An acceptable rebuttal re: Gemini: certainly I can see the appeal of trying to keep one or both Twins alive for stalling purposes because of their high value.
Yes, I definitely should have mentioned the increase in material from successful LifeStone usage, as that is the entire reason for the piece's existence. I will note however that your comment does not assert that LifeStone is "bad design", merely that a piece whose usage provides a net benefit of "-1 morale and +4 to +7 material" is still a strong piece despite its RPS issues against gravity and thunder. If that is your belief, then that means you would fall on my side of the "should LifeStone exist or not?" argument camp, which I appreciate.
For the record, I have argued in the past, and would again in the future, that nerfs to LifeStone should not be mere simple numeric edits. For example, pieces revived by LifeStone could come back frozen/petrified for 3/5 turns, which would allow users to pay for a material advantage with a tempo or positional disadvantage.
also phoenix+0 lifestone+3 is a thing, you thundermage your own phoenix early so your lifestone cannot be exploited
This is a disgusting interaction. Phoenix reviving itself is one thing; Phoenix cloning itself through LifeStone manipulation is quite another. If I was Grand, I would consider this interaction to be a bug and endeavor to figure out some way to make it not work.
Thanks for the comment; I shall send you 10 RP shortly.
Just a sidenote on Gemini, I don't believe that the vanilla moveset of "3 range rook" is worth 8. Probably around the lower end of 7-8, especially as Crusader and AirElemental are basically strict upgrades to that.
I don't have a problem with LifeStone reviving things. I'm thinking of a design in our game that does the same but is more granular with costs (so you could revive a number of different units, or one big cost one). Though this is even more difficult to balance and may not see the light of day (because of the idea of "unit advantage", the idea that units may have a different extra innate cost than their number such that, say, two WaterElemental for a Rook is NOT an equal trade - for example, Pawns in this game are 0 but not literally zero value). To make a properly balanced unit like the one I mentioned, you would basically have to figure out that number and incorporate it into the design, or rebalance the game so the piece costs make sense with the unit advantage idea.
I feel like that interaction is pretty intentional, at least the Phoenix LifeStone part. Gemini's value was probably pulled out of LifeStone range for that reason, as you could do it with Gemini too. But there's a devbot army that uses 4 Phoenix+++'s and spams LifeStone+++.
Basically, currently I think LifeStone is really bad design right now, but the idea of reviving (which is really broad) can be quite good.
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