Hello mortals! Welcome to your weekly balance update.
In this update we're focusing on living cards that were previously unlived due to bugs so that we can get more complete balance data.
This has required several redesigns and within those redesigns we're trying to support lesser played archetypes in each god. We're slowing down a bit with our balancing as we're in a really good place right now, however there are still some nerfs and buffs that need to take place in the coming weeks - more info on that next week!
Magic
- Oni Spellsword changed text from 1/4 "Ward. Whenever you draw a card, gain 1 strength, and the friendly character with lowest health gains ward."
to 1/3 "Ward. After you play a card, Oni Spellsword gain 1 strength, and the friendly character with lowest health gains ward."
Oni Spellsword was a bug victim and one of my personal favourite cards.
We've given it a stronger overall design and lowered its health to compensate. We're expecting this card to be played with lots of cheap cantrips such as Seeing Stone that allow the player to rapidly buff Spellswords attack up. If Oni Spellsword is too strong we will revisit it in the future.
War
- Enduring Shield changed text from "Blitz. When your god attacks or is attacked, gain protected and lose 1 durability." to "Blitz. After your god is attacked, gain protected and lose 1 durability.
Enduring Shield was another bug victim and created a weird dynamic where you would attack with it and lose 2 durability on the weapon. We've cleared the text up and whilst it is slightly weaker overall it's now live so we are now able to test the data on it to see whether or not we need to increase its strength.
- Devouring Blade changed text from "Godblitz. Before you attack a creature if it has more health than your strength, gain 1 durability." to "Blitz. Afterlife: Destroy a random creature."
Devouring Blade was previously one of the clunkiest and buggy cards we had. We've cleaned up the design of the card to make it more 'core-like' and have provided War with hopefully a useful relic that can fit in its control or midrange archetypes.
Deception
- Mind Probe changed text from "At the start of your turn, if this card is in your hand, deal 1 damage to your god for every 2 cards in your hand." to "At the end of your turn, if this card is in your hand, deal 1 damage to your god for every 2 cards in your hand."
Mind Probe was another bug victim - by calculating the damage at the end of the turn we are also providing players with the ability to respond to this card which may reduce its toxicity in the future.
- Avatar of Deception changed text from "Hidden. Whenever you draw a card, shuffle a copy of it into your opponent's deck." to "Hidden. Roar: Give a random enemy creature sleep and confused."
This is the least favourite change we've ever had to make. Unfortunately the old design had a plethora of bugs that we are likely unable to fix before the card is tradeable and given the niche specialty of the old design it was potentially a huge risk to let the card go in largely untested.
We wanted to support the sleep archetype and a 4/4 Hidden creature on its own is a very powerful creature so it has been hard to find an additional effect that isn't gamebreaking. We're confident that the new version of Avatar of Deception is very strong and playable, without being oppressively so.
- False Peace from 5 mana, "Return 2 random enemy and 2 random friendly creatures to their owners' hands. Your creatures returned this way have their cost reduced by 2." to 4 mana, "Two random enemy creatures go to sleep. Two random friendly creatures go to sleep and they get +3 strength."
False Peace was a combo and high tempo card that we've been unable to properly test due to bugs. We've changed it to support the sleep archetype and the aggressive tempo based decks.
It's important to note that putting a friendly creature to sleep on your turn will make it miss its opportunity to attack this turn if it hasn't attacked already, but not next turn - so be careful with the timing when you play this effect and make sure you attack before you cast it.
- Pickpocket changed text from "Move the card with the lowest mana cost from your opponent's hand into yours." to "Copy the last spell and creature you opponent played."
The old design of Pickpocket would likely have been highly divisive and toxic, especially when looking at the communities current reaction to Cutthroat Insight.
It was a bug victim that we wanted to keep the flavour of without creating a card that would potentially enrage the community. As such we've tried to support Thievery based decks.
- Heads or Tails changed text from "A random player shuffles their entire hand into their deck and draws that many cards." to "Randomly either both players take 4 damage or just your opponent takes 3 damage."
I'm confident that the old Heads or Tails would have been players least favourite card ever if it had gone in bug free - luckily for everyone it was hit by bugs and as such we've redesigned it to capture the coinflip flavour.
The old design created a dynamic whereby you could be on the play and play it on turn 1 with bag of tricks, then it if it hit your opponent it would effectively have invalidated their mulligan. The new design is one that we expect aggressive decks to use as a finisher, but it does not come without risk.
Light
- Asterius, Glittering One changed text from "Frontline. Roar: Set the mana cost of all creatures in your void to 1 and return them to your deck." to "Frontline. Roar: Friendly creatures with 2 or less attack gain +1/+1."
Unfortunately Asterius never got its time in the Light due to bugs. We've redesigned it to support the 2 attack archetypes that Light is using at the moment.
- Ra's Ascension change text from 5 mana, "Double the health of all Anubians on the board and in the void." to 4 mana, "Double the health of all friendly Anubians."
Ra's Ascension was previously a really, really bad card that was also not working correctly. We've simplified it and reduced its mana cost so that it is more playable.
- Beyond the Grave changed text from "Trigger two random afterlife effects from your void." to "Deal X damage to a creature where X is equal to the strength of a random creature in your void."
Beyond the Grave was very much a card that should have been a Death card. Light and Death both have void synergy but the ability to trigger afterlife in the void is a Death centered effect. Combine that with the fact that the card was buggy and we wanted to give Light another removal card, we've redesigned this card to be a very cheap but somewhat unreliable removal effect.
- Canonize changed card text from "Give +1/+1 to a creature in your void for each creature in your void. Shuffle it into your deck as the new Chosen One. Draw a card." to "Give a creature +3/+3 and protected."
We want to support the Chosen One archetype but we found this card to be extremely good on its own, in a very oppressive way. The card was also causing a large number of highly unpredictable bugs. We've redesigned the effect to be quite simple and to support Light's ability to protect large creatures which the Chosen One archetype naturally has.
Nature
- Spirit Animal changed text from "Deal 3 damage to a random enemy creature. Control Amazon: choose the target instead." to "Deal 2 damage to a random enemy creature. Control Amazon: Deal 3 damage instead."
Spirit Animal was another bug victim. We found in our play testing sessions that even with the 'Control Amazon' side buggy, the card was outperforming our baseline expectation for a 1 mana nature removal card, so we've given it a slight reduction in power level to compensate.
- Myrto's Daughter changed text from "Blitz. Pick one: Gain +2/+2, or give a friendly Amazon +4/+3." to "Blitz. Pick one: Gain +2/+2, or give another random friendly Amazon +4/+3."
This card was 'bugged' and highly exploited over the weekend whereby you could target Mryto's Daughter with the Amazon effect. This was unintended and as such we've changed the wording of Mryto's Daughter and ensured it cannot target itself with the Amazon side of the pick one.
Neutral
- Balance Summoner changed text from "Roar: Set the mana cost of all anims, enchanted weapons, and runes in both players hands to 0." to "Roar: Set the mana cost of all anims, enchanted weapons, and runes in your hand to 1."
Balance Summoner previously set both players runes/anims/enchanted weapons to 0. This created some very awkward situations that lowered the powerlevel of the card, however the effect of setting the cost to 0 was also considerably too strong in a lot of situations. As such we've both buffed and nerfed this card by making it hit only your hand, but changing the cost to 1 rather than 0.
- Arius, Augur Paroxysm changed from 8 mana "Roar: Destroy all other creatures and relics. Obliterate your hand, deck and void." to 9 mana, "Roar: Destroy all other creatures and obliterate your hand."
Unfortunately, Arius has been extremely buggy when it comes to destroying your deck, void and relics. We wanted to keep the effect of it having a huge impact when played, but that required us to remove a large amount of the 'downside to playing it, which in turn has required it to increase in mana.
- Raze Imp changed text from 2/3 "Burn 1. Roar: Shuffle two copies of Raze Imp into your deck and two into your void."to 2/2 "Roar: Shuffle two random Nethers into your deck."
We were having a lot of design space issues with Raze Imp whereby it was invalidating an entire archetype (mill), forever. If we introduce a competitive methodology like sideboarding we're not comfortable in having one card that effectively will permanently prevent an archetype from existing.
At the same time we think that Raze Imp is potentially a great inclusion to Nether decks so we've decided to further push that archetype by giving it an early game creature that adds more Nethers to your deck - something we believe that Nether decks need.
- Sentinel Princess is now an Atlantean.
We're slowly adding more tribes to cards and this was an obvious addition. Its worth noting that Sentinel Princess does not count itself when meeting the 'Control Atlantean' condition.
Thank you for reading! We have many more changes in the pipeline and we're likely to have larger updates in the coming weeks.
- Petrify
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