

This is a horrible idea.

Reason?

2423521:

890077:

This is a horrible idea.

Reason?

The Holy Napkin hath spoken!!! How dare you doubt?!?

-c

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http://myworld.ebay.com/corle2/

2423521:

890077:

This is a horrible idea.

Reason?

It'd be horribly, awfully imbalanced is why.

so would there ever be a circumstance I'd want to use a Common over a Rare?

I mean some characters are strictly better than others if they aren't balanced by an honor value.

What do you do with equipment?

I guess I'd just always play Bleakheart Hellcaller. All non-spec Warlock abilities + all Demon abilities = forever dots and huge incinerate.

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I'd play Elizabetha Cairnwallow (I don't know the spelling). Honestly, she gets four demons she can sacrifice to give her an untouchable defense. Not to mention she's throwing seven dice every throw with two warlock curses, and fear. This format doesn't seem fun at all.

Obviously not all characters are going to be playable, but a large portion of them should be.  How characters do is largely dependent on what class they are facing.  Another large part of the game is action bar cards.  They play a much bigger part in the game then they did.  Dont underestimate the powers of a priest either.

For the honor issue, you could always just stipulate that the two opposing minis would have to be of the same honor value.

Or...maybe you could do something funky. You could multiply your mini's health by your opponent's honor and then divide by two, for example. Seems kind of more balanced that way.

I think it's an interesting idea. And just saying the idea is horrible is kinda horrible itself. It might be unbalanced, but if you don't watch out, but that's why sithdragon asked what we thought of it. Maybe the ABC thing can be a bit more controlled as well. Just say both can use 5 ABC's or so (or you could go crazy and say you start out with 1 or 2, and than add extra if you're at a victory point at tick 5/10 for example). And as not every talent for a class has a specific card yet, I'd rule out those out. For balance between high honor/low honor you'd have to just test with health totals I think. I liked the idea of multiplying with your opponent's honor. Or multiply your own health by 5 and substract 2x your own honor or something.

I don't think it's a horrible idea, but like others have pointed out I think you need some way to balance the minis by their honor costs.  Maybe you could even say that they have to get points equal to whatever honor they are.  That way if I play Ojo'mon or Wilton I only have to get 1 kill.  If I play Haruka I have to get 2 kills.  It would also bring VPs back to it that would allow for some position and things on the board outside of just where you can attack from. 

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"It's like Michael Jordan going to the YMCA to play basketball."
WOW Minis Judge Level 1, Tourament Organizer, Player Management Level 1

the number of kills cant really change unless you are talking about chewing through 25-30HP twice.  The games take about as long as a regular game as is, so i think that would make the game too long.  About the only thing that you could mess with is the HP formula.  Play a few games out, and i think you will find that the honor isnt nearly the factor as you might think.  It has to do more with what class is facing what and how decent is your DEF/main ATK.  But if anyone can give a standard formula to increase some of the lower figs without having to go fig by fig for adjustments, im all ears.