RadicalX

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
 

Hello Skyladies and Skylords,
It is time for chaos, it is time for a new tome tournament!

When
On Tuesday 17.05.22 starting on 18:30 CEST (Berlin time), the stream will start about 30 minutes in advance,
Cardpool is dished out one hour before the tournament starts. Contact me for your cardpool!


Format
The format will be Tome, meaning you will build your decks for this tournament out of a booster pool I provide to you. We will play on the Testserver.

The tournament will be played as a 1on1 best of 3 double elimination tournament, grand finals will be best of 5, no reset. The grand finalist coming from the winnerbracket will start with a win (1-0) already.


How can I join the test server?
To join the test server you simply need to launch LauncherTest.exe located in your BattleForge installation folder. It is important you run the updater first, so you download the latest test server files.


Prize Pool! (subject to change)
1st place  - 4 Booster packs
2nd place - 3 Booster packs
3rd place - 2 Booster pack
4th- 7th place - 1 Booster
 
The more people get into the tournament the bigger the prize pool will get.
Big thanks to the devs who sponsor the prizes!


Organisation and sign-up
The tournament brackets will be on challonge, so register and join the tournament using the button below. 
I will send you a list of your cardpool ~1h before the tournament starts, so be available in Discord. I will not send you 8 actual boosters.
We will play on the Testserver.

Please use your in game account name to make communication and finding your enemy easier. In case of problems contact me or one of my mods via Discord, Battleforge or on twitch. Twitch mods: LynnTaki


Stream
A live stream covering the tournament will take place on the channel DasToggy on twitch.tv. Streaming will start around 18:30 CEST (Berlin time). Be sure to join the stream to be notified of last minute updates. Everyone is welcome to hang out and watch the action as well!


Rules! (read this)
• Be online in Discord or the forum ~1h before the tournament starts to receive your cardpool. If I cannot find you you cannot participate. Should there be Testaffinities on the testserver, use the version of the card that is closest to the original.

• Disconnection during a game results in a default loss. If both sides agree it is possible to have a remake.
• Not showing up to your match after 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 mins.
• After your match, go to Challonge and insert the result. That is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats . The brackets will be updated automatically.
• The Map Pool is: 1st round: Haladur, 2nd round: Simai, 3rd: Elyon, 4th: Lajesh, 5th: Uro and 6th: Yrmia (same pool as in ranked duel).
The first match of the round will be played on the fixed map, then it is losers choice. The winning player (who won the previous match in the bo3) also has to lock in his deck first.
• The brackets for the tournament will be shuffled before the tournament starts!
• Use your Battleforge name for the tournament. If your Challonge account differs from your Battleforge account name use the "Sign up with an alternate name" feature or change your name for the tournament in the settings. Finding your opponent will be a LOT easier this way.


Questions
Reply in this thread if you have questions, I will check it out later.
Best regards,
Toggy

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 - CCC #4
Kapo hosted another successful Crappy Community Contest© on the map Mo. Players were encouraged to play as few cards as possible to complete the map. As one of the first events to not focus on speed, this resulted in some interesting strategies. As with all CCC, the more players attend, the better the prizes are, in this case resulting in a free booster for the whole community. 
 
• 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

Just wanted to mention single player rPvE 10 is not up to date. Mocaak did beat the record in January 2022 (11:04.0). Replay was also posted on my youtube channel if you look to confirm this (as 1p rPvE ladder isn't fixed yet).

What a tournament! The vod will be watchable on my twtch account for everyone who missed it.

 

Hello Skyladies and Skylords,
It is finally time, the PvP League will start on the 16.05.22!

But everything step by step, we finally have a PvP League Homepage  (big shoutout to Triggz), you can find all the info there. It is still under construction and some minor positions in Divisions, Admins or rules might change.
During the next week the Matchplan with all the upcoming matchups will be updated and released.
This homepage basically shows you three things:
• The Divisions and their Admins, check in which Division you ended up and bring your questions and complaints to me so we can find a solution.
• The Rulepage with all the rules, basically explaining how the league is meant to be played. If any clarification is needed hit me up.
• The Matchplan with the opponents each playweek. Not yet online but soon you will see the matchups for each week here, knowing who you have to play.
Notice that it's still under (minor) construction and some things may change. Depending on the feedback that is given I might post a FAQ on the webpage soon.

The first playweek will start on the 16.05. and once you played everyone in your Division the season will end, with a new one coming up after a little break. I am looking forward to all the great matches and the different decks being played, see you in the forge!
Greetings,
Toggy
 

Greetings Skyladies and Skylords,
We have crossed 50 participants for the league and everything is advancing as planned, therefore I can proudly announce that we will transition into Phase III and the start of the league soon (~2weeks).
This also means that the signup to the league will end on 06.05.22 .
Stay tuned for a final release of the rules and the divions with members and admins.
 
Greetings,
Toggy
 

Just wanted to mention single player rPvE 10 is not up to date. Mocaak did beat the record in January 2022 (11:04.0). Replay was also posted on my youtube channel if you look to confirm this (as 1p rPvE ladder isn't fixed yet).

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings.

To prepare you for the upcoming PvP League, we bring you our second PvP Rookie Tournament!

Everything you need to know:
Event            - PvP 1v1 Rookie Tournament, Best of 3, Double Elimination Date             - 23.04.2022 13:30 Rules            - Rookies only! (full rules below) Prizes           - Boosters for top 50% players Event-Mods - Dallarian and Dutchy Streamers    - Toggy and Hiko will be streaming the tournament on the offical Twitch channel Stream will start at 13:15 CEST
Please note: everyone will play a minimum of two Bo3's (Double Elimination

Sign-up

This tournament will again be hosted on Challonge.
You can register for the tournament there. You will also find the bracket on Challonge at the start of the tournament. Please use the name of your ingame account to speed up communication in finding your opponent

 
Prize pool

The following prize pool will be adjusted according to the amount of participants:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1st place               10 general Booster packs
2nd place              9 general Booster packs
3rd place               8 general Booster packs
4th-6th place        5 general Booster packs
7th-50% place      1 general Booster pack
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Rules

The access to this tournament will be restricted to players only, who...
... are not PvP gold rank or above
... have a w/l ratio of below 60%
... feel like they are rookies
Please note: this tournament is for our less experienced players, we will personally check the entries.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No bug abuse, cheating or insulting other players. Penalties may vary from a warning to default loss.
  Disconnecting during a game results in a default loss. It is possible to have a remake, if both sides agree.
  Not showing up to your match after 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 mins.
  After your match, go to Challonge and insert the result. This is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats. The brackets will be updated automatically.
  Use your account name for the tournament. If your Challonge account differs from your Battleforge account name, use the "Sign up with an alternate name" feature, or change your name for the tournament in the settings. This will speed up finding your opponent. If you do not register for the tournament with your Battleforge name, we can't find you for the prizes! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Map Pool

The first match of every round (of each Bo3) will be played on the following fixed maps, after that it is the losers choice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1st Round:  Haladur 2nd Round: Simai 3rd Round:  Elyon 4th Round:  Lajesh 5th Round:  Uro 6th Round:  Yrmia --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
We hope you have a lot of fun with this event, and are looking forward to casting your games!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.


Best regards,
Skylords Reborn Team and Toggy

Made a few adjustments compared to the tier list I posted on discord. 
 

Just wanted to mention single player rPvE 10 is not up to date. Mocaak did beat the record in January 2022 (11:04.0). Replay was also posted on my youtube channel if you look to confirm this (as 1p rPvE ladder isn't fixed yet).

I just uploaded my personal testing map. In this you can test the live version of every fire rpve boss.

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.

It would be SO MUCH cooler if the Treespirits got spawned from the projectile, not from the unit itself. I mean, it is literally called a "Spore Launcher".
Having it on every auto attack (or every few ones) would be amazing but it would have some wonky quirks to work out. The amount of spawned Treespirits could even scale with the amount of spores shot and therefore with support, as far as I have seen. They'd have to be temporary though.

Imagine if attackers got swamped like that. Could take Spore Launcher into an entirely different direction. Nerf the amount of default spores it shoots from 3 to 1 but let every attack spawn a Treespirit, amount of spores and Treespirits scaling with support. Unfortunately, the Treespirits would take up pop cap as we don't currently have a way to introduce new pop-counts per unit ...

Hey Skyladies and Skylords,
to give you a little update: We crossed 40 participants for the league today! Pretty much all the divisions are coming together quite nicely and I am very happy to see a lot of new names there. Signup will stay open for another ~4weeks until we go to Phase III which will be a tournament to kick things off and publishing of the Division lists. 
 
See you in the Forge,
Toggy

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.

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.

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.

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.

Noob Kapo is ready for 4a. I will squash you with my Juice Tanks, Mark of the Keeper and Howling Shrines!

Speaking of decks, what is really missing is some way to get decks in and out of the game. Usually, in other games, this is done by some "code" that is used to import/export a (deck) setup.
Ideally, we could have
a link that gives you the deck in a browser, like:  skylords.eu/deck/ERT6343E654FG23SDFERZHSDFS45DG a button in the game, where you enter that code "ERT6343E654FG23SDFERZHSDFS45DG" and it creates this deck for you (a derivative of cloning a deck from someone else) forum integration, like if you have the code you can add <deck>ERT6343E654FG23SDFERZHSDFS45DG</deck>, and it gives you a picture of the deck, when you click on it, you auto-copy the code also a discord bot function, !deck ERT6343E654FG23SDFERZHSDFS45DG gives you the picture as well Right now we are stumbling around in this area, sharing decks with screenshots all the time, so it would be kinda cool to think about a long-term solution for deck sharing.

Okay Skyladies and Skylords, it is time to advance to Phase II of the PvP league and that includes more info on the whole thing and opening of the signup page!

Format
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 but be aware that the first seasons(s) might be a little of a wildcard to get that sorted.
To give you an example of how the structure of the league may look:
• 1a: the target audience are the top players, platinum rank
• 2a, 2b: the second tier of players, probably higher gold ranks
• 3a, 3b, 3c, ...: lower gold players to high silver
• 4a, 4b, 4c, ...: new players and silver players
Divisions with the same number are supposed to be roughly equal in skillevel.
At the end of a season the top players will have the chance to promote in division while the bottom players will have the chance to be demoted to lower divisions.
 
Rules
General Rules:
-To participate you need a Skylords Reborn account and be present in the official PvP discord server
-You play versus one opponent each week, as shown by the playchart of your division
-Display sportsmanship, listen to admins
-Not showing up to a match or disconnecting results in a default loss, though rematches are recommended
-Contact your opponent to schedule a matchday and time during your playweek, you can do this via the PvP Discord
-If you cannot agree on a day and time, default day/time is Sunday at 7pm CET
Matchrules:
-Each player picks either 1 or 0. Use /roll 1 to determine who wins the coinflip. The winner can decide if he wants to ban a map first or if he wants to be able to lock in the deck last.
-Mapdraft: There are 6 maps in the pool: Haladur, Simai, Elyon, Lajesh, Uro and Yrmia. Everyone bans 2 of those maps (1-2-1, /roll 1 to determine who goes first). The remaining two maps will be played with the map of the cointoss loser first
-Play two matches versus your opponent, one on each map left after the drafting
-You can change decks between matches, free PvP Decks are allowed (and even recommended), the one with the higher base elo would have to lock in first if you cannot decide
-Save the replays, they act as proof. Admins are allowed to ask for replays anytime
-Report the score to your league admin
-Gain 1 point for a 1-1 (draw) and 2 points for a 2-0 (win), losing 0-2 or losing via default lose does not result in any points
Signup
You can sign up for the league using this link or the button below
You will be asked for you Forum name, ingame name, prefered league to start in and Discord account.


The official PvP discord will be mainly used for communication and updates. 
Please join it using this link.
 
 
As always, if you have any questions reply in this thread. Keep in mind that neither the format nor the rules are set in stone yet, and while the signup lasts (about ~4 weeks) there might still be changes.
See you in the forge,
Toggy
 

Just a clarification for all new players: The league is also for you, there is a special division just for silver and new players (like the old rookie tournaments) where you can enjoy PvP and learn together without getting stomped by veterans. More details will be shared in Phase II.
 
Greetings,
Toggy

Hello Skyladies and Skylords,
As hinted before and announced recently on stream, we will have a PvP league starting within the next two months. But all in order:

What?!
A league like a football league will start for every PvP-player who is interested. You will have one opponent per week (rules not yet completely finished). The exact model will be presented soon, but imagine it like this: A league system consisting of different divisions (1-4) each consisting of groups of about ~8 players. The top players will be in division 1a, the new players in 4a-z. After every season (~8 weeks) you can rise in league if you are in a topspot or drop down if you are in a bottom spot.
All this wll be organised via a few excel sheets since a webpage is out of my skillset atm. But stay tuned for a final draft of the rules and system!
 
When does it start? Where can I sign up?
No fixed date is set yet, signup will start in Phase II.
Edit: Phase II is now live. Sign-ups are open. 
 
Timetable!
• Phase I : Official announcement of the league, recruiting admins (~1week)
• Phase II(we are here): (click here) Open the signup and showcase the rules and format (~4-6 weeks)
• Phase III: Hosting a tournament to determine the participants in the top division and start of the league (1 weekend)
 
So right now...I need YOU!
To host this league, Hiko and I need people to help us out, especially for managing the different league groups (divisions) and to help me manage a Discord. So the open positions atm look like this:
• League Admin
• Discord Admin
And whatever roles we might need. If you want to help us do this reach out to me via Discord ( Toggy#8400 ). And yes, you can be an Admin and still participate in the league, it is not a problem.
 
Thats it pretty much for Phase I, if you have any question respond in this channel or hit me up on stream ( where I will be tlaking about the league) and Discord.
See you in the Forge,
Toggy

How to play Nature T1
- a PvP Guide by RadicalX -

 
-General talk-
Okay I'm almost finished with the entire T1 section. I'll say the the same stuff as I did before, with this guide I want to provide information for newer players (Stuff like: Which cards do I use against which color), but also for the ones who are already dedicated veterans (going for in depth analysis here). Again I want to remark that every statement I make here refers to 1v1-PvP since 2v2 works in a different way (especially for nature because in 2v2 you can cover up most of its weaknesses while benefitting even more from the strengths nature offers).

 
Let's just start with a short summary of what nature is good or bad at:
+ Nature T1 has a good scaling in extended T1 fights (it outscales Shadow & Fire units by a wide margin and can get really opressive due to free sustain)
+ Many people, even some of the top players, have no clue how to play against nature T1, because they never play against strong nature players. Since nature has a very different playstyle compared to other factions this can be a massive advantage for you.
+ Nature T1 spells scale well into mid/late T2, which opens up for very strong mid game options
+ Nature T1 is simply fun to play and practicing the micromanagement is really rewarding
- Nature units don't scale into T2 at all with the exception of Dryad (playing T1 vs T2 with nature is also quite hard and requires alot of experience)
- The deck is hard to play as it requires very crisp decisionmaking (can be good for you if you invest alot of time into practicing)
- Nature has no clean answer against Phasetower (resulting in a matchup that is really hard to deal with and you need Primal Defender in your deck to survive). But Phasetower is disgustingly strong in any matchup.

 
Nature has some weak points that can be exposed. The units are expensive, which makes you vulnerable for cross map action and aggressive T2's. You usually just want to avoid playing Nature as Shadow and Fire usually bring up much more stability to your decks. People who mastered their respective T1 could actually abuse nature T1 heavily. That said most high ranked players are very inexperienced when it comes to playing against nature. Even the “average Prime” from the old days would hide himself behind Phasetowers & instant T2's to get throught this early matchup regardless of strategic advantages.

 
Deck building
Let's start to take a look the cards, that are available in Nature T1. I'll simply set up groups like in my other guides to give you an overview of what cards I'd consider as strong or ... well not so strong.

 
S - Tier
Dryad (blue): Super essential card with an insane ability and passive. Definitely must have in the traditional nature deck. Does synergise well with pretty much everything your T1 offers and as an ranged M unit with splash damage almost perfect. Her damage often gets underestimated as her card description is wrong (should be 660 attack and not 550 since the splash damage is not part of the calculation). The additional crowd control can be used to very high value in micro trades.
Ensnaring Roots: Super essential spell, one of the main reasons why you want to play a nature splash - it is useful in every stage of the game against almost every type of melee unit. Synergises really well with the wide arsenal of ranged units, that nature can bring on the table.
Hurricane: Very powerful mid game spell, helps alot against S units in T1 fights and allows you to survive against stronger S units like Darkelf assassins in T2.
Surge of Light: Grants you extra safety against AoE damage and makes your opponent think twice, if he wants to nasty that Dreadcharger into your full hp units. In addition to that this spell is almost always useful throughout the game, especially on open fights. It empowers very simple attacks (Playing Deep One + perma heal can put your opponent onto a massive amount of pressure in the later stages of the game).
 

 
A – Tier
Shaman: Also very important in a good nature T1 deck. The sustain it offers leads to great importance of micro, which gets rewarded heavily (saving these 1 hp units is so damn satisfying). It's super important for nature mirrors and overall useful in many ocasions. Clearly a must have for extended trading.
Windweavers: The double shot ability makes them super useful in big fights and against squad targets. Windweaverspam beats out Nox spam, which is quite important, when playing against Shadow. Just struggles against knockbacks (Firesworn, Hurricane, Frostmage) so spamming it against anything else than shadow is rarely useful.
Swiftclaw: Technically the best swift unit, if you're interested in playing an aggressive T1. If you want to avoid fights or save deckslots for stonekin, a different swift may be the better option. Its high dps is very useful against Frost players (Swiftclawspam can punish greedy early well choices) and also good as a front liner in early (!) nature mirror fights. Useless against shadow though, but still worth a deck slot most of the time as the high dps also brings up potential threatening to early T2s by your opponent.
Spearmen: Very Important in alot of matchups. Their high hp pool makes them easy to micro, which leads to a very high heal efficency. Very good in dazed fights against Shadow and they also make the difference in early nature matchups. Underrated card, which is sort of similar in its function as skeleton warriors are in Shadow T1. In their M-Counter form they also get a little bit of extended range, which allows you to safely attack rooted melee units without taking damage by yourself.
Primal Defender: Helps you alot to slow down phasetower-players on dangerous maps like Whazai and can slow down the game in general. Provides alot of safety and is a very good addition in your deck. I recommend playing it and at a certain point it is even a must have card. It also allows you to stall out at certain choke points against aggressive Frostmagespam in order to survive the early stage of the game.
Treespirit: Destroys every type of healthy gameplay (has arguably the highest cost efficency out of your T1 units), but sadly doesn't help you against the real threats nature has to face (Mortar, Phasetower, Frostmage) as you can soak up damage rotations. Treespirits always just hit the closest target, which is an exploitable weekness, so while I see alot of people try that “only Treespirit T1”, it doesn't work out well. The card is insanely good, if you are weak at T1 looking to slow down the game to survive for later gamestages, but is very slow when it comes to transitioning into offense.

 
B - Tier
Amazon Blue: Very good, if you look for a fast T2, because its an L counter and its ability is deadly against Nightcrawlers (You can swap and activate them immediatly afterwards). Therefore it simply scales better than Swiftclaw, but is inferior in T1 fights. The beast damage reduction can be useful against some creatures (Swiftclaw, Treespirit, Sunderer).
Mark of the Keeper: Defensive Building, which can be very strong in certain spots on the map and deadly against some decks, that rely to much on mid range units & spells. But usually you fall to far behind to protect every single base since 70 power is quite a huge price. Aura radius is too small to block Phasetower from attacking so it doesn't work as a replacement for Primal Defender.
Evenom (red): Very good to support your army in T1 vs T2 fights. Helps alot to bring down skyfire drakes as it is a soft counter to ravage. Can be used to play out and punish instant T2s of fire splashes (don't do this against pure Fire though!).

 
C – Tier
Dryad (green): Synergises well with an endless amount of cards, which is very nice to have, but rarely useful enough to justify the 60 power investement. Can be nice to cheese your opponent with some sort of Darkelfassassins burst combos or and also denies small debuffs and anti magic areas.
Werebeasts: They cost 75 power which is slightly less than the other swift units ... if you want to go instant T2 to safe 5 power this is your choice! Also a potential choice to swift start against Shadow T1 even though their combat ability is still lackluster.
Mumbo Jumbo (both affinities): Cheese card that has to be used on an isolated unit, otherwise it has pretty much no effect. This card belongs to rPvE bossfights.
Manawing: Troll card, which is fun to play and microing the teleport ability is super fun. But its hp pool is just too small to make serious use of it outside of the PvE area. All T1 factions do have good anti air units in their basic composition, which makes the air unit stat malus pretty bad for you. That said you can still use it to bring down annoying cliff mortar attemps (I'm looking at you DasToggy).
Stranglehold: The card has huge damage and provides huge safety, but the cost is too high. Also doesn't hit buildings, which is very bad vs Phasetower/Mortar.

 
D – Tier
Amazon Green: The blue version has a damage reduction, which makes it just straight up better than this version, that does almost nothing.
Evenom (purple): dps is too low to justify its power cost.
Fountain of Rebirth: PvE card, does litereally nothing for you due to its initial cooldown.

 
This is my T1 I use most of the time when playing nature T1:
Swiftclaw
Dryad (blue)
Shaman
Windweavers
Spearmen
Ensnaring Roots
Hurricane
Surge of Light
Primal Defender
Even though 9 slots look like a huge investment you need to keep in mind, that nature has alot of key spells (Root, Hurricane, Surge of Light) that scale very well into later stages and will be strong through the entire game. If you look for higher slot efficency you may consider cutting Spearmen.

 
Matchup Discussion

 
1 Nature vs Shadow
1.1 General matchup discussion
1.2 How to deal with Nox Spam
1.3 how to deal with Dreadchargers
1.4 How to deal with Phasetowerspam
1.5 How to punish beast Shadow T1 players
1.6 What to do against instant T2
1.7 How to rush greedy power wells
1.8 Map advice
2 Nature vs Frost
2.1 General Matchup discussion
2.2 How to deal with Frostmagespam
2.3 How to punish early wells
2.4 How to deal with Ice-Guardians & Master Archers
2.5 How to deal with early T2
2.6 Map advice
3 Nature vs Fire
3.1 General Matchup discussion
3.2 Dryad spam dicussion
3.3 How to play the classic matchup
3.4 How to survive the early game against Wrecker
3.5 What to do against Mortar
3.6 How to deal with early T2
3.7 Map Advice
4 Nature Mirror
4.1 Swift unit starter
4.2 Swift vs ranged starter
4.3 Treespirits
4.4 Playing against early T2
 
1 Nature vs Shadow
I want to start with the matchup against Shadow, because I think it's pretty easy to understand the dynamic from the nature perspective for a basic level.
I want to describe how to beat the average Shadow T1 player:
There are multiple scenarios you will encounter, when playing against Nature T1. I will go through all of them. First of all I will show you how the average Shadow T1 player plays & how to demolish him with ease. Then I'll go further to discuss what to do against dangerous unit compositions and strategies and how to survive against the overpowered Phasetower.

 
1.1 General matchup discussion
Nature has a general strength, when fighting against S Units due to Windweavers double damage bonus & Hurricane. This makes Forsaken less effective, espcially in a spam they are absolutely weak against Hurricane. On the other hand nox troopers make your Swiftclaw/Amazon entirely useless as you want to get off max value out of ensnaring roots. Starting with your swift unit may result into an autolose, which leads me to one of the golden rules, when playing nature T1: Always let your enemy spawn his first unit before you. This gives you the information about his T1 therefore you can react properly. The matchup against Shadow is probably the easist one to learn at the beginning, which is my main reason why I'm starting right here.
1.2 How to deal with Nox Spam
This is quite an easy task. All you have to do is spamming Windweavers and pull back that unit in a fight, which gets focussed. Most of the time your Windweavers will survive, because Nox Trooper need extra hits to kill squad units. Therefore you can save multiple units and heal them with surge of light. Even with motivate there is no way you're gonna lose that fight if you micro properly.
Tip: You can select damaged units on the small screen at the right side. This allows you to pick your targets faster and more precisely.
1.3 How to deal with mass Dreadchargers
Some people may try to circle around you with Dreadchargers, which is a little bit harder to defend. Spearmen do a good job though to protect you. Against a massive amount of Dreadchargers it's quite useful playing a second squad of Spearmen. The important part in this scenario is to avoid open areas in the early stage, because you may get crushed from multiple angles. Just hover around choke points and punish overagressive pushes by using ensnaring roots (best case scenario is to catch 2 units, who are close to each other so multishot of windweavers increases your damageoutput during the cc time).
1.4 How to deal with mixed unit combinations
Probably the most effective way to play Shadow T1 is a combination of 1 Forsaken squad (to finish of S squads, because Nox struggle with this) and an equal amount of spammed Dreadchargers/Nox Troopers. You need to be careful with your micro and a good amount of Windweavers are necessary to eliminate threads quickly. Always try to kite back up until you have a big army and some additional power to support with your spells effectively. It should be easier to stay safe as Nox & Forsaken aren't that fast. Just be careful and don't fall back too far, otherwise a straight wellfocus into T2/Phasetower defence may put you far behind.
1.4 How to deal with Phasetowerspam
This card ist probably your worst enemy when playing nature T1. It destroys windweavers with its absurd splash damage and has an insanely high cost efficency ... pretty much a cc immune long range high dps tank. You will face Phasetowers in 2 possible occasions (Defensive and offensive situations). If you are trying to rush against a phasetower player (because he picked up a greedy power well or something like that), keep in mind that you're still going to lose an engagement. Try to set up your mobility advantage to and walk up to the main base to bait out a Phasetower, then walk back to the extra well. This way you can soak 60 additional power out of your opponent's power pool. Keep in mind it simply doesn't work on large maps like Haladur. Phasetower will always favour the Shadow player unless he makes major mistakes. Maps like Whazai are even worse, because a straight phasetowerspam in the middle can reach your powerwells just after 2 ports. You need to set up a primal defender defence before your enemy gets to port in. Otherwise the game is just lost.
1.5 How to deal with a Shadow T1 Master
This will be really tough. Your goal is early survival. The Shadow player has some ways to create massive advantages within the first minutes to build up big advantages. I'll show one of these powerful early attacks, that will end up with a clean 80+ power advantage for the shadow player most of the time.
I'll give Yrmia as an example (Your opponent starts with a Dreadcharger. You have to respond with Spearmen or Windweavers . The game is over if you make one single missstep. You opponent will just start picking up a power well ...
1) Now you can decide if you want to rush him. If you decide to rush him he plays a defensive Phasetower, that can port to the main base if you try to switch (even though it takes more damage there, fighting at the enemies main base will be hard, because the Monument will also constantly attack you with its splash damage and finish off squads before you can heal them).
2) You take the well by yourself. This lowers the early voidlevel and leaves you open for a split attack which favours Shadow. An immediate double attack at your well and your main base will follow soon with 2-3 units per base. Shadow units are more effective without additional support while the expensive nature units need to synergise with each other and their support spells. In addition to that crowd control is nearly useless (1Dreadcharger, 1 Nox, 1Forsakensquad), because you won't be able to cc multiple units, you don't have enough crowd control in your base to make the cost investement worth it & you lack the units to kills cc'd units. If you try to overwhelm your opponent at one spot, he can just spam units at the other spot and get your powerwell over there (especially when he motivates the unit from the weaker side). You lose at least 1 powerwell.
3) Instant T2. If your opponent mimics your movements early and stays on the same side as you do, there is no way you can reach an orb fast enough with your slow first unit. If you decide to start swiftclaw, your opponent will read your plan in about a second and won't pick up the power well, so he can rush your T2 immediatly if it's needed. You can't go for a dazed fight anymore, because Nox Troopers demolish Swiftclaw/Amazon and winning a fight while being 80 power down this early into the game is just not compensable just by good micro.
Shadow T1 is very powerful at the start of the game and you definitely need to respect that. But don't worry to much, you won't meet such a strong shadow T1 player on a regular base. Most of the time people do make mistakes, so you can pick off some units with your cc or simple do favourable damage trades that keep you alive until you start to scale up. You will still face turrets and instant T2's alot, but you can survive that by using primal defender or picking up instant T2 by yourself. In the best case scenario you may be able to rush your opponent.

 
1.6 Rushing an opponent who plays instant T2:
1.6.1 Pure Shadow
Pure Shadow: Very hard to deal with. Rushing is only a good decision if you're close to your opponent's orb already and even then it may be close. You need spearmen as tanks and M counters to deal with Shadow Mages, who will destroy your units faster than you may think. If you are not in position there is no way to rush that, you need to be in position with your spearmen, when the T2 is finished already.
1.6.2 Bandits
Bandits: Actually easy to rush if you are close. That is a big 'IF' since you can't start swift vs Shadow and this gives Bandits more space. Just split against crowd control, play 1-2 dryads and sleep incoming drakes. Bandits has no crowd control, so you can even rush over a decent distance. If your opponent is to far away, picking up a power well with primal defender (that thing demolishes drakes) is also fine. Just make sure to defend proactively & keep an eye on nightcrawlers aimed for split attacks. you need to catch units before they get close to your power wells (rallying banner attacks are annoying). I recommend practicing this, if you are a pure nature player, because Bandits has the upper hand in this matchup due to cards like windhunter and powerful rallying banner attacks.
1.6.3 Shadow Nature
Shadow Nature: Don't overstay your welcome T1 against Shadow Nature. This deck is probably the deadliest out of all against T1 units. Cheapest high dps units + cheapst crowd control. A common strategy with this deck is to sacrifice entire T1 armies just to get a powerwell and then defend counterattacks with Oink + Phoenix (+Nightcrawler-Nasty). Don't fall for this bait
1.6.4 Shadow Frost
Shadow Frost: Hard to rush, easy to defend against. You can just pick up a powerwell and defend early attacks with good micro. Just don't push to aggressively, as Shadow Frost does really well at defending power wells and orbs (but that should be well known). From a defensive spot you won't be surprised by any Lyrish Nasties or some stuff like that.
1.7 How to rush against greedy power wells
This is a pretty common scenario when facing unexperienced shadow players. Most of them will put up very aggressive extra powerwells without the needed ressources to defend them. If you want to punish that, you still need to keep an eye onto two things. First of all you need to be in range to punish a potential defensive tower. Secondly you still need at leasty 3-4 combat units and some power to make good use of your support spells. Even with a 100 power lead an early engagement may be very bad for you, because Shadow units work much better on a very low power level. So taking like 20-30 seconds to build up your army in the first place might be a wise choice if you don't have enough units in the mix, but as I said you need to be at least somewhat close to

 
1.8 Maps (Tips and spots to watch out for)

 
Lajesh: With the walls it's a great map for you as it blocks any early action and you control the only attack areas with your crowd control. Allows you to scale up to critical points, that allow you to take control over the game.
Elyon: Phasetower or instant T2 by your opponent may lose you mapcontrol right from the start on, you need to fight from an uncomfortable position. At least the wall protects your main base, so you won't be pressured early, which is good for you to scale up safely, especially when playing pure nature.
Haladur: Your main base is far away from the center of this map. This means you are open to get split attacked. Defending that on equal power level can be very tough, escpially due to the strength of motivate. Centered fights will be in your favour unless Phasetower is played.
Yrmia: As seen above, this map gives you alot of trouble due to multiple spots to get flanked from, if your opponent mastered his T1. Phasetowers from the center position are very dangerous. Small entries can be covered by ensnaring roots though, which may a possible opening for you.
Whazai: If you see your opponent starting with Phasetower you need a primal defender at your entrance to the center of the map, otherwise you will be destroyed by phasetowerspam. They just need 2 ports to attack your powerwells. Even T2 isn't enough to stop this. If phasetower isn't played you should be fine though, Windweavers are more valuable than spearmen in this scenario, because they can attack the powerwells at the main base over that cliff.
Uro: Troublesome map. Gives you some issues due to the high distance between wells since you have to start with a slow starting unit, but it's not as bad as the Frost vs Shadow T1 matchup on this map since you've got a chance to win the dazed fights. Fast T2 is valuable for you on this map unless you win early trades.
Simai: The is somewhat fine to play, but you may lose entire map control upon playing an extended T1 agianst Phasetower. So early T2 is somewhat necessary if you see your opponent prepare anything at the center of the map. Apart from that you've got 2 power wells next to you main base, that are somewhat safe to take, which is pretty useful. 
Generated maps (small): Similar problems as on Elyon. You may lose mapcontrol, rushing against instant T2 or phasetower is hard, but not always impossible. You make your decision based on your distance to your opponent if you want to rush or play the game slowly with less mapcontrol
Generated maps (big): Games most likely shift to the T2 stage before anything dangerous may happen. You should be careful about sacrificial well focus strategies by your opponent as you can't counterattack over such a wide distance.

 
2 Nature vs Frost

 
2.1 General Matchup discussion
Frost is an uncomfortable opponent for you, because Frostmagespam is negating your scaling power, therefore you can't sit back and scale up safely like in other matchups. You either need to be more proactive to get early advantages or try to use defensive buildings to stall out up until later stages of the game. That's easier said than done. The Frost player can fall back and also use its Ice-Guardians, but with strong micro plays you can force good early fights and create very nice advantages for yourself.
2.2 How to deal with Frostmagespam
There are 2 options for yourself to deal with a Frostmagespam. You can either go for a Swiftclawspam, that is beating Frostmagespam very early into the game. You can try to force an early fight, if the Frost player oversteps. But you aren't guaranteed to get the fight you want if your opponent stays at his main base up until he scales up. If you play stonekin an aggressive T2 position may be an option due to the high amount of M knockback in, but as a pure nature player I don't recommend doing such things. The Frostmages S-knockback is negating the option of using spirit hunters & ghost spears to full effect. On bigger maps you can take an early well to force a response to create an easier target compared to the main base (keep in mind an orb also does formidable damage). It also lowers the void level which delays the big Frostmage burst breakpoint. A less aggressive strategy would be mass Dryads/Shamans against the magespam and hope, that your opponents splits up his mages a little bit too far. Then you can use ensnaring roots to pick up mages, that are placed too far from the main group to get your advantages. If your opponent picks up to many mages, because he doesn't allow you to outtrade him early, you need to rely on a more defensive strategy. Turrets work quite well in this case, because once the mage army gets to big the turrets will buy you some essential time. Frost units are too slow to run around your bases, therefore you are safe for a while with the option to prepare your next move. If you get to kill some Frostmages early on, you may be able to win this in the late T1, because Frost Mage charges are limited, while you have access to two combat units with the Shaman & Dryad. The mage player is still favoured in this matchup, but the homesoil nerf at the last patch in 2013 was apparently beneficial for the balancing in this matchup (I guess that was the only good thing about that nerf).
2.3 How to punish early wells
On maps with big well distances like Haladur I recommend going for an aggressive early game. Swiftclawspam is an option here. You can switch targets once your opponent spent alot of power into Ice Guardians. They are too slow to follow your units when there is a great distance between power wells. You simply run away from the Ice Guardians while destroying the undefended power wells. If your opponent wants to go for a Frostmagespam, you can simply pick up an early powerwell to open up a spot to attack if the Frost player responds by taking a well on its own in the center. On a low void level the Frostmagespam is vulnerable to heavy aggression.
Tip: Keep an eye onto the Glyph of Frost. Always try to anticipate it and try to bring up less predictable movement patterns on the board. Even though that seems a little random sometimes, it may be harder for your opponent to predict your movements correctly.
2.4 How to deal with Ice-Guardians & Master Archers
This is probably an easy task for you. If Frostmage isn't involved you win the scaling game since you ranged advantage over Ice-Guardians and the Hurricane against a potential Master archerspam are simply way to effective. Just keep in mind that you need a good amount of units on the board to make your crowdcontrol worth its use as Frost units are very tanky. In the early game you need to be on point with your micromanagement in order to keep your units alive (Shaman heals, Dryad cc, kiting) before cc starts winning these trades for you in the late game. Frostbite is very dangerous here, you might lose units, that are out of position! Keep in mind to stay in an aggressive stance when commiting to an attack. Your opponnent might tech up and suddenly your poor Shamans are infront of a War Eagle, which is a situation you probably do want to avoid.
2.5 Playing against instant T2s
I mostly would recommend picking up T2 by yourself in that case because you should have strong T2 options, when playing pure Nature here. Frost Fire, Frost Shadow & Pure Frost are very good T2 matchups for you and instant T2 give you an optimal position to gain leads over Energy parasites. Stonekin is pretty difficult to rush with nature T1 as Stonetempest is super effective against your M heavy unit composition. You need to be very close to be able to rush this effectively (getting a tempo lead by dealing damage to the orb during its construction time).
2.6 Map advice
Lajesh: Again the walls are very valuable to block Frostmages as they can't shoot through them. If you get into a leading position here, you may consider trying to get mapcontrol as this blocks T3 for the late game. You always have the option of playing safe if anything goes wrong.
Elyon: I usually recommend looking for an early T2 in the corner on this map. Your mainbase is safe, but you can't contest the center in an extended trade against Frostmages. If you're playing pure nature your opponent will be forced to go T2 by himself as he can't defend Energy Parasites with T1 and doesn't reach your T2 orb in time.
Haladur: The big distance betweeen the main base and the center are always and advantage against Frost. Taking an early power well is your best bet here. Lowers the void and can't be rushed effectively as long as you've got a defensive building as back up. You've got at least a minute to prepare yourself before the Frost player gets into a meaningful range to do something useful.
Yrmia: Very small map and very dangerous against Frost. It's really hard to safely aquire any position on the map here. The wall segment gives a 75 power boost for both players, which favours the Frostmage spam as your opponent will reach his critical mass earlier into the game.
Wazhai: Keep in mind that melee units are less effective here due to the cliff. Going aggressive with Dryad + Shaman can work out pretty well, as most people will be nervous and overcommit into an early engagement, that nature wins due to the Shaman sustain. Against experienced Frost players a Primal Defender behind that cliff can block early center aggression.
Uro: If you play Stonekin, you can go instant T2 against aggressive magespam. You most likely identify your opponent's itention as he either needs to take the long path in oder to get wells or the short path in order to fight. I think playing against this as a pure nature player is dangerous, because Magespam can rush early T2's and it's hard to defend any position apart from your main base.
Simai: You can take that early well to create a big tempo lead in your advantage. Low void level, big map with walls to intercept Frost players for a good amount of time. Should be fine to play this matchup here.
Generated maps (small): You most likely lose map control on these maps, which is a little unfavourable for you. But sometimes you can go for a swiftclawspam due to the big distance between center and main base.
Generated maps (big): Early advantage for you as Swift units are very valuable here. You can try very aggressive Swifclawspam into T2 as there is no option to counterattack in time for non-swift units. The distance between both players is huge. Keep in mind that Frost T1 players usually play super strong late game decks so getting an advantage pre T3 can be very important for you.

 

 
3 Nature vs Fire
 
3.1 General Matchup discussion
The matchup against Fire is very interesting and there are alot of ways this could play out. There are some easy & effective strategies, but also some advanced ones, that are way harder to execute, but more useful in the end. Fire T1 is often played differently dependend on the deck you are facing because there is a big variety in deckslots that are invested in T1 within the Fire deck. Pure Fire can throw 8-9 cards into its T1, while Fire Nature will simply use 4-6 cards, because it requires way more slots in T2. Some cards like Wrecker & Mortar turn around matches heavily and you need to know and respect their specific power once they are used. Before going into specific T1 fight discussion I need to warn you here. Fire players tend to skip T1 against nature quite often and nature units are very weak against T2. So keep in mind to avoid binding power into to many units while being in a passive stance. This frequently leads to frustrating losses and you want to avoid that.
3.2 Dryad Spam Discussion
I would say this was a very famous way to play the matchup from the nature perspective. Alot of players would simply spam dryads to scale up to a point where they simply outscale the opponent. I agree with the fact, that Dryad is a very powerful card with good stat cost efficency and especially against Fire T1 the damage reduction is huge because of eruption. A double Eruption doesn't kill units anymore and its damage gets reduced to 225 per target (from 300). Anyways you need to be careful when to use this strategy. You lose alot of mobility and versitility, which makes you weaker against early T2 and Mortar tower. These are strategies you will face quite often and this is why I don't consider spamming Dryads in this matchup unless your opponent tries to go for a Fireswornspam. Dryad has a superior stat cost efficency and Firesworns can't use their ranged advantage or S knockback against such an army.
3.3 How to play the classic matchup
The classic unit composition you will face is built around 1-2 scavengers combined with Sunstriderspam and maybe 1 Firesworn. Your opponent will try to fight on an open field or at least attack from multiple spots at once, so you can't use your cc onto all units. On most maps I recommend a Swiftclaw start to match the speed of Scavenger, because especially on mid centered maps Fire can pick up a well + mortar or instant T2 which is very unpleasent to play against. In rare occasions you may consider starting with a Dryad. In order to win this fight you need at least 2 Dryads, because you need the damage reduction against the Eruption on all of your units. Before you manage to do that try to avoid every possible fight.
Tip: Spawn order is an important here. Your Dryads need to get spawned early on, because they need to be undazed to switch their mode for damage output. Shamans on the other hand are incredibly good dazed as they already heal for full value. This is very important to know to win extended trades.
3.4 How to play agianst Wrecker
Wrecker has insane M damage. I think it's the best basic cost stat efficency out of all T1 units if you simply look at its damage output. This is something you need to respect in this situation. Most of the time only pure Fire players will carry Wrecker in their decks, because they do have the slot left to use them. But sometimes Fire Frost also goes for the Wrecker, because it has a weak T2 against pure Nature. They most important part in this case is your use of crowd control. Because Wrecker has the ability to allow undazed summons so your CC can end up being used against you. If you use ensnaring roots onto a wrecker, he can use the ability and spawn undazed melee creatures out of the root range while his sunstriders will be placed inside the root area, because they are immune to knockbacks over there, which is a safe spot against Hurricane. In addition to that Wrecker empowers split attacks by alot. Bringing up an undazed Sunderer or multiple Wreckers right front of your powerwell is a huge threat and you always have to respect that.
3.5 How to deal with early T2s
3.5.1 Pure Fire
Don't rush this. It doesn't work unless you get a big gifted lead. Enforcer and Wildfire are a powerful defense against T1. Pure Fire will completely roll over you, you have to respond with T2 by yourself and avoid having more bound power in your T1 units. The pure Fire matchup is very unforgiving to play, so be on guard!
3.5.2 Fire Nature
Fire Nature is a threat for you, but not as bad as pure Fire. As long as you are close to your opponent's orb, you can attempt to rush it down. If you won a trade beforehand it should be even better. Your biggest task is keeping all units splitted against cc, while keeping the dryad buff applied to all units. Make sure to sleep any T2 unit immediatly. Skyfire Drake is especially Dangerous. Envenom can work as a soft counter to Ravage here, as it is unlikely to kill a skyfire Drake without it. Always try to be ready for a lavafield. The Fire Nature options are powerful, but there is only limited power and time available for him and that can be your advantage. Keep in mind that a missed rush onto a fire nature T2 always means game over. So be careful.
3.5.3 Fire Frost
Probably the easist deck to rush as Coldsnap is useless against nature. The 50% damage reduction is very good for your shamans. Still don't underestimate the power of Skyfire Drake and a potential Lavafield. You need tempo to force protects or cc to keep down the powerlevel in order to prevent a lethal strike. Think twice if you really want to run into the risk of rushing against Fire Frost when having a favourable T2 matchup anyways.
3.5.4 Bandits
Nobody plays Bandits and we talked about that earlier in the guide.
3.6 What to do against Mortar
This card is probably the most dangerous one for you in this matchup. Completely blocks any form of aggression. Once you lose map control and a mortar is up, the position is fone forever. In addition to that Mortar eliminates the ability to basetrade effectively as his damage/cost efficency is even above T2 level. Try to avoid mortar in every way. Cliff mortar attacks also can be difficult to defend once you fall behind, that's why I always recommend playing the game on a low risk level when playing nature in its current state. That said you can't get into a super passive stance as aggressive Mortars may force you into a fight.
3.7 Map advice
Haladur: Bad map for you. Split attacks from the side paths are very dangerous. Defending a Sunderer in your main base isn't just dangerous and expensive, it also leaves alot of bound power in your main base making any center position very exploitable.
Elyon: You can take fights if your opponent agrees on going for a T1 Battle. Center position to fight over, you should win extended trades, but lose early circle engagements. Be careful about instant T2 though.
Lajesh: you can stall, but you won't be able to attack effectively either. Don't lose control over the postion close to your main base. That can end up pretty ugly when playing against pure Fire.
Yrmia: You either have to be aggressive to pressure against potential instant T2 (with extended void power extremely dangerous!) or try to set up T2 at the other side of the map. T1 trades should be manageable, because you should be able to reach your critical amount of units pretty early.
Uro: Big map, so keep an eye onto split attacks. Apart from that you should be fine by contesting the center position. Whoever gets it in the end will be at a massive advantage as it is a great setup for both players (split attacks for your opponent and EP management for yourself).
Wazhai: Cliffmortars everywhere … super tricky to play against it. I would even consider playing manawing in a tournament to prevent this … When Mortar isn't used you should be able to play very aggressively as the wells at the cliff are very vulnerable, even when your opponent picks up early T2.
Simai: Slow starter. As long as you don't lose map control entirely you should be fine for the early stage of the game. Be careful about welling up too much as this leaves you open for split attacks.
Generated (small): Center rush + Mortar is disgusting to play against. Fire is clearly favoured on these type of maps due to this and you should try to bait out an early fight even though it may be difficult to win. Center control is key on alot of small generated maps.
Generated (big): Just make sure you don't bind too much power in T1 units as this makes T2 pickups much more juicy for your opponent. Should be difficult to apply serious pressure here.

 
4 Nature Mirror
I still feel like Nature mirrors are one of the most fun matchups in the entire game. Especially since Treespirit got nerfed and doesn't destroy the faction entirely anymore there is alot of room to show of crazy skills in this matchup. There are 3 ways to play out the game and I will explain the basic concepts right here.

 
4.1 Swift unit start
Probably the most common way to play this. Swiftclaw or Amazon start into spearmen into dryad into shaman spam. This is the most effective unit composition in the early stage. You will try to use your dryad to keep as many units cc'd as possible while Shamans will switch between attack and healing rotations. Keep in mind, that it's your priority to keep your units alive. Important note: Don't use any spells in the early game! Your Shamans are more than enough to keep your units alive in the early game. Spells are wasted power, because once you use them your opponent can just play another Shaman while keeping his other units alive during the cc duration. At some point it may be useful to add a second Dryad to increase the damage output and protect your other Dryad from burst rotations. Shaman & Dryad micro is key in this matchup. Switching between damage and support modes while maintaining correct unit focus is incredibly hard and really allows you to show off your skill with the deck. Keep in mind that Swiftclaw will me more dangerous than Amazon, because Amazon damage reduction doesn't work against other units even though she can take on the Swiftclaw in a simple 1v1. Her damageoutput isn't sufficient in extended trades. Using the ability onto the Swiftclaw is a NoGo by the way! Dryads could just cc the swifclaw resulting in 65 power being almost wasted. In addition to that the unit ends up getting unbound, which is a huge advantage for the
4.2 Swift unit vs ranged start
The second way to play this matchup is the Dryad start. You can't fight your opponent in the early game, because your dps is way to low and Swiftclaw + Spearmen are a huge thread to your units, but once you have 10+ units you can try to burst them down with crowd control. The melee units are somewhat useless, because they don't reach your units anymore while there is no way to heal them against the burst rotations in the late T1 anymore . But as I said if you get into a fight to early you will lose, because the Melee units do way more damage and Shamans will be able to sustain through your damage output, especially with a Dryad in the mix. In addition to that the lack of swifclaw reduces your pressure onto early T2s. EP spam vs Nature T1 can be a huge turning point.
4.3 Treespirits
This is the third and probably the easiest version to play out the matchup is Treespirit spam. Beats out the dryad spam due to the high dps, but struggles alot against Spearmen, because they can soak up the damage early and get healed by Shamans later on. I feel like playing them is less effective after the damage nerf, because the sustained dps version beats them now unless you get enough Treespirits to Burst down Spearmen with one rotation (and you need many of them). Keep in mind, that you need to use your Dryad wisely here. Using the sleep animation just after a Treespirit used his attack is useless, because it has up to 10s cooldown between his attack rotations. Treespirit spam is even worse against early T2s though, that has to be considered here.
Tip: Amazon takes 50% less damage against Green Treespirits and soaks up burst rotations aswell.
 

 
4.4 Rushing an opponent who picks up instant T2
4.4.1 vs pure Nature
This isn't a big deal, because pure Nature doesn't have any high dps units do deal with your natural Sustain. Also you do have good cc tools to deal with Ghost Spears and Spirit Hunters. With many ranged units it should be easy to kite Deep One and apart from that there isn't too much pure Nature can offer in T2. If a pure Nature players goes instant T2 at least somewhat close to you I recommend to attack immediatly. Adding up 1-2 S units into the mix may be valuable as they deal well with the S units pure Nature can bring into the fight. Defensive T1 vs T2 is not recommended as Energie Parasites are impossible to defend with Nature T1. 
4.4.2 vs Stonekin
Way more difficult but still possible if you are close to build up a tempo lead by damaging the orb (preferably with a swiftclaw). Razorshard/Stonetempest can be quite annoying, so you need to make sure, that your unit split is perfect, but in the end there is no “burst combo” that can take you out, so there is nothing you need to be afraid of as long as you play your game perfecly. Spearmen can be really useful to support your unit composition in this matchup. 
4.4.3 vs Nature Shadow
Nature Shadow has huge potential against your T1 and is pretty big in the early T2 stage. Pretty dangerous to play agianst, but pretty unpopular deck.
4.4.4 vs Nature Fire
Rarely played with nature starteres, but somewhat troublesome. At least Natures Swift units are more expensive than scavenger, so your opponent won't be able to use his power as effective as in the Fire T1 version and may be more open to an immediate rush.

 
So that's it for now. I may be able to add some replays for some matchups later on. Thanks for reading this wall of text and I really hope to see some new nature starters in the future! Feedback's always welcome! 
Best regards
RadicalX