As someone who didn't know as much about this enemy, most confusing thing for me is: ,,shares pain inflicted to him with his nearby allies.'' So that's wrong because the reflect dmg is delt to enemies and not allies?
Global Balance Changes
Each unit size has a defined limit of how many melee units of a given category can attack it at once. This limit directly affects the viability of melee units in a way that is not true for ranged units. As part of how balancing efforts, we have decided to increase the amount of melee units which can attack a given unit at a time. This should prove especially helpful for early strategies utilizing S-units or when fighting against boss units in RPvE with a primarily melee army.
Numbers of melee attackers for creatures of different sizes:
A single S creature can be attacked by at most 4 Normal, 6 Reach and 2 Huge attackers ➜ at most 6 Normal, 9 Reach and 4 Huge attackers
A single M creature can be attacked by at most 6 Normal, 10 Reach and 2 Huge attackers ➜ at most 9 Normal, 15 Reach and 4 Huge attackers
A single L creature can be attacked by at most 8 Normal, 12 Reach and 4 Huge attackers ➜ at most 12 Normal, 18 Reach and 6 Huge attackers
A single XL creature can be attacked by at most 12 Normal, 14 Reach and 6 Huge attackers ➜ at most 18 Normal, 21 Reach and 8 Huge attackers
Normal = S & M-units.
Reach = Units with extended range. Ghostspears is a good example.
Huge = L and XL-units.
S-units count as 1 normal (or reach) attacker.
M-units count as 2 normal (or reach) attackers.
L-units count as 1 Huge attacker.
XL-units count as 2 Huge attackers.
Fortification walls: increased the gate's toggle cooldown from 1.4 seconds to 3.4 seconds.
Some units were unable to attack or pass through a gate when it was rapidly toggled between closed and open.
Twilight's Transformation ability: added scaling to the transformation cost based on tier.
Tier 2 units remain at 85%
Tier 3 units from 85% ➜ 80%
Tier 4 units from 85% ➜ 75%
Twilight Transformation is now as efficient as Breeding Grounds at T4.
Changed all cone-attacker splash radii to 38m (ie. Frost Mage). This would reduce out-of-range issues faced by cards of this type.
PvE Balance Changes
The focus this patch for both PvE and PvP has been on the Nature faction. For more information on our vision for Nature, check out our Nature Deep Dive.
While changes are split here between PvE and PvP sections, many of the changes, such as Parasite, Shrine of Memory, and Spikeroot, have important consequences for both game modes. Our PvE and PvP balance teams work closely together to ensure that the impact of all changes are evaluated for both game modes. Below, we have listed both the changes and our reasoning behind them.
[ Tier 1 ]
Amazon (Nature):
- Wildlife Protection radius increase: 20m ➜ 30m
Quality of life change to make it easier to use Amazon(g) with Werebeasts in T1.
Fountain of Rebirth
- Ritual of Rebirth healing: 15 / 18 / 21 / 25 life points regenerated ➜ 20 / 23 / 26 / 30 life points regenerated globally
A small buff to enable the Fountain to be used in more scenarios, particularly when supporting non-Nature players in multiplayer.
Treespirit:
- Unit cost decrease: 60p ➜ 50p
- Life points reduction: 680 / 720 / 800 / 880 ➜ 560 / 600 / 660 / 730
- Thorns damage reduction: 100, up to 150 total ➜ 75, up to 115 total
These changes to Treespirit were initially intended to turn the unit solely into a Root Network battery, but testing has shown increased viability in all game modes due to the ability to spam them out quickly, a trait that Nature T1 otherwise lacks. The cost reduction means a net benefit for Root Network decks, allowing them to set-up more quickly while binding significantly less power.
[ Tier 2 ]
Healing Well:
- Water of Life:
- Added initial healing capacity of 1500 life points.
- Recharge rate increase: 20 life points per second ➜ 50 life points per second
Purely support buildings typically need to provide a lot of benefit to be considered for inclusion in a player's deck. Currently, Healing Well takes 2 minutes and 30 seconds, or 150 seconds total, to fill its healing capacity of 3000. This is a recharge rate of 20 life points per second. Given that the building starts with 0 initial capacity, this means that the player must not only wait for the building to construct, but also well over a minute before the building becomes usable, and then only for a few seconds before they will need to wait again. In some sense, this mimics an initial and recurring ability cooldown timer, but we do not think this state of affairs is proper to this card. These changes should allow Healing Well to fulfill its purpose as a stable source of sustain in a localized area.
Sunken Temple:
- Orb requirements changed: 2 Nature ➜ 1 Nature, 1 Neutral
- Building cost reduction: 120p ➜ 110p
- Swapped Shadow and Nature affinities of the card.
- Plague:
- Changed from active ability to passive auto-cast ability with a cooldown of 30 seconds.
- Now displays a respawn status bar indicator.
- Summoned Pest Creepers:
- Unit now dies after 40 / 60 / 60 / 60 seconds.
- Added immunity against reviving effects.
- Can no longer be infected with the Twilight Curse.
- No longer grants ground presence.
- Green affinity poison duration increase: 4 ➜ 5 seconds
Sunken Temple is a spawner building with has a high upfront cost of 120 bound power and a continually high cost of 80p for each ability activation. Given that the units it spawns are unbound units, the building will eventually pay itself off. This payoff comes in the form of melee S-units, which already begin to struggle in T2, particularly in PvE. Additionally, while the building eventually pays itself off, the time it takes for this to occur is quite long, both in terms of power cost and in-game time. This is not helped by Nature's newfound lack of void manipulation in T2. In nearly all scenarios, it would be better to push for T3 with a different strategy than using Sunken Temples.
One of the holes that currently exists in Nature's T2 is the lack of a splashable defensive tower. Even Pure Nature's tower, Living Tower, is often lacking when not supported by other root network entities. The idea with this change is to turn Sunken Temple into a shrine which continually spawns short-lived defensive units. These units can then be paired with cards like Infected Tower to create permanent Twilight bugs or Furnace of Flesh for some minor void manipulation.
[ Tier 3 ]
Northland Drake:
- Unit cost increase: 240p ➜ 300p
- Life points increase: 2435 / 2560 / 2820 / 3100 ➜ 3235 / 3360 / 3620 / 3900
- Frost Breath (auto-cast) damage increase: 265, up to 398 total (2370 dp20) ➜ 400, up to 600 total (3570 dp20)
- Active ability Blizzard:
- Duration increase: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
- Ability cost increase: 60p ➜ 70p
- Infused(r) Blizzard's flat damage bonus to frozen units is now consistently dealt against all frozen targets damaged by the storm.
We have done a lot to buff Pure Frost, but have thus far neglected Northland Drake. We wanted to give the card a substantial buff, but needed to sharply increase its power cost to avoid any potential issues with PvP. Overall, this constitutes a 20% total increase in stat efficiency and a much improved ability.
Oracle Mask:
- Mysticism:
- Increased duration of the internal buff from 8 / 8 / 10 / 10 seconds ➜ 12 / 15 / 15 /15 seconds to match the external buff.
- Changed the buff effect of the aura around friendly buildings from granting units invisibility ➜ units take 100% less damage.
- The granted buff of the aura will now reapply to existing units in range.
- Changed the displayed status bar icon on affected units and buildings from the card artwork icon to the ability's activation icon.
- Added a proper global status bar description.
- The visual effect of the activation no longer lasts an unlimited time on Oracle Mask.
The old Oracle Mask was incredibly bugged and allowed the player to unbind their entire army and generate free units. This is a stopgap measure while we work on redesigning Oracle Mask entirely.
Shrine of Martyrs:
- Power cost increase: 125p ➜ 220p
- Blessing of the Martyr: Now a permanent, passive effect. Only one Blessing of the Martyr can be active at a time per team.
We have envisioned Pure Frost as a macro-based faction oriented around good preparation and diverse unit compositions. The recent changes have given Frost players a lot to do in terms of micromanagement, and the newly buffed Shrine of Martyrs has only added to that by requiring the player to check back every 30 seconds. Given Frost's nature as a faction, which we discussed at length in our Deep Dive into Pure Frost, we would like to test out a version of Shrine of Martyrs which applies a permanent global buff. By doing so, we hope to cut out some of the micromanagement we have added to Frost in recent patches.
Shrine of Memory:
- Orb requirements increased: 2 Nature (T2) ➜ 2 Nature, 1 Neutral (T3)
- Power cost increased: 100p ➜ 120p
- Echoes of the Past:
- Void return percentage increase: 100% / 150% / 200% / 200% ➜ 150% / 175% / 225% / 300%
- Maximum void return increased: 20 power per 2 seconds ➜ 80 power per 2 seconds
- Also affects allies now, also only one Echoes of the Past can be active per team.
- Decreased duration: 30 / 30 / 30 / 35 seconds ➜ 30 seconds on all upgrades.
As a T2 building, Shrine of Memory sees play in PvP scenarios regularly, but falls behind in PvE compared to other void return mechanics. Its current effect is most efficient with medium amounts of void power, but actually loses efficiency beyond a certain threshold (333) and only works for the player which owns the structure. This means that Pure Nature as a faction has very poor void return tools, which is a major reason it is currently so weak.
Turning SoM into a tier 3 buildings opens up significant space for buffs. Shrine of Memory now affects allies again, an ability which was originally taken away due to its strength in 2v2 PvP. Additionally, we have increased the void return percentage and allowed it to overcome the natural void return cap to allow it to compete with other void return options in T3. The goal is that after this change, all four factions will have competitive void return options which are thematically appropriate to the faction itself.
Stone Warrior:
- Damage increase: 1700 dp20 ➜ 1850 dp20
- Life points reduction: 1950 / 2020 / 2170 / 2360 ➜ 1750 / 1820 / 1970 / 2160
- Shatter Lance activation cost reduction: 100p ➜ 80p
- Gifted(g) Shatter Lance: Can now target structures. Deals 50% damage against structures.
The blue affinity was recently given the ability to damage frozen buildings. The green affinity's description suggests it can do the same, and we don't see anything wrong with the interaction, so we have modified them to be consistent. We also reduced the ability cost to buff both affinities slightly. Stat realignment is for PvP viability which leaves unit with identical stat efficiency, which is the same as Mutating Maniac, better than Mutating Frenzy, and slightly worse than Fathom Lord.
Sylvan Gate:
- Power cost reduction: 110p ➜ 80p
- Add "Accelerated Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%.
- Change Linked Fire ➜ Repeater
- Range: 25m ➜ 100m
- Sylvan Gate no longer provides support itself
- Move affinities to their own passive:
- Change Blessed(b) affinity to Tainted(p) affinity - Friendly entities connected to the root network within a 25m radius around Sylvan Gate will deal piercing damage
- Infused(r) affinity - Friendly entities connected to the root network within a 25m radius around Sylvan Gate will deal 25% more damage.
Sylvan Gate is in a prime place for a redesign. We would like to turn Sylvan Gate into a long-distance Root Network repeater, a role that fits perfectly with its existing tunnel ability. With these changes, a single Sylvan Gate will cover 200m and be able to connect support from every root entity within 100m in every direction. This means that Sylvan Gate can bridge massive distances, allowing the player to easily move their frontline root network unit while leaving their root network battery far away from the battlefield.
Thornbark:
- Linked Fire, out-of-combat support provided increase: 1 ➜ 3.
One of the aspects of root networks that has always been a little weird is the fact that every unit provides the same amount of support. There is no scaling, so it is always best to use the cheapest option in terms of power and population limit. With this change, Thornbarks used as root network batteries will provide significantly more support. Now only 2 Thornbarks will be needed to max-out another root network unit with full support.
[ Tier 4 ]
Banzai Lord:
- Counter added: Banzai Lord now has an S-counter
- Bird Calling summon amount: 3 birds ➜ 2 birds summoned in total
- Banzai Birds:
- Damage (p): 1000, up to 3000 ➜ 1500, up to 4500
- Healing (g): 1000 life points ➜ 3000 life points restored
- Life points increased: 800 ➜ 1200
- Explosion radius decreased: 25m ➜ 20m
Banzai Lord has causing performance issues by spawning massive amounts of birds at once. To mitigate this issue, we reduced the birds from 3 to 2, but increased the damage and health of each bird proportionally. This means that Banzai Lord (p) will continue to deal the same total damage. At the same time, we reduced the explosion radius slightly to give the purple affinity a minor nerf. The green affinity was severely underperforming and each green affinity Bird now provides 3000 life points worth of healing, which should allow it to properly fulfill its healing role.
Fire Sphere & Shatter Ice
- Fixed incorrect handling of overkill damage.
This is the first instance of us changing the way overkill damage works. It should provide a substantial buff for both cards by allowing them to always deal their full potential damage when a sufficient number of enemies are present.
Forest Elder:
- Flower Power / Pest Plants aura radius: 20m ➜ 30m.
- New passive Ability, "Magic Link": Unit is surrounded by a magical zone of 30m radius where summoning friendly units requires 30% less of the usual power costs.
Forest Elder is meant to be the apex Pure Nature unit, but currently is a walking Regrowth on steroids and a slightly improved Wheel of Gifts. Pure Nature is a unit-centric deck, and a major part of being a unit-centric deck is needing to summon units. Many players who splash Nature want to summon units in base, next to a Breeding Grounds. It thus feels unsatisfying when you have to summon a unit in the field and miss out on the major cost refund. We wanted to let Nature players stay in the field without waiting for other units to catch-up, as well as decrease the faction's bound power cost. As such, we thought it fitting to give Forest Elder a slightly improved mobile Breeding Grounds effect. More changes will be coming to Forest Elder in the future.
Lifestream:
- Life Link:
- Damage absorption limit increased: 10000 ➜ 20000 damage
- Removed maximum ability duration.
- Range increased: 200m ➜ 300m
- Implemented a new visual effect to prevent confusion with Regrowth.
Lifestream is Nature's superweapon equivalent and is a sustain option in a faction overflowing with sustain. In order to be used, it needs to either out compete Regrowth and Forest Elder or possess its own niche use. We have striven for the second option. To do so, we doubled the absorption limit and made the effect last permanently until the limit is reached. This will both increase Lifestream's strength in existing situations, as well as allow it to be used with less active input required from the player's end. Overall, it should fit in better as a part of a fixed defense and compliment Nature's healing in more offensive scenarios. To achieve this second aspect, we also decided to increase its range to 300m to match our recent buff to Comet Catcher.
Necrofury:
- Unit's default attack: Melee ➜ Ranged.
- Damage: 1100 dp20 ➜ 4160 dp20
- Range: 40m attack range
- Needs to face enemies in order to target them.
- Only affects ground units
- Movement speed increase: 4.8 m/s ➜ 6.4 m/s
- Nether Bomb is unchanged when switched into this mode.
Necrofury is a card with a good concept that doesn't see play outside using its powerful Bone Shards ability to one-shot bosses with Unholy Hero and Fallen Skyelf. We are wanting to leave its current boss killing identity intact while opening it up for general usage. The goal is to allow Necrofury to function as a backline archer without the need to constantly micromanage her. Given Necrofury requires only 1 Shadow orb, it will be flexible enough to be used in a wide variety of decks and provide a reason to single splash a Shadow orb.
Overlord:
- Blood Share:
- Effect radius increase: 15m ➜ 20m
- Healing increase: 1000 ➜ 1500 life points
- Self-inflicted damage remains at 1000
The ability is currently very thematic and fitting for Overlord but also quite lackluster, so we are giving it a small boost.
Primeval Watcher:
- Stasis Field targeting: Self-targeting ➜ Targeted area within a 30m radius
Primeval Watcher is the primary backline damage dealer for Pure Nature. We want to increase its overall strength and the flexibility of Primeval Watcher's paralyze ability to allow for more offensive application. More changes will be coming to Primeval Watcher in the future.
Promise of Life:
- Orb requirements changed: 3 Nature, 1 Neutral (T4) ➜ 3 Nature orbs (T3)
Allows Promise of Life to combo with Abyssal Warder and Pure Nature in T3, but otherwise has the same restriction for other decks, given it will still require 3 Nature orbs. This combo has proven to be quite powerful in testing and opens up a unique style of play, though one that can feel foreign to Nature. The idea is to attack a location with Abyssal Warder, purposefully allow it to die, and cast Promise of Life just before its death. This causes both a fully restored XL-warder and 2 L-warders to spawn, both of which are unbound. Promise of Life and Abyssal Warder will allow the player to quickly accumulate a large army of unbound units, while the new Shrine of Memory will grant fast void return, resulting into quicker transitions into T4.
PvP Balance Changes
[ New Card Design Spotlight - Burning Spears ]
Burning Spears were designed as a new tool to increase deck building options in pure Fire. The faction currently has a limited pool of pure cards in PvP leading to a very M-unit centric deck design with a limited amount of deck building options and balancing levers to change specific matchup behaviors. The addition of Burning Spears will add a versatile small sized unit into the faction, that is supposed to help with some of the factions counter issues against L and XL units in T2, while demanding a deck slot investment in return. The passive ability enables very high back loaded damage potential to punish players that try to ignore them, whereas the slow and steadfast ability allows Burning Spears to stick to their priority targets while enabling further spell synergies with cards like Wildfire.
[ Nature Rework ]
Pure Nature has been struggling to find its place in PvP for a long time. The faction features some tools prone to snowballing games once a lead is established. This can be frustrating to play against. While these tools offer great snowball potential, the faction lacks ways to actually get ahead through more conventional means. At higher levels of play the deck could be considered the weakest, since it was possible to shut down the strenght points it has while abusing its weaknesses.
To address these issues, we want to increase Nature’s pool of options in open field trades while increasing its capacities of defending structures more consistently. At the same time, we are toning down the snowball mechanics to avoid creating an overly strong faction, which can’t be dealt with at some point in the game. This should lead to a more enjoyable experience for all players involved. Considering some of these changes are quite drastic, follow-up tweaks might be necessary to reach the desired goal.
Burrowing Ritual:
- Cost reduction: 50p ➜ 40p
Our previous plan of slightly buffing Tunnel in PvP didn’t work out for various reasons. As a result, we decided to add a bit of power to one of its combo pieces, making slot investments for Tunneling strategies a little bit more worthwhile.
Creeping Paralysis:
- Cost reduction: 60p ➜ 50p
- Paralyze duration increase: 15s ➜ 20s
- Target limit increase: 7 ➜ 10 total targets
Adding more crowd control and open field trading options for pure Nature allows the deck to compete with nature splash factions. The listed buffs are supposed to enable its role at defending power wells against melee units by preventing them from focusing down power wells. The spell also excels at disrupting immobile army stacking strategies.
Deep One:
- Life points reduction: 1650 ➜ 1450
- Catch ability cost reduction: 25p ➜ 10p
Deep One happened to be the most stat efficient T2 L-unit. Combined with Surge of Light, this led to very powerful snowball potential, allowing straight focus onto power wells ignoring any counter units. We reduce the overall health ratio to impact the effectiveness of Surge of Light support. On the other hand, we want to maintain Deep One’s ability during more defensive trades and are reducing its ability cost as a result. Deep One’s performance will be highly impacted by the upcoming Nightguard nerf as well.
Energy Parasite:
- Counter type change: S-counter ➜ M-counter
- Power Drain: added 30s initial cooldown
Any tool capable of generating maximum energy leads can snowball out of control very quickly. Therefore, preventing Energy Parasites from connecting to power wells at any given state is an absolute must if you want to beat pure Nature consistently. This necessary zoning of Energy Parasites often lead to a tempo loss by default, leading to heavily restricted gameplay options when playing against them. While this power level was necessary to keep pure Nature viable in the past, it did not leave a lot of room to buff the faction. This change is supposed to bring up more counter play options to Energy Parasites while keeping the unit strong and viable. The initial power investment can’t provide fast payoff, as counter unit spawns can be delayed. As nature often struggles with attacks based on M units, we also change the counter type from S to M. This might allow Energy Parasites to be utilized in combat before the initial cooldown goes off.
Ghostspears:
- Orb requirements changed: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral ➜ 2 Nature orbs
- Weapon Change ability cost removed: 10p ➜ 0p
- Damage increase: 900 dp20 -> 990 dp20
With the introduction of Amii Paladins, every nature splash has its own melee S-sized M counter nowadays. By moving Ghostspears to pure Nature, we can tweak each of these units to specifically balance them towards each faction's needs. This change opens up room to buff pure Nature’s overall trading capabilities.
Parasite:
- Orb requirements changed: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral ➜ 2 Nature orbs
- Cost reduction: 100p -> 80p
- Damage per second increase: 60 / 60 / 60 / 66 dmg/s -> 70 / 70 / 70 / 80 dmg/s
- Max targets increase: 4 / 5 / 6 / 6 -> 8 / 9 / 10 / 10 total targets
- Fixed damage interval from 0.9 to 1 sec without increasing total damage
Pure Nature had little room to interact with air units in the past. Spirit Hunter poison gets countered by strong sustain tools (Ravage, Crystal Fiend healing etc.) and Parasite Swarm is too expensive and too susceptible to cc in order to work consistently. Parasite is supposed to be a strong support tool addressing this issue. Additionally, the card synergizes well with crowd control options to deal with stacked unit setups. We will move orb requirements towards pure nature to avoid interactions with splash factions, creating space for such a strong buff.
Parasite Swarm:
- Splash damage removed
- Total damage increase: 16, up to 24 total damage (800 dp20) ➜ 24 damage (960 dp20)
- Counter type change: M-counter ➜ XL-counter
- Mind Control: added 10s initial ability cooldown
Parasite Swarm is mostly reliant on using its active ability to generate value. This makes using the card rather inconsistent, especially in early T2 stages. The upcoming change increases single target damage by 50% vs L, S and buildings, while increasing damage by 125% against XL units (M remains unchanged). On top of that, its counter type is getting shifted from M to XL in order to provide a new option of dealing with XL units. This should make Rogan Kayle less mandatory in pure Nature. In return, we add a small initial cooldown on the ability to prevent undazed spawn into instant swap plays.
Rogan Kayle:
- Damage increase: 990 dp20 ➜ 1075 dp20
- It’s the Shoes range increase: 15m ➜ 20m
While not a pure Nature card in the first place, Rogan Kayle often gets used in combination with crowd control spells to produce permanent cc-chains. Outside of that, the card is rarely used and has large drawbacks due to rather underwhelming stat cost ratios. We increase its power a bit to open up more situations where the Lyrish leader can actually lead to victory.
Shrine of Memory:
Shrine of Memory will be shifted away from a meta pure Nature card and redesigned as a T3 tool. The card used to be a catch-up mechanic to compensate for nature’s weak early T2 complementing its spell spam heavy snowball tools. With the upcoming buffs, a back loaded hyperscaling mechanic is no longer necessary. Considering gameplay with SoM point and click hard counters like Suppression or Matter Mastery would naturally get more popular if Nature would increase in popularity, we decided to rework the card entirely. For more information, head towards the PvE section, where SoMs new powerful role will be further discussed.
Spikeroot:
- Unit cost reduction: 120p ➜ 110p
Root Network decks were kept in a rather weak state in PvP considering static siege setups are rarely fun to play against. That said, we think it’s safe to increase Spikeroots power level a bit considering the card can complement Nature decks in various ways and is not reliant on root network support to be functional in the first place. It can be used as another tool to address nature’s M-counter issues.
[ Shadow L-counter Adjustments ]
Nightguard has been dominant across Shadow splashes by shutting down a lot of L-unit centric strategies entirely across multiple matchups. The advantages of getting unbound units through mind control effects are more substantial than just removing units from the map. When kept alive, even a single unbound L-unit would lead to a huge long term advantage. Her omnipresence is preventing options to diversify faction identities, but also leads to numerous unhealthy interactions like shutting down L-unit centric factions entirely. We haven’t been able to touch Nightguard so far as a few L-units were at risk of getting out of hand without her (i.e. old Mountaineer). But since these outliers have received nerfs, we want to attempt to redesign the L-Counter role in Shadow splashes to enable more proactive skirmishing.
Nightguard:
- Unit cost increase: 65p ➜ 90p
- Swap ability cost reduction: 75p ➜ 50p
As the central change here, Nightguard unit cost will be increased by 25 energy, rewarding energy investments to prevent the swap from going through in the first place. On the other hand, her ability cost will go down by the same amount, so total swap costs remain unchanged. This will weaken Nightguard’s preemptive zoning power before the swap goes through and also strengthen any re-swap scenarios. Therefore, taking down the Nightguard after a swap goes through needs to be prioritized even more than before. As the total cost per swap remains unchanged PvE impact is minimized considering it is way more likely to be able to keep her safe compared to PvP.
Executor:
- Counter type change: M-counter ➜ L-counter
- New passive ability, "Piercing Death" - Unit deals 60% piercing damage
Executor has been redundant so far given that Shadow already has exceptional M counter options. To bring up a combat based alternative to Nightguard his counter type will be changed from M to L. In addition he will receive piercing damage to be able to help against buffed L units. This should help against early T2 or in 2vs2 matches.
Knight of Chaos:
- Chaos ability cost reduction: 50p ➜ 40p
Pure Shadow was quite reliant on Nightguard to sufficiently counter L units. This buff should help compensate for the loss of power, and will also open up more opportunities for the less reliable purple affinity to finally cause real chaos.
[ Miscellaneous Changes ]
Dreadcharger:
- Charge increase: 12 ➜ 16
Small change as a response to recent design changes in the Shadow vs Frost matchup. This should enable more extended T1’s given that Frost also receives Ice Guardian buffs in this patch.
Eliminator:
- Taming ability radius increase: 20m ➜ 30m
- Added radius preview
- Buff increase, fire(r) affinity only: 30% ➜ 50%
- Fixed affinities not working together without allowing it to stack infinitely
Helping Eliminator to reward very specific strategies in decks that are built around him.
Ice Guardian:
- Increased range from structures before Ice Shield decays: 25m ➜ 30m
- Added a visual indicator when the Ice Shield is not decaying.
After acquiring more data from the Master Archer change, the previous spam scenarios are less effective in PvP as predicted. That said, Frost often ends up being confined to its own structures. We are giving Ice Guardian a bit more room to chase units and add a little bit more power into close well combat, where Frost is supposed to excel. This is needed to avoid map cutoffs early into the game. We also added a visual indicator when the ice shield is not decaying. This should lead to more comfortable unit micro options.
Mountain Rowdy:
- Ice Block ability cooldown increase: 30 / 25 / 20 / 20s ➜ 40 / 35 / 30 / 30s
While we are satisfied with the overall position Mountain Rowdy took in pure Frost, he currently has the potential to keep his ability active constantly. With the increased range, this is a very potent zoning tool and sometimes slows down the game a bit too much. Therefore, we want to provide a proper window for players to attack after the ability runs out.
Phalanx:
- Damage increase: 570 / 600 / 660 / 750 dp20 ➜ 600 / 630 / 690 / 780 dp20
Phalanx recently saw a bit more play in PvP. We think they still are on the weak side, therefore a small buff, which doesn’t impact their combo potential with Nasty Surprise should help them take a more consistent L counter role in Frost splashes.
Slaver:
- Cost reduction: 80p ➜ 75p
Small buff to bring stat efficiency more into the line of other T2 L counters. Shouldn’t affect the unit performance too much.
Stoneshards:
- Life points reduction: 840 ➜ 810
Small tweak for Stoneshards considering Stonekin is slightly overperforming and will benefit a lot from upcoming Nightguard changes.
Strikers:
- Movement speed increase: 6.4 m/s ➜ 8 m/s
While Strikers are underperforming as a unit, we do want to keep them in a niche role rather than buffing them back into a meta position. Increased movement speed should help to seperate the great Striker players from the good ones without inflating their power level. This should make it easier for them to isolate and pick off units more often.
Twilight Brute:
- Damage increase: 940 dp20 ➜ 970 dp20
Even though Twilight Brute is a strong tool in a few matchups, deck slot limitations are quite restrictive in Fire Nature decks, so the card doesn’t see too much play all in all. Increasing the attack should provide a small extra reward for selecting them.
Twilight Minions
- Damage increase: 900 dp20 ➜ 930 dp20
- Life points increase: 780 ➜ 840
Considering Fire Nature loses Ghostspears as small sized M counter, Twilight Minions need to step in and take their role. Despite their superior stat efficiency, they were rarely played due to ranged disadvantages compared to Ghostspears and a less flexible ability. As a result, we will increase stat efficiency a little further to compensate for this patch and also look to add a lot more value for Twilight oriented deck builds in Fire Nature in the near future.
Virtuoso:
- Damage increase: 1790 / 1890 / 2075 / 2265 dp20 ➜ 2025 / 2125 / 2310 / 2500 dp20
Even after the recent ability buffs, Virtuoso remained underplayed due to his inferior stat efficiency compared to most other L sized melee units. As a result, we decided to increase his damage output to help him at countering L units and sieging.
Warden Sigil (Frost):
- Blessed(b)Sigil ability: Can no longer be attached to structures that are still under construction.
We are working on Wardens Sigil buffs to add more defensive tools in Frost T1. Unfortunately, the testing process isn't finished entirely, therefore only some technical preparations will be included this patch. We will follow up on this one soon.
Warlock:
- Cost increase: 45p ➜ 50p
- Damage increase: 430 dp20 ➜ 600 dp20
- Blaze Bolt: 60, up to 90 total damage (430 dp20) ➜ 72, up to 108 total damage (600 dp20)
- Attack speed: 3,5s ➜ 3s
- Witchcraft ability now allows self-targeting
After testing the Warlock sufficiently, we do think it’s safe to enable a little more combat power rather than keeping the unit just as a cheap supportive tool. Warlock still should remain as a part of growing armies, but once he can deal a bit of meaningful damage himself, the required amount of set-up to make him work is reduced. This should help Warlock become more valuable in earlier T2 stages.
White Rangers:
- Increased ability damage against non-Amii buildings from 50% ➜ 100% (orbs and power wells still do not receive any damage)
White Rangers already perform well in PvP, but given there is a distinction between normal and Amii structures (orbs and power wells), we can remove their reduced damage output against buildings to open up more use cases in PvE without inflating their PvP power level.
Patch #400033 - Force of Nature
Welcome to our newest patch, titled "Force of Nature"!
This update contains our fifth balance patch for the game, brand-new cards, and many other changes, enjoy!
Patch Preview
- Three new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Wasteland Terror, Burning Spears, and Transcendence.
- Major changes to the PvP game mode, including PvP Happy Hours, reward reworks, hiding player loses, and more.
- Added 18 new, primarily PvE achievements for both beginners and veterans alike. Including one to earn the new promo Mana Wing!
- Rebalanced Fire RPvE to provide a still challenging but less frustrating experience
- Rebalanced over 40 cards, with a large focus on Nature cards.
- Changed several PvP and PvE maps to improve player experience
General Changes
Updated in-game player banner colors for GM accounts to represent the current roles.
Added ability to search for missing copies and charges in the Auction House. For example, writing `(charge=2 & copies<2) | (charge=1 & copies<3) | (charge=0 & copies<4)` in the textbox will show you all the cards you can still potentially buy to get a fully charged collection.
Added ability to play cards by clicking on the upgrades in the upgrade scroll view or the upgrades in the upgrade window.
Added ability to change the play speed in the forge, or to pause and unpause it. New hotkeys are available in the options menu. The default hotkeys are J, K and L for decreasing speed, toggling pause, and increasing speed.
Added a responsive deck counter to the decks window that shows how many decks the player has, relative to the maximum number of allowed decks.
Improved the UI that displays what is remaining to complete an achievement. Previously, players could hover over the progress bar to see a tooltip, but this was unclear. Now, there will be a clearly visible (?) icon next to the progress bar that has the tooltip instead.
Added ability to press the Space button in the reforge window to reforge the current cards in the window. This removes the need to press the Reforge cards button.
Increased unit icon (dot) size on in-game minimaps from 4x4 to 5x5 pixels.
Added the new Force of Nature loading screen.
Added ability to change how the automatically generated replays are named. There is an extra setting in the GUI section of the configuration file at `/Battleforge/config.json` called `savereplaysnameparts` for this.
New Cards
Burning Spears - 80p T2 Pure Fire
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Oracle.
S-unit designed to counter Large and Extra Large units. For more information, check out our design spotlight below in the PvP Balance Changes, section as well as Community Update #23.
Wasteland Terror - 260p T4 Pure Bandits (Fire and Nature Affinity)
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Blight (Fire Affinity) and Raven's End (Nature Affinity).
Bandit dragon for those Bandits players who want other options besides Tortugun. Its ability acts as a mass Disenchant to let your army continue to more forward through crowd control. For more information, check out Community Update #14.
Transcendence - 90p T4 Amii Spell
You will find the upgrade for this card on the map Sunbridge.
Our first Amii spell is castable on both enemies and allies, with different effects depending on the target. When cast on enemies, it buffs one unit and debuffs all of its surrounding allies. When cast on allies, it debuffs one unit and buffs and its surrounding allies. In both cases, it rewards careful target selection and micromanagement from the player side. For more information, check out Community Update #20.
Mana Wing - New Promo Card
While not a new card, we have also added a new promo to the game. Every player will be able to get a promo Mana Wing by completing the new achievement "A Force of Nature". The promo will not be available in boosters, but it will be trade-able. For more information, check out Community Update #24.
PvP Game Mode Changes
[ New Player Protection ]
To protect new players from facing top players when they are just getting started in ranked play, it is no longer possible to get matched with players with a base ELO above 135.000 if your own base ELO is below 102.000.
[ Made Player Names Anonymous ]
To prevent players from dodging bad match-ups, player names have been anonymized in the ranked lobby. This does not affect the sparring lobbies.
[ Losses are Now Hidden]
It has been proven in other competitive games that showing losses on the ranked ladder results in demotivation and higher entry barriers. We have therefore removed losses from the ladder. The information is still accessible on your profile if you want to look it up.
[ Updates to the Free PvP Decks ]
We have made some changes to the cards contained in the free PvP decks to compete with the new meta. If we made updates to the free PvP decks you have currently selected, you will now have the option to either swap to the new cards, or keep your current set up. Changes have been made to Pure Nature (Parasite over Shrine of Memory), Twilight (Twilight Minions over Ghost Spears), Pure Shadow (Executor over Nightguard) and Pure Fire (Burning Spears over Scorched Earth).
[ Improved Rewards ]
We have removed the gold penalty that was currently active for playing sparring games. Quests that require you to play 2vs2 games, now also count 3vs3 games for completion.
We have also allowed you to drain the reserve while looking for ranked a match. If you queue for at least 5 minutes, even if you don't find an opponent, you will earn BFP as if you were ingame, meaning you get BFP not just for playing, but also while searching for matches.
[ Happy Hours ]
Happy Hours are specific time periods where players will receive additional gold and BFP for playing PvP. The daily boost / reserve will drain at a factor of 1.5x, while you will also get 1BFP per minute extra for queuing. For Happy Hours, there will be an in-game announcement, and the icon on the world map will indicate Happy Hours are active.
Happy Hours will take place during the following times:
- 1vs1 happy hours: 7pm-9pm CET
- 2vs2 happy hours: 9pm-10pm CET
- 1vs1 happy hours: 4am-5am CET
By clustering players together during certain time frames, players will have an easier time finding matches more frequently.
New Achievements
Skylords Reborn currently faces primary two issues in terms of content: early game progression is too steep, and endgame content is nearly nonexistent. These achievements are intended to make the first step in tackling both issues. Smaller, more digestible progressive achievements will mean a player will no longer finish the campaign on standard, with the next goal in sight being to play all the maps again on advanced before being rewarded. New players will now be slowly guided through the campaign and RPvE, allowing them to steadily accumulate cards along the way.
At the same time, we are adding our first set of endgame achievements to the game. This will provide more content for our veteran players and give them a reason to replay old maps, often with a twist. We hope you all enjoy these new challenges, and we will continue to expand the endgame content into the future.
[ Infinitely Scaling Achievement ]
Reborn in Fire [1 Mini-booster]
Reforge Cards (Unlocks every 20 reforges, scales infinitely)
[ Beginner Achievements ]
Just a Story [1 Twilight booster]
Complete Viridya and Brannoc's story on standard difficulty or higher (Encounters, Siege of Hope, Defending Hope, Soultree, Crusade, Sunbridge, King of the Giants, Titans, Ascension)
The Most Dangerous Game [1 Bandits booster]
Complete Mo's story on standard difficulty or higher {Mo, Ocean, Oracle, Slave Master, Convoy, Blight, Raven's End, Empire)
A Debt Unpaid [20,000 gold]
Complete the story related to the Treasure Fleet on advanced difficulty or higher. (Bad Harvest, Treasure Fleet, Mo, Blight, Slave Master, Convoy)
A Mile in His Shoes [2 Stonekin boosters]
Complete Rogan's story on advanced difficulty or higher (Encounters, Siege of Hope, Defending Hope, Crusade, King of the Giants, Titans, Dwarven Riddle, Guns of Lyr, Empire)
A Wrinkle in Time [250 bfp]
Win the 4-player map Empire spawning at least 5 different Lost Souls cards from a deck containing only frost, shadow, and Lost Souls cards.
Godslayer [250 bfp]
Win the 2-player maps Sunbridge and Insane God on any difficulty.
Apprentice [1 booster]
Win 20 randomly generated PvE matches of difficulty 5 or higher.
[ Veteran PvE Achievements ]
The Road Not Taken [3 boosters]
Win 20 randomly generated PvE matches of difficulty 9 or higher.
Turn Back All Ye Who Enter Here [6 boosters]
Win 20 randomly generated PvE matches of difficulty 10.
Nevermore [2 Bandit boosters]
Complete Blight's story on expert difficulty (Blight, Raven's End, Slave Master, Ocean, and Oracle)
Make it Double [2 Amii boosters]
Complete all 2-player maps on expert difficulty. (Crusade, Sunbridge, Nightmare Shard, Nightmare's End, The Insane God, Slave Master and Convoy)
Never Thought of Him [100,000 gold]
Complete the story of Mo becoming the new king of the fire tribes on expert difficulty with all players in the map using decks containing only Fire cards. (Mo, Ocean, Oracle, Slave Master, Convoy, and Raven's End)
The Long Journey Home [2 Frost boosters]
Complete the story re-establishing the Kingdom of Lyr on expert difficulty using decks containing only frost cards. (Encounters with Twilight, Siege of Hope, Defending Hope, Bad Harvest, Dwarven Riddle, and Guns of Lyr)
Not Even My Final Form [Rogan Kayle Card]
Win the 1-player map Encounters with Twilight on expert difficulty without using T3 or T4 cards.
Forest for the Tree [Viridya Card]
Complete the 1-player map The Soultree on expert difficulty using only Nature cards from T1 and T2.
A City Strongly Compact [Stronghold Card]
Win the 1-player map Defending Hope on expert difficulty with a deck containing only spell and building cards.
A Force of Nature [Promo Mana Wing]
Complete all 1-player and 2-player scenarios on expert difficulty with all players in your team using decks containing only Nature cards.
Those who complete "A Force of Nature" will be rewarded with a Promo Mana Wing! This promo is unique to this achievement and will not be available from boosters, but it will be trade-able. We hope you look forward to the challenge!
Welcome to this guide on how to construct and pilot the Batariel deck. This guide will go over all the ins and outs of the deck, what to do in certain situations, and general tips and tricks for both beginning and more advanced Batariel players. Let’s open the Gates of Purgatory and jump in.
What does Batariel do?
Batariel is a Tier 4 card. It is a rare card and got two affinities.
Its first ability is Gates of Hell.
ACTIVE: Activate to smash Batariel's giant mace onto the ground, dealing damage to enemies in a 10m radius. The impact will crack open the ground, allowing an enormous cleft to emerge that will erupt fountains of red-hot lava after 5 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds. Affects ground targets only.
The second ability is Infused/Tainted Purgatory.
PASSIVE: Unit enters stages of rage in battle depending on how much damage it has recently dealt. Either it does more AoE damage around himself, or he shreds the enemy’s armor, depending on the affinity. But if there is no damage dealt for 4 seconds, the flames will abate again.
For this deck we will only be using the fire affinity, and all future references, unless explicitly stated, will refer to the fire affinity Batariel. The fire affinity is used because his passive does more damage, and the shadow affinity reduces the armor of the enemies. Reducing the armor is only relevant if you have other units to do damage as well, in a pure fire deck for example.
How is the Batariel summoned if you do not have four Fire orbs? Enlightenment. Enlightenment is three orbs, two of which nature, and it allows you to use any card for the next 20 seconds without orb restriction. You do still have to pay the cost, 300 power in this case.
The Deck
Let’s start with the Tier 1 options this deck has. When playing a Batariel deck, you have three factions to choose from. Either you start with fire, nature, or shadow. Frost is by all means the worst faction to start with, as a general Batariel deck does not contain a single frost orb.
Fire start
With fire, most of the time you want to start with 3 Nomads (Nature affinity). An alternative could be Sunderer in some cases where you try to speedrun certain maps, but Nomads are recommended over Sunderer as they heal themselves and can hit air with their ability and are in general more flexible.
The second card you want is Mine. Mine is an excellent card to take out the enemy units at your t2 camp. In bandits and Twilight maps, often one Mine should be enough. If you are fighting Fire you could use only one Mine, but if you are less experienced or are not as comfortable with a fire start, you can use two mines. When you encounter Lost Souls, you always place one mine and wait with engaging the camp until a second mine is off cooldown. The reason for this is that you may encounter Tier 3 units like Mana Beasts, one mine if often not enough. If there are also units that give shields, then two Mines might not be enough, and you need to place a third one.
The third card you want to bring is Eruption. This card is excellent in taking out pesky (flying) units or to help out your opponents when they are in trouble. Eruption has one other very important use, which is to take our crucial spawn camps. One eruption does 300 damage for 75 power. All small spawning camps have 1200 health, so four eruptions will take out the camp and will set you back 300 power. This tactic is the mostly used in RPvE difficulty 10, but can also be utilized, and encouraged, in RPvE difficulty 9 when you try to clear the Tier 3 camp. In difficulty 9 and below, one to two Eruptions are often enough as you have your Nomads hitting the camp as well.
Blaster Cannon an optional card. This card is not necessary in RPvE difficulty 9 and below, but is almost a must-have in difficulty 10. The reason for this is that there can be flying enemy units on your Tier 2 location, which does not happen in difficulty 9 and below. Blaster cannon fire affinity does insane damage versus flying units and because of that it is preferred over the shadow affinity. The shadow affinity also hits air, but traded extra damage against flying units for extra damage to ground units, but that damage is negligible.
Sunstriders can be a nice addition too as they could replace blaster Cannon, they are inferior, but more versatile.
Shadow start
Shadow starts are very straight forward. The first card you want to bring are Forsaken. Forsaken do insane damage and have an awesome ability to do even more ridiculous damage at the cost of dying after the ability wears off.
Nox Trooper is a decent alternative to Forsaken, and is far superior against Crystal Fiend camps, where Forsaken get destroyed. Also, they have a better trapping capability as they shoot each unit in a squad one by one. And base damage output is higher than Forsaken, even when they lose overall to frenzied Forsaken especially when getting rid of the spawner. Dreadcharger also a decent alternative, but very situation.
Motivate is a card shadow can not go without. This card gives a near-dying unit a new purpose by allowing the same units to do more damage for the next 30 seconds.
For Soul Splicer, we want to have the Nature affinity. You want to build this shrine outside the enemies range, as it takes some time to construct it. When constructed, it can collect corpses around itself and a select area. These corpses can be used to heal your Forsaken when they are within the range of the Soul Splicer.
A general tactic when approaching the Tier 2 orb is to construct your Soul Splicer and wait until you have 6-8 Forsaken, depending on how comfortable you are. With the Forsaken you want to lure the enemy towards the Soul Splicer, so it can collect their corpses whenever they die. When fighting the enemy, use motivate on one of your Forsaken to allow the others to do more damage, and to have your first corpses inside the Soul Splicer.
You want to bring an Embalmer’s Shrine if you bring Shadow Phoenix as your Tier 2 unit. You want to construct two Embalmer’s Shrines before doing anything else.
If you play a shadow start in RPVE difficulty 10, then it is recommended to bring 9-11 forsaken, Lost Souls can require more, 3-4 squads gets frenzied and immediately attack the spawner. The remaining units clear the units with the help of a Soul Splicer and Motivate.
Nature Start
Nature t1 is relatively effective, in some cases better than fire, especially in solo. Basic composition is Windweavers + Dryad (Blue affinity) + Ensnaring Roots, for difficulty 10 Hurricane and Mark of the Keeper are very strong as well, and may be essential. Root is preferred over Hurricane is because it also helps vs non-S-units up to Tier 4. The edge that nature has over fire is solely not having to build a fire orb until an orb switch, with access to cultists + furnace and breeding grounds (especially useful with Shadow Phoenix against stronger t3-t4 camps)
Windweavers is the go-to damage dealer for Nature Tier 1. They are versatile and can shoot multiple enemies at once, which makes them excellent in clearing early camps.
Dryad provides the units around her with a damage reduction buff. One Dryad is often enough, but keep in mind that she does not buff herself. Having a damage reduction buff on your units allows you to use less heals.
Surge of Light is great. It is super good to heal your low health Windweavers, and it scales super good into the later stages of the game as you can still use it to heal your Batariel.
Ensnaring Roots is a must have. This spell can create distance between the enemy and your Windweavers. This card is also very effective when you need to take out a spawner in difficulty 10.
Mark of the keeper is a must have in difficulty 10, but in difficulty 9 or lower it is not needed.
No Shaman? Yes, Shaman is not used in Batariel decks. Shaman is a unit that rarely attacks, and it binds power. For every Shaman you have, you have one Windweaver less. There are only 20 deck slots, and Shaman should not be in there.
Tier 2 options
On Tier 2, there are a couple options to choose from. When you start with Fire, you are generally safe to use your Nomads + Mine and use Eruptions on the spawning camp. In difficulty 10, you can bring Gladiatrix (Nature affinity) with Curse of Oink, or you can bring Shadow Phoenix with Embalmer’s Shrine. If you start with Shadow, your best option is to bring Shadow Phoenix. You need three Shadow Phoenix to kill a small spawning camp.
or
When you are playing difficulty 10, if you start with fire and want to use Phoenix, you will need to do an additional orb swap for your Batariel. This sets you back some power, but might be required sometimes.
Less optimal, but alternative options are Bandit Minefield and Lavafield.
Core of a Batariel deck
The core of a Batariel deck are Life Weaving and Unholy Hero. Life Weaving keeps Batariel alive, and Unholy hero allows the Batariel to do insane amounts of damage.
Heals are important in every deck, Batariel decks are no exceptions. You should bring at least one heal spell, such as Regrowth. It is recommended to bring a backup heal in case you run out of Regrowth charges or the card is on cooldown. Two options are Surge of Light and Equilibrium (Frost affinity). It is totally fine to bring all three heal spells, as even some veteran players do.
Very important spells to bring are both Frenetic Assault’s (one is mandatory, the other is quality of life), Infect (mainly quality of life, you can do without) and Disenchant (depending on the enemy faction). Frenetic Assault makes sure the enemies are not attacking your Batariel, but each other, which gives Batariel more survivability. Both Frenetic Assaults are recommended as they have a long cooldown between casts, and you might need more than one in a difficult camp. Infect serves a similar purpose and cleans up remains. After the enemies kill each other with the Frenetic Assault effect, two Nightcrawlers will spawn from each corpse, up to 10 corpses. 20 extra units to soak up damage and to do more incremental damage.
Batariel needs to have his burning passive ability active as soon as possible. He does this be damaging enemy units or buildings. If Batariel is not able to attack, due to a paralyze effect, the chances are the Batariel will die. To solve this, Disenchant is a must-have when you fight enemies like Bandits and Twilight. Those otherwise annoying Willzappers and Windhunters are now useless when you bring Disenchant. Bandits have one boss that permanently reduces the attack by 50% when it does damage: the Equestrian Twins. This debuff can also be nullified with Disenchant.
There are two more must have cards in every Batariel deck, which are Curse of Oink and Nether Warp. Curse of Oink was mentioned earlier as well in the Tier 2 section, but it is also an all-star when Batariel is out already. Curse of Oink is an instant CC (crowd control) spell. Whenever Disenchant is on cooldown, or whenever there are scary enemy units, Curse of Oink can keep incoming damage to a minimum. Keep in mind, this has no synergy with Frenetic Assault.
When entering an enemy camp, you want to position your burning Batariel in a location where it can either hit as many enemies as possible, or where it can take out a spawner. Nether Warp is the solution for this. After you Batariels AoE burning is active, you can warp him further into the camp. Keep in mind, all the enemies will be able to target him, so make sure you have some heals ready and Life Weaving active. Recommended is the Nature affinity Nether Warp because the Frost affinity debuffs your Batariel with a slow effect. Yes, the Nature affinity heals your opponents units too, but that heal is insignificant compared to the damage output of the Batariel.
When you have your core, there are one, two or three spots left for other cards. Thunderstorm is the one that is most recommended bringing as it is such a versatile damage spell. The second card is Soulshatter, as it can decimate smaller camps on its own, but you need to be careful as the damage also damages friendly units. The third option is Earthshaker. This card can take out crucial enemy buildings. This is optional, as Batariel should not have any problem taking out buildings on its own, but can be a quality of life.
Void return
Because spells are cycled non-stop in this deck, void return is of utmost importance. There are two options available for a Batariel deck. Either Shrine of War, or Cultist Master + Furnace of Flesh.
Shrine of War is the best void return card in the game for multiplayer maps. You use spells whenever you want to kill enemy units, and whenever enemy units die, the Shrine of War gives back void power. It is the perfect synergy, there is however a big downside. Shrine of War costs 150 power and has no continuous upkeep. You will need two to be able to keep it running constantly. You will need to invest 300 power, which delays your Batariel immensely. Shine of War is recommended in fire starts.
Shrine of War has been nerfed and now require 2 fire orbs, which forces you to play either the alternative option with Furnace of Flesh and Cultist Masters, or rely on a teammate.
The ability of the Cultist Master is free, and it summons three Nightcrawlers that die after 20 seconds. When they die near a Furnace of Flesh, it gives back void power. Similar to Shrine of War, you will need to maintain the upkeep of this. It is recommended to have around three Cultist Masters to give reliable void return. If you have more than four, then consider building a second Furnace of Flesh or to alternate between the activations, but this requires way more micro. This option is preferred in Batariel decks that start with Shadow or in solo RPvE maps. If a teammate has a Shrine of War, you can kill the Cultist Masters and the Furnace of Flesh, as Shrine of War is superior to them.
Fallen Skyelf
Fallen Skyelf can play a critical role in certain scenarios, vs bosses like Twilight Hulk or Abaddon, which have very high damage output, or Hellhound who will eat all your units if you don’t kill him quick enough. And helps overall vs bosses.
Plague
Double Shadow starters sometimes gravitate towards triple shadow instead of switching to fire. These decks require more precise play due to the lack of cards like Disenchant or Earthshaker, but end up being significantly faster upon being executed well, given how strong Plague is. The spell speeds up camp clears in general and sometimes even allows very powerful pathing advantages as a spell combo around Plague + Infect (+ Frenetic) sometimes removes T4 camps on its own (ideally this even works against small boss camps i.e. Umbabwe/Bandit Lancer). Sometimes Disenchant cannot be removed upon facing factions like Twilight, but whenever there is an angle to cut the fire orb Plague should be your go-to choice when considering the orb swap with a double Shadow start.
How to kill a camp
When entering a camp best to attack a unit, preferably flying, because Batariel doesn’t dance around those, like he may sometimes when trying to attack ground entities. Also, because Batariel does more damage per hit with his normal attacks against flying units. If power levels/refund permits, then Batariels ability is a great way to enter, use it on a building cluster or a boss. Best to warp after front buildings are destroyed or nearly destroyed (possibly finished by infect). Infect should also be used when entering the camp to maximize the crawlers spawned, after the buffs with frenetic, not necessary, but can be useful, plays an especially important role vs Lost Souls and Twilight bugfest.
When playing vs Lost Souls always have at least two Batariels for later camps, keep one in front to tank all the debuffs and for ground presence to cast cc spells against spellbreakers, and teleport second Batariel in the back line, who will take care of the camp. Preferably, use infect to soak up the damage and all the debuffs as well. In case of 2 Lost Bane presence, drag the camp out use spells (with infect) and try to either use Batariels ability on Lost Bane closest to the spawner, and then warp, or if possible just warp in. Can also try to power through after dragging the camp after getting rid of Lost Banes and having crawlers, enemies won’t pose as much threat even if they respawn, just keep eyes on Spellbreakers.
Against Twilight Infect is crucial, especially against difficulty 10, where Twilight gazers are bugged and reflect huge damage back to Batariel if not careful, crawlers soak up that damage. Best wait to approach them is to use Batariels ability and maybe even port them together in a bunch, then frenetic/oink and use Batariels ability. But be careful as you won’t have nether warp available to get close to the camp.
Bosses
Against Bosses, either focus them with Skyelf support, if they can be killed within the ability right away, or warp in the backline and deal with a boss after taking out the majority of the camp. Raven ship is very tricky to kill with a Skyelf, she most likely will get focused, must use infect and possible defensive spells on her, or be on a safe side and deal with the boss without, it’s not too dangerous to Batariel, just have to oink gunner when it spawns. Twilight Dragon boss also takes a while to kill, and Skyelf will heal it if used too early, so it’s better to used when more than half hp is depleted. Nyxia debuff can be disenchanted, which means that the Batariel can freely attack her. Hellhound is best if approached with at least two Batariels like all late game LS camps, and infect must be used. Try to get rid of him asap, before your Nightcrawlers die and he starts eating Batariels. Killing him is not a problem, surviving is.
Due to the Lost Spellbreakers Disenchant, engaging with Frenetic Assault (both work here) or Curse of Oink may save you a lot of trouble. Can be tricky, especially in non-motm maps where you don't know exactly where they're located. Against higher tier Souls camps with Banestones:
1 Banestone: Try to disable the Lost Spellbreakers as mentioned above, engage with Batariel ability onto the Banestone and port into the camp. Can be hard with Lost Dragons and such where the Batariels ability couldn’t be used, in that case Disenchant (G) works well.
2 Banestones: From my experience it's best to just wait for the camp wave to spawn into your direction, use Infect on it and engage the camp with the Nightcrawlers before Batariel to distract the Lost Spellbreakers. Try to get one Banestone down as fast as possible and use Frenetic Assault + Nether Warp into the camp (hoping that Bata burns at this point)
Fire Bosses: Abaddon, you must avoid his ability at all costs, either send a unit in front to take it, or just dodge/warp in the backline and deal with Abaddon when you have taken care of the camp. Golem should be attacked with ability for the majority of HP, auto-attacking is dangerous. Magma Fiend boss is the most difficult to deal with as a Batariel deck. Must have at least 2 units, if only playing Batariel in t4, have 1 or 2 extra when approaching it, go in with a single Batariel without any buffs and instantly warp in the back line and cc the camp, infect will help as well, then buff Batariel and take care of the camp. After the majority of the camp is gone, send in other Batariels to tank debuff, and buff the one not being attacked. For all these bosses Skyelf is crucial, may not be mandatory. Keep Fallen Skyelf in a distance from Abaddon, she will die very quickly if she is close.
General tips
You might be asking, but what about Unholy Power? That increases the damage of Batariel too, right? Simple answer, no. Unholy Power is basically a dead card in your deck, as it does not stack with the burning of Batariel.
When you fight Lost Souls or Fire, Disenchant is not needed, as these enemies has no way of stopping your Batariel via cc. When you start with Shadow, you can stay and you do not have to switch an orb to fire.
If you spawn your Batariel at Tier 3, it is recommended not to build the two wells at your Tier 4 orb location. This will set you back 200 power, and will only pay off when you are floating in power anyway.
Batariel does more damage with an attack than against non-flying:
XL Ground: 481
L Flying: 697
XL Flying: 1045
This is due to the longer animation when attacking flying units and as the damage per 20 seconds is fixed, attack types with different execution durations deal different damage.
@Volin has a in-depth Twitch Stream about Buffed Batariels, where you can see some gameplay: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1423615481?t=00h06m39s
Special thanks to the following people for helping out with this guide!
@arabikaa @Damo @Donaar @Kapo @Mocaak @RadicalX @Volin
Oh I remember sketching those concepts during first days of war... Sirens and withering of hope. Yet never give up till you breathe and do what you must! And you can see how it progressed, together we all will win.✊
Greetings Skylords!
Every three weeks, we give an update on the things going on behind the scenes of Skylords Reborn. Welcome to another Community Update!
• Soon™
Last Community Update we revealed our upcoming new achievements and ever since we get daily questions when those (and the patch in general) will hit the live server. We are currently hard at work finalizing the upcoming patch, but aren't able to reveal a concrete release date just yet.
We expect to share more information with you regarding its release in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that.
In the meantime, we are excited to reveal a new card today!
• New Card Reveal: Burning Spears
Burning Spears is a new tier 2 fire unit, requiring two fire orbs. Upgrading the card reduces its power cost and increases its stats. The values noted here are for U3. It will be an Uncommon and won't have an affinity.
Burning Spears is an S-sized squad unit that contains a weapon-switch similar to Ghost Spears. They will also have the Steadfast passive ability, meaning they can't be knocked back.
Weapon Change
Type: mode-switch
Makes unit more effective against large units instead of extra-large ones. Lasts until deactivated.
Weapon Change
Type: mode-switch
Makes unit more effective against extra-large units instead of large ones. Lasts until deactivated.
Burning Lance / Scorching Injury (passive ability)
Enemies hit by Burning Spear's attacks will be set on fire and take additional damage that steadily increases the longer they burn. The burn deals 2 damage per second and stacks up to 25 times. Attacked units may only walk at walk speed for 15 seconds.
Design Goals
Burning Spears are designed as a new tool to increase deck building options in pure Fire. The faction currently has a limited pool of pure cards in PvP, leading to a very M-unit centric deck design with a limited amount of deck building options and balancing levers to change specific matchup behaviors.
The addition of Burning Spears will add a versatile small sized unit into the faction, that is supposed to help with some of the factions counter issues against L and XL units in T2, while demanding a deck slot investment in return. The passive ability enables very high backloaded damage potential to punish players that try to ignore them, whereas the slow and steadfast ability allow Burning Spears to stick to their priority targets while enabling further spell synergies with cards like Wildfire.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy about it and feel comfortable revealing it, numbers and effects might still change before release.
• Artwork Spotlight
Now that our art team has grown, we tried a different approach for our creation process. The card was already play tested, so we knew its effects and that it would use the Ghost Spears model, but there were no other hard restrictions for the art.
Our artist Spirit Alpha worked together with Tweeto to explore some ideas, which resulted in multiple concept arts. They settled on a barbaric look.
The next step was to visualize the design in-game, and make sure what we had in mind would actually be possible to implement, preventing a mismatch between art and model.
Once the theme, colors and general appearance were fleshed out, it was time to start working on the artwork. Different compositions were explored again.
Spirit Alpha then handed in this artwork. While we were generally happy with how this design turned out, there were still some things to be done. While the Deep One claw was a nice touch, we found it did make the artwork more cluttered and distracted the viewer's eye. With the help of Tweeto, adjustments were also made to the background, contrast and skin, left arm anatomy, right arm shape and the spear.
After a couple of extra iterations (and lots of discussion about flames with our art critique), we finally settled on the current design. A big thanks to our artists Spirit Alpha and Tweeto for drawing the artwork, to Friendly Firefly for working on the ability icons and to our art critiques for their support and comments.
As you can see, a ton of work went into this, and we haven't even showed you half of the iterations.
We are very happy with how it turned out, and hope you like it as well!
• Upcoming PvP changes
While PvP has a very passionate community, the game mode currently has certain flaws that prevent players from getting into it. We hope to tackle these in our upcoming patch. Here are some of the changes we will implement:
Queue will drain the BFP reserve
PvP often enters a "Spiral of Death" when too few players are online. It takes too long to find a match, so players stop queuing, which results in it taking longer to find a match... We want to give players an incentive to wait in the ranked lobby for more than a few minutes, resulting in the lobby no longer being empty and the next person who wants to play finding an opponent quickly. If you queue for at least 5 minutes, even if you don't find an opponent, you will earn BFP as if you were ingame, meaning you get BFP not just for playing, but also while searching for matches.
Hide Player Names
We have seen that some players tend to dodge certain high ranked players while playing ranked, not queuing up when they see higher skilled opponents in the lobby. To prevent this behavior, we will hide player names in the ranked lobby. To not impact casual play, we have separated the sparring and ranked lobbies, allowing you to still invite players into your lobby and make things like tournaments and Toggy's Fightclub still possible.
Hide Losses
Another reason that prevents players from queuing up is the fear of messing up their win/loss ratio, or even feeling shame to have their losses publicly shown on the ladder. It has been proven in other competitive games that showing losses results in demotivation and higher entry barriers. We hope this change encourages players to focus on what matters (playing the game and improving yourself) instead of stats that might not even represent your current skill level.
New Player Protection
To protect new players from facing top players when they are just getting started, we will prevent players with <102.000 base ELO from getting matched with players at >135.000 base ELO.
Changes to Free PvP Decks
With upcoming balance adjustments and new cards, we will update our free PvP decks to compete with the new meta. Additionally, we have made changing these decks more flexible; resulting in no longer having to reset all the free PvP decks when we make these changes.
If we update one of the free PvP decks you have currently selected, you will now have the option to either swap to the new cards, or keep your current set up. We are currently planning to make the following changes:
Pure Nature:
+ Parasite
- Shrine of Memory
Fire/Nature
+ Twilight Minions (G)
- Ghost Spears
Pure Shadow
+ Executor
- Nightguard
Rebalanced 2vs2 Maps
While we mostly balance the game around 1vs1, we know players really enjoy 2vs2 as well. We are very happy with how our rebalanced 1vs1 maps turned out, and we want to give 2vs2 the same treatment.
Changes include removal (or adjustments) of walls, wells, slight changes to the layout, and making certain area's immovable for flying units. This should result in a better play experience and more balanced maps.
These maps will also have observer versions, meaning it will now be possible to host 2vs2 tournaments again! We also updated the minimaps to be accurate.
PvP Happy Hours
A feature long in the works and finally nearing release is Happy Hours. Happy Hours are specific time periods where players will receive additional gold and BFP for playing PvP.
We have noticed PvP is currently quite scattered, with a lot of players wanting to play, but going offline again when they can't find opponents. While rewarding to queue is one incentive to have players stay online longer when the lobbies are empty, we also want to help players find opponents in general. We hope that by clustering players together during certain time frames, players will have an easier time finding matches more frequently.
Happy Hours will take place during the following times:
- 1vs1 happy hours: 7pm-9pm CET
- 2vs2 happy hours: 9pm-10pm CET
- 1vs1 happy hours: 4am-5am CET
These times were decided upon by going over our available data and keeping different time zones in mind where possible. During Happy Hours, there will be an in-game announcement and the icon on the world map will indicate Happy Hours are active.
We hope to release all these features with our next patch, though Happy Hours is currently still in active development. We hope to finish it in time to be included as well.
• Team Changes
We have a new teammember in Nukie, who has joined the team recently as a Global Moderator. Welcome, and thanks for your help!
• Open Positions Rework
We have made some changes to our open positions and spotlighted them in their own forum section. It is now easier than ever to see the current open positions, and we also added some extra information to each role, better showcasing what you will be doing.
Skylords Reborn is always looking for motivated volunteers to help out the project. You can currently help out in multiple areas, ranging from artwork to development, map design and much more.
Want to help out but don't want to join the staff? No problem! We also have positions like proofreader and map tester where you can more easily drop in and out, helping out when you have time. Lastly, we also have open-source projects and our Skylords Bounty (see below). Please take a look!
• Active Bounty
While we already have some nice contenders, our current Bounty to create a Spring Forge is still open. A Skylords Bounty is an open-source task for the community to create something needed in one of the departments of Skylords Reborn. If your entry gets chosen, you can win a great prize, and we will reward everyone who applies with a serious attempt with a participation reward as well. View more information on Active bounties.
• OPEN - Spring Forge Bounty
Spring Forge Bounty is an opportunity for the community to have full engagement with the next upcoming Forge. This allows everyone to submit a possible design for how they would like the Forge to look! The winning design will be rewarded with a Promo Razorleaf!
A tutorial video has been provided to assist and help the community take its first steps for doing so!
• Tournaments / Events
• NEW - Toggys Tome Tournament #4 17.05.22
A midweek tournament held on Tuesday May 17th, at 18:30 CEST (Berlin time). The format will be Tome, meaning you will build your decks for this tournament out of a booster pool Toggy provide to you. Tome tournaments always result in crazy decks and cards you dont see very often, so be sure to join the action or watch the tournament on Twitch. The tournament will be played on the Testserver. More information and sign-up.
• STREAM - Official 2p rPvE Contest#3 Last Resort - 25.05.2022 16:30 CEST
In this event, players were only allowed to use units, not spells or buildings. We will host a stream revealing the winners of this contest on Wednesday 25rd of May, 16:30 on our official twitch channel.
• FINISHED - Skylords Open 14
The Skylords Open returned with a blast! We saw some of the best players battle it out, with some match results that would surprise you. You can rewatch the matches here.
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers Hiko and/or Metagross to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
• In Conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading!
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code.
The code will reward you with a mini-booster: FIRE-CARD-HYPE-TIME
The code is valid until June 4th, when we will bring you another Community Update.
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments!
Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #22
You can watch the video with sound @ https://vimeo.com/709862323
Ok, turns out you have to be logged into vimeo to watch the video, since the video hasn't been rated on vimeo yet...
At these moments, I miss the good old days when such matters were simpler.🙄
Although no I don't miss those times at all, because back then you could only dream of FullHD live streaming. 🤣
Battleships are my favourite rPVE deck at the moment. With their standard attack i find them to be realtively broing, too - but i just love the ability! The long range means you can destroy anything on the ground before it gets to damge you. It's really fun with unholy power. I don't really think they need a buff, especially when you play with winter witch, ice age or coat of protection they are already indestructible (unless magma fiend boss in fire rPVE 😞).
The remaining participants will be able to draw random boosters out of following lottery: 10 x 2 general Booster
(They will be drawn at the end of the stream)
We will Stream the results of this Event on Wednesday, the 25th of May at 16:30 CEST
Hi all,
as a huge fan of Thunder Wagons there's only one thing which keeps me from regularly using them: their way over the top ear-ripping volume while having your view centered on them. The constant sound their engine creates is such a turn-off and sucks all the fun out of this card.
So, my suggestion: reduce the engine sound by 50% (?) to bring it in line with other sound effects. Or are there other ways without turning off all sound effects?
Thanks!
Greetings Skylords!
Every three weeks, we give an update on the things going on behind the scenes of Skylords Reborn. Welcome to another Community Update!
• Nature Deep Dive
After Frost and Bandits, it is now time for a Deep Dive into one of the more popular factions among (new) players: Nature. In this Deep Dive we will look into the faction's strengths, weaknesses and upcoming changes. You can expect more incentive to play pure Nature, adjustments to the root network, important changes to cards like Abyssal Warder and Forest Elder and a sneak peek into two upcoming Nature cards. We are currently testing the changes, and you can expect most of these changes to hit the live server with our next content patch.
We have also opened up multiple forum posts about the proposed changes.
From the beginning of the project, community involvement has been, and continues to be, important to us. We have thus decided to institute a change in the structure of our balance discussions. Going forward, balance discussions will be transitioning from discord to the forums with the hope of facilitating better discussion and involving more people.
• Introducing Skylords Bounty: Seasonal Forge
We are aware there are quite a few players who want to contribute to Skylords Reborn, but don't have the time or motivation to fully apply as a team member. Today we introduce an alternative: Skylords Bounty!
A Skylords Bounty is a task for the community to create something needed in one of the departments of Skylords Reborn. If your entry gets chosen, you can win a great prize; in this case a Promo Razorleaf! Even if your entry is not chosen, everyone who applies with a serious attempt will earn a participation reward.
For our first Skylords Bounty, we have selected the task to help us create the next Seasonal Forge. During our December update, we gave the Forge a snowy look. We are now looking to give the Forge a spring make-over. This is your chance to get your work into the game!
Please check out this forum post for more information and a short tutorial video on how to create a Forge. We hope we can count on your contributions!
• Mana Wing Promo
It is time to reveal our latest promo! A few months ago players were able to vote for their favorite card to get the promo treatment, and Mana Wing was the clear winner. Joining Snapjaws, here is the second Skylords Reborn promo:
A huge thanks to everyone involved. From artwork to model adjustments and special effects, multiple people spent weeks on getting everything just right. The wings have a shining glow, and as icing on the cake there are also golden dots when the unit is flying around. We are very proud of the result, and hope you will like it as well!
We will reveal how you can get your hands on this promo in the next community update, so stay tuned for that!
• Artwork
The artwork behind the promo was a team effort from three talented artists. The starting point was the Mana Wing wallpaper from ArtRhino. A great piece of art, but it shares the same colors as the original Mana Wing. To give it that promo feel it thus needed some changes. Our two artists, Spirit Alpha and Tweeto, then worked together to create a new look and color palette for our feathery friend.
• Survey: Events
Once again, we would like some feedback on our events. What do you like about them? Which ones were your favorite? And most importantly: Why?
We use this information to provide better events for you, so please take a few minutes to complete the survey. If you have never joined one of our events, please let us know in the survey why that is the case. Thanks a lot in advance!
• Tournaments / Events
You will now also be able to find the events on our Forum Calendar! We hope this will make it easier to keep track of them, and tease future events in advance!
• NEW - PvP League - Register now
The PvP League has been a project long in the making, but sign-ups are finally open!
The league will consist of small groups (divisions) of about 8 players who will fight each other, one opponent per week. A season ends when everyone played everyone in the group. Players should be roughly equal in skill level and can move up or down in groups depending on their results. This makes the league a perfect place to play PvP; both for new and experienced players! More information and sign-up.
• NEW - Official PvE Contest#5: They See Me Walkin', They Hatin' - Until 14.04.2022
For this challenge, we want to see you succeed in playing the map Convoy on Advanced difficulty while using pure colored decks.
Depending on what color deck you use, you will be able to get different rewards. If you want to increase the challenge, you can also try to tackle the map on your own or on expert difficulty for some bonus rewards. More information and sign-up.
• FINISHED - Official 1 Player rPvE Contest#3 The Minimalistic Firewatch
This event was very popular; we received exactly 120 different replays! In this event, people had to beat the map of the month on difficulty 7 but with an interesting twist: use as few cards as possible! Check out the results here.
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers Hiko and/or Metagross to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
• Team Changes
Welcome aodpi! He's our new Tool Developer. He will create and improve various tools which aim to optimize the user experience and also speed up the internal development process. He is currently helping out with our new updater.
We also have a new webdeveloper: nkmol! He is mostly helping back-end wise for the web interface. Welcome, and thank you for your contribution!
We are always looking for more help and support for the project. Please look over our open positions and apply if you see a role you like! We have multiple positions open, from development to audio or visual editors.
• In Conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading!
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code.
The code will reward you with a nature-booster: DEEP-DIVE-MANA-WING
The code is valid until April 23rd, when we will bring you another Community Update.
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments!
Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #20
Nature_Deep_Dive.pdf
Greetings! Since the 5-power nerf to shadow mage, we have been watching closely the PvP meta to determine if further balancing is required. Unfortunately, we have decided NOT to reverse the power cost of shadow mage. Instead, we will further double it, to a power cost of 110. This opens up a large rework concept I want to present you today. Eirias was so nice to make a short video showcasing all changes to give you a proper impression about what you can expect here.
Here is a short summary: To compensate for this major change, we are adding three new abilities.
1. Teleport. This is a buff aimed at PvE usecase, to potentially replace nether warp. In PvP, nether warp is still necessary for quick defense, and nether warp will remain a staple of speedrunning decks. However, we felt that regular PvE usage would benefit from a large buff to offset the new power cost.
2. Time stop. This is a new cc ability for shadow mage, which is similar to knight of chaos, except that time stop also affects buildings and prevents units from moving. Time stop is particularly targeted to nerf to oppressive stonekin tower play. New tools for other factions will roll out in the coming months.
3. Death mark. This ability is used for the shadow mage to enable favorable trades, especially against targets that run away. It is also an indirect nerf to the currently-oppressive frost t3s, which cannot simply disenchant to get rid of death mark. Finally, we are pleased to announce that shadow mage will also be our next promo. Although there has been contention that a promo shadow mage would break the game's balance, we felt that it would be an interesting tradeoff to allow a player to have access to twice as many shadow mage charges, at the cost of losing a t3 slot.
We also felt that we should honor the original developers' intentions, which was to offer shadow mage as the next promo card. If you want to see any of these exciting new abilities in action, check out Eirias's video! There is also a booster code hidden in the description.
Thank you very much for your feedback on my Twilight Slaver video. 🥰
Since the video to my surprise has been received extremely positive Ive got something for you.😈
Hittimo asked me if I can do it again and I had to answer him that this was not an intended move BUT nevertheless I have in fact created another video of a similar situation in the past.
Same map - other side. Here you go.
Greets,
Y.W.W.W.M.
P.S.
I have created a new topic, because it is also a new video and after all we want to fill the media section with content as well. 😉
Greetings Skylords!
Every three weeks, we give an update on the things going on behind the scenes of Skylords Reborn. Welcome to another Community Update!
• New Card Reveal: Transcendence
We are hard at work on our new content patch, which will come with balance changes for both PvE and PvP, bugfixes, QoL features and new cards! Stay tuned for more information on the features and release date.
We are excited to reveal one of the upcoming new cards today; the first Amii spell Transcendence!
Transcendence is a tier 4 spell for Nature/Shadow. Upgrading the card reduces its cooldown and increases its duration, the values noted here are for U3. It will be a rare and won't have an affinity.
This new Amii spell has a different effect, depending on if you cast it on an enemy or own unit:
Kenosis
Target own unit takes 100% more damage and deals 75% less damage. Friendly units within a 25m radius around it deal 50% more damage and benefit 50% more from any regenerating ability. Lasts for 20 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds.
Tyranny
Target enemy unit deals 100% more damage and takes 75% less damage. Enemy units within a 25m radius around it deal 25% less damage and benefit 50% less from any regenerating ability. Lasts for 20 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds.
The effect of Transcendence expires if the target of the spell dies. This results in a spell that provides a powerful buff or debuff as long as you keep its target alive, rewarding careful management of the fight.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy about it and feel comfortable revealing it, numbers and effects might still change before release.
• Artwork
Once again the artwork has been created by our artist Tweeto. It went through multiple iterations and we are very happy with the result!
The artwork is actually based on the Altar of Chaos wallpaper from Nano.
Here you can see an early concept:
• We Need Your Help
We hate to sound like a broken record, but there are currently multiple positions open that greatly delay or prevent further development of Skylords Reborn. Please take a look at our open positions to see where you can help. Below are three positions highlighted.
• Open Position - Audio Editor
We would love to continue adding voice lines for more cards and narration for new maps. As an Audio Editor, you will be responsible for selecting and extracting the best takes, doing post-production and making sure the overall quality is high enough to be implemented into the game. If you have more skills, you will also be able to design new sounds for the game as Audio Producer. Read more and apply.
• Open Position - Community Manager
As a community manager, you are responsible with aiding the communication to and from the community. You will work closely with the Project Coordinator (previously Community Manager) to communicate staff and project decisions to the community through, for example, The Community Updates and self-written announcements. Furthermore, you will act as a contact person for the community to share project feedback and suggestions, and are expected to keep the staff informed and be up-to-date with the state of the community. Read more and apply.
• Open Position - Game Client Developer
As a game client developer, you are responsible to maintain and develop the game client. This mostly includes add new pre-game features (content outside of matches, so no game mechanics) through .pak files used by the game. You will be responsible to create and design in-game interfaces for new features, add networking support for new features that require it, solve bugs etc. using LUA, XML and little bit of Rust. BattleForge uses LUA and XML in their .pak files, which are loaded by the client. Communication with the server happens through a proxy written in Rust. Read more and apply.
• New Legends (Lore)
We hope most of you are aware of the Chronicle book, that can be selected on the top menu. The tabs [World], [Plot] and [Legends] contain interesting story points and lore that explore the world of Nyn. Every campaign map has an epilogue, and quite a few important story points happen outside the actual game.
While you are browsing through the Chronicle book, be sure to take a look at the Skylords Reborn feature [Cosmetics], that was added to the game during our anniversary patch! We noticed a lot of people overlooked this feature when it was released.
With the help of the community on our Lore Discord, we are expanding on the lore by adding new Legends pages for various units. Below is an example of the upcoming Legends page for Snapjaws, written by Metauriel. You can expect more of these lore entries for other units to be added into the game with our next content patch. We hope you look forward to them!
"Like the entirety of these catacombs, the grand chamber reeked of death. On the far side stood a tall, obsidian statue that radiated an aura of fear and awe. Wings sprouted from its back, no less than six horns from its head, and it was wreathed in clouds of smoke that almost concealed the bones littering the floor around it. Stepping into the room, I crouched to investigate the bones. They were diluted by some dark substance. It wasn’t blood, for when I touched it, I could feel it sap my strength. That was when I heard them. No voices, but a cackling and murmuring of a hundred jaws, shifting all around me. I raised my lantern, and that was when I saw them. Hundreds of eyes glinting in the flickering light. Thousands of teeth, dribbling darkness. A swarm of floating creatures, trailing smoke, gasping for their meal."
- Journals of a Witchhunter, pt. 6
• Tournaments / Events
• NEW - Official 1 Player rPvE Contest#3 The Minimalistic Firewatch - Difficulty 7 - Until 17th March 2022
An exciting new event for all kind of players! In this event you have to beat the map of the month on difficulty 7 but with an interesting twist: use as few cards as possible! There are multiple leagues so you can choose your difficulty level, ranging from 15 cards to only 3. More information and sign-up.
• FINISHED - CCC #3 - You think this game looks good?
CCC#3 offered a competition of a totally different kind. This time Kapo moved away from speedrunning, away from maps, even away from playing. For this contest you had to share the best screenshot you could create. As with all CCC, the number of participants unlocked a reward for the whole community, so be sure to grab your mini-booster scratch code if you haven't already! The winners will be revealed soon.
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers Hiko and/or Metagross to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
• Team Changes
Cocofang and Xanatoss have joined the team as balance developers. They will help us with implementing PvE and PvP changes, as well as adding new cards into the game. We are very glad to have them, since this is an area of game development that greatly benefits from more help. If you are interested in joining them and help speed up our progress, please click here.
• In Conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading!
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code.
The code will reward you with a mini-booster: AMII-CARD-HYPE-TIME
The code is valid until April 2nd, when we will bring you another Community Update.
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments!
Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #19
Hello again Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings; The jury had its say, and it's time to announce the winners!
But first, I’d like to thank everyone for making the Crappy Community Contest #3 happen – no matter in what way: participation, sponsoring prizes, spreading the word or helping me to organize it. Of course, a special thanks goes to the two Jurors who carried the burden of deciding with me: @CrazyCockerell (as representative of the Art Critique Team) and @Minashigo Hiko (as representative of the Skylords Team).
Before revealing the winners, please remember that all art is subjective, so I want to present to you a gallery of all entries, so you can see all the entries for yourself: <CLICK HERE>
I'll proudly present to you the Winner of CCC #3:
Congratulations to Dutchy, winning a Juggernaut Promo, a Frost Booster, and a Rogan Kayle!
The following Skylords made it into the Gold Tier: (sorted alphabetically)
Dallarian Frost Booster, Battleship
Evilkasi Nature Booster, Deepcoil Worm
Fero_lol Nature Booster, Forest Elder (P)
General_Thugdil Lost Booster, Winter Witch, Fallen Skyelf, Lost Vigil G
Heretic Stonekin Booster, Mo
Little_Ducky Frost Booster, Frost Mage (x2)
SirDawill91 Frost Booster, Dreadnought
THE_BIG_WET Nature Booster, Worldbreaker Gun
Ultralord Frost Booster, Frost Shard
Velanir Bandit Booster, Banzai Lord P
The following Skylords made it into the Silver Tier: (sorted alphabetically)
DarkDragon Overlord
Lans Abomination P
Midra Fire Worm
Sylar Battleship
Volin Corsair P
As some winners may notice, prices received depend on the units depicted on the entry.
I will send you the prizes as soon as possible through ingame mail.
In conclusion
Thanks again to all who helped to make this happen. I am still searching for new CCC ideas, so if you got any, please drop me a direct message here: @Kapo
If you have a crappy idea for future CCC's you may share and discuss that with me, maybe you can host your own Crappy Contest! Feel free to contact me anytime. If you want to discuss or host a non-crappy contest, contact our Event Managers, Hiko and/or Metagross. They are super supportive and will help you to organize your event!
Hope you enjoyed the contest, I see you in the Forge!
Kapo
Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings.
Welcome to the third official rPvE event!
We hope you will have a lot of fun with this event!
What kind of event will it be?
rPvE/Battlegrounds singleplayer - Map of the Month - Difficulty 7
For this challenge, we want to test your deck building skills. A deck normally consists of 20 cards. We decided that we should go back to the beginning, back to where it all began: The Tutorial deck! However, it would not be fun if everyone played the same deck, so we gave it a little spin. In previous rPvE events there were restrictions on colour or ground presence, this time there will be a slot restriction. This event is not entirely based on speed tough, so read on to find out how you can succeed in this event!
When will it start?
We will be accepting entries starting today.
The event will run for about two weeks, specifically until 17.03.2022 23:59 CET.
You can send your replays through DM to me on Discord (Metagross31#1103) or through a PM to me on the forum (@Metagross31).
How can I participate?
You just have to send in your replay with which you want to participate, including the player name, the number of cards used and your reached time.
For example: "Metagross31_10cards_time_00h20m30s"
You can send in your replays until the 17.03.2022.
You can find your replays here: Documents=>Battleforge=>replays
Please note:
You are allowed to send in different replays, but only your fastest replay per league will be counted. You can submit replays to multiple leagues, but you can not be drafted for a random draw in a lower league, if you already won something in a higher league.
Your entry has to be a victory!
What is the objective?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The goal is to beat the current singleplayer rPvE map of the month with a deck consisting of as little cards as possible. Depending on the number of cards used, your replay will be part of one of the following leagues:
Rookie League - Up to 15 cards
Advanced League - Up to 10 cards
Iron League - Up to 7 cards
Master League - Up to 5 cards
Insanity League - Up to 3 cards
Sounds fun! What's the prize pool?
There are different prize pools for the different leagues, with the "higher" leagues having bigger rewards. Also, you not only get rewards for having the fastest run, but there are also some rewards for competing, which get distributed between the people in a certain league. Additionally, the fastest time in each league gets an additional reward. In the lower leagues, these rewards will only be given out to people below a certain rank.
Rookie League:
1 general booster for 1/3 of submissions in this league (33.3%), distributed randomly
3 general boosters for the fastest run in this league (Maximum rank to get this reward: Strategist (6) or lower)
Advanced League:
1 general booster for 1/2 of submissions in this league (50%), distributed randomly
4 general boosters for the fastest run in this league (Maximum rank: Lord (9) or lower)
Iron League:
1 general booster for 3/4 of submissions in this league (75%), distributed randomly
4 fire/frost boosters for the fastest run in this league (Maximum rank: Skylord (12) or lower)
Master League:
1 general booster for every submission in this league
6 general boosters for the fastest run in this league (No maximum rank)
Insanity League:
1 general booster + 150 bfp for every submission in this league
8 general boosters for the fastest run in this league (No maximum rank)
5 general boosters for the 2nd fastest run in this league
3 general boosters for the 3rd fastest run in this league
1 general booster for the 4th and 5th fastest runs in this league
Additionally, there will be a reward of a non-promo Ultra rare card of your choice for the three fastest runs across all leagues.
In conclusion
This event focuses on your deck building skills, flexibility and speed on this month's rPvE 1p map.
To summarize the event in simple steps:
- Choose which league(s) you want to participate in.
- Build your deck according to the restrictions
- Come up with a strategy for your run.
- Beat the current map of the month, difficulty 7 while being as fast as possible.
Satisfied? Send the replay to me! (Metagross31#1103 on Discord or via PM in the forums @Metagross31).
When will we stream ?
We will announce the winners on stream.
Date: 19th of March, 2022 6pm CET
Future events
If you are interested in helping with these kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out!
Send me or @Minashigo Hiko a PM on the forum, or direct message via Discord (Metagross31#1103, Minashigo Hiko#1126).
We are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
We hope you have a lot of fun with this event. We are looking forward to seeing all your replays!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
Best regards,
Skylords Reborn Team
(1) The rules and insights highlighted in this document should be regarded as general guidelines. If this is true of our Design Philosophy principles, which are the most fundamental (primary) design principles in the game, then it is even more true for the secondary and tertiary design principles outlined in this document. As such, we don't few these as strict rules which we cannot break while designing towers moving forward, but as guide posts to help us not loss our way. On this topic, I think it is worthwhile for us to note why we write and release these documents. I see three principle reasons.
We write these documents as a way to force ourselves as designers to slow down and consider all the factors at play. By working through the fundamentals of the game itself, a faction, or a class of card, we create a solid base of understanding which will serve as our guide posts going forward. Overall, this leads to more harmonious and less haphazard changes.
We write these documents for other people in the community who like to think about the game in a deeper way. These players also directly help us by questioning, critiquing, and adding to our own understanding of the topic. So these documents act as a focusing lens which helps the community to channel their thoughts and suggestions in the same direction as the balance team, leading to more productive suggestions overall.
Finally, we write these documents to give a heads-up to the community about what is coming next and to both gauge and generate excitement in a given topic.
(2) We are and have been attempting to be as transparent as possible as a team. The mistakes we make are far more often mistakes of forgetfulness than of anything else. As such, I don't appreciate the insinuation that we are obscuring our thinking on the subject in an attempt to paper over the fact that we plan on nerfing a large amount of towers. This simply is not true. Two towers are currently slated for eventual nerfs, Necroblaster and Time Vortex, both of which are far outside the acceptable range compared to other viable towers. In both cases the nerfs will be relatively minor, more corpses for Necroblaster and less life points for Time Vortex. The rest of the intended changes will be buffs. I do think that we could have phrased things in a more positive light in our emboldened statements, but I also think the current phrasing does correctly convey the general idea we intended to communicate.
(3) I think you have correctly identified a lacuna, or missing part, in the document, namely the distinction between damage-oriented and crowd control oriented towers. On this subject your thoughts on Rocket Tower are especially appreciated and I think raise several good points. We can discuss this particular topic more in the balancing discord where I opened a channel on this topic per your request. On the particular remark in the document about Fire T1 towers, that statement was a direct result of our playtesting for DRPvE, where Fire T1 is far and away the worst faction and a lot of this has to do with lacking a damage tower in T1. I do agree in a general sense with your analysis that Shadow + Frost tend to have damage towers, Nature tends towards support towers, and Fire in early tiers tends towards knockback towers, though this changes by T3 where Tower of Flames has no built-in crowd control.
(4) As you can see right below the Deep Dive, we have recently gained the ability to resize buildings. We will be adjusting several NPC and player buildings to more correctly fit their model size. We will also be able to adjust building size as a balancing consideration, if we think that is appropriate.
Greetings Skylords!
Every three weeks, we give an update on the things going on behind the scenes of Skylords Reborn. Welcome to another Community Update!
• Small Patch
We are hard at work on our new content patch, which will still take quite a while. However, we plan to release a small patch this weekend including some small features and bug fixes. We have also added a much requested feature: you will now be notified when a friend comes online.
Below, you can read about two highlighted changes from this patch. The patch also includes various bugfixes, for example being able to queue into yourself in PvP.
• Adjustments to the booster images
During our anniversary patch, we noticed that the booster images in the game had plenty of issues. First of all, the ratios are all over the place, with some boosters being tall, where others are wide. Additionally, the positioning angles and BattleForge logo placement is not consistent and some images had shadows where others didn't. We gave them some touchups and have added new images for the boosters.
Old booster packaging:
New booster packaging:
• Winter Forge
While the holidays are over, winter is still here. We thought it would be fun to give the Forge a different look during winter, spring, summer and autumn, so we have updated it to a snowy theme! For the spring, summer and autumn Forges we plan to include the Community, so stay tuned for that!
In a previous patch, we added powerwells and monuments into the forge for testing. We are curious to hear if you enjoy changes like this, even if they are purely cosmetic.
Is the new look too cold for your taste? Feel free to swap it back to the neutral forge with the new slider on the top right.
• Current State of the Economy & Reforging
On the 18th of December we released both Reforging and a 100BFP booster discount. As expected, this heavily impacted the economy of Skylords Reborn. Now that the dust has settled and the booster discount has expired, we can slowly start looking at the state of the economy. Windhunter has shared some statistics and thoughts on this topic.
"The market trends pre-update (not shown here) were that Common cards were largely worthless, Uncommon cards were following the same trend, Rare cards were steadily decreasing in price (even among sought after cards such as Overlord, Bloodhorn, and Amii Monument), and desirable Ultra-rare and promo cards were increasingly inflating. This was because Ultra-rare and promo cards were the only remaining sources of value left in the economy. Reforging changed this by condensing the total price range of the market and by giving each card in the game a base level of value."
You can read the whole post and check the stats for yourself here.
• Deep Dive: Towers
As we continue to work towards the release of DRPvE, a topic of much discussion has been the current state of towers in the game. While some towers over perform, most are not worth a deckslot.
In this Deep Dive, we take a look at the different kinds of towers in Skylords Reborn, their strengths and weaknesses, and how we plan to make changes to them in the future. Please note we are still in the early stages of our tower rebalance; ideas are not final and these changes will take quite a while to implement once they are finalized. Either way, we hope you enjoy this insight into our current philosophy regarding Towers in Skylords Reborn, and that it provides you with the necessary information to join the discussion in our balance discord.
DeepDive_Towers.pdf
The next design document you can expect will be our in progress Nature Deep Dive. You can find all our Deep Dives and other documents here.
• Changing the size of buildings
While working on the above topic, we came across a new possibility for the game: resizing towers. We are now able to change the size of a building (visual and collision-shape-wise), which will be very relevant for cards like Rocket Tower, that take up way more space than you would expect from its model. This will be another helpful tool in adding some QoL changes to Skylords Reborn!
Please note: the image below is an example, there are currently no concrete changes to Tunnel planned.
• Art Timelapse
With our anniversary patch, it was revealed that the artwork of the new bandit cards combine into a single art piece: the new Bandit loading screen. If you are a frequent reader of the community updates, you have seen the work that went into each different new bandit cards over the last few months, including sketches of early iterations. However, if you are interested in more behind the scenes, we have a nice treat for you. Tweeto has actually recorded his design process, and we created a time-lapse video showing all the steps that went into this latest art piece. Did you know Bandit Sniper is actually standing on a dead Burrower? Find out everything that was added (and removed) in the video here.
Big thanks to Tweeto for his hard work and jabbyay for helping to create this video. Tweeto is already hard at work on the next art piece, which we will show off in a later community update. Like this kind of content? Please be sure to let us know!
• Advanced Filtering
We would like to take a quick moment to thank everyone for taking our survey about your use of advanced filtering. We are working on a full documentation for the filters that are currently available in the game. If you don't want to wait for that, you can find a Work in Progress version in the game files under BattleForge/docs/advanced_filtering.txt once the patch hits.
We have also added a few new filters and a lot of alternative words for current filters.
• Tournaments & Events
• NEW - Toggy's Tome Tournament - 30.01.2022
It's time for another Tome Tournament! In Tome you play 1vs1 PvP but with a twist; your deck is build right before the tournament from the content of a number of boosters. This results in wacky decks and a very different PvP experience, so be sure to check it out. The tournament will be streamed live, check out the full rules and sign-up here.
• NEW - CCC #2 The Besieged Forge - UNTIL 05.02.2022
Kapo has started another Crappy Community Contest! Participating in it will result in a reward for the entire community, so be sure to check it out. In this contest, players are playing on a new map created specifically for this contest! Check out the full rules here.
• ALMOST ENDING - Official 2p rPvE Contest#2: The Bandit alliance UNTIL 31.01.2022
You only have a few days left to compete in this event! For this challenge, we want to see your adaptability in unique situations.
We are looking for the fastest time with only one rule: each player may only spawn one single unit with ground presence through the whole run!
• COMING SOON – Community 1p PvE Contest – early February
Hope you didn’t hide your warm clothes yet! To celebrate the end of winter, we will pay a visit to another Frost themed map. This time the challenge will be for a single Skylord, so bring your best deck and face the unknown. All the details should be published next week, stay tuned.
• Host your own event/tournament
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our Event Organizers Hiko and/or Metagross to have your event prizes sponsored by us. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.
• We need your help!
Now that we are able to implement voicelines and audio into the game (thanks to some great voiceactors helping us out!), we are looking for someone to help us with audio post-production and quality control. Unfortunately we currently do not have enough volunteers to continue implementing any further voicelines and sound effects into the game.
• Open Position: Audio Editor
We would love to continue adding voicelines for more cards and narration for new maps. As an Audio Editor, you will be responsible for selecting and extracting the best takes, doing post-production and making sure the overall quality is high enough to be implemented into the game. If you have more skills, you will also be able to design new sounds for the game as Audio Producer. Click here to read more and apply.
• Team changes
We are excited to finally add a marketeer/outreach coordinator to our team! Runeseeker will help us out with promoting the project and attracting new and old players alike. We appreciate the help and are happy to have him on our team!
We also have various potential team members doing their trial tasks. In the near future we hope to add more balance developers, moderators and an artist.
• In Conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading!
As is tradition, this community update comes with a scratch code.
The code will reward you with a mini-booster: COMM-UNIT-YNEW-S18B
The code is valid till February 19th, when we will bring you another Community Update.
As always, we are open to feedback, so please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments!
Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update #17
Greetings Skylords!
Happy Anniversary! Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the Skylords Reborn project. We hope you had a lot of fun reliving your BattleForge memories and are excited to give you a look into the future.
• Anniversary Stream
In case you missed it, we hosted a special anniversary stream yesterday. We celebrated the past, present en future of Skylords Reborn, with news, card reveals, give-aways and more!
Sadly, something went wrong with the playback of yesterdays stream that we are not sure we can fix. Since we recorded it live with the 3 of us, and 2 audio tracks are broken, it does not make much sense for the viewer anymore. We are sorry for those who missed the stream and now can't watch it.
If we cannot fix the video, we plan to do a retake for youtube, adjusting it to be some kind of looking back at 2021, that people can watch to see everything that has been added to Skylords Reborn since release.
• Patch Reveal + Toggy Stream
Our biggest surprise from the Anniversary Stream: our Anniversary Patch releases today!
See the brand new cards and features in action during a special celebration stream hosted by Toggy tonight!
There will also be a quiz where you can win the new cards, so be sure to check it out!
The Stream is happening at twitch.tv/dastoggy
We are very grateful for Toggy's support over the years and have officially rewarded him with Skylords of Honor today. Well deserved, and to many more years!
• New Cards
This patch will release five brand new cards into the game! We are excited that you will finally get your hands on the cards we have been working on for the past months. The following cards will be added to the game:
Coat of Protection
Coat of Protection is a new incentive to play Pure Frost. This tier 4 spell can be seen as the frost equivalent of Regrowth, helping the faction with some lategame support. Check out the full card-reveal here.
Bandit Minefield
Bandit Minefield is a new tier 2 Spell for Fire/Shadow that should greatly help the faction in PvP. It is a rare and does not have an affinity. Check out the full card-reveal, including the design process, here.
Banzai Lord
Banzai Lord is a powerful new tier 4 unit that can be splashed into, requiring only one shadow and one fire orb. He collects the corpses of fallen foes and allies to summon his darling birds. The card appears in two affinities, one with destructive birds, one with healing birds. You can find more information in the Bandit Deep Dive.
Bandit Sniper
Bandit Sniper is a new, ranged M counter for the Bandits-faction. It is an uncommon that does not have an affinity. It's ability Focus Shot allows the Bandit Sniper to live up to its name, dealing devastating damage to enemies at long range.
Amii Paladin
The shroud surrounding the Amii-faction is slowly lifted. Amii Paladins is our first look at the Amii-faction, after the never followed on tease from Amii Phantom back in the day. It's special ability ''Reflective Armor'' allows the unit to reflect 100% of incoming damage back into enemies, making them a challenging foe to fight.
Amii Paladins has the new Amii Passive Ability "Elusive". Units with Elusive have the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze reduced by 10%. This ability will be added to all current and future Amii units.
Amii Phantom
While not a new card, Amii Phantom has received a brand new look! Both her artwork and ingame look have been adjusted to fit with the vision of the Amii-Faction. Elusive has also been added, and we plan to change her voicelines (she currently has those from Nightguard) to complete her makeover.
A word on Wasteland Terror
Some of you might be wondering why Wasteland Terror (previously Wasteland Wing) is not included in this patch, even though he was revealed in an earlier communtiy update. Sadly, we were not able to make the anniversary deadline and could not include him in this patch. Rest assured that he we will be implemented in a future patch, though we are not able to tell when just yet. Until then, may you enjoy the clear blue skies while you still can..
• Voice Actors Update
Now for some disappointing news. With the help of some talented voice actors, we have created some great voicelines to go along with our new (and some old) cards. Sadly, we ran into technical issues. For some reason, the game keeps crashing inconsistently while playing the new voicelines. Because this did not happen during our initial testing, we could not pinpoint the issue on time to solve it for this patch. Sadly we have to ship the new cards without their matching voicelines. We are really disappointed about this, and we hope to be able to find the solution soon and patch in the new voicelines in all their glory. For this we would love to get your help.
Beside the new cards, we will also be adding voicelines for Dryad, Mountain Rowdy and Amii Phantom in the future. There are also already plans for other cards that are currently without voicelines, like Bandit Lancer or Warlock.
We would like to give you a sneak peak of what we have been working on and give you a proper first impression of two new cards.
Here is what you can expect from the sinister Banzai Lord:
And here is what you will hear leading the Amii Paladins into battle:
We would love to have the help of the community fixing the issues we ran into implementing these voicelines. If you have any understanding of coding and/or sound, please head over here and join us in solving this issue.
• Balance Changes
Alongside new cards and features, we will also release some balance changes this patch.
Following the Bandits Deep Dive, there are a couple of changes in this patch, including Amok, Commando's, Windhunter, Sandstorm and Corsair. Further PvE-focussed balance changes will be implemented for Frost, with adjustments to Ice Age, Battleship, Maelstrom, Northern Keep, Retreating Circle and fan-favorite: Juice Tank.
There are also some changes to popular cards like Sunderer, Dryad, Master Archers and Stormsinger, in combination with the new cards you can expect a fresh meta for PvP as well.
You can check out all the details and explanations for the changes in the patch notes.
Patch_400031_-_December_18_2021.pdf
• Free PvP Decks Updated
We expect new cards like Bandit Minefield to shake up the PvP scene and find it important that everyone who wants to play PvP can do so without grinding for cards or upgrades first. We have upgraded our free PvP decks to include the new cards, alongside adjustments to most decks to adapt to the meta changes that have happened since the introduction of the free PvP decks. Please note: to update the decks, we had to reset all the current decks. Sorry about the inconvenience.
Here is a quick recap on where you can find the PvP decks:
- Select the sword on the top right of the menu to select your 2 free PvP decks.
- Free PvP decks are fully upgraded decks, that can only be used in PvP.
- You can select two new decks every day*, if you want to switch things up.
- You can freely swap around cards in those decks with cards in your collection to customize the decks to your liking. You can do this by clicking the tab in your inventory on the top left and changing General to Free PvP and vice-versa.
*We have reduced the timer to change your two Free PvP decks from 7 days to 24 hours.
• Updated PvP Starter Guides
On top of changes to the standard free PvP decks, RadicalX and Hirooo got together to update their starter guide for PvP. Want to get into PvP but not sure where to start? In this guide you will find everything you need: deck descriptions, tips and tricks for every match-up, an overview of the pro's and con's of your deck and how beginner friendly the deck is to play!
The guide ended up being longer than your average thesis, but we made sure to provide it with a clear layout so you can easily find your favorite deck and browse through the information you need.
You can find the updated starter guide here, and be sure to join the Tutor and Apprentice discord that is specifically designed to help new players get started. Feel free to ask all your questions there.
• New Fire rPvE Preset
It is now possible to face the Fire faction in all its blazing glory in rPvE! You can expect a fresh new challenge for rPvE, including new bosses to fight against. While we did a lot of testing, we would love to hear your feedback on the balance of this new enemy.
Please let us know your feedback on the forum or discord!
• Reforging
One of our biggest and most requested new features this patch is Reforging. The idea behind this new system is to give players a use for their spare cards without listing them on the Auction House. Players have no use for 40+ copies of the same common, and listing them for 3BFP on the AH has proven to be quite tedious and often unsuccessful. Additionally, the rise of expensive ultra rare cards is becoming a problem. We hope to tackle these issues with this new feature.
Here is how it works; players can reforge four cards from their collection to create one brand new card, destroying the four cards in the process. The card that is created will depend on different factors such as the rarity and color of the input cards. Players can also increase their odds by selecting cards that have something in common, for example four buildings. Using higher rarity cards will also increase the odds of an ultra rare dropping. Should the odds of reforging into an ultra rare card ever exceed 100%, players will get some spare Forge Shards. These Shards can then be used to get a mini-booster. It is not possible to use or get a promo card when reforging.
We expect this feature to have a large impact on the economy as a whole. Being able to exchange rares and cheap ultra rares for the chance of getting one of the more expensive ultra rares should bring their prices down. At the same time, this feature should increase the price of cheap ultra rares, since they are now valuable resources for reforging. While some of you might be worried that destroying four ultra rare cards to create one random one will further decrease the supply; please note that reforging multiple ultra rares is designed to be inefficient, thus discouraging the use of more than one ultra rare at a time, since the odds of getting an ultra rare does not improve over using a combination of rares and ultra rares. After the dust has settled, we expect this will bring a better balance to prices within a rarity. Because of the big shake-up this will have on the economy, we have closed the Auction House between the announcement of this system and the release of it.
• Legacy Avatars
We have added additional features regarding the player avatar you can select. It is now possible to buy the avatar that was previously only selectable with the creation of a new account for 15.000 gold. Additionally, once you have bought one of those avatars, they will be added to your collection, allowing you to swap freely!
In the future we are also planning to add additional avatars that can be collected through special events or achievements.
• Advanced Filtering
Our developer Kubik has been working on improving the filtering of search results, both for the inventory and the auction house. Some of you showed interest in this progress, so we put together a document explaining how the current filtering works, why it's far from perfect, and how it will be changed. It's a bit more technical than the other documents we have shared with the community so far, but we hope you will enjoy this look behind the scenes!
Advanced filtering.pdf
• Booster Discounts + Santa
As a special treat for our one year anniversary, all boosters in the game will be 100BFP cheaper between 18-12-2021 and 18-01-2022.
Additionally, every player will receive the Santa Claus card after playing a game. Happy Holidays Skylords!
• Team Changes / Open Positions
It has been a wild ride getting Skylords Reborn to the state it is now. We still have more new cards and exciting game modes in development, but need help getting them to you sooner. If you love the project, please consider helping us out, we would love to have you on our team.
Below are three roles highlighted, but you can find more information, desired traits and all our open positions here. If you are unsure if you qualify, please reach out and have a talk! At the same time, we are sad to announce Carofex has left the team as a balance developer. We want to thank him for his contributions and wish him well!
Open Position - Map Tester
As a map tester you get early access to new maps and gamemodes and are responsible to playtest them and provide feedback to the other map developers about possible issues or improvements. This includes check how balanced the map is, how fun it is to play, if there are any exploits, if areas on the map need to be prettified etc. Map developers/designers/artists should be able to rely on you to make sure maps that are released or changed are done so properly. More information.
Open Position - Client Developer
As a game client developer you are responsible to maintain and develop the game client. This mostly includes add new pre-game features (content outside of matches, so no game mechanics) through .pak files used by the game. You will be responsible to create and design in-game interfaces for new features, add networking support for new features that require it, solve bugs etc. using LUA, XML and little bit of Rust. BattleForge uses LUA and XML in their .pak files which are loaded by the client. Communication with the server happens through a proxy written in Rust. More information.
Open Position - Game Server Developer
As a game server developer you are responsible to maintain and develop the game servers. This includes add new features, track and fix bugs, optimize code, roll out new server updates, improve server monitoring etc. The servers are written in C++17, use boost asio for networking, MySQL as database, Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring etc. More information.
• In Conclusion
And that's it for this Community Update, thanks for reading!
Remember; as a special treat for our one year anniversary, all boosters in the game will be 100BFP cheaper between 18-12-2021 and 18-01-2022.
We also have a scratch code for you, which will reward you with a general booster: SKYL-ORDS-REBO-RN1Y
The code is valid until January 8th 2022, which is when our next community update will release.
We hope you will join us in the celebrations playing this new patch, and we would love to hear your feedback on how you experienced the past year of Skylords Reborn! Please let us know below.
Happy holidays!
Archive
Community Update #13
Community Update #14
Community Update #15
BattleForge PvP Guide - by Hirooo & RadicalX (Last Update: Q1 2023)
Hello and welcome! Since this has been requested for a while we made an update for the PvP 1vs1 deck preview Hirooo and I ended up writing more than 5 years ago. The meta has changed since then, mostly due to recent balance changes and the introduction of brand new cards. We also expanded our matchup descriptions a little bit to provide some additional information and hopefully some useful tricks. With the official release of Skylords Reborn, free PvP decks were added to the game. They have replaced our previous "deck examples".
Where to find the free PvP decks
- Select the sword on the top right of the menu to select your 2 free PvP decks, see image below.
- Free PvP decks are fully upgraded decks, that can only be used in PvP.
- You can select two new decks every day, if you want to switch things up.
- You can freely swap around cards in those decks with cards in your collection to customize the decks to your liking. You can do this by clicking the tab in your inventory on the top left and changing General to Free PvP and vice-versa.
What will you find in this PvP guide?
Here is what each of the sections in this guide contains:
• Regularly updated power rankings, followed by our top 3 deck recommendations for new players
• Basic deck descriptions where we point out major strengths and weaknesses and explain how to play and possibly adjust the presented free PvP decks.
• Comprehensive matchup discussion, sorted by favorable, skill based and difficult matchups.
[ POWER RANKINGS ]
These rankings should give you a rough overview of the state of each deck on this current patch. Do not get discouraged if your deck of interest isn't rated highly. Any deck can perform well and with a good strategy or strong micro play you can overcome matchup dependent differences more often than not.
#10 Fire Frost (↓)
Currently the weakest deck on this patch, has rather unclear win conditions whenever shielded Skyfire Drakes do not dominate the matchup. Other decks that were previously considered weaker received strong buffs leaving Fire Frost a little behind. Due to the lack of faction cards Fire Frost solely relies on splash synergies whereas other factions have much more powerful carrier cards. Some strong new combos like Warlock + Core Dredge emerge, but fundamentally the faction is just less well rounded than others. That said, Fire Frost offers a very unique, fun and micro rewarding playstyle and can still be worth playing for that reason.
Final rating: 4/10
#9 Amii (↓)
This might be a surprise for some as Amii received 2 new cards, which are both reasonably strong. The reason for Amii being listed low on this ranking is the Nightguard nerf combined with other faction buffs. Amii relied the most on Nightguard usage out of all Shadow splashes as the faction does not have a very powerful response to melee L-Units. You are forced to win at early T2 in almost any matchup. While some of the most critical counter decks are a little bit more forgiving now, Amii’s major weaknesses are maintained. The lack of both large and flying combat units makes Amii incredibly susceptible to strong AoE damage effects and limits the T2 scaling. It might be the hardest deck to execute as micro-managing a lot of low energy units non-stop is a tough task, but when mastered the deck is still absolutely viable with a lot of new tricks you can make use of.
Final rating: 6/10
#8 Twilight (↓)
As Twilight is receiving numerous changes, this rating is rather preliminary and might change in the near future. Twilight units are getting more and more powerful, but do not entirely compensate for the faction's downfall compared to its old times (Fire Nature was considered top 3 before the first balancing changes). Melee unit dependency and hefty deck slot limitations made it harder to keep up with other factions that kept improving. Twilight Transformations add depth to the faction in late T2 nowadays, but this can be complex in execution. Twilight can still play with very high tempo and its late T2 pushes are one of the most rewarding ones in the game. Even though the deck’s performance is not at its prime we can still recommend learning it if you are interested, it will definitely pay off in the long run.
Final rating: 6/10
#7 Pure Shadow (↓↓)
The biggest downfall compared to the last rating where the faction received a top 2 rating. Pure Shadow’s performance got worse in almost any T2 matchup. Major changes with an impact: Nightguard nerf, Burning Spears release, Twilight Crawler release and buffs, Parasite Swarm buffs, Creeping Paralysis buffs & Tranquility release. Is pure Shadow a weak faction now? Definitely not! Even though Harvester is less dominant than before, the pure Shadow T3 still is one of the most flexible and powerful ones. On top of that the faction has a lot of deck building options and unique units creating leads throughout the game. Nether Warp’s playmaking potential is beyond crazy and in the right hands pure Shadow can still turn into the overly dominant faction we used to see in the past.
Final rating 7/10
#6 Pure Nature (↑↑)
Pure Nature is on the rise. After taking the bottom spot in our last rating the recent set of changes turned out to be strong buffs overall and helped multiple nature players secure a position at the top ranks of the PvP ladder. With much more versatile tools to deflect attacks and buy time, the faction has seen a lot of improvements compared to when it was rated as the worst faction in the game. Energy Parasite might be the most micro intensive unit in the game as it is spammable and vulnerable, yet so valuable it will pay off in the long run. Great map awareness, strong micro and an easy to use L-unit make for a very well rounded and strong deck. The main weakness of this faction is its slow start as nature T1 is susceptible to high tempo play and pure Nature does not have the best defensive tools to balance this out at early T2. But once you gain control of the game, it will be hard to stop you.
Final rating: 7/10
#5 Pure Frost (↑)
Pure Frost probably has the most powerful T2 defense in the entire game. Strong counter units, endless building synergies and solid crowd control options can even compensate for power deficits. When fighting around your own wells and orbs, pure Frost has the potential to outtrade any faction in the game. It is very easy to well up and scale towards later gamestages when playing this deck, but it can be hard to obtain enough map control in the first place. Due to mobility restrictions and reliance on building synergies Frost can not cover great distances without losing out on combat power. Your enemy will be able to pick fights on his terms, block important positions on the map and disjointed units will easily be outmaneuvered. But through good unit control and resource management you can overcome this and maintain a compact defense until your Eagles get to strike back.
Final rating: 8/10
#4 Pure Fire (-)
This one streamer telling you pure Fire is bad is lying! Do not believe him, it is a deception! The faction has very dominant trading tools for combat on the ground. Firedancer is the best Siege unit to break a defender's advantage, Enforcer is overwhelmingly strong, Wildfire is extremely versatile and Juggernaut is a simple brute force siege tool, strong enough to win games on its own. No deck can leverage tempo leads as well as pure Fire does, which leads to a rating at the upper half of this list. On the downside the faction’s air control is still weak and combined with the lack of hard cc some factions can take advantage of this in T2. But pure Fire is a very powerful deck that performs perfectly fine regardless of your skill level.
Final rating: 8/10
#3 Bandits (↓)
Bandits remain to be the biggest winner of balancing changes ever since Phasetower/Mortar nerfs enabled more T1 options. The faction has a wide set of strong ground combat tools, powerful air control, reliable attacking patterns and solid defensive options despite the lack of hard cc. Unique mechanics like Bandit Sniper ability and a reasonable T3 scaling through tools like Bandit Lancer, Cultist Master or buffed Soulhunter round this up extremely well. Bandits is a versatile deck with little weaknesses to take advantage of. The faction scales fairly well throughout all stages of the game. But unlike the decks that are listed higher on this tier list, Bandits does not have this simple win condition you can use to break up evenly matched games. After various balancing changes Bandits is definitely not as oppressive and less powerful than it used to be, but it is still a great faction that deserves a spot in the top 3.
Final rating: 8/10
#2 Lost Souls (↑)
Lost Souls is just outright solid at every stage of the game, extremely powerful scaling. This makes it the most well rounded faction you can play. You have a plethora of counter tools, strong spell synergies and except for the lack of air units the faction has anything you would want from a good PvP deck. Lost Souls is the most stable deck in the game, but also a rather slow paced faction. It is harder to apply pressure throughout the early stages compared to more aggressive factions and you can leverage your tempo leads by welling up instead of attacking your opponent most of the time. This makes it easier to play compared to most other factions, but also limits its potential at perfect play. Overall Lost Souls mostly benefits from the decline of pure Shadow and Bandits and reclaims a top 2 position in the current meta.
Final rating: 9/10
#1 Stonekin (-)
Stonekin is the best T2 faction by far. Stormsinger + Nature splash support is so good, it can either carry the deck by allowing big T3 scaling set ups or simply synergize with remaining faction tools in T2 to build up a constantly growing deathball. The faction does not have very clear weaknesses as they only emerge from slot limitations. The only issue to point out is the lack of burst leading to a minor weakness to equalize early tempo deficits when getting attacked by strong Siege tools (i.e. Firedancer). But with its overwhelming dominance across multiple matchups, this won’t stop Stonekin from defending its top spot this patch.
Final rating: 10/10
[ NEW PLAYER RECOMMENDATIONS ]
If you are new to the PvP, it can be difficult to find out where to start. Usually the best way of learning the basics is by sticking to one faction you enjoy playing. Get to know your cards, matchups and improve step by step. Look up some content from veterans using your faction and most importantly, play the game even if the matches end up being very tough. You will naturally improve over time and after learning the basics PvP is so much fun and offers incredible strategic depth. For that reason I would highly advise to pick a faction that you enjoy playing, even if it's not rated super highly by us. Every faction (except for Fire-Frost) is can be viable at the highest level and if you like pure Fire for example, just pick it from the free PvP section and play it.
For anyone unsure about which faction to pick, we will list our top 3 starter recommendations. This list will be updated with every patch to make sure it is not outdated and provides some basic information. We think the following factions will give an enjoyable experience for newer players while teaching you important game mechanics, but again it's more important that you have fun with the faction you are using.
Pure Frost
Pure Frost wins a lot of matches through defensive play and strong air control. War Eagles are arguably your most powerful T2 unit, but due to their low mobility and inability to attack air, you need time and more units to protect them well in order to get something done. Overall you have a very well rounded deck with strong defensive mechanics and due to its reactive nature you are not force to perfom a lot of micro actions in oder to succeed.
Lost Souls
Lost Souls offers a lot of versatility that usually makes it appealing for most players. The faction's core cards and mechanics can be understood rather intuitively and you have the tools to compete with other decks throughout every stage of the game. Lost Reaver + Lifeweaving can be a simple, but effective tool to attack in T2 and your late game scaling is rock solid. The high hp frost units synergize incredibly well with Shadow spells like Liveweaving and Nasty Surprise and with Tremor/Grigori you can overwhelm opponents at T3 almost effortlessly.
Stonekin
Stonekin wins games by stacking up unit masses over time. Use your crowd control spells to win unit trades and add more pieces to your army step by step. With a lot of knockback tools the faction can be infuriatinng from ahead. Most mechanics are easy to learn, but hard to master. This faction is an ideal choice for players that don't like to follow a meta path and like to experiment with deck building. The majority of our free PvP cards could be replaced in stonekin and the deck would still be able succeed at any level (just keep the support spells, they are really great).
[ MATCHUP DISCUSSIONS ]
Structure
The following ratings will go from easiest matchup (1) to the hardest one (9) for each faction. In addition to that, the matchups are divided in 3 categories: favourable, skill based and difficult matchups. The matchup description with details and a rough gameplan follows afterwards.
[ PURE FROST ]
1. Deck description
Pure Frost is a very defensive oriented faction, that can be very dominant in close base encounters. War Eagles are one of the most powerful T2 units and with proper support they will provide full control of the game. Your various units are reliable and your scaling into late game is fantastic, but the deck often follows a slow playstyle limiting your options. In T1 the lack of a swift unit can get exposed, therefore you may have a lot of trouble acquiring map control. The risk of playing Frost is not as big as it used to be and with the introduction of buffed White Rangers/Mountain Rowdy there is a lot more variety making the deck interesting to play. You will be highly rewarded for learning this faction. Pure Frost dominates some decks, that are fairly strong in the current meta. Your T3 scaling is fairly solid with interesting deck building options, but late T2 air dominance is what makes this deck shine the most.
2. Matchup discussion
Favorable matchups:
(1) Pure Frost vs Pure Fire (-)
Used to be one of the most one sided matchups during EA times and still is clearly Frost favored at the T2 stage. Going even in T1 without taking too many risks is the way to go. Skyelf Templar, while being nerfed, still plays an essential role to establish air control, which is so important to attack pure Fire. With Skyfire out of the way, War Eagle can freely counter any M sized ground unit, which includes more than half of pure Fire’s arsenal. Be careful with using Area Ice Shield too early as Global Warming has been buffed and could counter massively. Rather try to time the spell i.e. when a Skyfire projectile is in the air about to kill a War Eagle/Skyelf Templar. With a very controlled T2 you can dominate this matchup, but you shouldn’t be overforcing. Upon establishing control with a strong Skyfire Drake split, pure Fire can either protect Firedancers for potent counter attacks or safely scale towards T3, where Juggernaut will outmatch you most likely. With Amii Ritual you can build a counter T3 though as the spell can block Stampede and buy time for Skyelf Sages to remove the Juggernaut before your wells and orbs get taken out. Then again pure Fire lacks tools to attack air as long as you split your units against backlash.
Skill matchups:
(2) Pure Frost vs Pure Shadow (↑↑)
With Nightguard getting nerfed, you have the upper hand in this matchup now. War Eagle being less contested means pure Frost has better chances in various trading situations and can only be matched by Darkelf Assassins. With White Rangers getting buffed you also have a solid answer to them, as their ability punishes any reckless activation of Unholy Trance. Heavy unit spam can be deflected by mountain rowdy as the ability counters low hp ground units and the slow buys time to catch and out-micro your opponent. Harvester usually does not work against Lighblade + War Eagle + Frostbite. Stormsinger will always be a good addition into your unit mix and should establish full control in T2. Since most Shadow units are pretty cheap it will get harder to split them up later into the game, strengthening your AoE tools i.e. War Eagle scream is more efficient. Just keep in mind to avoid heavy unit stacking yourself, because Aura of Corruption counters low mobility single area attacks. Play around the high spell cooldown or split up your attack. Freezing units with Liveweaving is extremely effective, because the two damage reductions don't stack. A nice micro trick in this matchup is to cancel out War Eagle screams in order to bait out a Nether Warp dodge attempt. The T3 stage is rather dangerous since Frost relies on unit spam to finish the game, which can be hard countered by Voidstorm. The newly buffed Nox Carrier might be a soft counter to stalling base gameplay around Amii ritual.
(3) Pure Frost vs Lost Souls (↑)
With nerfs to Nightguard, pure Frost tends to have the upper hand at T2 given that you don’t lose out on T1. Giving up a little bit of map control is fine as long as you have enough space to take a couple wells and don’t get locked out of T3 entirely. Lost Souls will mainly use Darkelf Assassins + Stormsinger + Frostbite in trades, which can be easily matched by Mountain Rowdy and White Rangers as long as you don’t run into a large tempo deficit. Taking extra wells is safe more often than not. Souls does not have any air unit, so try to get a good position for your War Eagle. Cliffs are ideal as they protect against the Stormsinger ability and also ensure an escape path whenever necessary. Be careful with putting too many resources into a single area attack though as a slow army will always be susceptible to an Aura of Corruption. Defending Lost Reaver is not a big deal due to Lightblade and War Eagle, but you still need to split against him as the Nasty Surprise combo can be devastating. In T3 both decks are fairly similar, but Lost Souls is slightly stronger here due to access to stronger spell synergies and the more flexible slot distribution usually leading to a bigger T3 investment overall. You don’t need to close games on T2, but building up a lead early on is advised.
(4) Pure Frost vs Twilight (↓)
Twilight will be able to match and outmaneuver you on open ground as superior mobility and cheaper crowd control will allow your enemy to pick fights whenever he wants to. Skyfire Drake and Twilight Crawlers are fast and very dynamic units that can build up leads even though your units tend to be more stat efficient overall. The easiest way to get rid of mobility concerns is securing a close well position. Even if your slow units, especially the War Eagle, get outmaneuvered you can still set up powerful counter attacks and reinforce appropriately. Vileblood attacks can be defended with War Eagle and Lightblade, but are not to be underestimated once your opponent gets ahead. The siege damage is massive and will drain a lot of power for building protects or cc. You need to intercept any minor attack as early as possible, making sure you can weaken the attack as much as possible before it gets close for transformation. Always try to build up some Stormsingers count from neutral states as kiting works very well in trades against the melee unit heavy Fire Nature deck. Keep an eye on any attempt to play Breeding Grounds as the card generates ridiculous amounts of value. If you see it being used you have to be proactive in order to shift attention to another base quickly. If your opponent is forced to spawn at another base the Breeding value gets negated for some time. Ideally you get to punish the initial investment and take down a power well. On higher energy levels you start to outscale Fire Nature in T2. War Eagles are a dominant force and with enough power to protect them you will consistently win trades. Fire Nature has limited options to contest air units (Eruption, Gladiatrix, Skyfire Drake, Twilight Transformation). War Eagle beats Gladiatrix, Area Ice Shield can protect against burst combinations around Eruptions, so Skyfire will be the most dangerous unit to play around. If you have some cliffs for your Eagles, try to make use of them as Twilight Transformation does not function here. Depending on how many counters you have to establish air control (Gravity Surge, Defenders, Skyelf Templar), your life might be even easier in this particular matchup. Nightshade Plant transformations can be a major threat in T3, so consider playing for Skyelf Sage + Amii Ritual to block early tempo pushes. As Fire Nature often does not have deck slots for a large T3 your enemy will burn out of charges way earlier.
(5) Pure Frost vs Stonekin (↑)
Even though Aggressor can be quite annoying for your War Eagles the matchup got easier since Stone Tempest received some nerfs. Stonekin still has what it takes to prevent you from executing successful attacks. Stormsinger & Spirit Hunters are fairly efficient against air units in the early T2 stage and the mix of building protects and cheap crowd control is always hard to overcome. Crystal Fiend might also play a big role in this matchup, shutting it down as quickly as possible needs to be high priority (Gravity Surge may be a very useful addition here). The constant healing over time can start a snowball that will be impossible to stop once you fall behind. Never take additional wells in early T2 without a good reason and try to scale slowly, because you might give your opponent an opportunity to play an uncontested Breeding Grounds, which almost always out-values an extra powerwell in slow paced matchups. Keep an eye on how many different cards your enemy uses in the T1/T2 stage. Stonekin often has a weakness based on slot allocation and it is important to identify which stage is the weakest. Some players might skip T1, others might try to play without a T3 to pressure you a lot in the mid game. If the energy level is high enough you can even overcome some power deficits, but you sometimes need to reconsider based on deck building whether it’s best to play for a mass War Eagle push in T2 or a T3 win.
(6) Pure Frost vs Fire Frost (↑)
This matchup might be a little bit harder than you might expect initially. Skyelf Templar and White Rangers contest air units and War Eagle gets rid of any M ground units that might try to attack them (Icefang Raptor vs White Rangers, Gladiatrix vs Skyelf Templar etc.) . Overall Fire Frost has a limited amount of playable units and you have fairly solid answers to these options, even the famous Frost Sorceress + Skyfire Drake combo. Mountaineer can be easily matched by Lightblade after losing his M knockback as you can force him into shield mode whenever you want. Defenders can be a strong niche option to keep contesting air control in this matchup. While everything looks very good on paper up to this point, there is one thing Fire Frost can take advantage of. With lots of slow and high health units the unit count during skirmishes is very high in this matchup making Coldsnap + Warlock a deadly combo. If a buffed Skyfire dodges your Coldsnap and the enemies one hits, you are in serious trouble. Also never use Mountain Rowdy against Warlock as the self freeze will also trigger the damage amplification. On top of that Warlock will also ensure superior T3 scaling, where Timeless One provides endless access to the Freeze mechanic. Combined with some high energy scaling T3 unit (i.e. Core Dredge) you will have a very hard time matching this. This is why a good unit split against Coldsnap in mid T2 will often make the difference between winning or losing this matchup.
(7) Pure Frost vs Pure Nature (↑)
Frost Mage spam is not as oppressive in this matchup anymore, but can still win the game at the early stage. The strategy is still very powerful against Nature T1 on small maps and strong enough to rush greedy fast T2 attempts. Ghost Spears and Spirit Hunters are useless against knockback without cc support and Deep One gets kited against Frostbite. If you manage to get a critical amount of units (7+ Mages) while being close to the enemy's base you are set up to win. Try to stack your army to avoid getting caught and isolated by ensnaring roots and slowly push forward. Nature can shut this down by playing a very aggressive early game which confines you at your base. This is especially annoying on large maps. Try to snipe overextended units with Frostbite or Glyph of Frost to shut this down. At T2 the matchup got better for you considering Mountain Rowdy is another strong L counter for Deep One with a strong ability to shut down supported attacks. White Rangers also add strong defensive capabilities that allow you to defend every kind of attack. Your absolute main priorities need to be never letting an Energy Parasite reach your Power Wells and never allow a Parasite Swarm take over one of your L units. This is still true if it means you have to take bad trades. Investing a Coldsnap for one Energy Parasite is still 10 times better than allowing him to use the ability. Usually Stormsinger + Frostbite are your main counters, add Gravity Surge to your deck if you keep struggling. Also sacrificing L units is much better if you can not prevent a Parasite Swarm ability from getting through anymore. It is more likely to lose to nature's energy manipulation than getting overwhelmed in trades even with some energy deficits. Whenever you manage to defend successfully you can transition into counter attacks. Nature is fairly weak at defending, especially if you can split your low cost units well against crowd control. With Area Ice Shield support you can quickly opt into a well focus. Whether T3 can be used as a win condition solely depends on whether you have a solid XL unit in your deck or at least some sort of counter for Parasite Swarm. Otherwise the nature player could stay in T2 for a very long time and just zone/take over your T3 units. Energy Parasites get even more annoying because you don’t want to play a lot of Stormsingers after investing power into your T3 orb. Skyelf Sage might help, but is also rather expensive. Therefore, keeping the 250 energy for stronger T2 attacks could be the better move here.
(8) Pure Frost vs Amii (↑↑)
With Nightguard being removed, Shadow Nature can not be considered a hard counter to pure Frost anymore. Mountain Rowdy and White Rangers are strong defensive tools to shut down the early aggression Amii is known for and with superior high energy scaling this might be enough to turn the tides in this matchup. A combination of Darkelf Assassins and Amii Paladins still functions dangerously well and needs to be respected when playing on 3-4 wells early on. But if you keep sufficient map control you will be able to endure these attacks and slowly scale up. Make sure to play around the Amii Paladins active ability as a reflected War Eagle scream might be devastating. The level of early pressure you need to deal with is highly dependent on player proficiency, much more than in other matchups. In late T2 War Eagles control the Battlefield, but you usually won’t be able to attack as Aura + CC is very strong and small unit attacks get shut down by Amii Phantom spam. You should be able to reach a good T3 transition, where Amii Ritual will be a key card to defend heavy Cultist Master attacks. Fortunately the spell counters Evocators Woe making your defense very reliable. A niche counter option to decimate any attempt of Cultist Master stacking would be Frost Shard. Timeless One handles any small scaled attacks. Buffed XL units like Brannoc will be weak against Coldsnap + Lightblade taunt granting ideal set up for a late game win once charges start running out.
Difficult matchups:
(9) Pure Frost vs Bandits (-)
Bandits arguably have the best tools to remove War Eagles from the map entirely making it the best deck to pick into pure Frost. Windhunter is an excellent L counter and combined with well splitted Darkelf Assassins pure Frost starts to struggle a lot. Your advantage lies within your reliable trading tools and strong defense. Fortunately Bandits do not have the strongest Siege units and need to get ahead to make good use of Rallying Banner attacks. This gives you a chance to play very defensively and stall games out until reaching T3. Stormsinger and White Rangers might be enough to play a safe mid game to then win through good trades around your crowd control or T3 scaling. Mountain Rowdy (purple) is a great counter tool to large rallying banner attacks. Counterpressure into the Minefield/Bandit Sniper combo will be extremely difficult though. If you can slow down the game and play a very controlled match you might have the upper hand. With little ways to trade into stacked Windhunters you somewhat rely on your opponent making a mistake in order to stabilize though. The T3 pattern is fairly similar as Bandits have the tools to play faster and aggressively, whereas pure Frost wants to slow down and scale into T3. Amii Ritual will be very helpful to buy time against split attacks and Frost Shard might be a card worth considering for this matchup as it counters Rallying Banner + Cultist Master spam. Soulhunter might be hard to trade against unless you play Skyelf Sage, make use of your building protects and cc tools including Lightblade. If you manage to drag out the game in T3 you should win in the long run.
[ PURE FIRE ]
1. Deck description
If you want a deck with offensive strength, this deck provides it. Crazy dps units & spells and an immense siege potential with Firedancer. In addition to that pure Fire has one of the best T3 units also known as Juggernaut, which makes closing out games seem quite easy. Your downside is the lack of deck variety and limited air control. The amount of viable cards is insanely limited and you end up with a fairly predictable set up. On the other hand a very clear deck structure allows you to focus on improving your execution and micro management, especially in T2. Strategic matchup approaches are not overly complex and learning the faction in a reasonable amount time is possible. In many matchups you attack with the same unit setup (2x Enforcer, 1x Fire Dancer, 1x Skyfire), which is simple but effective.
2. Matchup discussion
Favorable matchups:
(1) Pure Fire vs Stonekin (↑↑)
The release of Burning Spears relieved a lot of pressure in this matchup. You don’t have to trade with M-units into Stone Shards anymore and with their steadfast passive the Burning Spears are extremely reliable against the knockback centric Stonekin deck. Your opponent now has to fall back to Stormsinger/Spirit Hunter + Root or Stoneshard spam, which can be outscaled rather quickly. With a certain energy level or a tempo lead, pure Fire will take over, because Firedancer can always force the Stonekinplayer away from his power well, making him lose the defender's advantage. A unit mix around Enforcer, Burning Spears and Skyfire Drake supported by the strong AoE damage spells will always come out on top in this situation. A high energy level is usually helpful for you. If the game reaches T3 and your opponent tries to play Stone Warrior (blue) + Timeless One against your Juggernaut, try to disenchant the Stone Warrior ability mid air. At this rate the ability cast goes through, enemy loses energy, the ability goes on cooldown, but you don't receive any damage. With Stampede being this powerful, snowballing is not a problem.
(2) Pure Fire vs Amii (-)
Amii solely relies on small and medium low hp ground units to trade and apply pressure. The powerful AoE spells like Lavafield & Wildfire can shut this down, which is almost the entire story of this matchup. The only unit capable of contesting the Fire army are Amii Paladins. The unit trades well into your M-units and can reflect Wildfire damage if timed properly. You need to kite them well, play around the high ability cooldown and wait until energy level rises. Lavafield gets more and more valuable over time as the spell is expensive in the first place and the high damage cap automatically adds late T2 scaling. Amii can’t diversify its unit composition, because the faction has no access to flying/large units. A slow and methodical early game usually is the best way to approach this matchup, because Amii spikes very early while falling off in later T2 stages. Getting to this position without a deficit is usually winning, because Amii lacks the tools to stop powerful Rallying Banner attacks. With little threats to your Firedancer the enemy has to walk up to you instead of playing around his base. This often exposes units that can be picked off by an Enforcer. Whereas Tranquility is not very relevant in this T2 matchup, it can be a big nuisance in T3. The spell can force out your disenchant, creating a positive trade and indirectly strengthening the threat of all remaining cc spells and buffs from Amii. Brannoc with Surge of Light and Lifeweaving support will beat Juggernaut in a direct encounter as a result. So either try winning on T2 or ensure reaching T3 with a clear tempo lead so your Juggernaut can strike first.
(3) Pure Fire vs Lost Souls (-)
Pure Fire performs fairly well into Lost Souls. Enforcer is superior to Nightcrawler/Stormsinger and Firedancers are really hard to remove. This gives you a solid advantage in open field trading as well as siege scenarios. L units are the only ones that are difficult to deal with. Mountaineer & Lost Reaver can apply a solid amount of pressure and also synergize well with Live Weaving. But with well timed disenchants and good uses of wildfire you can deflect these attacks without losing a powerwell to then start a powerful counterattack in return. In this particular matchup it's extremely important to always consider the potential impact of Nasty Surprise. It is the most disruptive spell Lost Souls can use against pure Fire and if you get caught off guard it might turn the tides in this matchup. At higher void levels you will start rolling over your opponent due to damage ramping up and overloading building protects. In T3 Juggernaut may be the best tool in the game to break through a Timeless One defense, so scaling is on your side as well.
Skill matchups:
(4) Pure Fire vs Pure Nature (↓)
The nature matchup got more difficult than before. Parasite got added into the mix and needs to be respected as it is another tool capable of attacking heavy usage of Skyfire Drakes. You can always Disenchant the Parasite or counter with Ravage as long as no damage sources are around. The green Disenchant is recommended here, because it does not only remove the Parasite Spell, but also can grant immunity against other poison effects or Mind Control. Parasite Swarm always needs to be defended, because an unbound Skyfire Drake with Nature spell support is scary. Your overall gameplan didn’t really change. A short and aggressive T1 leading towards a low void T2 usually is the best way of controlling the game pace and preventing fast scaling. Once you win a trade you can try to push towards your opponent's power well immediately with a Rallying Banner set up. Firedancer & Enforcer convert tempo like no other faction, but with Creeping Paralysis there is another tool you need to play around in order to get consistent results. The cc duration is very long and might enable a successful well repair, but you often get to dodge the spell due to its long animation. Nature can win at a high energy point by snowballing with Deep One + Spirit Hunter setups that are still fairly hard to counter once there is enough power for heal-spam support. HP nerfs to Deep One and the Burning Spears delay this scaling point fairly well, but do not prevent it entirely. Always keep a good unit split due to the high amount of cc spells from pure Nature.If you can’t avoid high energy counts, you need to try winning through T3, because Juggernaut is still unrivaled in this matchup.
(5) Pure Fire vs Twilight (-)
A pretty specific matchup, but not too complicated to learn. At the early T2 stage Twilight Minions + Skyfire Drake is really hard to beat, because your own Skyfire Drakes get oinked and die without dealing damage at all. Twilight Minions are M Counters and stronger on a low void base than Scythe Fiends. Vileblood can be matched with Burning Spears partially, but crowd control can buy enough time to put pressure on your power wells. With energy level rising you'll have an easier time, because pure Fire will be able to match air control once Skyfire + Oink can be countered by an immediate double Eruption (155 power vs 150 power). Skyfire charges are also limited at 8, so keeping track of that might create further opportunities to win. Burning Spears trade stat efficiently into any Twilight unit except for the Crawlers. This makes them very strong considering Twilight lacks ranged units to kite them properly and Crawlers can be annihilated by an Enforcer. With Wildfire support on top of this you will win trades on the ground. Scythe Fiends can also help leveraging tempo fairly well and T3 is Juggernaut’s playground.
(6) Pure Fire vs Bandits (-)
Bandits can be a tough opponent due to its strong T2. With the tremendous buffs to Windhunter, your Skyfire Drakes lose a lot of value in this particular matchup. Gladiatrix will be an essential tool to burst down Windhunter in combination with Eruption and it is extremely important to disenchant Life Weaving that could block this combination. Bandits can build up incredible pressure even with small leads, so there might be a reward for playing a risk aversive early game in order to prevent a T2 snowball. Winning a trade against Bandit Spearmen and Windhunter in early T2 is fairly unlikely, but with Burning Spears you can at least prevent straight well focussing. If you get into a position to counter attack, look to play around close base attacks in order to utilize the high attack range from Firedancer. Saving the 50 power from Rallying Banner can make a big difference. If you manage to withstand the early attacks and trade evenly until T3 the game is almost won. Juggernaut will be unstoppable as he outtrades the Soulhunter as well as the Bandits Lancers with ease. Just make sure you don’t run into an Aura of Corruption with Stampede on cooldown.
Difficult matchups:
(7) Pure Fire vs Fire Frost (↑)
This entire match up comes down to surviving against the Skyfire + Frost Sorceress combo. It converts leads really easily and almost always comes out on top in trades. Stormsinger adds up to a really good unit mix that pure Fire will struggle against. Once you lose some of the open field trades, the snowball will be hard to stop. As the pure Fire player you want to play really passive early on to survive with the help of undazed respawns and more space for good unit positioning. Ideally you get to expose the Shield Sorceress and hunt her down with an Enforcer. The shielded Skyfire Drake can be disenchanted by Gladiatrix to allow bursting it even if it’s not entirely energy efficient. Global Warming can also be helpful in this matchup. A nice little trick to ensure better positions in this matchup is to extend your T1 and take as many power wells as possible during this stage. The Fire Frost player does not have the best tools to force an early T2 (very expensive set up and no cheap siege tools) and even then you could play T1 vs T2 for quite some time. This allows you to invest more power into your economy instead of getting a rather low value T2 very early. Once you get tempo at the late T2 stage or manage to break skyfire charges at any given point, pure Fire will roll over. Frost Sorceress will be too vulnerable without a Skyfire protecting her and units get bursted before the shield cast goes through. T3 also ends up being clearly in your favor. Fire Frost has no tools to fight against Juggernauts in T3, which can be very important on large maps that allow uncontested tech ups.
(8) Pure Fire vs Pure Shadow (↓)
This is mostly a retrospective rating adjustment and not the result of any actual changes. We moved pure Shadow into the section of difficult matchups as we agreed that pure Shadow is just way easier to execute in this particular matchup. Burning spears might prevent a Harvester from turning games on its head, but you still can’t just sit back and wait for the Shadow player to make the first move. You are on a timer as removing Harvester power efficiently is not very likely. T3 is pretty hopeless either because Voidstorm can hard counter Juggernaut and even Netherwarp can stop stampede from destroying your base. This leads to a position where you need to create a substantial advantage at the T2 stage. You need to move out of your base and break the defender's advantage. With proper execution this is possible because of your superior trading tools, but any misstep might result in your opponent stabilizing until the first Harvester can be played. An approach to shut this concept down is to set up a Rallying Banner attack next to the enemy's base without committing entirely. You need to hover around the enemy’s base with a Firedancer, forcing the Shadow player to respond and push her away from his well. You can then summon Enforcers to protect your position and bait out further reinforcements. Your enemy either binds power into many units that can be countered by a Lava Field at some point or has to leave his base, losing the defender's advantage of spamming undazed Shadowmages safely around the power well. In both situations Harvester timings get delayed, which is good for you. Once you win a trade, you can just add pressure until you can steamroll with an Enforcer spam. A very useful micro trick here is using the Enforcers to dodge Shadow Mage attacks. During the charge animation they can outrun a shot consistently (try practicing this one in the Forge). If you dodge the first shot, your charge goes through allowing the Enforcer to win the 1v1 against the shadow mage without taking any damage.
(9) Pure Fire vs Pure Frost (-)
Even though this matchup is listed as the most difficult one for a reason, the level of pure Frost’s dominance is greatly overestimated in this matchup. Pure Fire has a very clear win condition in T3 and by making good use of tempo and defender’s advantage in T2 it is possible to reach this stage uncontested more often than you might think. If you carry Global Warming in your deck, your chances are even better. Overall it is important to play very defensively in T2 and avoid playing units that do not help you contest air control. Try to use Skyfire Drake against War Eagle and Gladiatrix against Skyelf Templar. Everything else is micro dependent. Your units are weaker in direct combat, but more mobile and you have more tools to retreat and reinforce around your own structures. After acquiring multiple units, always try to split your Skyfire Drakes against crowd control. Eruption can be used to add some extra burst, but don’t get baited into an Area Ice Shield. Try to keep as much distance from your opponent as possible as pure Frost is significantly weaker on open fields. Do not take any close wells and do not take risks like taking more power wells after winning a small trade. This will mitigate the pressure across this critical game stage. If you manage to outtrade your opponent heavily it’s better to counterattack and apply pressure by adding a Firedancer to your units mix. She can keep her distance from War Eagles and is easily protected by your army unlike the other melee units in your T2. If the Frost player starts switching to heavy ground unit support, you can always add a Rallying Banner later and run them down with Enforcers. If you trade well enough, you might get a shot of beating your opponent at late T2 or simply enable a T3 transition, where Juggernaut can take over. Considering you often want to take T3 before your opponent, Backlash can be extremely helpful whenever the Frost player decides to play extended T2 vs T3.
[ PURE NATURE ]
1. Deck description
Pure Nature might be the most skill expressive faction in the game as it has an endless amount of tools you can make use for micro and macro oriented playstyles. The deck has very strong crowd control and trading tools. With Energy Parasite there is a unique mechanic of generating resource advantages without setting up siege attacks in the first place. This leads to a fairly unique playstyle none of the other factions can offer. On the downside you lack defensive capabilities since nature does have limited access to defend its power wells, especially from a power deficit. High tempo attacks will always end up problematic. In T3 you have decent scaling since Parasite Swarm scales super well into the higher tech stage. Creative deck building can also be rewarded. With various tools like Mumbo Jumbo, Tunnel, Rootnetwork or even Enlightenment you can quickly adjust the deck to your personal playstyle and surprise opponents.
2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Pure Nature vs Fire Frost (↑)
This matchup is solid for you. Pure Nature is a soft counter to Fire Frost, since it's able to trade well into its units during the early stage of the game and in addition to that Parasite Swarm is a huge threat for the buffed 100+ power cost units. Fire Frost needs to establish good trades by using Stormsinger and Icefang Raptor (which got better after it received a mobility buff), which is something you can shut down especially after Ghostspears received stat buffs. Energy Parasite can always cause some trouble even though you probably won't get to use the ability too often against Skyfire Drakes, but you can slow down the tempo to safely scale up to the later game stage where Deep Ones are available, which guarantees successful trades. With Parasite against unsupported Skyfiredrakes there is more room to play out the game from ahead. In T3 you can close games fairly well even against Timeless One defense as pure nature has access to strong game finishing tools.
Skill matchups:
(2) Pure Nature vs Amii (↑)
Pure Nature gained a lot of power in this particular matchup. Nightguard dropped down in priority and as she used to shut down Deep One entirely, this is a blessing for pure Nature. With increased cost and Parasite as a strong tool to target her, you can overcome the strong early phase of the Shadow Nature deck and outscale comfortably. You need to respect the strong Amii tempo play on low energy count (Motivated Burrowers, Darkelf Assassins/Amii Phantom + CC), but with Energy Parasites pressure and even stronger crowd control tools you can stabilize more often than not. Creeping Paralysis will buy enough time to keep your Spirit Hunters safe and establish Deep Ones on the board. With more energy income nature will win out on trading and reach a position for a strong counter attack. Attacking on low unit counts is not advised as Tranquility is extremely powerful on low energy levels. On T3 the decks are rather evenly matched with a slight edge to Amii, but this also depends on deck building. That said this matchup usually ends beforehand, because both decks are good at applying pressure and none of them is built to ensure late game scaling.
(3) Pure Nature vs pure Shadow (↑)
After recent changes Parasite Swarm reduced Harvester pressure, making Rogan Kayle less mandatory for this single matchup (full duration oink -> rogan kayle ability -> full duration oink still works though). This opens up more freedom in your slot distribution and you can build the deck more towards your preferred choices. The shadow matchup doesn’t change dramatically as a result, but you will get more consistent results against other decks. For Shadow in particular Deep Ones are still solid, but with buffs to Knight of Chaos and nerfs to Nightguard it is less snowbally. Energy Parasite needs to be used carefully since Shadow Mage can one shot them, but on the other hand you can force mage spawns far away from map relevant positions and abuse the fact that they are much slower than your Energy Parasites. Your trading tools are solid and Creeping Paralysis can be very strong against the slow Shadow Mages. Root + Parasite can be useful against unitstacking. But you need to outmaneuver the Shadow player at some point in T2, because Voidstorm scaling is really powerful. T3 definitely goes in favor of pure Shadow and puts you on a timer. You could play a T3 with Abyssal Warder here as a niche soft counter to Voidstorm, but he would be less effective in other matchups.
(4) Pure Nature vs Lost Souls (-)
Pure Nature does pretty well against Shadow Frost in T2. If you don't lose tempo during the T1 the odds should be in your favor generally speaking. Energy Parasites can generate a huge amount of pressure and if you micro them very well you are in full control of the game pace. Ghost Spears & Spirit Hunters beat the core trading units in Souls, but make sure you don’t get picked off by Frostbite. After acquiring a power lead you can use Deep One & Burrowers to attack the enemies economy. Nightguard is no problem anymore since her costs have been increased and the recently buffed Parasite can remove her reliably. Try to split up your army and attack multiple areas to play around Aura of Corruption. Surge of Light is your main tool to keep up pressure for an extended time and will give you a change to overload building protections. It is very powerful, but keep in mind you immediately run out of steam once Surge of Light charges are gone. There are different gameplay options in T3, but against Lost Souls building around Mutating Maniac and Nightshade Plant can really help. Without an appropriate XL counter Lost Grigori might cause you trouble.
(5) Pure Nature vs Pure Frost (↓)
The dynamic between pure Nature and pure Frost has changed to some extent. War Eagle dependency in T2 is much lower nowadays, because Frost received more tools to trade. This reduced Parasite Swarm’s hard counter function within pure Nature. Unpunished Frost Mage spam can be hard to deflect in the early game even though T2 + Creeping Paralysis is offering a newly buffed tool here. You need to neutralize this strategy by playing a very aggressive early game with your Swift unit, which is snowballed by a Shaman spam. The constant free healing will be a major threat as frost lacks burst early on. Use your mobility advantage to confine the enemy in his base. To contest Shaman healing other units than Frost Mage will be required, allowing you to delay the critical Frost Mage stacking as long as you keep up the pressure. In an ideal scenario your opponent over invests into mages and loses the game right here. But keep in mind that stacking T1 M units in this matchup might be heavily punished if your opponent finds an opportunity to take T2 and clear your army with War Eagles. In T2 you have to make use of Energy Parasites to force Stormsinger spawns far away from any potential fighting area. Frost is much better at trading around its own structures with various counters to everything your T2 has to offer (White Rangers, Mountain Rowdy, Stormsinger, Lightblade etc.). Use the terrain to get a mobility advantage and also sync up your Energy Parasite movements with the rest of your army. This forces a choice where your enemy either trades with less energy or allows the Energy Parasite to use its super powerful ability. Ideally your opponent gets mentally overstrained and messes up on both ends. Against War Eagle Parasite Swarm still works very well. Try to hover around cliffs as flying units will be immune to any sorts of Gravity Surge at those areas. Deep One spam is weaker than before, but still very potent. in T3 you can use Nightshade Plant to break through Timeless One defense, making high energy games less concerning especially considering the extra value Parasite Swarm generates against T3. Just keep in mind that you are not allowed to waste too many healing charges early on as your T3 heavily depends on Surge of Light.
(6) Pure Nature vs Bandits (↑↑)
While listed as the worst matchup previously, the T2 interactions changed drastically. Deep One is not a beast anymore giving nature a much more reliable counter to Bandit Stalkers. Ghostspears and Spirit Hunters have been fairly vulnerable to Bandit Minefield in the past, but Deep One can easily move out of the radius and pull one of his enemies away from your wells negating the zoning effect entirely. Energy Parasites can apply constant pressure, especially if you prevent your enemy from getting the map center, to slow down Bandit Sniper. If you make good use of nature's skill-expressive tools you should be slightly favored in T2, because Creeping Paralysis & Hurricane are an excellent way to shut down Rallying Banner + Darkelf Assassins. Strong AoE damage tools like Thunderstorm or Mutating Maniac can stop heavy Bandit Lancer/Cultist Master spam. If your deck can handle the pressure from Soulhunter, you are set up to win. While nature favored on perfect execution, Bandits late T2 pressure can still be extremely difficult to deal with and always needs to be respected.
(7) Pure Nature vs Pure Fire (↑)
While still challenging, pure Fire can be dealt with nowadays. Parasite is a new tool in your kit to attack Skyfire Drake spam at power limit and Creeping Paralysis can be used frequently to catch Firedancers and Enforcers off guard. You need to focus on trading well through the early game, because you are not allowed to fall behind ever. Fire can take down your wells very quickly, but as long as you get to diminish the pressure from Fire’s strong Air control you will be able to scale. Deep One + Spirit Hunters is a very strong trading combo, because Deep One can draw a lot of attention, enabling Spirit Hunters poisoning all the counter units constantly. Don’t tunnel on power wells, because the damage from Burning Spears & Wildfire can’t be ignored. Try healing up your Deep One right before it drops below 300 hp unless you know your enemy already reached his power limit. You might bait greedy enemies into wasting an Eruption. Don’t spam too many units at one area to avoid Lavafield value and use excess energy for spell support, split attacks or Energy Parasite distraction. Another option of winning this matchup would be a successful Parasite Swarm swap. You can’t rely on it, but getting an unbound Skyfire Drake is close to game over. In T3 Fathom Lords can be really solid trading tools, but they can not outpace Juggernaut so do avoid T3 if possible. You can make use of another trick here though and add Mumbo Jumbo to your deck. Juggernaut often walks alone and the spell can take his ground presence away, making it impossible to disenchant any cc spells.
(8) Pure Nature vs Stonekin (↑)
Stonekin slowly outscales pure Nature during t2 as Stormsinger stacking is more effective compared to other Frost splash matchups since Stonekin has the nature cc sources to support them against Ghostspears, Spirit Hunters or Deep One. With Crystal Fiend support this used to be unbeatable, but you can potentially remove the unit with Parasite nowadays. Burrower spam also is less of a problem unless you are behind considering Creeping Paralysis can buy time with its long cc duration. Even if it’s dodged the spell can force Burrowers to move away from power wells making them susceptible to Ensnaring Roots. But as you won’t win through normal unit trading it all comes down to Energy parasite micro to generate power leads. Deep One pressure, Parasite Swarm swaps, cc chains etc. can work, but only if you get ahead. In T3 Mutating Maniac can be a game changer as the poison cloud is a lot cheaper than before, which allows you to counter heavy unit stacking more efficiently. Overall the matchup is still stonekin favored, but only to a lesser extent.
Difficult matchups:
(9) Pure Nature vs Fire Nature (↓)
This matchup got more difficult than before. Deep One lost some of its hp as a compensation for the buffs Nature received across the board and Fire Nature benefits the most from that power shift as the faction has solid counterplay to Pure Nature's newly buffed tools. Burrower/Twilight Crawler + Skyfire is the most mobile set up to create pressure on the map and Creeping Paralysis gets outmaneuvered. Parasite can be helpful against Skyfire Drake, but with Disenchant you can’t guarantee a removal, because unlike in the pure Fire matchup Fire Nature usually saves up power for spells instead of investing everything into the initial unit set up. Slaver can stop Deep One in its tracks and has dangerous burst potential with the 450 damage passive that can be triggered any time. Again, Mumbo Jumbo is a potential gamesaver. As Fire Nature often doesn’t invest too much power into units during an attack you often face 1x Burrower + 1x Skyfire attacks. This can be countered by Parasite Swarm + Mumbo Jumbo on the Burrower denying ground presence for a Hurricane. Your opponent has to sacrifice the Skyfire or even allow the swap, which would be a game changing trade with how powerful unbound units are. T3 is extremely risky, because Fire Nature has more flexible options in terms of summoning the Nightshade Plant.
[ SHADOW NATURE / AMII ]
1. Deck description
Shadow Nature is my personal favourite deck. It rewards proactive and aggressive gameplay during the early game and it's playstyle is really fast paced. You've got no L-unit to rely on in offense, neither do you have any building protects or high defensive capabilities. Your strength lies within strong split attacks and aggressive open field skirmishing by combining the powerful shadow splash units with the cheap nature crowd control. At later T2 stages the deck doesn't offer as much as most decks, but you can still rely on a very solid T3 to close out your games once you managed to get ahead.
Alternative deck
2. Matchup discussion
[Reminder: Amii Paladins just got released, so some of these matchup impressions might change a little bit based on how well the unit performs - I will update the overview during the process]
Favorable matchups
(1) Amii vs Lost Souls (-)
Amii has been known as a specific counter for Lost Souls for a long time and this functionality has not changed. Whereas both factions have almost the same set of core units, Amii has much more effective crowd control. This leads to distinctive advantages in trades. Your early T2 is clearly superior and you can set up constant pressure to a point where your opponent gets overwhelmed. The best way to snowball an advantage would be to activate frenzy on multiple Nightcrawlers at different bases and overload building protects with a well timed Motivate. Ideally you look for a timing where Coldsnap is on cooldown. In mid T2 Shadow Phoenix can also be a very powerful finisher against well clusters that synergizes extremely well with the cheap nature cc to secure strong dives. Lost Reaver + Live Weaving is the most powerful tool for counter attacking you need to respect, make sure to cycle through Nature cc and Tranquility to keep him busy. Darkelf Assassins and Amii Phantom can be used to kite and deal significant damage, even without a direct L counter. Even though the matchup is Amii favored, the main downside is the high micro requirement for execution pressure all the time. The Souls player has the luxury of scaling, he can play defensively fishing for a good Nasty, Aura etc. in order to scale up to T3. At this stage Amii ends up losing so you need to be proactive and put your units into much more dangerous territory. But if you practice this matchup enough and constantly force these beneficial T2 unit trades, you can toss any Lost Souls player around like a puppet.
Skill matchups
(2) Amii vs Pure Shadow (↑)
Pure Shadow is easier to play against nowadays. As Tranquility allows you to kite Harvesters into infinity you don’t really sit on an early timer to get something done. Shadowmage might deflect your early attacks effectively, but as long as you play on an open field and use your cc well, you should be fine. Shadow Phoenix provides a great AoE damage tool against low pure Shadow units and Ensnaring Roots can counter Netherwarp dodge attempts. Amii Phantom is very strong in this matchup too as she leverages tempo lead very well. Against Harvester you need to play chain cc. Do not play Aura of Corruption carelessly as buffs or Skeleton Summons might counter this. From a leading position an Amii Phantom spam is able to stop a Shadowmagespam since you can use an oink to set up an engagement. With their melee mode they can disable ranged attacks, which allows them to win a duel against both Shadowmage or a squad of Darkelf Assassins. Nightcrawlers are a big threat, but for that you can switch some of your units into ranged mode and kite well due to the slow effect. Amii Paladins can be useful to trade into M oriented compositions as well, while also granting the setup for a strong nasty surprise. But at some point you need to make your move as T3 is difficult to play. Voidstorm/Aura of Corruption/Netherwarp are way too good at shutting down any aggression Shadow Nature has to offer in the late game.
(3) Amii vs Fire Frost (-)
Fire Frost is another faction you need to beat down in the early game. Fortunately Amii has the tools to do so, but you need to make sure you don’t mess up. One massive Freeze or Lavafield might shut down early aggression which is something you want to avoid. Fire Frost is rather weak against S units. Therefore, you want to rely on Darkelf Assassins and Amii Paladins to get ahead. Icefang Raptor always needs to be respected and Amii Phantom can help kiting the unit. Amii has a pretty clear advantage in the early T2 stage. Nightguard is still an option in this matchup to deal with expensive shielded units despite the nerfs. Fire Frost usually needs a lot of time and resources to set up their unit mix, which grants your Nightguard enough safety. If the game goes to a higher void level you need to solidify a strong power lead as Lavafield can be used more frequently and you do not have the tools to match that outside of micro intensive split attacks. Your units don't have a very large hp pool which makes them vulnerable. Fortunately you can still close out games by reaching T3 as Cultist Master + CC is absurdly strong when ahead, but you should never underestimate the potential scaling options of a frost splash deck.
(4) Amii vs Pure Frost (↓)
Pure Frost used to be a very easy matchup for Amii considering Nightguard + cc used to shut down any attempt of pure Frost staying in this game. But as Nightguard got a tremendous nerf and Mountain Rowdy ends up being extremely good against ground unit stacking the matchup dynamic changed. Tranquility is a worthy replacement and the new card can help you with low energy skirmishing, but Frost will try to stall out the early T2. With the ability to scale by defending around their own base, this sets up Frost to win in this matchup. You need to break this set up, because even though you can prevent War Eagle pushes with Aura of Corruption, Frost's late T2 scaling is clearly superior. You need to make use of your cc tools, stack Darkelf Assassins and build up leads through high pace gameplay. Use Amii Paladins to circumvent Area Ice Shield with their reflection ability if necessary. A small trick that can turn the tides in this matchup is the green Dryad. Her passive negates the unholy trance downside from Darkelf Assassins and allows them to attack for 20 seconds. On top of that the aura can block poison/DoT effects, which is extremely powerful against Mountain Rowdy and might surprise even a very experienced opponent. If you play high paced in T2, you will most likely stay ahead on the power curve and even though your scaling might be inferior, T3 can be a very powerful weapon to close out leads as Ashbone + cc and Cultist Master split attacks can be overwhelming, even against a powerful Frost defense.
(5) Amii vs Stonekin (-)
Against a player, who it not familiar with this matchup, you can probably just win this matchup by disabling some of the expensive stonekin ranged units like Stonetempest or Aggressor with Amii Phantom. She can disable half of the units and match Stormsinger equally in ranged battles. Supported with Dark Elf Assassins and crowd control you often get to overwhelm your opponent and snowball out of control. Make sure to split your Darkelfs against Hurricane (Triangle Formation) and chase down any ranged unit with one Amii Phantom. Throwing in Burrowers or Frenzied Nightcrawlers to increase pressure onto buildings is a valid strategy, but make sure to get rid of Stone Shards quickly. Against well clusters Phoenix can help to overload building protects, especially if you manage to secure a revival. T3 can be used to finish off persistent opponents as split Cultist Master or any supported XL unit can overload Stonekin T2 defense. But be careful with focussing too much on T3, because Stonekin might also play for that dependent on slot distribution. A 4 card stonekin T3 will beat your setup most likely.
(6) Amii vs Pure Nature (↓)
With pure Nature’s additional tools to punish early aggression and functional counterplay against Nightguard through Parasite, Amii is at a slight disadvantage in this particular matchup now. That said, your early trades are still powerful and especially with tranquility you can shut down the high cost trading units by surprise. The spell is very versatile and can be useful against nature across the entire game. As your trading tools are heavily outmatched by Deep One + gifted catch at higher energy levels, you need to get ahead. Burrowers can be great tools to apply pressure and outmaneuver the nature defense and leverage leads, but one misstep and a Creeping Paralysis might put an end to your push. In T3 your best chance is winning through a buffed XL unit as Cultist Master usually ends up being unable to overload the nature cc sources.
Difficult matchups:
(7) Amii vs Bandits (↑)
With the introduction of Mine Field it became difficult to utilize the Darkelf Assassin spam in order to break through the enemy's base. With Bandit Stalker being a strong counter to both Nightcrawler and Burrower this matchup get really tough. Fortunately it is not as oppressive as before, because both of these troublesome cards received nerfs. Amii Paladins can be an interesting choice as they trade well into Bandit Stalkers and even reflect Bandit Minefield damage with their ability. They might grant your Darkelf Asssassins a lot more breathing room to trade well as Amii will clearly come out on top whenever Minefield is on cooldown. Always try to split accordingly and make use of your cc advantage in order to build leads by winning trades over and over. If you outmaneuver a Bandits player once this quickly results in a destroyed powerwell as the faction neither has crowd control nor building protects. You need to avoid high void level games at all cost as Bandits is another faction that can make good use of Lavafield to outscale you. Determine the pace of the game by trading a lot. As Bandits usually tends to stack a lot of units around a Rallying Banner, it might be a great opportunity to set up a powerful phoenix + cc combo to relieve a lot of pressure.
(8) Shadow Nature vs Twilight (↓)
Twilight does have a certain advantage in this matchup as the efficiency of Skyfire Drake & Twilight Crawlers increases tremendously due to the strong synergy with nature support spells.This strictly limits the trading advantages you have. Your best way of applying pressure is to play on a low power level. Most Twilight units are expensive and the faction is reliant on melee units. This makes Nightcrawler and Darkelf Assassins really strong in skirmishes with very limited power. In order to achieve this you want to play hyper-aggressively right from the start. Constantly look for trades, punish extra well attempts, offer base trades and don’t wait too long before taking T2. This is your best shot at winning this particular matchup, but if you don't get a substantial advantage before Lavafield spamming is an option, you will most likely lose. Burrower + Skyfire attacks are really hard to defend at some point and once multiple Vilebloods enter the field, the lack of an L counter will be noticeable. Therefore, Twilight has an easier time playing this matchup once there is a reasonable amount of power available. On T3 things will turn into your favor again as you can delay and remove Nightshade Plants fairly consistently, but you won’t reach that stage so easily when playing this matchup.
(9) Shadow Nature vs Pure Fire (↑)
This matchup used to be one of the most one sided and brutal ones in the entire game. Pure Fire remains as the most difficult matchup, but it is less oppressive than before. Amii Paladins can be a really useful tool since it’s the only unit that does not get totally outmatched by Enforcer. They are a much more suitable M counter, that matches the raw trading power and dps pure Fire has to offer. With a well timed ability a Wildfire can be even utilized to burn down the Fire player instead. But Amii Paladins are prone to kiting especially since their powerful ability does have a long cooldown. If you lose tempo at any given point, pure Fire can always use this to immediately deal damage to your economy by taking out 1 or even 2 power wells with Firedancers. Without access to air units or a high damage nasty surprise it gets rather tough to deal with the Rallying Banner siege set ups. All of your other units are very susceptible to Enforcer + Wildfire combos, your cc is weaker against the ability to resummon undazed units at any time. Wildfire might also prevent powerwells from getting repaired. With the strong aoe damage tools to block almost any counter attack, it gets really difficult to stay relevant at higher energy levels. If you manage to survive and reach T3 though, Brannoc + Heal + Lifeweaving can outmatch a Juggernaut in a duel. As the new Amii spell Tranquility can disable a Juggernaut more effectively, the fire player needs to decide whether he wants to get rid of the effect or removes the Life Weaving from your XL unit. Either way you will come out on top.
[ FIRE NATURE / TWILIGHT ]
1. Deck description
Fire Nature is probably known as one of the most solid decks, because it has pretty much tools for everything. You have a solid counter for all unit types and sizes, instant damage spells to remove spam based attacks, crowd control to ensure good trades, strong siege units to launch attacks and control at both ground and air department. The big variety within its T2 is Fire Natures biggest strength and makes it one of the most well rounded decks overall. That said, Fire Nature might struggle at other Tech levels due to slot issues. In order to play towards its T2 strengths most players prefer cutting slots in T1 or T3 which might hurt the deck.
Alternative deck
2. Matchup discussion
Favorable matchups:
(1) Twilight vs Pure Shadow (-)
You come out on top in the various unit trading patterns. Twilight Minions, Crawlers and Skyfire Drake combined with the damage and crowd control spells tend to win all kinds of skirmishes on open ground. Pure Shadow tends to struggle against that, especially in the mid T2 stage, because all of its low cost units are vulnerable to Lavafield, especially Shadowmage. You need to be aware of flanking units to prevent a nasty surprise against your Skyfire Drake. Your defense against Harvester is also pretty nice due to the highly efficient Root & Disenchant combo. Just leave some Skyfiredrakes and a Gladiatrix behind that and they will take the Harvester down before he reaches your power well/orb. To stay relevant during mid and late T2 you can add Vileblood into your deck to increase the amount of pressure you can apply to the power wells. While this matchup is listed as one of the easy ones, keep in mind that at a really high level of play the matchup starts turning around, because Netherwarp really has an unparalleled amount of playmaking potential.
(2) Twilight vs Pure Nature (↑)
Your early T2 is superior due to the lack of an M/M counter in the pure Nature deck. This is something you can use to dictate the pace of the game right from the start with Burrower pressure. All you need to take care off are Energy Parasites. Defending them during the early game is your top priority, because it probably is the only way you might fall behind outside of losing in T1. Air Control usually pays off, because Skyfire Drake trades well into most units, but be careful with the newly buffed Parasite spell. With the use of crowd control you can easily prevent Parasite Swarms from controlling your units. With Burrowers and Skyfire Drake you can set up high tempo attacks, avoid high value cc spells and easily take down power wells whenever you have a little bit of tempo. Slaver is great tool against melee L-units, which deflects any attempts of Deep One pressure until mid T2. As long as you defend Energy Parasites and don't play too slow in matchup, you should be set up to win.
(3) Twilight vs Amii (↑)
In this matchup your defensive capabilities are straight up better, which leaves you in a very comfortable position. You have good ways to counter Nightcrawlers, Dark Elf Assassins & Burrowers around your own base and in case your opponent over commits at some point you can launch insanely powerful counterattacks, that are way harder to defend in return. Fire Nature is just a little bit more well rounded in T2 and can attack Amiis weakness of being built around small and medium ground units exclusively, which increases the efficiency of Lava Field over time. Amii Paladins need to be respected here and might be a setup for some strong damage combos, but apart from that you can keep them in check with Hurricane. Vileblood is an extremely effective tool on higher power levels, because besides Tranquility there is nothing that can keep melee L units in check. T3 is all about tempo as both set ups are fast paced, but not that strong in defense. Nightshade Plant can always turn games by surprise if it’s used in a creative way, but it usually is more wisely to look for a late T2 victory.
Skill matchups:
(4) Twilight vs Fire Frost (-)
A very interesting matchup. The early game is about Twilight Minions vs Icefang Raptor. Your support is slightly better, giving you an early advantage in this matchup. To some extent the matchup feels similar to the pure Fire one play style wise. Twilight Minions + Skyfire Drake can be used to trade very efficiently early, but at the later stages of the game you might start to struggle due to the value of Frost Sorceress in multi-unit compositions. Shielded Skyfire Drakes are hard to remove and Twilight Curse might be a consideration to surprise the enemy by disrupting his unit composition. The shielded drake usually guards more vulnerable units like the Frost Sorceress or Warlock and an unexpected removal might expose the remaining army. Either way you want to keep up the pressure and try to attack the enemies units constantly before the Frost Sorceress ends up generating too much value. Nightshade Plant can be an excellent game finisher, but on the long run Fire Frost will come out on top in high energy late game battles.
(5) Twilight vs Pure Frost (↑)
Twilight Crawlers make a major difference in this matchup. On large maps they outmaneuver War Eagles due to mobility and they easily contest White Rangers to create more space for your Skyfire Drakes. As pure Frost plays a very slow game, Breeding Grounds has to be mentioned in this particular matchup. The card is overpowered anyways and I usually don’t want to promote such things, but the mechanic is so good against low mobility scaling T2s. Otherwise pure Frost will be able to secure air control in late T2 and establish a strong set up.You want to utilize your crowd control advantage at the early T2 stage to gather a better position on the map and ideally a certain energy lead. If your opponent is too greedy and goes aggressive too early, you can outtrade with Skyfire + Minions/Crawlers + Oink. If Twilight Minions get matched by White Rangers or Ice Fang Raptor consider transforming them into a vileblood to outmatch the counter system and also put a powerful damage buff on your unit. If you keep up a high pace, pure Frost will be unable to stabilize. Otherwise Skyelf-Templar and White Rangers get to contest Air Control at some point and with War Eagles added, counteraggression starts to be a possibility. T3 is something you want to use to close out games, but shouldn’t be considered without any lead. Nightshade Plant is literally built to close out games quickly, because the Transformation spawn will allow you to play nasty mind games whenever you have a tempo lead. But if this early aggression can be stopped, Coldsnap, Lightblade and Building Protects might be problematic. Thunderstorm can be extremely good in this matchup as Frost often stacks up big armies. Especially a large T2 push against a seemingly greedy T3 can be shut down by a Thunderstorm potentially turning the tides in this matchup.
(6) Twilight vs Pure Fire (-)
Twilight shines during the early T2 stage with Twilight Minions + Sykfiredrake, while Pure Fire will outscale in late T2, where Scythefiends + Ravage + Wildfire take over. Since Pure Fire scales with high void power you should actually try to play your T1 accordingly to avoid this. Playing a short, but aggressive T1 is highly beneficial. Try to get a small advantage, but then don't hesitate and make your fast transition into T2, ideally on 3-4 wells. Also look out for a timing where your enemy binds too much energy into Thugs, because this unit scales poorly into T2 in particular. With a small tempo lead in T1 you can consistently snowball and finish the game. If you still struggle in this matchup consider the addition of Vileblood in your deck, because pure Fire struggles against L units, especially the ones with high dps against buildings. Burning spears need to be respected and either need to be focussed or cc’d. Twilight Brute can be a strong addition as their trading pattern against Scythe Fiends is very strong which reduces the amount of counter pressure on the long run. Avoid T3 unless you are far ahead, Juggernaut can be scary.
(7) Twilight vs Lost Souls (-)
I think this is one of the most intense matchups in the game. You have the upper hand in later stages of T2 due to the efficiency of Burrower + Skyfire Drakes during attacks, but once the game reaches T3 Shadow Frost can turn the tides and straight up outscale you with its Timeless One T3 based set up. This really puts a very high emphasis on the early stage of the game, because a small lead can determine whether the Shadow Frost player is able to hit T3 safely or not. Utilizing your crowd control to win open field trades is very important. When attacking, always consider positioning your units in a way so Coldsnap or Nasty Surprise don’t hit your entire army. Once you reach the high void T2 stage, lots of counter unit setups can be cleared with double Lava Field, because Shadow Frost doesn’t have access to air units. This can be a very efficient way to convert your high power income into pressure at later stages of the game. Shadow Frost probably does have the easier win condition, but once your micro is on point and you get to generate early tempo leads consistently you will be able to produce very good results in this particular matchup.
(8) Twilight vs Bandits (↓)
After Bandits received changes, this particular matchup was not rated correctly. As your T2 is built around melee units you need to play around Bandit Minefields cooldowns to get something done. Especially before the Bandits nerfs this was extremely opressive combined with Bandit Stalker shutting down beast units entirely. You either had to go for split attacks or try to bait the minefield and launch a strong attack immediately afterwards while facing strong counter units. Bandit Stalker are weaker than before, but still do shut down both Twilight Crawlers and Burrowers effectively and without tempo you can't really use them well during attacks. With Darkelf Assassins being a constant threat to any of your units, you rely on good crowd control usage in order to protect your weaker trading units from running into their counters. Twilight Curse can be useful to shut down Windhunters by surprise to regain air control. It’s most effective right after the enemy buffed the Dragon as this buff would be negated through the forced Transformation. At T3 Mutating Maniac is amazing and the sole reason this matchup is listed in the even category. The unit is amazing against Bandits, because it hard counters Bandits Lancers. The 1vs1 is a stat efficient trade and once multiple ones get used, poison cloud + root straight up annihilates them. With a spammable XL counter for normal trading this directly lowers the impact Soulhunter has, granting a clear win condition.
Difficult matchups:
(9) Twilight vs Stonekin (-)
Stonekin can be extremely uncomfortable to play against as there is little to no room to attack it. Stormsinger + Spirithunter + nature cc is such a brutal combo, that easily wins trades in almost any situation. Stonekin has very powerful tools to convert early leads into victory from constant pressure to building up armies around a Breeding Grounds for infinite value. Crystal Fiends are also quite scary and always need to be removed by Skyfire Drake + Oink/Eruption. Otherwise it will just generate too much free value by applying healing auras over and over. With Burrowers around the corner your power wells are always in danger whenever you lose a trade. To strike back you usually rely on a mistake by your opponent. Fortunately your snowball tools are fairly strong whenever that happens. A well executed Burrower spam usually is your best option and really benefits from a power lead. Stonekin has no strong burst tools and investing power into building protects and cc will leave them with really low dps options, allowing you to keep up the pressure for a very long time. Another way of attacking with a power lead would be the Vileblood + Ravage set up on low energy level, because you should be able to make sure Aggressor can’t be played (or even try to bait the aggressor and cheese it with Mauler). You will get opportunities to gain full control of this matchup, but if your enemy really knows what he’s doing, the stonekin matchup is completely doomed in T2.
[ PURE SHADOW ]
1. Deck description
Pure Shadow is one of the more unique decks, because it has its own powerful faction carriers with Shadowmage & Harvester in T2. This gives pure Shadow big powerspikes, that can then be utilized to create leads across many situations. You lack hard-cc in this deck, but you have the highest dps/power unit & the only XL unit in the entire T2 as a trade off. While easy to learn, Pure Shadow scales extremely well with execution level and mastering it at the highest level can be extremely challenging. Shadow is a deck with a lot of playmaking potential, as most of your spells and abilities can be combined with Nether Warp in some way. One of the main weaknesses is the T2 charge limitation, since Shadow Mage got only 12 of them. In T3 you have multiple powerful options, which depend on the element of your T3 orb. Staying pure shadow gives you access to Voidstorm, a global removal tool. Satanael has also been buffed to a very powerful state for more offensive set ups. However, splashing towards Frost in T3 can set up things like Lost Grigori taunt + Nether Warp combos, which can be deadly as well.
2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups
(1) Pure Shadow vs Pure Fire (↑)
Not too much changed about the matchup dynamic, but we rated this into the easier range considering it is easier to execute from the pure Shadow side. As already mentioned in the Pure Fire section, this matchup is all about timings. As long as you play for a Harvester spike attack there is not a lot of counterplay left for your opponent even with the addition of Burning Spears. The can not be ignored easily, but with some support spells like Nether Warp and Life Weaving is will be really difficult for your opponent to remove him without losing at least one power well. In order to reach this particular power spike Shadow Mages and Darkelf Assassins will be able to buy time in the early T2. Let your opponent come to you and invest the extra energy for a Rallying Banner, then try to warp mispositioned units into your base. This makes it much easier to keep a good unit split and avoid getting targeted by a strong lava field. Another option to take out pressure is an extended trade around the Rallying Banner finished by a well timed Corpse Explosion. If you get ahead you do not want to well up, but wait for your Harvester. Pure Shadow might be winning at T3, but in late T2 you do not stand a chance against Enforcers supported with Lavafield and Wildfire. You want to get ahead substantially before this stage hits. Using leads to set up a Harvester attack is the best way to achieve that. If that isn’t enough to win the game, try to stabilize and play for the next Harvester. If you run out on Harvester charges before the game is over (unlikely), you can still fall back to a very strong T3 as Voidstorm harcounters Juggernaut & even Netherwarp could straight up cancel a Stampede. While this matchup is still winnable on both ends, it is now listed as an easy matchup for pure Shadow as a straightforward Harvester attack is much more forgiving and easier to execute.
Skill matchups
(2) Pure Shadow vs Fire Frost (-)
Fire Frost shouldn't be the biggest threat to you. Shield Drakes and Icefang Raptors are not too hard to play against and as long as you respect the potential of a well placed Lavafield, Fire Frost shouldn't really give you too much trouble. Harvester can be really effective, but this depends on deck building and requires your opponent to play without Lightblade. However, most of the time you will face combinations around Stormsinger, Gladiatrix & Skyfire Drake and with any tempo lead your Harvester won't be stopped anyways. Coldsnap can be countered as it has a cast animation, which is long enough time to dodge it with a Nether Warp. This can be great in trades or simply get a Harvester in a position to destroy powerwells and orbs with the enemys cc being put on cooldown. But in many games you will end up in a T3 position, where you can utilize Cultist Master for pressure and combine the dead Nightcrawlers with either Shadow Insect for strong follow up trades or Corpse Explosion to blow up the economy buildings, even against buildings protects. Always try to attack well clusters and make good use of you high AoE burst. Voidstorm can negate any counter pressure, which lowers the risk of high energy investments during your attacks even when they don't succeed immediately.
(3) Pure Shadow vs Bandits (-)
Pure Shadow has clear counterplay to Bandit Minefield, which immediately reduces the pressure in this particular matchup. Whenever the spell is played you just warp away from any danger. As a result it is important to not waste Netherwarp and use this spell reactively. Most of the time you will be trade into a mix of Bandit Spearmen, Darkelf Assassins and Windhunters. Removing the air units from Bandits is a tough task and you always want to look for opportunities to either attack them with motivated Shadow mages, Nightcrawler + Nasty surprise or straight up remove them with Aura of Corruption whenever they get double or even triple buffed. Knight of Chaos (b) can always buy time against heavy Rallying Banner attacks and Corpse Explosion or Shadow Phoenix can annihilate stacked ground units effectively after any extended combat. If you defend successfully, power level will rise and Harvester or T3 become an option. While it can be tought to get something done with Harvester from an even position, because Windhunter ability and Bandit Minefield are fairly powerful tools to keep him away from wells, the card is excellent whenever you have some tempo. Bandits neither has hard cc nor can protect its buildings in any way, which is ideal for your Harvester. T3 is another reliable win condition for you as Bandit Lancers are not that impressive against Cultist Masters and Voidstorm is a hard counter for Soulhunter. If you even play something like Satanael, you will be unstoppable at this stage of the game.
(4) Pure Shadow vs Amii (↓)
The release of Tranquility gave Harvester a hard time in this matchup. As the unit can be cc'd permanentely, you need to be a little bit more creative in order to win this matchup. Shadowmage functions decently well as an all round counter, but her usage is limited by her charges. Avoid giving away too much tempo, Amii Phantom spam can be a serious threat. The unit might be more expensive than your ranged ones, but she can heavily outduel them due to the antimagic melee form, which snowballs whenever the amii player gets a significant lead. Split your units against nature cc and play for high energy skirmishes. Once more units get involved into trades, there will be more opportunities for you to make use of Corpse Explosion. More targets to hit and higher corpse counts are highly beneficial here. On the other hand you need to respect Shadow Phoenix + cc combos for the same reason. This matchup will mostly come down to some sort of outplay, may it be strategic or mechanical, as these factions are matched rather equally now. Shadow might have the upper hand at T3 due to more slots and voidstorm, but Amii's cc and healing spells scale well enough into later tech stages and definitely shouldn't be understimated.
(5) Pure Shadow vs Lost Souls (-)
Lost Souls can be difficult to play against. Darkelf Assassins & Stormsinger with Frostbite support are hard to deal with, even when using Shadowmages. Both factions like to work with higher power levels and as both factions tend to play on a lot of wells for that reason, Harvester will be usable frequently. Sometimes you even get to set up a double Harvester attack, which overloads building protects in seconds. Since you can dodge Coldsnap with Nether Warp there is absolutely no time left for the Souls player to recover unless Lightblade is available. After Nightguard got nerfed this is not the most unlikely and might have made this strategy a little bit more difficult for you. Fortunately Knight of Chaos ability cost reduction tremendously helps against Lost Reaver pressure and allows you to counter any brute force siege attempts, where the Souls player just buffs the unit constantly. You usually want to set up a close base scenario to reduce the impact of your mobility disadvantage and maximize your combat advantage (Shadowmage vs Stormsinger). Try thinking about this during your power well selection, even at T1. Close base scenarios often end up being played out very aggressively, leading to high value Corpse Explosions. Be a little bit more careful with Shadow Phoenix as the card is more foreseeable and Lost Reaver could soak up all the corpses denying the revive ability. T3 is somewhat similar, you want to play around short distances to maximize your Cultist Master efficiency, while the Souls player will try to outrun you with Silverwind Lancers and attack with Tremors if they find a good opportunity. Try to overload the protects with burst damage if you can. If you manage to take down a power well it leaves you in a great spot, because Voidstorm always allows you to reset the tempo. In such high energy level matchups Satanael scales really well and definitely should be considered.
(6) Pure Shadow vs Pure Nature (↓)
Any pure Nature matchup is about defending Energy Parasites appropriately. Shadow Mage seems to be an excellent counter due to her ability to oneshot the bug, but her low mobility is a concern. A good nature player will just hover from base to base forcing a lot of bound power. This will slow you down in terms of tempo, but keep in mind it’s one of your enemies most powerful win conditions. Preventing Energy Parasite abilities with a high investment is much better than ignoring them. Apart from that your early trades are fine, just keep in mind that heavy unit stacking will be punished by cc + parasite combos. Unit micro and a good unit split are crucial in the matchup. Knight of Chaos (b) is a solid tool against pure Nature as the faction is fairly reliant on melee units when it comes down to dealing damage against structures. He is even more important now after Nightguard received a hefty nerf and lost her position as a Deep One hard counter. Harvester can be strong from ahead, but with Parasite Swarm being fairly good at countering XL units now, you need to look for a good timing rather than playing the unit whenever you get to 300 power. If you want to play it safe you can always try to scale towards T3 and win this matchup there, considering pure Shadow has really powerful options at this stage and nature will not be able to keep up with that most likely.
Difficult matchups
(7) Pure Shadow vs Pure Frost (↓↓)
With Nightguard being less powerful, this matchup got much more difficult to play. You can aim for strong Darkelf Assassins + Netherwarp play to catch opponents off guard, but apart from that Frost has the better trading tools in T2 and a strong defense against Harvester on top of that. Your best win condition would be a strong and aggressive early game with heavy open field trading where you contest as much map control as possible followed by a rather defensive mid T2. Attacking against Eagle/Mountain Rowdy is rather pointless with your unit set up. You try to use a better position on the map in order to endure the mid game. Use Netherwarp to dodge Coldsnap or War Eagle screams and Aura of Corruption to punish strong single area attacks. If you manage to reach T3 your chance will be better as Cultist Master generates early pressure and your late T3 scaling is exceptional with powerful options like Satanael. Another niche way to attack pure Frost in T3 would be the newly buffed Nox Carrier as the unbound Rippers can build up constant pressure which is working nicely against the Amii Ritual design.
(8) Pure Shadow vs Fire Nature (↓)
Skyfire Drake + Twilight Crawlers in combination with cc is difficult to deal with as a pure Shadow player. There is quite a large amount of playmaking you can do around your Nether Warp to make advantageous trades, like warping out of Lavafield, catching high priority units off guard or using the spell on your Harvester to dodge Ensnaring Roots by prediction (if this works you literally win the game off that). Splitting your units against cc & Lavafield is criucial. As long as your Shadowmages are well positioned you can take down the Skyfire Drakes (a motivated Mage oneshots a Skyfire Drake). Knight of Chaos can slow down heavy Vileblood attacks and upon getting a tempo lead you can transition towards very explosive attacks. Corpse Explosion usually grants many opportunities to finish off a damaged power well. That said you play a very risky matchup here as one mistake will allow Fire Nature to start a snowball you can not control anymore. If the match goes to T3 you should be in full control again regardless of your T3 color choice (Shadow or Frost). Lost Grigori + Netherwarp can shut down any attempts of ranged unit kiting (just activate the ability and port the units towards your Grigori), Nightshade Plant can be stopped by Aura + Netherwarp or Voidstorm. This matchup is quite challenging for you to play, but you've still got a very good chance to win it as long as your micro is on point.
(9) Pure Shadow vs Stonekin (↓)
The difficulty in this matchup is pretty much card choice depended. Stone Tempest & especially Razorshard can give your Shadowmages trouble and make this matchup close to unplayable. The high mobility, extra range & M-knockback of Razorshards are a real threat for your slow Shadowmages, especially in the later stages of T2. Teleport and knockback immunity also grant even more power against Netherwarp. It feels like the card was built to counter your deck. Numbers quickly add up and you need to be really good at trading to win this matchup, considering Stonekin has much more breathing room in T1 compared to the past. Removing big Stonekin attacks can be pretty annoying too, because Aura of corruption is a double edged swort in this matchup. The Stonekin player might just use the Aura for himself as protection to build up offensive Cannon towers (Corpse Explosion can be useful as a counter measure). Forcing a close well scenario in the early stages of T2 should be your best move because it makes Shadowmages much more efficient, similar to the Lost Souls matchup. It is easier to split them during an attack and you can always retreat with low hp units to heal them up quickly. On top of this you can utilize Darkelf Assassins and Nightcrawlers with their active damage abilities in a much more aggressive manner, considering you can react quicker once CC sources are on cooldown since you don't have to deal with the summoning sickness in these scenarios. Stonekin does not have strong burst tools, making the faction a little bit more vulnerable to constant pressure than others. Since Lightblade (purple) is a more and more established tool in Stonekin due to the increased popularity of pure Shadow, Harvester is not a good choice in this matchup and won't pay off, unless you are already ahead and look to close out the game. Most of the time you want to slow down the tempo in this matchup and look for an economy game leading to a T3 win, since Voidstorm can be a hard counter for T2 only decks (Stonekin often cuts T3 to play around more powerful T2 set ups) and even against a large T3 your tools are good enough to compete.
[ FIRE SHADOW / BANDITS ]
1. Deck description
Bandits is one of our top decks right now and very popular around high silver/low gold elo. The T2 is explosive with powerful rallying banner attacks and a wide arsenal of single buffs and damage spells to strenghten your attacks. On top of that the faction has an appropriate counter tool to almost any unit in the game, making it very effective in unsupported skirmishes. Major downsides are the lack of cc and building protection spells, which will make you vulnerable whenever you are behind in tempo and Minefield is cooldown. Due to its strong set of previously released core cards, there is more room for different deckbuilding options. This grants a lot of freedom to individualize the deck based on your personal playstyle.
Alternative deck
2. Matchup discussion
Favorable matchups:
(1) Bandits vs Fire Frost (-)
With Windhunter you have superior air control in this matchup even when facing shielded Skyfire Drakes. Your T2 trades very well into anything besides Stormsinger and Lavafield, which probably will be your biggest threat. Minefield can zone the Stormsingers and a Bandit Sniper in the backline can always generate strong value by sniping them with the ability. Once you get a lead you should be able to snowball it quickly by setting up a Rallying banner and spam Darkelf Assassins with instant ability activation. Overall a really good matchup for you due to the strong tools for converting tempo leads and since your T3 should perform quite well too it will be easy to break through defensive setups.
(2) Bandits vs Pure Frost (-)
A Bandits favored matchup, because Windhunter contests air control, limiting the impact of War Eagles. Pure Frost might have strong defensive capabilities with Templar, Stormsinger and White Rangers, but can’t really break out from its defensive formation during any stage of T2. Whenever you get a good trade you can use this position to snowball with air superiority and extra pressure from Minefield for zoning. Adding Bandit Spearmen to the unit mix can be a good choice as they attack Stormsingers and are rather durable against any War Eagle attempt. You want to accelerate the game as much as you can. Once you have enough energy to set up a strong attack, put down a Rallying Banner, chase down the War Eagles with Windhunters and walk up to White Ranges with Darkelf Assassins making sure your opponent has no room to recover anymore. You can keep up pressure forever and even if the Frostplayer manages to survive to T3 the matchup dynamic does not change here. Pure Frost usually lacks a good M counter here, which is ideal for Bandit Lancer split attacks. The ability can cancel Timeless one Freeze and Soulhunter can seal the deal, but keep in mind he requires Disenchant support to deal with the Freeze + Lightblade cc chain.
(3) Bandits vs Amii (↓)
As Amii is more reliant on small units than most factions, Bandit Minefield is absolutely cruicial to control this matchup. The cooldown nerfs had an impact as a result. Bandit Stalker shuts down Nightcrawler/Burrower pressure effectively, making this matchup fairly comfortable to play. Lavafield alone grants a scaling advantage against Amii. Getting outmicrod during low energy trades is your biggest threat, because with strong unit split and cheap cc Amii tend to win these. The Amii Paladins can be dangerous if you don't respect their active ability, the unit needs to be kited. They can reflect minefield damage and also counter your Bandit Stalkers when combined with Amii Phantoms. Windhunter can be a great addition to your unit mix even though Amii does not have any L units. The faction is fairly weak at contesting air on open field, giving you much more options to play with in trades. Diversifying your unit compositions makes it harder to counter in most situations and Bandits has a plethora of powerful units to do so. A good strategic approach in this matchup is a rather passive and prolonged early game (T1) with many power wells. Great energy income will be highly beneficial for your faction. Once you get to spam your spells, it will get incredibly difficult for Amii to keep up through unit micro. Due to the nature of this matchup it will rarely go to T3, which should be slightly in favor of Amii due to cc scaling and a fairly similar pool of meta units.
Skill matchups:
(4) Bandits vs Twilight (↑)
Due to the previous lack of playdata the matchup wasn’t very well rated on our previous list. We had predicted this matchup to be rather even, but Bandits used to be a strong counter to Twilight the last time we updated the guide. A T2 faction reliant on expensive melee units got shut down by the area control Bandit Minefield established. With a double beast target (burrower + scythe fiends) for the Bandit Stalker it was quite an oppressive combo. With Minefield and Bandit Stalker receiving small sized nerfs and Twilight Minions +Twilight Crawlers being cheaper options than old Ghostspears + Scythe Fiends, the matchup is less oppressive than before. You can quickly break the map wide open by attacking multiple locations at once to reduce the impact of cc. Darkelf Assassins can deal fairly well with Twilight Minions. With Twilight Transformations being stronger now, Twilight Brute might also show up, which is a strong response to Bandit Stalker. Windhunter should beat Skyfire Drake and limit the pressure from any Vileblood attempt. Gladiatrix doesn’t really contest the air matchup as she loses horribly against Bandit Sniper. Be careful with double buffing Windhunters as Twilight Curse counters that otherwise. Avoid T3 at all cost, because Mutating Maniac + cc can turn this matchup on its head. Try to win this matchup at T2 by setting up powerful Rallying Banner attacks whenever you get ahead and only use T3 as a game finisher from ahead.
(5) Bandits vs pure Fire (-)
With Windhunter you can straight up reduce the zoning presence of Skyfire Drakes. As a result you will face a very ground unit oriented unit composition most of the time, which is an ideal set up for your AoE damage spells like Lavafield or Minefield. With Bandit Spearmen as a main trading unit you have a very strong tool to match the Enforcer and with Windhunter in the mix you also keep yourself safe from getting burned down by a really efficient Wildfire. The melee bonus damage is also useful against Burning Spears, that can not be ignored due to their ramp up damage. You can add Darkelf Assassin to counter them properly. Making good use of Ravage and Live Weaving to support your units against the high dps from Fire cards is crucial. You can keep up the pressure in T2, but this is a necessity in order to win. Even though you have the upper hand in T2, your units are straight up outmatched against Juggernaut. The XL counter is a threat for Soulhunter, Bandit Lancers get knocked around and you lack tools to protect you from Stampede.
(6) Bandits vs pure Nature (↓↓)
This matchup used to be one of the most brutal ones last patch. With recent changes to Deep One you are much more reliant on playing around Windhunters to gain control over the map. Playing around nature's strong poison and DoT effects here is crucial. Bandit Minefield is good against Ghostspears and Spirit Hunters, but fairly weak against Deep One. He can keep distance and take one of your units with him negating the zoning effect and limiting usage during siege. Bandit Stalker doesn’t counter Deep One anymore and Rallying Banner attacks are weak against Creeping Paralysis. In order to win the matchup you need to fall back to a much more dynamic approach by winning open field trades with a good unit split and utilizing your wide pool of units with strong combat power. Whenever you get ahead you can still make a strong transition towards a powerful Rallying Banner siege attempt. You can get a better position on the map most of the time, which can ultimately give you small advantages for trading. But always track the opposing Energy Parasites as they easily negate your tempo if you don't pay close attention to them. Zone them as effectively as possible and accumulate small advantages rather than brute forcing too early. Nature's defensive capabilities should not be underrestimated and if you lose a Windhunter to a Parasite Swarm, you will be in trouble. Late T2 is in your favor, but avoiding T3 should be a wise choice. Pure Nature could make use of Mutating Maniac, which is a big threat to your entire T3 (see Twilight matchup). Cultist Master is also less of an option against pure Nature with how many crowd control tools are available within the faction.
(7) Bandits vs pure Shadow (-)
Trading into pure Shadow can be tough, Minefield can help to force the use of Nether Warp and put pure Shadow’s most powerful spell on cooldown. Bandit Minefield can also be used as a tool to defend your power wells against the Harvester attempt, so the spell has great value here to buy time. Your trading units are solid and Lavafield is another precious AoE spell that pure Shadow often struggles against. Their smaller units usually lack high hp or reliable sustain options. Attacking against well splitted Shadow Mages can be difficult and pure Shadow has many ways to force them into good trading positions across the game, so this probably ends up being one of the more difficult matchups. Minefield nerfs might hurt your Harvester defense, but you can still fall back to Aura of Corruption for zoning in this matchup as buffs can just be removed. T3 will be very dangerous, because Voidstorm easily deals with Soulhunter and Cultistmaster gives Bandit Lancer a hard time. Pure Shadow can easily opt into T3s with 5 or even more cards, which will be hard to match with 2-3 T3 cards at best.
(8) Bandits vs Lost Souls (↓)
You do have a lot of tools to neutralize Lost Souls in T2. Bandit Sniper can deal with Stormsinger heavy compositions, Bandit Stalker out-trades Nightcrawler and the Minefield performs well against heavy Darkelf Assassin compositions. Attacking souls in T2 can be tough on the other hand even though Bandits are really good at it in most matchups. Rallying Banner attacks often get deflected by a strong Nasty surprise and without a strong siege unit you might be unable to punish a Souls player taking more and more power wells throught the game. To break through the Souls defense the early T3 stage has a high priority. Bandit Lancer will be a key factor to win this matchup, because even though Shadow Frost has an amazing T3, the faction lacks a proper M counter. Therefore you can put up insane amounts of pressure in T3 by spamming them at multiple locations. Use their ability to block Timeless One from activating the ability. Rallying Banner attacks can also be supported with Cultist Master spam to overload Timeless One defenses. Don't let the void level rise that much, you really need to put up the pressure to win. Soulhunter can help to finish games, but ideally requires good setup since Shield Building can delay attacks forever. If Grigori tries to disintegrate your Soulhunter, cancel the channel with your Bandit Lancers. Never let the Souls player stabilize, because he will win an extended fight in T3 due to charges and limited answers to Tremor attacks.
Difficult matchups:
(9) Bandits vs Stonekin (-)
In T2 you will have problems to stand a chance against a good Stonekin player. Stormsinger stacking + Heal/CC can be really difficult to trade into and with its high tempo stonekin has some really brutal options to snowball from winning initial trades. Utilizing your Bandit Sniper well will be a key factor to survive this matchup and avoid being overwhelmed by a Stormsinger spam. Fortunately proper Stormsinger spam execution is not that easy when playing Stonekin and any other unit compositions in Stonekin end up being significantly weaker. This makes this matchup a little bit more playable outside of upper echelons of play. Minefield shuts down small and immobile units fairly well. Once you get ahead you can set up pressure by Rallying attacks, because Stonekin lacks AoE burst damage options to counter heavy single area attacks. The knockback and cc tools still need to be respected here and might shut everything down. As long as you split a little bit against crowd control you can keep up the pressure. Your scaling with high energy level is good and winning through T3 can work as well, but Lancers can be stopped by extended T2 + Stormsinger spam, so you rely on fully buffed Soulhunters to break through. This works against T2 heavy decks, but can also backfire when facing Stone Warrior + Timeless One T3. Always keep an eye on the amount of different cards your opponent uses during the game to assess whether you play against T3 scaling or full T2 decks. The effectiveness of some units rises drastically dependent on card choice (i.e. Windhunter priority increases dramatically if Aggressor isn't used).
[ FIRE FROST ]
1. Deck description
Fire Frost despite having no own faction cards so far is a very unique deck, that lives around its interesting synergy between Frost Sorceress and Skyfire Drake. It has received some buffs towards its current playstyle, which can be really rewarding once you get to play around the bigger shield setups, but with additional improvements to other deck still seems to be on the weaker end as it lacks a little bit of siege potential in T2. Warlock purple received a change to its buff mechanic and now increases damage against Frozen targets, which ends up being a good scaling tool, which synergizes well up to the T3 stage, where Timeless One might take over. Overall Fire Frost is a very unique deck and also has some specific matchups, where it performs exceptionally well making it worth to play.
Alternative deck
2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Fire Frost vs pure Fire (↓)
A really valuable strength in Fire Frost is its excellent matchup against pure Fire. Shielded Skyfiredrake grants superior air control and you have a really strong mid T2 power spike, whereas pure Fire doesn't have the units to react properly. Stormsinger adds some safety to the matchup, because you can kite Enforcer in the early T2. Stormsinger hit + Frostbite + Eruption also is a good way of bursting Skyfire Drakes. Burning Spears can be hard to remove and Mountaineer lost priority in this matchup as a result, but as long as you win the air battle you are set up to win in T2. It is very important to stay proactive to avoid getting outscaled, because once pure Fire starts turning the pressure onto you it can be rough. You might get forced to trade before your units can receive their shield, so you either lose them to the opposing Skyfire Drake or your Frost Sorceress gets overrun by Enforcers. Losing Skyfire Drakes charges or a T3 (Juggernaut) are turning points in this matchup, so don’t lay back and allow your opponent to play towards his win conditions. A good rule of thumb is to avoid exceeding a well count of 6 as inflated energy income makes it harder to play a methodical and controlled mid game.
Skillmatchups:
(2) Fire Frost vs Amii (↑)
Fire Frost has solid tools to match Amii on higher power levels as Lavafield provides an inherent scaling advantage over small and medium sized ground unit stacking. The most critical part is the early T2 where you can not win open field fights. Amii Paladins can be fearsome opponents and you have to kite their reflect ability at all cost, keep it mind it circumvents any ice shield. Icefang Raptor is a very valuable defensive unit to zone the Shadow Nature army from your powerwells and keep up with Amii Paladins + Darkelf Assassin combos. At a certain unit count you can always look for a moment, where the hostile army is not well positioned, allowing you to catch them with a coldsnap. Warlock can be a strong reinforcement to hold your ground at this point. Amii Phantom can be matched with Stormsinger, but you should only engage combat proactively if you have enough power for Lavafield support. Try to use your Lavafield combined with unit damage to make small burst combos on a target. This removes potential Surge of Light counterplay. If you hit multiple targets and remove at least one of them, Lavafield is almost guaranteed to generate value. At a higher void level you can also add your Frost Sorc + Skyfire Drake combo to apply a lot of pressure. As long as you don’t run into a strong cc + aura combo you have good chances to take down some power wells. In T3 you need to make sure that you keep your distance to the enemy's base. Cultist Master is very powerful on close well scenarios and applies an enormous amount of pressure. Frost Shard can be a niche counter to Cultist Master stacking as Amii loves to play for that particular win condition due to the strong synergy with cc and healing. Removing 2 Cultist Masters with a single Frost Shard can be worth it even though it’s not energy efficient. The same applies for Backlash, but this one requires roughly 500+ void to function properly. If you manage to drag out the game, you are most likely favored as the standard Amii T3 quickly burns out of steam from charge issues. That said Amii T3 can function extremely well on low energy levels, which is why you should avoid very early T3 transitions.
(3) Fire Frost vs Pure Frost (↑)
Pure Frost needs to be respected because of the powerful air control, but with Frost Sorceress you can match this with your shielded Skyfiredrakes most of the time. On the other hand Warlock + Freeze can push off almost any attack pure Frost might throw at you. Try to utilize cliffs during combat if possible to make sure your Skyfire Drake doesn’t get targeted by any type of Gravity Surge (Spell or Stormsinger ability). Defenders or White Rangers can be dangerous too as they help contest air control and you need to target them with Icefang Raptors if possible. If you get ahead Frost Sorc shield supply with 2-3 units (i.e. Skyfire + Stormsinger + Icefang Raptor) can be very powerful. On higher energy levels you want to add more Skyfire Drakes, but keeping up shields on many units is fairly micro demanding. In many cases Frost vs Fire Frost ends up being played on high void leading to T3 on both ends. Timeless One + Silverind Lancers + Coredredge has seen lots of success in this particular matchup mainly due to the strong Warlock synergy creating overwhelming trading advantages long term. But at this rate you might find yourself in trouble due to slot issues dependent on your choices across other gamestages. Finding a well balanced allrounder Fire Frost deck can be tough and you often find yourself in a matchup that would be much better under the right circumstances.
(4) Fire Frost vs Twilight (↓)
Twilight Minions can give you a hard time in the early game, but with Icefang Raptors or Lyrish Knight you should be able to stabilize more often than not. Fire Nature can play a strong mid game around the newly buffed transformation tools (buffed vileblood+skyfire combos) combined with the cheap nature crowd control spells. Stormsinger will be essential to trade well and keep Burrowers away from your base, but be careful with trading on an open field. Shielded Skyfire Drakes + Stormsinger can be essential to secure air control in the mid game and after winning trades your Shield value will allow you to set up strong counter attacks. Twilight Curse might slow down pushes by transforming Shield Drakes, but with Frost Sorc in the backline you should be able to protect the unbound bug and build up even more pressure with your next push. T3 should be primarily used as a game finisher and help you close games from favorable positions. Tremor spam is your best option here, because Fire Nature has the damage to stop Giant Slayers even from T2 (Skyfire Drake + Root).
(5) Fire Frost vs Pure Shadow (-)
Shield Drakes with Lavafield support are rather decent against pure Shadow, but with severe scaling issues and lacking siege damage it can be rough to apply enough pressure to destroy power wells before you end up getting outscaled by a superior T3. Harvester can be a serious threat to deal with, but as long as you carry either Disenchant, Lyrish Knight or Lightblade in your deck you should be good to go. Also make sure you don't waste your Coldsnap for a Nether Warp dodge. Wait until the Harvester gets close to your powerwell so the Shadow player is forced to warp away from your base. You generate additional time and ideally follow up with another Frostbite to restrict movement further. Skyfire Drake can also be used to counter Harvester, because they are faster and also transition well into counterattack after a successful defense. With Lavafield and Frost Sorceress you can put up some solid support for them to break the enemies defense and turn this matchup. This is fairly essential as in T3 your chances are significantly lower due the high variety of options pure Shadow has. Voidstorm can clear out the map, Satanael + Bloodhealing creates insane high energy scaling, Cultist Master and Shadow Insect can be used for tempo and Corpse Explosion adds a permanent threat of burst to negate the value of building protects. It is not unwinnable on perfect execution, but the amount of threats alone and the potential map reset that voidstorm provides is very threatening. As the void level itself raises as a result, Backlash can be used as a strong counter in this particular matchup to withstand the strong pure Shadow attacks.
Difficult matchups:
(6) Fire Frost vs Lost Souls (-)
Lost Souls usually doesn't feel that hard to play against during T2, but its scaling is vastly superior leading to a very uncomfortable position, where you end up being forced to attack your opponent at some point even without an advantage. With nerfs to Mountaineer you need to rely much more on shield synergies to get ahead despite the Nightguard nerfs. The constant micro load around shielding up units while allocating resources ideally is a very tough task. Stormsinger & Darkelfassassins are really strong in a defensive position, because they trade well against the Skyfire drake. Icefang Raptor can help here to deal with Darkelf Assassins, but even if you get ahead you always need to respect strong damage tools of Nasty surprise and Aura of Corruption. In T3 Souls usually has access to better synergies as a lot of the lower tier cards scale better compared to the Fire cards. Nasty Surprise & Life Weaving are exceptional when combined with high hp Frost units. On top of that, Lost Souls usually offers more room to put additional slots into T3, building up to this powerful late game setup without opening up weaknesses in T2. Warlock can help to counteract to a certain degree, but isn't enough to turn the current matchup dynamic entirely.
(7) Fire Frost vs Bandits (-)
Bandits are very hard to play against, especially in T2 as Windhunter can contest air control even against shielded Skyfire Drakes. Stormsinger + Lavafield is your best setup to keep up trading wise, but you mostly have to find an answer to Bandit Spearmen as they can trade up against Icefang Raptors on an even power level. With no unit that trades up against Bandit Spears it is really dangerous to give up tempo against Bandits at any given point. You can stop Rallying Banner + Darkelf Assassin spam from even power by using Icefang/Lyrish Knight, but if you fall behind the endless spawns and immediate unholy trance activations can be extremely annoying to deal with. You need to play a really slow and controlled mid game and kite units with Frostbite to accumulate small advantages over time. For counterpressure try to play around your mobile units as they can outmaneuver the Bandit Minefield. T3 scaling usually isn't a win condition, because a well executed Bandit Lancer split attack can be overwhelming, but if you manage to stabilize at T3, you might have a reasonable chance to strike back. Frost Shard can be very strong to stop Rallying Banner + Cultist master pushes entirely and Shield Building or Lightblade can buy an enormous amount of time against Soulhunter. Try to play for late T3, because your enemy will most likely run out of charges first.
(8) Fire Frost vs Stonekin (-)
Stonekin is a very tough matchup as Stormsinger supported by Stoneshards and Spirit Hunters are really hard to trade into. The faction has better tools to trade and you main advantages lie around shield Drakes and defensive Warlock + Coldsnap set ups to potentially scale towards T3. But if Stonekin manages to acquire power leads, they will be snowballed by Burrowers, Stoneshard spam or even a Stonetempest. The variety of tools stonekin has in order to generate advantages is really wide and it’s hard to be prepared against each of them. Which stonekin version you end up facing solely depends on the deck choice your opponent made. Therefore, identifying the deck structure during the match is a key factor to determine your win condition, because you either might deal with additional trading and siege tools in T2 or a large T3 built around Timeless One and Stone Warrior. Stonekin won’t be able to provide everything at once. A T2 heavy stonekin deck can be beaten by a passive scaling approach, where you use defender’s advantage to trade better until you can get to T3. If you face a multi-slot T3 you should be better off by playing aggressive during T2 as the potential lack of important cards like an Aggressor i.e. could amplify Shield Drake value. Making the right call here is tough and it still doesn't guarantee success, but once you get to know your opponent you might be able to guess what he wants to do depending on his playstyle.
(9) Fire Frost vs pure Nature (↓)
Pure Nature was already hard to deal with and now received buffs on top of this. Trading into Ghostspears is extremely difficult as they are more stat efficient than Icefang Raptor, Deep One + Spirit Hunters is a strong combo on its own and with Parasite and Parasite Swarm your air units aren’t safe either. You usually have less siege options compared to other Firesplashes when it comes to taking down power wells early. This is problematic as you will get outscaled rather often. You can deal well with Energy Parasites, because with Stormsinger and Skyfire Drake you do have two counter tools granting a little bit of flexibility, but trading well into Deep Ones at the later stages of T2 is problematic anyways. Your best way of staying in the game is a strong defense against Energy Parasites, a ranged unit heavy composition to avoid high value cc and shield support for your air units whenever you attempt to attack. Try to kite the melee units and focus priority targets like Deep One or Spirit Hunters with Frostbite. If you get pushed back you can always try to look for a strong Coldnsap + Warlock combination that helps to keep up with nature’s scaling for some time. T3 is not your best option either, because Parasite Swarm can take care of your L units (you might consider adding Gravity Surge as an extra tool to prevent this, but deck slot issues arise again) and Mutating Maniac/Fathom Lord are powerful answers to any XL unit based strategy. In order to win this matchup you most likely need to acquire a lead by outmicroing your opponent at some point.
[ NATURE FROST / STONEKIN ]
1. Deck description
Stonekin probably has been the biggest winner out of all balancing changes, since Frost and Nature T1 are both playable by now. Playstyle wise you have great units and spells to win trades and accumulate small advantages by building up large and powerful armies to the point where you can overwhelm your opponent entirely. It arguably has the most powerful T2 in the game and the combination of crowd control and building protects leaves you with insanely defensive options. You only lack burst damage to quickly break free from large attacks when being down in tempo, but that should be the only true weakness I can think off. Anyone who likes to experiment with deckbuilding will find find a lot of options, because stonekin probably has the most amount of viable cards you can play. Also playstyle wise you can do almost anything from micro based snowbally gameplay to super slow cannon tower stacking decks, that will throw opponents into despair.
Alternative deck
2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Stonekin vs pure Shadow (↑)
With Lightblade (purple) being more and more of a standard pick in Stonekin your matchup against pure Shadow has gotten better and better with every patch. Due to its basic design Razorshard still is an amazing tool to face off against pure Shadow. It is immune against Netherwarp in its ranged stance, counters unit stacking due to the strong AoE, can outrange Shadowmage & Darkelf Assassins and also ends up being immune against knockback. Since Shadowmage is not as mobile as the Stormsinger it can't outrun the Razorshard attacks really quickly. This also makes the matchup simple to play from a strategic pattern. stack Razorshards, add stormsingers against Nightcrawlers and intercept Harvester with Lightblade (purple). At this rate you only have to play around the enemies AoE spells (Aura of Corruption, Corpse Explosion, Nasty Surprise) and accumulate advantages up to the point where power wells start dropping. Due to Nightguard nerfs Stonetempest and Crystal Fiend are strong snowball options in this matchup again. You usually get a time window to attack the enemies base once all 12 Shadowmage charges are depleted, because the power level of pure Shadow T2 drops significantly at this rate with void level being too low to take a T3 successfully. It’s best to play around choke points and small areas to increase the efficiency of cc spells and Razorshard AoE. If you get ahead you should always consider blocking T3 positions if possible (use Ice Barrier when starting Frost T1), because Voidstorm will be really annoying to play against in the later stages of the game.
(2) Stonekin vs Fire Frost (-)
This is a great matchup for Stonekin after your T1 options got buffed to secure an even early game. Stoneshards and Spirithunters can support your Stormsingers in this matchup to outtrade the Fire Frost player in any situation. You need to respect shielded Scythe Fiends, but with Aggressor this shouldn’t be a major threat. Stoneshards trade well into any ground unit besides Icefang Raptor, which gets attacked by Stormsinger. Your setup to find good open field trades is excellent and once you find them you can start leveraging your tempo leads by including L units into your composition. Stonetempest is a great option in this matchup due to its powerful M-knockback. Due to the stonekin passive + surge of Light synergy Tempest can also outlast extended trades against shielded Skyfire Drakes to overwhelm your opponent on the long run. Aggressor would be another great tool in multi unit compositions because the L knockback is just amazing against Skyfire Drakes and as long as there are enough damage sources you even get value from his knockback without any L units around. Once Skyfire Drakes are out of the way you can also add an uncontested Crystal Fiend. This should help overwhelming your opponent by outtrading him at his own base and countering the entire Fire Frost kit on the long run. Once your enemy can’t use his unit spell combos to burst your units, the Crystal Fiend healing will generate endless value over time. Playing for T3 is also a possibility, but keep in mind that Timeless One mirror scaling might favor Fire Frost due to the access to Warlock.
(3) Stonekin vs Bandits (-)
The most valuable advice we can give in this matchup is to play the correct units. Bandits has great tools against Stoneshards, Spirit Hunters and Stone Tempest, but absolutely no answer to Stormsinger + CC support. Playing around this simple pattern is the most reliable way of generating an advantage against Bandits. Bandit Stalker and Spearmen can be kited, Darkelf Assassins can’t be stacked due to Hurricane and Minefield is way too slow to catch Stormsingers in time. Leveraging tempoleads from this trading advantage should be easy by adding Burrowers considering Bandit Stalker can be zoned off by your Stormsinger army. Bandit Sniper always needs to be pressured considering the ability can oneshot Stormsinger if left uncontested. This shouldn’t be a major concern due to your mobility and strong cc options. Your only enemy in T2 will be energy scaling. If the void level rises, high tempo execution gets more and more difficult over time, whereas Bandits have amazing tools to dump energy without losing significant value. Rallying Banner spam attacks are incredibly strong on higher energy counts and with more units to take care of across the map it is much more likely to walk into a Minefield or get caught by an Aura of Corruption. If constant spell weaving allows Bandits to trade towards a stage where T3 is a possibility, the matchup also starts to be much closer again. Bandit Lancer split attacks are very powerful and can only partially be matched by using your M-knockback tools from T2. Combined with the threat of facing a double buffed Soulhunter this can be really tough to deal with. Timeless One + Stone Warrior would be the best response here. Overall it might not be the easiest matchup in terms of execution, but you can dominate it with some practice.
(4) Stonekin vs Twilight (-)
Twilight is a melee unit heavy T2 faction which is countered by Stormsinger stacking with CC support. This will be the core feature of your unit army, apart from that you can just adapt based on your enemies unit choices. Try to split well in order to avoid getting hit by Lavafield or CC and stack up advantages by using your own spells. Spirit Hunters & Frostbite can provide some extra dps against ravaged units and with either Lightblade or Aggressor you have solid counters for Vileblood. You usually struggle the most when falling behind in the early T2 stage, because Siege attacks might force you to invest all your power into crowd control and building protects, so you can't really start stacking units to generate value. Once there is 1 Vileblood or 2 burrowers the dps often is high enough to outvalue your defensive capabilities. Avoid taking risks in T1 to avoid such scenarios. You need to be proactive and win on T2, because at T3 Nightshade Plant mind games might be very dangerous to play against.
Skill matchups
(5) Stonekin vs Pure Nature (↓)
Stormsinger stacking is a great tool to deal with nature, because the unit is immune to most of its crowd control sources. Nature often has to rely on Deep One (+ability) to get any good trades done, which rarely ends up being power efficient if you kite well. Zoning Energy Parasites with Stormsingers is the highest priority, because you will need some time until you have a critical mass that can push the nature player back into his base and threaten power wells. Blocking Energy Parasites from getting their ability off needs to be prioritized as it’s the only option for pure nature to come out ahead. Crystal Fiend can be a great addition to the unit mix, because pure nature does lack burst damage leading to much higher healing values. But playing the card early is very risky because it dies to a single Parasite spell after the card received some buffs. It requires Surge of Light support in return to stay alive. As Nature often relies on Deep One scaling to stay relevant, Lightblade can be really useful on higher unit count. In T3 the player with more slots usually ends up being favored, but Parasite Swarm can be annoying if you play without XL units, so finishing the game in T2 usually is preferred. On a side note: Even though you might start in a mirror matchup in T1, Stonekin T2 is much better at dealing with larger T1 armies than pure nature T2, making it much more flexible and forgiving in the early game.
(6) Stonekin vs Shadow Frost (-)
This matchup favors you on T2. Considering most trading patterns consist of Stormsinger versus Stormsinger it ends up being beneficial, because you have superior crowd control. Using this to build up small leads by constant trading you can accumulate these small wins and increase the pressure constantly. Once you get to remove all units from your opponent you can start adding Burrowers for increased Siege potential to finish the game. Shadow Frost often tries to play defensive and utilize undazed Darkelf Assassin spawns as well as Nasty Surprise. Playing with tempo is extremely important, because if you fall behind heavy use of Lost Reaver + Stormsinger can be difficult to deal with. You often lack dps to remove the Reaver in time when utilizing the Aggressor against tempo deficits. Aura of Corruption needs to be respected, but when playing around mobile units you can avoid it, offensive Cannon Tower might be a niche counter too. Don’t let the game go to 6+ wells quickly, because Souls T3 usually ends up being problematic to deal with unless you invest at least 4-5 deck slots into your own T3. But even then you aren't favored, so opting for a win at T2 usually produces the best results. Force open field trades by contesting T3 spots and put pressure on your opponent if he tries to well up. If you get ahead try to take map control and stay close to your opponent. A greedy T3 attempt is a great opportunity for you to close a game with a Burrower spam.
(7) Stonekin vs Amii (↑)
This matchup often results in a traditional Stormsinger vs Amii Phantom micro war. The M/M ranged unit management really determines the outcome of this matchup and if Shadow Nature gets ahead the deck can be an overwhelming force rather quickly. But as long as you play very controlled, split your Stormsingers against cc and don’t make major mistakes you will be able to win in later stages of T2. First of all Stormsinger does have more charges than Amii Phantom and on top of that a few extra Razorshards get really strong at later stages once many Stormsingers are on the board. The extra range on Razorshard allows you to root down Darkelf Assassins and Amii Phantoms and with heavy unit stack it is so difficult to dodge the AoE damage and M-knockback leading to great trades. With enough Stormsingers to protect them from Amii Phantom’s melee disable mode this usually leads to an overwhelming force that ultimately wins you the game. After Nightguard received a nerf you also can consider playing Crystal Fiend in this matchup now, which works incredibly well during such extended trades. Do not get baited into Stonetempest as Amii Phantom still hard counters it. Amii Paladins are not a big threat to you as long as you play around the ability cooldown. T3 should be avoided as Shadow Nature has various options to apply strong pressure from split pressure to fully buffed XL unit.
(8) Stonekin vs Pure Frost (↓)
Usually the T2 is played in a very slow manner, which is good for you to establish very powerful unit setups, but also problematic as you might struggle punishing well stacking to a point, where T3 becomes a realistic option. Frost usually has more slots available to build a powerful T3, therefore wins these types of scaling games. Winning T2 is very important due to that and requires very aggressive gameplay at some point, where you ideally contest T3 positions or cut off map control by attacking Frost’s mobility restrictions. Stormsinger + Spirit Hunters usually do trade very well on low energy count, but get outscaled by War Eagles. Once you get ahead or establish map control, Aggressor or Stone Tempest might be valuable additions to deal with War Eagles, especially when you get to force the enemy to trade with you. Crystal Fiend is a great tool in this matchup to leverage leads, because Frost doesn’t have very reliable tools to burst it down. Avoid close bases at all cost, because it strengthens War Eagle gameplay and also supports White Rangers. Burrowers are not an option during T2, but can be strong at punishing both a long T1 and an early T3 giving you an edge during transitions. T3 will be difficult to play unless you invest little slots into T2, Thunderstorm is very useful for such strategies as it enables faster T3 timings. The high AoE damage can remove T2 pushes easily and effectiveness is even amplified due to War Eagles being too slow to outmaneuver it.
Difficult matchups
(9) Stonekin vs pure Fire (↓↓)
The introduction of Burning Spears highly changed the dynamic of this matchup as pure Fire now has an entirely new option for early game trading. This makes it much harder to establish leads and snowballing with low dps L-units is not an option either. Stoneshards remain as your best trading tools in this matchup as they outvalue Scythe Fiends and counter Enforcer, but to beat pure Fire entirely you will need ranged and spell support. If pure Fire manages to survive the early gamestage by utilizing defenders advantage the matchup dynamic quickly turns around, because the traditional s-sized melee units lose their value at higher power counts due to limited focus fire options upon being spammed and their weakness against zoning dps spells like Wildfire. At some point you may collapse to the relentless aggression pure Fire can throw at you. To prevent this from happening you need to be proactive during T2 and constantly acquire advantages by trading around your powerful cc tools. With many small wins you might be able to opt for a power well focus as long as you avoid high value wildfire or Lavafield. Your decision making and micro needs to be on point here as your Siege damage in this matchup is rather low, Burrowers against Enforcer is definitely not advised. In T3 you need to stabilize around Stone Warrior and try to match the Juggernaut pressure by playing around the Disenchant cooldown to utilize the Shatter Lance ability. This can work, but isn’t a guaranteed success, because one misplay around the Stampede ability is game over.
[ SHADOW FROST / LOST SOULS ]
1. Deck description
Lost Souls was one of the most played decks in PvP... for a good reason! The deck is the most solid one with no big weakness and an outstanding defence. A wide pool of units allows you to adept to any situation. With a fantastic T3 as backup you can play a very controlled game, whenever you get ahead in a match. You can constantly stay ahead in powerwells (the +1 game) up to a point where you can afford to switch into the T3 stage, where you'll most likely win.
Alternative deck
2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Lost Souls vs Fire Frost (-)
Fire Frost is rather easy to play for you, because you aren't forced to make proactive decisions in T2. You just need to defend incoming attacks and scale into your superior T3. As long as you stay even in T2 there is nothing you need to fear in T3. In T2 you can defend Scythe Fiends & Skyfire drakes easily with a combination of Darkelf Assassins and Stormsinger with Frostbite support. Try to split well against Lavafield at later T2 stages and try to target Frost Sorcs during skirmishes. This will heavily limit the amount of pressure Fire Frost gets to apply on the long run. Try to utilize your spells for burst oriented trades (Frostbite, Nasty Surprise) rather than extended ones (Coldsnap) to avoid maximized shield synergy and Warlock value. If you get ahead during trades, you can try to utilize Lost Reavers to launch powerful counter attacks. T3 will be in your favor as you have better units, more slots and superior spell synergies.
Skillmatchups:
(2) Lost Souls vs Twilight (-)
You can defend Burrower attacks with a very high efficiency in the early game and establish a very solid lead, that can be used to transition into a T3, where Fire Nature doesn't stand a real chance. If you get strong leads you can either opt for split attacks or Lost Reaver to apply pressure. The latter one might struggle against Slaver though, who is powerful against melee L units specifically. The most dangerous game stage is late T2, where double Burrower + Skyfire attacks with massive nature cc support are powerful enough to overload your building protects. Make sure to respect their mobility and try to take down Skyfire Drakes as early as possible. Try to split your units well when defending because once the void level gets really high, double Lavafield is a dangerous tool to remove all your small units (Stormsinger, Nightcrawler and Darkelf Assassins die to it). Try to find a good time window in order to tech up to T3 as this is your main win condition in this matchup. On a sufficient energy level Timeless one can withstand a massive Burrower push, if the Fire Nature player decides to rush you at that point. At T3 Mutating Maniac and Nightshade Plant both need to be respected but your T3 trading is superior and you will come out ahead in the long run.
(3) Lost Souls vs Pure Nature (-)
You are slightly favored in T3, but at a disadvantage in T2. Therefore, it is important to play towards your win condition in order to come out ahead. Deep One is really hard to deal, especially with Parasite being a cost effective counter to Nightguard. On top of that you always need to zone Energy Parasites with Stormsinger. This has to be your number one priority before you start thinking about anything else. If you want to attack nature you need to make sure to either split attack or surround your enemy. A good unit split will allow you to catch the more expensive nature units by using Frostbite without running into a cc spell with your entire army. This concept is extremely helpful to get rid of Spirit Hunters quickly. A strong split attack is the best setup for any Motivate -> wellfocus plays. L units aren't a reliable option against Parasite Swarm or Deep One, so generally try to stay away from Lost Reaver when facing pure Nature. T3 remains in your favor, but be careful whenever your opponent splashes towards Fire here. Mutating Maniac, Parasite Swarm, Disenchant is not as easy to beat and Nightshade Plant can overload your building protects. Apart from that Timeless One dominates the field and buffed Lost Grigori is very strong at taking out structures. Always track how much Surge of Light got used during T3 as this heavily impacts your chances of winning T3. You win the game whenever Surge of Light charges are depleted.
(4) Lost Souls vs Bandits (↑)
Bandits are fairly challenging to play against nowadays. You can't really utilize Nightcrawler against Bandit Stalker, Windhunter + Minefield limits the impact of Lost Reaver, Stormsinger always runs into the danger of getting targeted by the Bandit Sniper and Darkelf Assassins might struggle with the Minefield. Getting ahead against this setup is really difficult, but if you manage to do so the lack of cc and building protects will allow you to take down power wells very quickly. In return your defensive tools are fairly solid. Bandits do not have access to Siege units and Rallying Banner attacks are not as threatening due to Nasty Surprise, especially when combined with any high hp targets (lyrish knight, phalanx, lost reaver). Even though your T2 is a little bit more stable overall, T3 is very scary to play. Bandit Lancer spam can be really annoying to trade into, because you usually don't have a very powerful M counter in T3 and the active ability can prevent Timeless Ones from using theirs. Pressure only gets amplified if your enemy plays Motivate or Rallying Banner + Cultist Master. As all of these units are rather low hp ones, Frost Shard could be a strong addition to limit the early game pressure and enable scaling towards the later T3 stages. Bandits will run out of charges way before Lost Souls and Soulhunter is only a real threat whenever your opponent is far ahead. On the other hand Tremor can always build up pressure against Bandits even despite being matched by strong L counters.
(5) Lost Souls vs Pure Shadow (-)
You do have solid tools to deal with pure Shadow, especially when playing Lyrish Knight. He is a great target for Nasty Surprise, an XL counter for the Harvester and also withstands the M-knockback of Shadowmages due to being steadfast. Darkelf Assassins + Frostbite are always good at trading and in combination with Stormsinger you can defend against most attacks. Once you get ahead, Lost Reaver is a strong option for attacking. Try to play him with Stormsingers, because pure Shadow likes to use the Knight of Chaos as an L-counter and protect the Lost Reaver with Liveweaving from incoming burst damage sources like Shadowmages or activated Darkelf Asssassins. Harvester needs to be respected, but its effectiveness is limited, unless the Shadow player has a lead beforehand. Frost Bite is really valuable against him and a combination of buildings protects and Coldsnap usually can buy enough time. If you have problems countering Harvester you can always add Lightblade (purple) to your deck. You ultimately want to build up towards 6 wells and a T3, but avoid having a power well close to the enemy's base. In close well scenarios pure Shadow is heavily favored because Shadowmage reaches its maximum potential at these kinds of fights. On top of that, close well fights end up getting really bloody increasing the risk of running into a super high value Corpse explosion. As the damage aoe damage cap is extremely high, it often pays off to avoid building full well clusters and expand at different positions. Your T3 usually is a little bit better, this pays off the most on large maps, whenever Cultist Master value is reduced. If you expect a Voidstorm to be played either try to save some power or force counter units beforehand if possible so you avoid a huge negative trade allowing you to apply pressure with your Tremors once the Voidstorm is on cooldown. Keep in mind Voidstorm only has 4 charges and spell cooldown is vastly increased afterwards.
(6) Lost Souls vs Pure Frost (↓)
Nightguard nerfs were very strict nerfs to Lost Souls in this particular matchups. You mainly need to rely on Darkelf Assassins and Frostbite when trading against War Eagles, but it will require further support whenever you want to break throught the strong Frost defence. Avoid cliff areas to make War Eagles more vulnerable overall and be careful with activating the unholy trance ability from Darkelf Assassins when near your opponents base, because the immobility can be heavily punished by White Rangers. After accumulating unit advantages you can throw in Lost Reaver to build up pressure, but without Stormsinger support he won’t perform well against Mountain Rowdy and Lightblade. Overall beating pure Frost at T2 is difficult, but as Frost T1 will be unable to contest map control, you can stall games to T3 more often than not. Aura of Corruption is a basic tool to punish the slow War Eagles. You can also make use of Nasty Surprise defenses when comboing the spell with Lost Reaver. Phalanx + Nasty is even more effective at one-shotting up to 3 War Eagles, which is a niche combo worth considering in this matchup. This matchup has a very defensive play pattern at T2 because both factions do have severe advantages when playing around their own power wells. On open field trades you usually do have the upper hand, which can be used to establish a good position on the map. Combined with the higher mobility in T1 you might be able to block all T3 positions from your enemy. If the game goes to T3 vs T3, you mostly need to respond to Tremor attacks by using Timeless One + counter units and protecting your buildings with spells. Lost Grigori can shine in this matchup as he beats Tremor, Lancers, Timeless One combos with his taunt and also hard counters any cheese attempts around Avatar of Frost. Nasty Surprise tends to scale very well in this matchup, because it often adds the needed extra burst to take down power wells.
(7) Shadow Frost vs Stonekin (-)
Stonekin can be a really uncomfortable matchup, because its defensive capabilities match yours in T2 and with superior cc their Stormsingers usually are better on open field. Avoiding these types of trades is really important for that reason. Utilize defenders' advantage to adapt based on the enemies unit composition and set up some efficient trades by surprising your opponent with a good Nasty Surprise. If you get to achieve this you can well up as quickly as possible. You want the energy level to rise as quickly as possible considering you win at T3 most likely and attacking in T2 is not an option. Nightcrawlers get hard countered by Stoneshards and Reaver attacks only end up being an option when your opponent takes a greedy power well. In T3 your odds of winning are most likely higher considering Stonekin suffers from slot restrictions. But don’t tunnel into passive scaling whenever your opponent allows you to do so as stonekin could also play a large T3 and sacrifice deck strength elsewhere. But most people cut their T3 in Stonekin to have a more powerful and flexible T2. Whenever you play T3 vs full T2 Silverwindlancer + Nasty is a very important burst combo and will grant you incredible value.
Difficult matchups:
(8) Shadow Frost vs Pure Fire (-)
Pure Fire is really difficult to deal with, especially when you end up falling behind in this matchup. Enforcer is superior to Nightcrawler and Stormsinger which allows the Fire player to protect a Firedancer who constantly throws fireballs at your power well. This forces you to spend many resources into protecting your buildings. If you don’t break free by finding a good nasty, this leads to very inefficient trading patterns. In case the Firedancer is able to use a cliff as protection you are in serious trouble so avoid taking any of these positions when facing a pure Fire player. Your best chance of getting good trades is a powerful nasty surprise and good use of Frostbite during trades. If you get ahead you can try utilizing your Lost Reaver to destroy a powerwell. It is ideally paired with Darkelf Assassins as they can help deal with Burning Spears without getting hard countered by Enforcer like most M units. Lifeweaving will help against Wildfire, especially when you are aware that your opponent has not enough energy to follow up with an immediate disenchant. In addition to that Juggernaut is insanely strong, even strong enough to break through a Timeless One T3. Tremors do not keep up in tempo and whereas Aura might be enough to remove one Juggernaut, experienced Fire players will fully commit once they have two. Double Juggernaut can not be matched unless you are very far ahead to counter them with the Lost Grigoris disintegration spell (not reliable due to significantly higher upfront costs.
(9) Shadow Frost vs Amii (-)
Amii has a distinctive advantage in the early T2. The faction has similar units (Nighcrawler + Darkelf Assassins + Amii Phantom vs Night Crawler + Darkelf Assassins + Stormsinger) and superior cc which allows your opponent to set up better trades all the time. This leads to a survival game, because low hp unit spam can be removed through AoE tools (Nasty Surprise, Aura of Corruption) and split Lost Reaver attacks get more value over time. Try to spawn him very close to the enemies base, because Shadow Nature likes to play Darkelf Assassins or Amii Phantom + Root against them. Do not send your Reaver alone as Tranquility might lead to constant cc rotations which are really hard to break otherwise. Your main goal isn't necessarily kicking power wells, it is more about relieving pressure and buying time. T3 stage is highly beneficial for you as Timeless One can minimize the impact of Cultist Master attacks unless you play a close base scenario and Amii straight up collapses to Tremor spam whenever you get to set up a counter attack.
Conclusion
This overview is getting longer with every overhaul. I hope this wall of text is not too intimidating (>27.000 words) and provides helpful information to you!
What to expect in the future and last words:
We will keep this guide updated every few patch cycles (tier list at the start will be adjusted more frequently). We all know PvP is difficult to get into, but we will try our best to lower some of the barriers whenever possible. If you have any questions feel free to ask us in this thread or on one of the skylords discord servers. If you are entirely new to PvP, test some of the free PvP decks, look for a deck you like to play and adjust it until you find your own playstyle. External ressources (guides, videos etc.) can help a lot to understand the basics quicker and get to the point where PvP starts to be the fantastic and enjoyable game mode, that kept us playing for so many years. Hope you enjoyed reading, let's keep the PvP community active and see you in the Forge!
Best regards,
Hirooo & RadicalX
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