RadicalX

Passage to Darkness
 

Hello Skylords, Skyladies, and other Skybeings; and welcome to CCC #9 – the ninth Crappy Community Contest!


THE CONTEST HAS ENDED.
To see the winners, CLICK HERE. If you are just here to grab the code, there you go: CCC9-BOWA-NDST-RING
 
 
What are “Crappy Community Contests”?
CCC's are meant to be small-scale contests with weird challenges, hopefully luring you away from well-trodden paths. They are small-scale on the organizers side too: usually there will be no stream, video, or event announcing the winners. What's special about these contests is a participation prize for the whole Skylords community.

After a short pause, the CCC is back again, this time with a rPvE Challenge:
 
What, when, where, how?
The Archer's Tournament

All the famous archers want to settle this question once and for all: Which of them is the strongest?

This challenge is to win the highest possible single-player rPvE Map of the Month
in the fastest time under severe card limitations.

In this challenge, you are sent to win a rPvE MotM as fast as you can, using mainly T1 archers to destroy your enemies. You may unlock a maximum total of 3 cards (limited choice) by building your orbs:
Tier 1: Chose your Archers



Tier 2: Unlocks your first support spell


Tier 3: Unlocks your second support spell


Winners will be ranked according to the usual ranking tables – first on difficulty, then on time. For example, if you have an ultra-slow run on a rPvE difficulty 6 map, you will still be ranked higher than all difficulty 5 entries. Clearing a map with only archers is hard? Fear not! If you only want to participate, you may enter with a simple rPvE Difficulty Map of the Month Difficulty 1 run under these rules, making you eligible for the random prizes, which will only take you a minute or two.
Clarifications:
Don't forget to select Map of the Month! Replays with randomly generated maps are not allowed to enter the tournament. Even if you are able to play out a spell mentioned on Tier 2/Tier 3 earlier, you are only allowed to cast it once your orb has been built. If you don't want or need the T2 or T3 support spells, of course, you can ignore them and just build a big army of archers. You may also choose a second spell listed on Tier 2 after building your Tier 3, but you are not allowed to pick a second archer card. Lastly, even though the above pictures are of cards without upgrades, you can of course use your fully upgraded ones. The red affinity of Wintertide is allowed, but please note that the Infused Defense is plain worse in this challenge scenario.
  How to enter:
Battleforge automatically saves a replay file of the last match you play, named autosave.pmv.  After playing the map, rename this file, so it doesn't get overwritten. You can find your replays here: Documents => Battleforge => replays.

The contest has started with the release of this post – submit your replay through Discord (DM to Kapo#0116) or the Skylords Forum (DM to @Kapo) until 10.12.2022 23:59 CET  (= 8 days time total). You can submit multiple times, but only your best entry will count. Please note that any submitted replays may be posted here in the forums.

To lessen my workload, please rename your replay to the following format: CCC9_<difficulty>_<time>_<name>.pmv  (e.g. CCC9_5_17.22_Kapo.pmv)


 
What's the prize pool?
Since this is not just a crappy contest, but a Crappy Community Contest, you may help with your participation to earn a prize for the whole community. If we reach more than 25 participants (unique players, not entries), we will unlock a Mini-Booster code for the entire Skylords community. If more than 40 participants enter, the code will be upgraded to a Booster instead of a Mini-Booster. So tell your fellow Skylords to try this challenge – it's an occasion to try something completely new, and it raises our chances to hand out a code for everybody. 
Of course, the top ranking Skylords will get prizes too, sponsored by myself, the Community and the Skylords Reborn Team:
1st place               5 General Boosters + Promo Razorleaf
2nd place              4 General Boosters + Promo Rogan Kayle
3rd place              3 General Boosters + Promo Lyrish Knight
4th place              2 General Boosters + Harvester + Bandit Minefield
5th place              1 General Booster +  Amii Monument
6th place              Disenchant (G) + Deepcoil Worm
7th place              Cluster Explosion (R)+ Razorleaf
8th place              Parasite Swarm + Soulshatter
9th place              Ice Age (G) + Transcendence
10th place            Stronghold
11-15th place       Two Rare cards (see sponsored cards below)
16-20th place       One Rare card (see below)


Last place              Juice Tank (x4)
For participation, there is a random chance to win one of the following cards out of a large pool:
Random Draws          5x1 General Booster, Evil Eye (x5), Spitfire, Stronghold, QueekQueek, Church of Negation, Mine, Nether Warp (B), Ice Age (B), Timeshifter Spirit, Mindweaver, Wrathgazer, Abyssal Warder (R), Mine, Frenetic Assault (R), Ashbone Pyro (x2), Cultist Master, Satanael (R), Razorleaf (x2), Wildfire, Deepcoil Worm, Mark of the Keeper, Hurricane, Corsair (G) (x2), Corsair (P), Bandit Minefield (x2), Banzai Lord (P) (x3), Lost Shade (B) (x2), Twilight Creeper (R), Abomination (P), Sunderer, Juggernaut, Shrine of War, Batariel (R), Earthshaker, Soulshatter, Home Soil (x2), War Eagle, Worldbreaker Gun, Battleship, Ice Tornado, Mana Wing, Spikeroot, Shrine of Memory, Colossus, Bloodhorn (P) (x2), Bloodhorn (R) (x2), Nightshade Plant (G), Abomination (B), Lost Shade (P), Lost Grigori (P), Transcendence, Grinder (R), Grinder (P), Viridya, Brannoc, Mo, The Incredible Mo, Jorne (x2), Ravenheart, Embalmers Shrine, Nightguard (P), Skyelf Sage, 250 BFP (x20).
 
This CCC also features again a Newcomer Card Pool. By participating, players of Bronze or Silver Rank will automatically receive at least one valuable uncommon card (more likely two or three). Of course, you may also win other random draws additionally if you are lucky. The Newbie Card Pool contains the following cards:
 
Should we get more too many entries, the pool will be expanded, so every newcomer will receive a guaranteed card. Those expansion cards will be rare cards (instead of more Uncommons), so tell your fellow beginner to participate!
 
Sponsors
If one or more mighty Skylord(s) decides to sponsor this event, please contact me. I would be more than happy to beef up or expand the prize pool, add additional random draws, special bounties or any other upgrades to the prize pool. 
The following prizes have been sponsored so far:
Skylords Team          General Boosters (x20), Evil Eye (x7), Community Booster Code
@THE_BIG_WET     Newcomer Card Pool (see above), Promo Lyrish Knight, Sunderer(x3), Juggernaut (x3), Shrine of War (x3), Batariel (R) (x3), Earthshaker (x3), Ashbone Pyro (x3), Soulshatter (x2), Home Soil (x3), War Eagle (x3), Worldbreaker Gun (x3), Battleship (x3), Ice Tornado (x3), Mana Wing (x3), Spikeroot (x2), Deepcoil Worm (x3), Shrine of Memory (x3), Colossus (x3), Corsair (G) (x3), Bandit Minefield (x3), Banzai Lord (P) (x3), Bloodhorn (P) (x2), Bloodhorn (R) (x2), Nightshade Plant (G) (x3), Abomination (B) (x3), Lost Shade (P) (x3), Lost Grigori (P) (x3), Transcendence (x3), Grinder (R) (x3), Grinder (P) (x3), Viridya (x3), Brannoc (x3), Mo (x3), The Incredible Mo (x3), Jorne (x3), Ravenheart (x2)
@MadDoggo         Promo Razorleaf
@arabikaa             Promo Rogan Kayle
@T1421                Spitfire
@Titan                 Harvester, Disenchant (G), Cluster Explosion (R), Cluster Explosion (P), Church of Negation (x2), Spitfire, Nether Warp (B), Ice Age (G), Ice Age (B), Timeshifter Spirit, Parasite Swarm, Mindweaver, Stronghold, Wrathgazer, Abyssal Warder (R), Mine, Frenetic Assault (R) (x2), Ashbone Pyro (x2), Cultist Master, Satanael (R), Wildfire, Razorleaf (x4), Deepcoil Worm (x2), Mark of the Keeper, Hurricane, Corsair (G) (x2), Corsair (P) (x2), Bandit Minefield, Banzai (P) (x2), Bloodhorn (R), Lost Shade (B) (x4), Twilight Creeper (R) (x2), Abomination (P) (x2)
@hauclir               Stronghold, QueekQueek
@Dolewan            Embalmers Shrine, Nightguard (P), Skyelf Sage, Banzai Lord (P), Cultist Master
@Lans                  Skyfire Drake (x4), Fire Dragon (x4), Nox Trooper (x4), Life Weaving (x4), Shadow Phoenix (x4), Void Maw (x4), Frost Mage (x4), Coldsnap (x4), Construct (x4), Shaman (x3), Ensnaring Roots (x3), Grimvine (x4), Lost Spirit Ship G (x4), Razorshard G (x4), Gemeye P (x4), Gemeye G (x4), Home Soil (x1)
@Grak                  5000 BFP
@Skury                 Abomination (B) (that got lost somehow, and when I wanted to buy it he gave it for free <3)
Anonymous              Amii Monument
Note: Since there have been two incredible big donations, some of those cards will go into the next CCC as well.
Conclusion
I hope you have fun with this challenge, and I hope your arrows and spells strike true.
Kapo
     
Future Events – get involved!
If you are interested in helping with these (or better) kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out! Contact our beloved Event Manager @Metagross31 on the forums or discord. They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
If you especially like this small-scale-format, and you have an idea for it, you may also contact me directly to discuss your idea and host your own Crappy Community Contest.
 
 
 

Greetings Skylords!
A new month; a new Community Update! It's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

• 2nd Anniversary Stream

The second anniversary of Skylords Reborn is coming up! Two years ago, on the 18th of December 2020, the world of Nyn opened its doors again, allowing more than 100.000 Skylords to re-experience this one-of-a-kind game. Since then, we have been hard at work to bring you even more content, bugfixes, new cards and other features. Skylords Reborn is truly by the fans, for the fans, and we are glad we can celebrate this second anniversary with you. 
On Sunday the 18th of December at 20:00 CEST*, we will be hosting an anniversary stream on our official Twitch channel. We will look back on another year of Skylords Reborn, show off what will be included in our latest patch, and answer questions from the community. 
We hope you will be joining us! 

*Due to the busy December month, this time slot is pending, we will share the final streaming time closer to the anniversary. 
 
• Upcoming Content Patch

We are also hard at work to bring you a new content patch, aimed for release in December. It will include various balance changes, new cards, new achievements and a new feature.
Last year we focused on improving the economy and introduced Reforging; a way to make use of spare cards lying around and to adjust the prices of cards, giving even worthless cards a set minimum value and a creating a soft cap on card prices to prevent runaway inflation among the best ultra rares. We also added more achievements, increasing the number of boosters players can earn to help newer players get started on their collection.
Achievements are a great way to naturally introduce players to more cards, but also to keep players engaged with fun challenges. However, by rewarding items that interact with the economy (boosters, cards) we see some players get frustrated with achievements that provide challenges they don't enjoy or find too hard, yet feel forced to do because of the rewards.
So we started to work on an additional reward layer, and we are proud to reveal the new upcoming feature: Cosmetics.
With our new patch, we are introducing a bunch of new achievements focused on providing fun new challenges for players, while not having to worry about impacting the economy with their rewards. Instead, players will be able to earn special borders, banners and titles, allowing for more expression and fancy bling! Here is a little teaser:  

Cosmetics will be part of our upcoming patch, and we will share more about it and their connected achievements in the anniversary stream. 


• New Card Reveal: Sanctuary

In our Nature Deep Dive back in April, we already mentioned Sanctuary, a card that has been in development ever since. Sanctuary is a new tool for Pure Nature players that provides an effect similar to Mark of the Keeper to a select number of units. 
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 

Sanctuary is a new tier 4 spell for pure Nature decks, requiring four Nature orbs. The card will be Rare, and will come in two affinities. The effect of the non-upgraded version is as follows:
 
Blessed Spellbane
Up to 4 friendly units in a 25m radius will be wrapped in a countermagical aura. Affected units are surrounded by a spellblocking zone of 20m where enemies can neither use ranged attacks nor special abilities. Hostile players cannot play out cards within that zone. Additionally, affected units take 25% less damage. Lasts for 20 seconds. Reusable every 40 seconds.

Gifted Spellbane
Up to 4 friendly units in a 25m radius will be wrapped in a countermagical aura. Affected units are surrounded by a spellblocking zone of 20m where enemies can neither use ranged attacks nor special abilities. Hostile players cannot play out cards within that zone. Additionally, the duration of the immobilizing effects of Freeze and Paralyze is reduced by 75% on all affected targets. Lasts for 20 seconds. Reusable every 40 seconds.

Sanctuary continues our work on the Nature faction, alongside various balance changes coming to the faction in our upcoming patch. Sanctuary aims to provide Nature players with a reward for playing Pure Nature decks, instead of Enlightenment decks. It is a powerful effect that covers some weaknesses with which the faction struggles.
Sanctuary is planned to release in our next patch. 
 
• Art Spotlight

Work on Sanctuary started back in July, with SpiritAlpha coming up with a few sketches to explore directions. At this point, we weren't sure what the focus point would be of the spell. During design there were versions with non-nature units like the Overlord at the center of the spell. We thought it would be fun to show these very early concepts.


The art feedback channel was home to many a discussion during the progress, with as many as eight different takes up for discussion. We had versions with the focus on a village (1, 2), a focus on a single unit (Swamp Drake 3, Giant Wyrm 4, Abyssal Warder 6) to Twilight investation around the borders, being held back by the sanctuary (8).

After voting, the version with two dragons in the sky (5) was used to come to the final design. A big thanks to our artists SpiritAlpha and Tweeto for working on this piece and to our Art Critiques for providing feedback. As you can see, we always put a lot of thought and effort into our artworks, we hope it shows!

 
• Tournaments / Events

Since Community Updates are posted on a monthly schedule, events might come and go in between them. Be sure to keep a close eye on the ingame event-tab and the forum calendar to not miss any events! 

• CLOSING SOON – Official PvE Contest #7: Harvest season – until 02.12.2022
For this challenge, we want to see you succeed in playing the map Bad Harvest, while accomplishing several goals of varying difficulty.
The more objectives your team accomplishes, the more points you get, which will lead to greater rewards! More information. 

• NEW – CCC #9 – The Archer's Tournament – Until 10.12.2022
Once the official PvE contest is finished, a new CCC run by Kapo goes live the day. Click here for details.
 
• FINISHED – Official Halloween Event
While our Halloween event is now over, you can still play this new take on a familiar map. Instead of Encountering Twilight, Rogan Kayle finds himself in the face of new horrors. Click here for how to access the map.  

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizer, Metagross! We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you.


• Team changes

Sadly, Chibiterasu has decided to quit his role of balance developer. While sad to see him go, we respect his decision and would like to thank him for all his work.
 
• Contribute to the Project

As always, we hope you will consider helping out the project. Please take a look at all our open positions on how you can do so. 
There are also a variety of contributor roles, like translator, that don't require you to join the staff, but still allow you to help out now and then. Please take a look. 
 

• 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 General-booster: HAPP-YANN-IVER-SARY

The code is valid until January 1st, 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 #29

On a personal note; it is hard to believe this is Community Update 30 already! Preparing and writing these always takes much more time than expected, but I hope its appreciated by the playerbase.
Community Updates started out as a way to keep the playerbase informed about all the work going on behind the scenes, as we are always working on more content, quality of life fixes or other ways to expand upon Skylords Reborn, even if it can take a while for a new patch to go live. All of this is done by a team of about 35 volunteers working in different departments on their evenings, weekends or holidays, alongside their job, studies and social responsibilities. It's always impressive to me to see how much we get done and are willing to invest into a fan project for no profit. Sometimes the workload can be a lot, but I am extremely grateful for the fact BattleForge was not only resurrected and I get to play it again, but I also get to work with a bunch of talented and passionate people in a great community. 
Lets celebrate another year of Skylords together, and I hope to see you during the stream and in the Forge. 😄
 

grants access to Banzai Lord & Bloodhorn (arguable the best T4 units rn), so you are not reliant on Deathray. While the deck might be not as durable as others this combo is far from the worst when played casually and even the absolute best deck for speedrunning in rPvE. For more casual gameplay you can stack a lot of Banzai Lords, activate the ability early and use Nether Warp right into a camp. With enough birds this will probably burst down more than 50% of the enemies and with Emberstrike + Bloodhealing you have more than enough durability. Use Plague whenever you can afford it. Offering can be really good to replenish charges if necessary (use it on banzai birds or emberstrike for T4 charges). Against any strong XL boss you can add bloodhorn as an excellent counter (ability stacks with unholy hero). You can methodically take out one camp after another, which is really fun to play and not hard to execute once you get used to the pattern. 
I would consider  to be the worst combination for casual play, simply because of the weakest XL unit line up you can get (Ironclad + Construct). I agree, that Winterwitch provides more than sufficient durability and the deck would be playable for casual rPvE 9, but to me it offers less than other options.  might be another contender as it proivdes the least amount of durability and you might get some serious trouble with reaching spawn buildings. But with Plague, Infect, Frenetic and Lost Spirit Ship green for additional healing it should be okay for rPvE 9 and your damage output is actually good. 2 or more fire orbs will always grant value for casual runs because of XL unit stacking + unity and strong damage spells. 3+ Nature orbs are not that amazing, but with primeval watcher you have a powerful XL unit that can be supported dependend on what you are splashing into (Transcendence for shadow, Earthshaker & suppression for fire, Gemeye for Frost). As strong crowd control and healing spells are easy to use these decks should be rather convenient. 
 
 
 
  

grants access to Banzai Lord & Bloodhorn (arguable the best T4 units rn), so you are not reliant on Deathray. While the deck might be not as durable as others this combo is far from the worst when played casually and even the absolute best deck for speedrunning in rPvE. For more casual gameplay you can stack a lot of Banzai Lords, activate the ability early and use Nether Warp right into a camp. With enough birds this will probably burst down more than 50% of the enemies and with Emberstrike + Bloodhealing you have more than enough durability. Use Plague whenever you can afford it. Offering can be really good to replenish charges if necessary (use it on banzai birds or emberstrike for T4 charges). Against any strong XL boss you can add bloodhorn as an excellent counter (ability stacks with unholy hero). You can methodically take out one camp after another, which is really fun to play and not hard to execute once you get used to the pattern. 
I would consider  to be the worst combination for casual play, simply because of the weakest XL unit line up you can get (Ironclad + Construct). I agree, that Winterwitch provides more than sufficient durability and the deck would be playable for casual rPvE 9, but to me it offers less than other options.  might be another contender as it proivdes the least amount of durability and you might get some serious trouble with reaching spawn buildings. But with Plague, Infect, Frenetic and Lost Spirit Ship green for additional healing it should be okay for rPvE 9 and your damage output is actually good. 2 or more fire orbs will always grant value for casual runs because of XL unit stacking + unity and strong damage spells. 3+ Nature orbs are not that amazing, but with primeval watcher you have a powerful XL unit that can be supported dependend on what you are splashing into (Transcendence for shadow, Earthshaker & suppression for fire, Gemeye for Frost). As strong crowd control and healing spells are easy to use these decks should be rather convenient. 
 
 
 
  

Hello Skylords, Skyladies and other Skybeings.
Welcome to the seventh official PvE event!
It has been a while since the last official event, especially a multiplayer event, but we still hope you will have a lot of fun with this event!


Quick overview:

What kind of event will it be?

PvE - Advanced - Bad Harvest with a point system
For this challenge, we want to see you succeed in playing the map Bad Harvest, while accomplishing several goals of varying difficulty.
The more objectives your team accomplishes, the more points you get, which will lead to greater rewards!
Additionally, the teams with the highest number of points will receive some extra rewards.
But there is more! Similar to the beloved Crappy Community Contests, there will be something the entire community will work towards. Once the combined points of all submitted runs surpasses a certain threshold, the prizes for everyone will be increased.

So gather a team, polish your strategy and go for the Highscore!


How can I participate?

Everyone with an ingame account can participate in the event - there is no need to sign up separately.
You just have to send in your best replay, including the player names, the time of the replay and what objectives you accomplished. [Note: Your entry has to be a victory]
For example:
Low points:        A, C, D; Total:     700
Mid points:         K, L, P; Total:   1500
High points:              all; Total:   3800
Penalty points:          W; Total: -1000
Total points:                                5000

You can send in your replays until the 02.12.2022. 

Please note:
You are allowed to compete with multiple teams, but only your highest score will determine the rewards you win, meaning you can only get rewards for one submission. You are allowed to compete with a team of less than 4 people, or even alone.
You can find your replays here: Documents=>Battleforge=>replays


What are the objectives?

This event will have a point system: points will be rewarded by completing the following objectives. The goal is to get as many points as possible!
You don't have to complete them all, but of course you should aim for as many points as you can in a single run.
It is important, however, that your final score from objectives is greater than zero. Runs with a negative score do not qualify.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Low points:

A: Sharing is caring: 200p
Have at least two different players build the orbs and power wells next to the gold wagon. (One orb and 4 wells per player)
B: Preparing the Turkey: 200p (+100p if the unit used is a Beast-unit)
Fly 3 laps around the small peninsula below the first guild cannon using any flying unit. (See FAQ for a screenshot)
C: Saving the harvest: 200p
Don't let the gold chest next to the gold wagon get destroyed.
D: Saving the tractor: 300p
Don't let the gold wagon take any damage.
E: Fire Mastery: 300p
Have at least one player in your team play a pure fire deck.
F: Shadow Mastery: 300p
Have at least one player in your team play a pure shadow deck.
G: Frost Mastery: 300p
Have at least one player in your team play a pure frost deck.
H: Nature Mastery: 300p
Have at least one player in your team play a pure nature deck.
I: Make love, not war: 400p
Take out all the guild cannons on the map.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maximum low points:    2600
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Medium points:

J: Saving the farmers: 400p
Don't let any of the human defenders in-between the walls around the gold wagon die.
K: No grain left behind: 400p
Completely destroy all enemy walls.
L: Only pick the ripe ones: 400p
Do not kill any Bandit Master Healers.
M: Beware of the Tractor: 400p
Run over at least 5 squads of small units with a Thunder Wagon with activated RAMPAGE ability.
N: Getting the harvest home safely: 600p
Do not lose any of the prebuilt Defense Towers in the starting camp.
O: Don't step onto the fields: 700p
Have no player cross the wall in front of the top right Stonekin camp. (See FAQ for a screenshot)
P: Beyond the trodden path: 700p
Have no player cross the line above the camp with the second Stonekin lord. (See FAQ for a screenshot)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maximum medium points:    3600
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

High points:

Q: Beware of ergot!: 800p
As a team, do not own more than 5 orbs and 15 power wells in the starting camp at the same time.
R: The real deal:  1000p
Play the map on Expert difficulty instead of advanced.
S: Keeping the barn open: 1000p
Do not build any walls.
T: Hurry, before the rain comes: 1000p
Destroy 12 bandit tents within 30 seconds.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maximum high points:    3800
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maximum Total points:    10000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Penalty points:
U: Caring too much: -1000p
Have a player control three or more different monuments in the starting base at the same time.
V: That's not a ... tractor!:  -1000p
Play out Amii Monument.
W: Wait! This isn't the Harvest Festival!: -1000p
Play out Church of Negation.
X: Halloween is already over: -1000p
Play out Necrofury or Mutating Frenzy.
Y: Rounding up the crops: -1000p
Play out two or more overlapping instances of Aura of Corruption at the same time.
Z: Your time has not yet come: -1000p
Play out Santa Claus.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total penalty points:    -6000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Check the FAQ for clarifications.
Since those are a lot of objectives, we prepared a spreadsheet, which you can use to keep track of the objectives you want to complete and which player should complete them. You can find this spreadsheet here. Since this is a public spreadsheet, we recommend creating your own copy of it to not interfere with others.
Time Score:
There will also be points awarded for time. The faster you finish the map, the more points you will get with a maximum of 1500p.
There are no preset time windows that determine your time score, instead your time is compared to all entries.
This means that every second counts when it comes to your time score!
However, you can not lose any points by having a slow time. So it is up to you to decide whether you want to go for as many objectives as possible or if you want to leave some out in the hope of getting a better time.
You do not have to calculate the time score yourself, we will calculate the time score for every entry.
For a detailed explanation on how the time score is calculated, see the FAQ below.
 
FAQ     
In order to reduce confusion about the objectives, we have precompiled a list of questions you might have and answered them beforehand.
If you have any questions about one of the objectives, please check this FAQ first.
If your question is not yet answered in the FAQ, feel free to ask in this thread. That way it can be clarified and added to the FAQ.
Questions about specific objectives:
Calculation of the time score:






Sounds fun! What's the prize pool?

In contrast to past events, this event is less about how you fared in comparison to everyone else and more about how many points you collected overall. Thus, your reward will be directly based on your final score, including your time score. Note, that all rewards listed here are per player.
1000-2499 points: 100 BFP
2500-3749 points: 1 Mini Booster
3750-4999 points: 1 Mini Booster + 100 BFP
5000-5999 points: 1 General Booster
6000-6999 points: 2 General Boosters
7000-7999 points: 3 General Boosters
8000-8999 points: 5 General Boosters
9000-9999 points: 8 General Boosters
      10000+ points: 8 Boosters of your choice + 1 BFP per point beyond 10000
Additionally, the team with the highest total score will be rewarded a promo Harvester (1 per Player).
Furthermore, if the combined score (without time score) of all participating teams surpasses 75.000 points, all prizes will be increased by 50%!

How will the winners be presented?

This is yet to be determined. We will keep you updated about this.




Future events
If you are interested in helping with these kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out!
Send me a PM on the forum, or direct message via Discord (Metagross31#1103).
We are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring your prize pool!
We hope you have a lot of fun with this event, and we are looking forward to seeing all your replays!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,
Skylords Reborn Team
 

With the playerbase as low as it is it would make more sense to compare active players in ranked for example (people who had matches in the last weeks). Comparing those you see that there are more players in pvp than 1 month ago, much more than 3 months ago. Nobody claims its a superpopular mode. But you claimed it's dead, wich is definetly not the case.

The question is: Do you want this game to succeed or not? The old EA-version was utterly broken, and yes, a few people are having fun with it in this state for nostalgic reasons. If you think the SR team can just flick on a switch and there is a second, old version of the game available, you are mistaken. You need to pour resources into such an undertaking – manpower better spent on making the current (objectively better!) version even more awesome.
It's a fool's quest to make the same 20-30 people happy, and not develop the potential for this game to make 1000 happy – or much, much more. Yes, maybe those "would have played it for many more years", but the game will never have any appeal to new players.

For me playing for nostalgica and enjoying new balance/cards not exclude each other

Of course, there can be different opinions on what direction the game should take, and what effect it will have.
But this point I'd like to refute: When more than 2000 people are filling out the yearly survey, and we get participation of 300+ on an event, "making 1000 players happy" is a low-estimate - on planet Earth.

Since my last pure fire campain replay collection is complety outdated I took the new patch (wich I really love) as an ocasion to do it again!
This will be an always repeating quest with every big update that destroys replays 🙂
Some runs have actually improved a lot, some were just terrible but i didnt want to repeat them...
Don't take it to serious, these are still casual runs! 😇
 
1-Player-Maps:
 
2-Player-Maps:
 
4-Player-Maps:
 

Patch #400038
This patch adds the new Twilight card "Evil Eye" to the game. It can be found in General and Twilight Boosters and can drop from Reforging.

New Cards
Evil Eye - 240p T4 Twilight 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Encounters with Twilight.
Evil Eye has been requested as a playable card many times over the years. This ranged Demon Dominator deals increased damage the longer it can focus its sight on an enemy. If a unit directly attacked by Evil Eye dies, its corpse explodes, spewing forth boiling liquids that deals damage in a 15m radius. More information in our Community Update.

Welcome to the Official Halloween Event!

The Lost Souls have altered the timeline again - instead of encountering Twilight, Rogan Kayle finds himself facing very different horrors. Enjoy a spooky experience, celebrate Halloween and the release of the new card “Evil Eye” with us!    
 
Everything you need to know:
Map                 - Spooky Encounters (Community Map) Difficulty          - Expert Date                 - 28.10.2022 - 02.11.2022 Restrictions      - None Goals                - Win the map on Expert difficulty Prizes               - Either 1 Evil Eye (upcoming new card) or 1 Twilight Booster Replays            - Send through DM on Discord (Kapo#0116) or PM on the forum (@Kapo).
  Send in your replay, renamed to Halloween and your ingame name – for example: “Halloween_MyName.pmv” until the 2nd of November 2022, 23:59 CET. 

At the end of the event, we may make a compilation of interesting and/or funny replays/screenshots – by participating, you automatically agree to be included in that.

How To Play
Go to the Community Map section and select the Event map named Spooky Encounters / Gruselige Begegnungen / Rencontre avec les Perdus / Жуткие Стычки. Complete the map on expert and send me your replay.

How to access the map:
How to get your replay:

Prize pool
For this event, everybody will get a prize – you have a 50:50 chance to either get your hands on the upcoming new card Twilight Evil Eye or a Twilight Booster. There is no restriction on how many prizes we dish out, half of the players will get an Evil Eye, the others will receive the Booster, determined by a roll of the die. Please note that you can only enter once with one winning replay. Prizes will be sent out manually after the event ends. 
          

We are looking forward to your replays! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Last but not least, a big shoutout to those who helped with this Event: @LEBOVIN, @Dallarian, @Majora, @R4bitF00t, @Metagross31, @CrazyCockerell, @SpiritAlpha and our map testers!


Best regards,
Skylords Reborn Team

Greetings Skylords!
This Community Update is a few days ahead of schedule because we have two events that we don't want you to miss! From today until 2nd of November there is a special Halloween event, and on Saturday 29th October we have a PvP tournament with a participation prize! Let's get you up to date. 

• Halloween Event

The Lost Souls have altered the timeline for a special Halloween event! Instead of Encountering Twilight, Rogan Kayle finds himself in the face of new horrors. Enjoy a spooky experience on this adjusted map to celebrate Halloween, and the upcoming release of the new card "Evil Eye" with us!    

You can find the full event details here. This is a temporary event which ends on 2nd of November. Check it out now to not miss out!

• Evil Eye release and adjustments

Evil Eye will release next week in a small dedicated patch (which will not break replays).
Players participating in the Halloween event will have the chance to be rewarded with the new Twilight card the moment it comes out! After the event is over Evil Eye will also be eligible to drop from General and Twilight boosters as an uncommon card. So save your boosters till then!
Since its original reveal, we have made some adjustments to the card based on testing feedback.
The original design had a couple of issues, including a lack of splash damage, squishiness, mobility issues and increased susceptibility against crowd control. While the damage output of the card has a very high potential peak, in practice the card turned out to be hard to use and didn't add much to the Twilight faction besides a new transformation effect. 
To make the card feel more rewarding to play, we gave it a new mechanic; a unit being attacked by Evil Eye explodes if it dies (thematically its insides are superheated and explode), dealing damage in a small area. Having on-enemy-death mechanics is already part of Twilight's identity (i.e. Twilight Warfare) and we found this could solve the splash issue in a more creative manner. 
While this addition goes against the single-target attacker role we originally had in mind, it makes the card more fun to play and gives the player the option to either focus on a strong unit (i.e. a boss) by making use of its passive Rage ability, or micro it to benefit from Searing Sight's new on-death ability. 
Lastly, we gave the card a much-needed health increase from 3300 to 3800. We are happy with how the card turned out, and hope you will enjoy playing it! 
 
 
CHANGED: Searing Sight
Casts a superheated beam that deals 200 damage to a target enemy every second. If a unit directly attacked by Evil Eye dies, its corpse explodes, spewing forth boiling liquids that deal 1000 damage in a 15m radius, up to 3000 in total. 
 
Transform
Evil Eye has the faction's ability "Transformation", allowing it to transform into other Twilight units. Because Evil Eye is already a strong tier 4 card, it has a special passive ability to make transforming it worthwhile. 
 
Conjuration
If the unit is transformed, it will restore spell card charges. The card of every Fire, Nature, and Twilight spell will be granted one more charge and will be immediately reusable. The maximum number of possible card charges for a specific card will not be exceeded.
 
ADDED: Rage
Unit does increasingly more damage the longer it attacks, up to a maximum of 300% more damage, but falls back to its original damage output if it doesn't fight for 5 seconds or changes target. 
 

• New Card Reveal: Raven Walker

While Evil Eye releases in the coming days, there are more new cards in development. We are hard at work adding a new legendary card into the game: the infamous Raven Walker.
Raven Walker is a powerful tier 4 Legendary card, meaning only one can be summoned on the battlefield at a time (like i.e. Viridya or Ravenheart).  Besides being a strong ranged unit, Raven Walker has the ability to corrupt the very air around it, causing played out cards to backlash, dealing huge amounts of damage to both allies and enemies, including buildings! If Ravenheart or its summoned Raven Ships are nearby, Raven Walker will lose its slow passive ability and move like a general XL unit.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 

 
Slow
Unit has Slow movement.
 
Blackpowder Turret
Every 4 seconds, unit fires an explosive shot that deals 920 damage to enemies in a 10m radius around its target, up to 1380 in total. Knocks back small and medium units. Affects ground targets only.


Corrupting Aura (100p)
Activate to cast a destructive aura of 30m radius at the target location. Every card played out within it will backlash, dealing 10 times their power cost times their orb count as area damage distributed among all hostile and friendly entities, up to 10000 in total. Lasts for 30 seconds. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Fleet Support
If Raven Walker is within 25m radius of a Raven Ship or Ravenheart, it will lose Slow.
 
Some of you might be wondering why Raven Walker is a Legendary card, instead of a Bandit card. While exploring our options, we found two issues with a Bandit approach. First, we feel Bandits as a faction is currently quite complete in terms of T4 units, and this unit would not add anything interesting to the faction; it would not be much different from Construct-decks which already use double Shadow for Nether Warp.
Additionally, Raven Walker's Corrupting Aura ability works on buildings. This means it can be used even with healing spells to destroy enemies and important structures, allowing for a wide variety of decks to build around it. But because of how Corrupting Aura works, it can be stacked infinitely, which is problematic from a balance point of view. It does not come up often that we want something to be limited to a single instance, making this the perfect Legendary. It is also a good opportunity to expand the existing Legendary deck and slowly add Blight's entire raven squadron to the game.
Raven Walker is planned to release in an upcoming content patch. We are not ready to announce a release date yet. 
 
• Tournaments / Events

Since Community Updates are posted on a monthly schedule, events might come and go in between Community Updates. Be sure to keep a close eye on the ingame event-tab and the forum calendar to not miss any events! 

• NEW - Official Halloween Event - until 02-11-2022
The Lost Souls have altered the timeline for this special Halloween event! Instead of Encountering Twilight, Rogan Kayle finds himself in the face of new horrors. Enjoy a spooky experience and celebrate Halloween and the release of the new card "Evil Eye" with us! More information.  
 
• NEW - Official PvP Tournament - 29-10-2022
On Saturday 29.10 we are hosting an official PvP tournament with prizes! The tournament starts at 14:00 p.m. CEST (Berlin time) and will also be livestreamed on our Twitch. Every player who participates will get a booster, so be sure to join even if you are inexperienced! More information. 

• FINISHED - Battle of Tactics #2: Perfectly Balanced
Ultralords latest contest has finished, and the winner reveal can be watched on Twitch. Big thanks to Ultralord for hosting this event, please let us know if you liked it! More information.  

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizer, Metagross! We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you. 
 
• Team changes 

We are glad to announce two new members to the team behind Skylords Reborn. WaterMelonLord has joined us as a Global Moderator. Cool. 

Mynoduesp has also joined the team as Quality Assurance (QA), helping with maintenance and player friendliness, for example by improving descriptions. 

We also had a couple of replies to our translator roles, thank you! We could always use more translators, so if you are fluid in French, Russian or German, please consider doing some translations for us.



• Contribute to the Project

We have opened up a new staff role: Social Media Manager. We heard multiple times that people are intimidated to join the team as a marketeer, so we split up the responsibilities and tasks, making the entry barrier a lot lower. As a Social Media Manager, you are responsible for keeping our Social Media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit) up to date. Help with our Twitch and Instagram account would also be greatly appreciated.  
As always, we hope you will also consider helping out the project. Please take a look at all our open positions on how you can do so. 

There are also a variety of contributor roles like translator, that don't require you to join the staff, but still allow you to help out now and then. Please take a look. 
 

• 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 Lost Souls-booster: LOST-SOUL-TIME-LINE

The code is valid until December 1st, 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 #28

Hello fellow Skyladies and Skylords!
It has been a very long time, but we are finally back with a new PvP tournament!

Tournament Date
On Saturday 29.10.22 starting at 14:00 p.m. CEST (Berlin time). The stream will start about 30 minutes in advance.


Format
The tournament will be played as a 1on1, Best of 3, double elimination tournament, meaning if you lose a set, you move to the lower bracket and can still make the finals! Grand finals will have a bracket reset, meaning the player coming from the lower bracket has to win two sets against the finalist to win the tournament.


Prize Pool
• Participation reward: Playing at least two rounds in the tournaments will earn you 1 General Booster, even if you lost both rounds!
• 1st place                        10 General Booster packs 
• 2nd place                        9 General Booster packs
• 3rd place                         8 General Booster packs
• 4th-8th place                  5 General Booster packs
• Random rewards    
Additionally, there will be a pool consisting of all PvP cards from the Rebirth edition, which will be randomly distributed between all participants!

 

Organization and sign-up
The tournament brackets will be on Challonge, so register and join the tournament there using the button below. Please sign-up in advance!

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


Stream
A live stream covering the tournament will take place on the official channel on twitch.tv. Streaming will start around 13:30 p.m. CEST (Berlin time). We will use the stream to communicate with the players, so 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!)
• 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: Haladur, Simai, Elyon, Lajesh, Uro and Yrmia (same pool as in ranked duel).
• The first map to play on will be decided by the players banning maps. The first player to ban is decided at random.
• After that it is loser's choice, but you can't pick a map you have already won a game on in the same set.
• 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.
• Playing at least two rounds in the tournaments will earn you 1 General Booster, even if you lost both rounds. This is meant to encourage players to give PvP a try, immeaditly surrendering or not showing up for a match will disqualify you for this reward. We send out these boosters the days after the tournament. 


Questions
Reply in this thread if you have questions, we will answer them as soon as possible.
Best regards,
The Skylords Reborn Team

The tier list below only includes rPvE performance as my pure Fire knowledge at campaign is fairly limited. For Global Warming I would like to add that I'm referring to the red affinity here. The blue one would rate way lower, but it was the only affinity you could select in this list.

The tier list below only includes rPvE performance as my pure Fire knowledge at campaign is fairly limited. For Global Warming I would like to add that I'm referring to the red affinity here. The blue one would rate way lower, but it was the only affinity you could select in this list.

The tier list below only includes rPvE performance as my pure Fire knowledge at campaign is fairly limited. For Global Warming I would like to add that I'm referring to the red affinity here. The blue one would rate way lower, but it was the only affinity you could select in this list.

a PvP Guide by RadicalX
 
 
 
 
-General talk-

Since some people asked me to do this I decided to make a small guide regarding Shadow T1. This guide provides information for every type of player (from new to experienced). I will try to explain every single matchup and I hope this is going to be helpful for some of you, who want to improve their gameplay when we get to play again. 
Note: Every statement refers to 1v1-PvP since 2v2 doesn't always works in the same way. 
First of all: What makes Shadow T1 so attractive?
Shadow T1 & Fire T1 were the most played T1's in the game for a simple reason: Both of them haven't got any major weaknesses. Frost T1 often loses Map control due to the lack of swift units and  Nature struggles seriously against towers or can get entirely ruined by an instant T2. Meanwhile Shadow doesn't have these issues and it doesn't lack in strenghts either. The early T1 is the strongest out of all colours. 
- the Deck - 

(This is just a short list without in depth explanation. For some more detailed information take a look at Eirias'  Deck building guide: [http://forum.bfreborn.com/index.php?/topic/917-how-to-build-a-pvp-deck-guide/])
Group 1 - The "must have" Units (you won't be able to compete on a high level without them):
Dreadcharger 
Forsaken  
Nox Trooper 
Nasty
Group 2 - Strong additional cards, which provide safety for some matchups:
Motivate
Skeleton Warriors
Phasetower
Nightguard
Group 3 - Cards, that are only useful for higher Tier combinations:
Embalmers Shrine
Life Weaving
Group 4 - Cards that are only useful in a single certain scenario (usually not viable):
Snapjaws 
Witchclaws (both affinities)
Wrathblades
Soulsplicer (green)
Decomposer
Lifestealer (For specific information ask @Hirooo)
Executor
 
Group 5 - Trash
Offering (both affinites)
Soulsplicer (red)
You should make sure that your T1 has a good synergy with the rest of your Deck. 
Some examples:
- If you play Shadow Nature, Life Weaving would be a trash card, but in a Bandits-T2 Life Weaving is essential to support your skyfire drakes.
- Phasetower gets even stronger in a shadow/frost deck, because you can support them in T2 with Kobold Trick & Glacier Shell.
- Shadow Nature has a nice synergy with nightguard because the cheap cc allows you easily to catch the enemies units / you can prevent the nightguard from escaping after she used her ability.
The average Shadow T1 includes 6-7 cards (I usually played Dreadcharger, Forsaken, Nox-Trooper, Skeleton Warriors, Nasty & Motivate (+ Life Weaving in Bandits & Pure Shadow). In theory Phasetower has to be included since this card is a little bit OP (especially against nature), but Phasetowerspam doesn't require any micro and these dirty wins weren't really satisfying. 
- Matchups -
Shadow vs Fire
Lets start with this matchup since it's the most popular one.
Most important cards in this matchup:
Shadow:
1. Dreadcharger -  2. Forsaken - 3. Nasty - 4. Motivate
Fire:
1. Scavenger - 2. Sunstriders - 3. Thugs- 4. Sunderer - 5. Eruption
Core strategy:
Your first unit is Dreadcharger. Apparently this should be your starting unit in every single matchup, because the Dreadcharger is fast and has the shortest spawn animation out of every T1 swift unit (werebeasts are equal, but they weren't really popular). This means you will always reach important positions like middle orbs on random maps before your opponent.  The first thing you have to notice is your map. As long as you play on a large map you are allowed to take a power well without any concern, but on smaller maps like Elyon for example you shouldn't take anything, otherwise you are going to lose immediately against a Sunderer rush. On smaller maps you have to go for a dazed fight. So lets take a look at "How to play dazed fights": 
1. Spawn a dreadcharger, walk towards the position you intend to capture.
2. Spam mass forsaken and split your units (as long as your units are dazed you shouldn't have multiple ones at the same position, otherwise the can get erupted. If your Units reach full hp it's okay to have 2 Forsaken-squads close to each other). If you got multiple units in position you are ready to fight!
3. Your opponent will use Scavenger, Thugs & Sunstrider. Your first focus should be the scavenger, Sunstriders may have next to no health and are very vulnerable, but the scavy can slow your unit -> your opponent will kite you to death. The Fire player on the other hand has to focus your dreadcharger, because he won't reach your forsaken with his 540hp Scavenger, who has got inferior stats compared to dreadcharger, but a superior ability and aslong as they focus each other they are even in terms of strength.  
4. If your units are close to death try to get them out of combat and heal them up later. Save as many units as you can and always try to have a good focus to catch out your opponent's Sunstriders as long as the scavy is out of the fight. If one of your Forsaken squads is out of position close to your enemies units just frenzy them to force your opponent back to get a positional advantage or - in the case where your opponent doesn't retreat - deal tons of damage (Frenzy Forsaken are devastating for Fire) and motivate them afterwards to get an even bigger damage boost.
5. Many people play thugs since their micro isn't good enough to win a dazed fight against frenzy Forsaken. The most important thing to notice is that Thugs are more expensive than Forsaken, which means the focussed forsaken squad can just run away, the thugs have to chase them, but your opponent has 10 additional bound power which creates an advantage for you. But be careful! Don't get lazy with your micro against thugs, because otherwise they can delete your forsaken and their passive will give your opponent even more power. Your micro has to be on point in this situation. EDIT: Since there was some discussion about thugs I want to expand this paragraph. It's very important to note that 2 Forsaken can kill Thugs, that are played in your backline before they get out of daze. So a very important tip against Thugs is to avoid early engagements and get up a decent amount of Forsaken (at least 4-5). This allows you to burst down dazed squads & full hp thugs from the other side will be easier to kite. Thugs are powerful, but onedimensional cards, so this strategy works with a high consistency to prevent them from destroying and zoning your backline and ensures you to win the early dazed fight. 
6. If you get an advantage take a super aggressive power well to gain map control. If you lose the dazed fight try to take a safe position and buy time to recover your temporary disadvantage (but be careful, if your opponent tries to abuse this and starts spamming power wells. Pure Fire benefits heavily from this.). If you get a good amount of practice with this, you should win at least 90% out of your dazed fights against Fire T1. 
Important notes: 
Even if Nasty and Eruption can be game changing in the perfect moment they are usually not efficient in dazed fights! They are only good to punish mistakes, aside from that spawning additional units is the better choice. Sometimes you can spawn a single squad Skeleton Warriors with their tank ability they can easily reach good nasty positions, but you still shouldn't rely on the use of Nasty to win the fight. 
NEVER use lifeweaving on your Dreadcharger. It's just not good to spend 70 power to support a unit without substantial damage. Your opponent can just run away or change his focus and would always win the trade. If you think you really need a tank in your fight choose skeleton warriors. They do have got even more effective hp (1.5k) with their ability and you have to spend only 50 power which is fine.
Fake Frenzy is pretty funny ^-^ You have to wait a split second until Frenzy gets activated which means you can easily cancel the animation by walking around -> sometimes your opponent thinks you really activated your Forsaken and retreats immediately.
Always try to play at your power limit. It's pointless to hold anything back since the only useful spell in your Deck is Motivate which costs next to nothing.
 Here is a replay that shows how a dazed fight between two good players looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cm1gRHwA0U
Hirooo made some small mistakes but that was an overall well executed T1. Sadly the commentating isn't always on point since Farrock doesn't have the same game knowledge as the top players (No offense against him, I respect his work & effort alot). 
The dazed fight is pretty much the most important thing to master in this matchup, because even on alot of the bigger maps you will fight under the same conditions after taking a power well. 
But lets take a look at another very common scenario: The close well fights
This fights are way more aggressive, because Forsaken & Thugs are way more efficient in these situations. The reason for that is very simple: As a fire player you can't just run away from Frenzy Forsaken because otherwise they will just focus your well and delete it in no time. Thugs are super strong to support the fire players' defence. But keep in mind you got the early advantage in this matchup, so play as aggressive as you can. The power of fire scales proportionate with gametime as long as no wells go down, because Sundererspam can get really dangerous in the later stages of your T1. If you have to defend a Sunderer just use a Dreadcharger to block its walkpath as fast as you can (this slows the unit down severely) and focus it as much as you can before it's able to reach your power well (Use Nox Trooper + overload if you need a little bit more burst to finish it of when your opponent retreats). You have to keep calm in these situations, because if you panic and go for something like "mass frenzy" your opponent just walks away, waits 20 seconds and returns with a second Sunderer and this is ... lets say it's not good ... 
I also found a replay that shows how to abuse the early power of Shadow in a close well fight. Very nice decisionmaking by killroy in this game (he didn't waste any units). He does a really good job in terms of snowballing the game by attacking 2 spots at the same time, it's worth it to watch this game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD_n3CbbbMk
This is a pretty rare scenario, but some maps do have big well distances and promote passive play (Simai does this because the Shadow player doesn't take the middle since he's scared of cliffdancer, meanwhile the Fire player prefers high well distances). Nox Trooper gets more valuable on maps like this. Usually they are inferior compared to forsaken in this matchup but they can create a high amount of burst and on this maps you don't have to deal with such a high amount of Sunstriders. The Overload-ability does 487,5 damage -> 1 hit + overload kills a scavenger in 6 seconds for sure and creates a little temporary power advantage for you. Just abuse this and take another power well, your opponents' attacks will be predictable since the map is big which allows you to defend well against sunderer. You can create a small, but reliable lead like this and this allows you a safe transition into your T2.
[I didn't find a good replay for this, but I'm going to add one as soon as I got one]

- Map Advantages -
This matchup is the least map dependend one (Shadow mirror doesn't count ^^), but there are still some maps that give you advantages or disadvantges.
Elyon: Small map, fast and early T1 fight -> it's easy to secure map control and sometimes you will be able to prevent your opponent from his T3.
Yrmia: This is a very small map aswell with close wells next to each other, but the map isn't as fancy for you as it looks. The passages on this map are really really small, you won't be able to split your units unless you attack from multiple areas! Keep that in mind, otherwise Eruptions can be a threat at this map.
Haladur: This matchup is pretty balanced on this map and very entertaining aswell. Pretty much one of the main reasons why Haladur was such a popular map in the community. 
Simai: As explained this map promotes a slow & passive T1. It's usually a solid map for you, but be careful against these nasty pure fire player, who abuses this to get into a high powerlevel T2.
Lajesh: Weird map for casual ranked games, since you always have to pay attentions at your walls + it gets really easy to turtle with wallspamming. In tournament maps this can be one of the greatest maps in the game as long as both players agree to play without walls.
Whazai: This map is fine for T1 action, but has some risks for you. It has a very small passage before you reach the middle which is a dangerous eruption spot and the small area gives you a hard time microing against thugs at the same time. But if both players take a well in the middle you are at a clear advantage. It's very easy to let your Forsaken attack the well & the main base at the same time and since there is a cliff next to the main base thugs & scavenger can't reach the Forsaken in time. But careful! This map gets really nasty against pure fire, especially if you decide to take that well in the middle.
Uro: The most dangerous map for you. Wells are so far away from each other, it's even hard to move your units between your own wells to defend properly against Sunderer without a disadvantage. Sometimes you get forced to trade wells - you can't just sit back and play passive. Calm decisionmaking is even more important on this map.
Generated maps: Small maps usually favour you a little bit since they are mid centered and you will most likely win the dazed fight, big maps are really shitty to be honest. T1 doesn't really matter, the better T3 usually wins.
Shadow vs Frost

The second matchup will be against Frost. I think a very important thing to notice is that this matchup is very map dependend.
Most important cards in this matchup:  
Shadow:
1. Dreadcharger 2. Nox Trooper 3. Motivate
Frost: 
1.Master Archers 2. Ice Guardian 3. Ice Barrier 4. Home Soil

Core strategy:
Playing against Frost is always a little bit tricky. You will start with your Dreadcharger as fast as you can! Don't waste time, you have to reach your opponent as fast as possible to force a dazed fight, because Shadow will win that dazed fight against Frost every single time. Dreadchargerspam will always beat Masterarcherspam, just be careful with wintertide. If your opponent plays it just stop any move command and micro your units very carefully. Aslong as you don't suicide your Dreadcharger, Wintertide won't have any impact on the game. If you catch your opponent before he takes a power well, you can deny him access to the entire map, which is litereally game over. But lets get over to the interesting part where you can't deny the power well:

1. Your opponent has to take a well: You get a 100 power advantage and now it's your turn to use that to attack (unless you play on a super big random map). Your core units in this situation are Dreadcharger & Nox Trooper. That's everything you need since Forsaken are very weak against Master Archer (sometimes you can play a single squad, but be careful with the use of Forsaken against Frost).
2. It is very important to notice which starting unit your opponent got. If it's a Lightblade just go for 2 Dreadcharger + Nox Trooper spam. If he got only Master Archers you should think about more Dreadcharger.
3. After that you have to react to your opponents' unit composition. If he chooses to play ice Guardians, play more Nox Trooper - against Master Archers you have to get more Dreadcharger. In the perfect scenario the Dreadcharger take out the Master-Archers without beeing hit by the Ice Guardians, who get smashed by your Nox Trooper in the meantime. But this doesn't always work out perfectly.
https://youtu.be/F-uawwk6hRg?t=23m5s At this game it worked out pretty well, even if it's a 2v2 match. That would've worked on a small 1v1 map aswell.     
4. If one of your units starts to get very low just pull it out of the fight. It's easy to micro the fast Shadow units. Sometimes you won't be able to kick the power well, but you can take out so many units without losing a single one. 
5. If you get around 4-5 low hp units just take your own power well, heal your units and continue to pressure. Your temporary advantage is still massive and even if your opponent got a good amount of power thorugh his extra well he doesn't have that much extra power, because he lost many units already and only 90% of the power returns back into the void. 5 power lost per unit and this adds up pretty fast in this matchup. Especially if you continue your attacked with your healed units. Now it's your time to get a massive advantage.
6. If you think you can take your opponents' power well you can use motivate to give your units some extra punch, but be careful. Frost has already access to Glacier Shell, you have to deal around 3,8k damage in a very short time. It's usually wise to go for the units first & take the well down later when you got an overwhelming amount of units.
Important notes:
Nasty is usually not very useful against Frost units, because they have just too many hp. In addition to that Ice barrier can be used to block alot of the damage in dangerous Situations. You need at least T2 units like Lyrish Knight for example to make some effective nasties.
If you have to wait for some units to heal up or something like that, try to tease a little bit with your Dreadcharger to force a early home soil or maybe even a frost glyph.
You need godly reaction to entirely dodge a well placed Frost Glyph, but keep in mind that it's not that bad when you get hit unless your opponent has already 5+ units, which shouldn't be the case as long as you are aggressive. Otherwise just use the focussed unit as motivate-food ^-^ 
Many people don't consider attacking as the best choice, but that's just a huge mistake. If you just take your own well against frost, the power level will rise and your opponent benefits from that since Frost T1 Units are very cheap and have very good stats. Back in 2011 I lost so many games, because I wasn't aggressive enough in this matchup. Double Ice Guardian + MA spam + homesoil will be way to efficient at some point, there is not alot you can do against then after you played a passive early T1.

-Again I would love to add a replay at that point, but I didn't find a decent one. If anyone knows some good Shadow vs X replays on youtube send me a pm please.-
Ok lets get through the Map part. Frost is super map dependend due to the lack of a swift unit, so it's really important to abuse your map-advantages.
 
Haladur: The more common "Scavy-spam" works on Haladur aswell with Dreadchargers. Your opponent takes a well in the middle, but the distance between the well & main base are incredible high. So you just have to spam Dreadcharger and run down to the main base, attack there and if your opponent spawns alot of units just walk back to the well in the middle. The Frost units will be to slow to follow and you can overwhelm your opponent. Motivate is essential to this strategy! Aside from that Frost even has an advantage on Haladur if your opponent gets his position in the middle since the power wells are very close to each other and Frost T1 excels at that scenario. So try to zone him from the main entrance to the center of the map.
Elyon: One of the easier maps for you. You can get control over the middle wells & orbs, which denies your opponent a T3 spot. You don't even have to take anything there. Just use your units to prevent the Frost player from reaching the area. Later on you just need to stall for T3 and win basically without taking any risks. 
Yrmia: Very difficult map. Power wells are really close to each other, there is no way to get superior map control or something like that. At least it is a really small map which allows you to attack very early with a strong rush. But if you fail to control the early game you may end up beeing at a bad spot because Frost T1 results nearly every time in a Timeless One based T3 which is very powerful. 
Simai: Slow Map, you can make an aggressive push to deny your opponent control over the wells at the top of the map. Aside from that the well distances are very high unless you take any stupid power wells which makes it a low pressure map. But if your opponent takes a well at the start you actually get to zone him from his T2, which gives you control over the early game though. 
Whazai: Great Map for you, you can get immediate control over the mid spot and in addition to that nox trooper can attack 2 of the power wells in the base over cliffs, which makes it sooo difficult to defend against this with Ice Guardians. Keep in mind that Frost can spawn dazed Iceguardian with an active (!) Shield behind the cliff at their main base, so don't rely on a simple Dreadchargerspam.
Uro: The best map for you. It's important to do a quick start, because you have to walk very far. This map is litereally an autoloose for Frost because you can deny your opponent every position on the entire map. You will be able to force a dazed fight, that shadow is going to win without any Problems. 
Lajesh: With walls again very weird to play. Very slow and passive gameplay. If both players agree to play without walls the game gets really great. Small map with alot of potential for aggression, but potential close wells on the other hand.   
Generated Maps: small maps are nearly a freewin since they are usually mid-centered (as I said before) and you will be able to control the mid-wells. Large maps will be boring & usually end up in a T3 fight, which is not so good against Timeless One decks. 
 
Shadow vs Nature

The matchup with the potential to be the greatest out of all, but 2 cards influence the balancing in a negative way (Phasetower & Treespirit).

Most important cards in this matchup:

Shadow without Phasetower:
1. Dreadcharger 2. Nox Trooper 3. Nasty Surprise 4. Motivate 5.Forsaken (!)

Nature without Treespirit:
1.Spearman 2. Windweavers 3. Ensnaring Roots 4. Surge of Light

Core strategy:
There are 2 ways of playing the matchup Shadow vs Nature and I'll start with the easy one. It includes the use of Phasetower, a card that is ridicilously broken in this matchup for multiple reasons:

1. Phasetower has insane stats (900/1200) and is even with his teleport debuff stronger than any unit nature can offer (Primal defender can match him in terms of strength, but Phasetower has his insane teleport ability which makes him way more versitile). His strength is so overwhelming that his transition into T2 is still amazing (especially for shadow frost that can protect the turrets with kobold trick and glacier shell).
2. Phasetower has splash damage which allows him to finish off windweavers squads very quickly (The Nox Trooper for example has to shot at every single unit at the end to kill the entire squad)
3. Buildings are uneffected by crowd control which is a huge advantage against nature, that usually relies on Ensnaring roots in this matchup. 
4. Nature doesn't have a counter unit against phasetower (apparently Sunderer is the only unit with Siege damage in the entire T1 -> no nature Unit, that can threaten buildings.). 
5. I do consider Treespirit as a ridicilous card, that needs a rework and destroys the beauty of nature T1. But Phasetower is the perfect counter against them, because of superior stats  and the fact, that they are unaffected by the poison. 
6. Since nature is forced to play slow units against shadow it is possible to take a well on mid centered maps and defend it successfully with a Phasetower to gain map control for free, which is devestating on maps like Elyon. 

Just overall: Phasetower is op and I will just show a short replay that demonstrates the power of Phasetower without any micro-effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1x8GEMpyAI (Game 3 of a showmatch series between Elendil & Sarlesch - german cast by JMCW)
Sarlesch wanted to go instant T2, that's why he started with amazon. He changed his mind after 30 seconds and played 2 Windweaver squads (I guess the reasoning behind this was the fact, that elendil was able to rush his instant T2 in the previous game). And after that his chance of winning went down to litereally 0%. Elendil realized immediatly Sarlesch couldn't go T2 anymore, built up some phasetowers and won the game with no effort. 
The matchup gets way more interesting without Phasetower or Treespirits (btw. I recommend instant T2 against Treespirit as long as you play without Phasetower) included. 
The start is pretty interesting against nature because nature has different starting units against different colours. Swiftclaw, which is usually the best choice, is just awful against Nox Trooper and against shadow in general. So as long as your opponent doesn't know you play Shadow T1, you can try to play some mindgames. Just don't play a single unit in the first 10 seconds and see how your opponent reacts. Some people will get impatient and start with the swiftclaw  which gives you a massive advantage. Nature needs 4+ units (Spearmen + Windweaver spam) and around 100 extra power to be able to use crowd control and surge of light. If he plays an aditional useless 80 power unit it takes such a long time for him to reach a state where he is able to fight you. A time window that can get abused heavily. At that point you can just go ahead and beat your opponent with a nox trooper spam. If he retreats you can use your temporary advantage to secure map control with an aggressive T2, which is litereally "gg" beacuse nature struggles really hard against T2 since its units are super expensive with low dps.
If your opponent doesn't fall for the bait just go ahead with your Dreadcharger and look for an immediate fight because at late T1 stages Ensnaring roots & Surge of light provide way to much power. On the other hand Shadow has the early fight advantage beacuse you've got cheap high dps units, that can overwhelm the nature player easily. Dreadcharger and Nox Trooper are your core units at this stage. 

How to play a dazed fight against nature:

If you get to fight your opponent before he gets a critical amount of units you have to play around 2 things:

1. Ensnaring roots
This is why you need at least 2 dreadcharger to run around your opponents' slow units and attack from multiple positions with them and multiple nox trooper. Otherwise your entire army gets rooted and 3+ windweaver squads can easiliy take out 2-3 units in those 15 seconds with a 45 power spell. If your opponent tries to kill the rooted units the other army can attack without interference (maybe even with a motivate boost).

2. Surge of light
It is very important to notice, that nox troopers don't finish 6 unit squads immediatly. They have to shoot at every single unit once to kill it. It is really important to finish off the windweaver/spearmen squads immediatly to prevent efficient heals. There are many ways to do this:
- Dreadcharger can use his "stomp" to finish them off since it does a small amount of damage when you knock back units
- If your opponent plays with Spearmen it's fine to have a single forsaken squad added to your unit composition. They can finish off squads very fast, but be careful with your positioning, Forsaken are really squishy in this matchup - Windweavers can take them out really fast. And don't play 2 squads at the same position otherwise hurricane is going to hurt you 
- Nasty surprise can outclass heal in this matchup. If your Dreadcharger is in a good position and you can finish a single unit + damage other ones, just go for it. Your opponent can't make an efficient heal against that (150 vs 110 power). In addition to that the power of nature decreases tremendously with every unit loss since this just lowers the efficency of crowd control. 
How to play if your opponent takes a power well:
Just attack at 2 positions at once with the compositions of 1 dreadcharger, 1 nox trooper & 1 forsaken squad. There is no way nature can match this even if you built up your own power well. Just spawn additional Dreadcharger/Nox Trooper over time and apply as much pressure as possible. If one of your attacks seems to go down, just use motivate to start the big push on the other side. You can kick a power well for sure. After that just go immediatly T2 to negate your opponents temporary advantage due to a superior amount of left units. Nature can't use cc at multiple positions, playing around this is your main win condition. 

Important notes: 
- This doesn't work against Treespirit! So be careful if you don't know your opponents' playstyle.
- You can force your opponent to take a well as long as you play with phasetower, because shadow can just take a power well and defend it without any problems due to phasetower. If your opponent then decides to take his own well you have 2 places to attack, even if he is a smart player who tries to avoid unfavourable early fights.

Map specific information:

Haladur: Great Map for you! You can split your army really well and threaten the main base & the middle position at the same time. Haladur is really troublesome for nature, your opponnent may think about an instant T2.
Elyon: With phasetower an absolute freewin. Without Phasetower it can get a little troublesome because the main base it protected through the wall. Your main approach is winning an early fight in the middle since there is alot of space to play around ensnaring roots. Afterwards you can secure map control with an early T2
Yrmia: Great map to attack from multiple positions, but can get sometimes a little bit tricky because there isn't that much room to split your units that well. But since the map is really small you can apply an insane amount of early pressure. With phasetower it's nearly a freewin.  
Simai: Very slow map that doesn't really promote early fights unless both players try to go for the middle immediatly. At that point you have a good shot at beating the nature player with a good nasty if you play well around ensnaring roots. 
Whazai: Ridiculous phasetower map. You need 2 ports from your base to be able to attack your opponents power wells. Without Phasetower it's important to use the side ways to surround your opponent. If you are only focussed on the middle you will get serious trouble against roots.
Uro: You can run around your opponent due to the fast Dreadcharger. But keep in mind, Uro is a really big map and it takes time to reach the enemies base which favours the nature player. Your advantage: An early T2 at a good position can be devastating for your opponent.
Lajesh: Favours Nature heavily. The Walls just block every kind of early aggression. On lajesh without walls you have a better shot since the map is really small and you can play more aggressive. But there is a wellcluster pretty close to the main base which is easy to defend for the nature player. Pretty balanced map aslong as both players agree to play without walls.
Generated Maps: Small maps favour Shadow with Phasetower heavily, because you can just take the middle, build a turret and ... it's gg (okay to be honest Phasetower-Shadow T1 has an advantage on every map). Without Phasetower you can get problems on mid centered maps, but atleast there is alot of space to play around Ensnaring Roots. Large generated maps favour you a little bit, because you can just play super aggressive without anything to worry about. Even if you mess up, your opponent won't be able to reach you in time, because it sometimes takes around 50-60 seconds for remaining windweavers & spearmen to reach their destination. Enough time for your void to come back to you.                                     
Shadow vs Shadow
The mirror matchup is pretty interesting since small mistakes can get punished super hard (especially with high dps units like Forsaken). 

The Most important cards for the mirror matchup:
1.Dreadcharger 2.Forsaken 3.Skeleton Warriors 4.Motivate 5.Nasty Surprise
Core strategy: 
In theory this matchup consists mainly of Dreadcharger + Forsaken spam vs Dreadcharger + Forsaken spam and the guy with better micro (or the one who hits the clutch-nasty) wins the game since both players use the same cards. If you want to reach the highest ranks you should practise the mirror match opening, because the first skirmish is super important since you can't avoid it unless you go instant T2. You can't just take an additional power well unless the distance between you and your enemy is incredible big. If your opponent gets greedy and takes a well you can just attack, destroy it and the game is pretty much over.
And this is how the rush works:
Spawn 2 Dreadchargers to prepare an attack from 2 spots. Your opponent loses his opportunity to defend with a huge nasty. Spawn additional units and focus the power well. There is nothing your opponent can do against this since he just spent 100 power more which is massive in the early game (you can play 2 additional Forsaken squads, which adds more than 2.000 dp20s). 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u965vcN2cug  Here is an example of a T1 rush against the strongest defence shadow can offer (Phasetower + wrathblades). I made some horrible mistakes in the early T2 stage, but if you can destroy a power well that early in the game you get such a massive advantage. The game was just over. My opponent was more than prepared for an attack (I used the same strategy to beat him in the first game in this bo5 series) but there is nothing you can do to stop the rush.
If your opponent doesn't go for a power well things will get a little bit harder. Micro management gets super important, but also the decisionmaking. The way you use the Frenzy ability of your Forsaken often decides who wins the fight. You can increase your dps in the skirmish, but if you activate to many Forsaken your opponent can just retreat and wait for them to die for nothing. 
More important notes:
- Always be aware of nasties. Dreadcharger is very fast and if you leave it at full hp you can get in trouble if your units aren't well positioned
- Motivate can be massive. The amount of additional damage you can deal for literally no power is very good for any kind of skirmishes. Use it on the first Forsaken squad that is close to die.
- Phasetower can be super useful on maps like Whazai, but usually isn't the best choice, because Shadow has got high dps Units to deal with it. 
But lets go ahead and talk about one of the most important cards in this matchup. Skeleton Warriors are monsters against Shadow. 50 power and 1,65k effective hp with their ability is huge. Shadow just hasn't got anything to deal with them. They can tank against Forsaken forever, they beat Dreadcharger with their ability and the most dangerous thing: You can't just ignore them and kite because they are a massive nasty threat aswell.
Many players would just think of Wrathblades as a solution. But here is the problem: Wrathblades have got only 600hp and can get killed super fast by Forsaken and even if you don't focus them Wrathblades get a dp20s of 1512 against S units with their ability. If you compare the stats (1512dmg/600health vs 600dmg/1650health) you will realise, that Skeleton Warriors win the 1v1 against the Wrathblades. This is why Wrathblades are pretty useless, at least for dazed fights.
If you managed to win the first skirmish you can use your temporary advantage to take a power well at a position that gives you map control. Try to make a gameplan from that point, maybe you can use your position to deny a T3 spot, or maybe try to get close to your opponent to push your advantage. 
If you are even after the first small fights you can also try to take a power well, but maybe at a safe spot. If the power level gets higher it is unlikely to get rushed that easily, because you can spam more units to intercept your opponent. In addition to that nasty gets way more effective at that point since it's harder to split the high amount of units well enough to prevent nasties from beeing power efficient. 
How to play when both players aquired a power well:
Try to play as aggressive as possible. Never be passive, that will lose you the game for a simple reason. If the enemies Forsaken manage to reach your base you'll get a problem. At that point your opponent can just activate frenzy and you can't get rid of them, because it's super bad to frenzy your Forsaken in a defensive position. Even if you kill the enemies units, your own Forsaken will die aswell and you will just sit there with a low power well. You can play more units, but the next attack will finish the well most likely and if you decide to repair your well you won't have enough power to play any units. This is why you have to force skirmishes on an open ground and if you get an advantage due to superior micro just play as aggressive as you can. If you get pressured at some point just don't lose your nerves and activate your Forsaken. You will lose your chance to use a temporary advantage for a counterattack. Attacking at multiple positions is always a good choice. It is just way more difficult to react properly if you apply pressure everywhere even if your opponent has got enough power in theory. If you manage to control and micro your units well you can gain massive advantages because so many players struggle with multitasking especially when they have to react fast and have to prevent you from reaching their power wells.
A common strategy: If you get an overwhelming amount of units just go ahead, and frenzy all of them. Just go for the wellfocus, but go T2 at the same time. This will allow you to deal with the counterattack (Darkelf Assassins, Shadow Phoenix, CC vs Frenzy, AoE damage spells like lavafield or lyrish nasty).
There aren't many map specific advantages because both players have got access to the same cards so i won't make a map list for this matchup. Just keep this in mind:
- Phasetower is super effective on Whazai (I mentioned this earlier aswell)
- Big generated maps are just awful, you can't be aggressive on these maps, because if your opponent takes a well you just have to take one aswell.  You need atleast an entire minute to reach him, which means your opponent can build up a good defense and even gets around 30-40 power back even before you applied any sort of pressure. 
But this is just an exception. So keep in mind: Good micro and the ability to be proactive are the most important things you need to master the shadow mirror.
Okay, this is the end of my Shadow T1 guide. I hope this will help some of you in the upcoming future. Since I've got some requests I will write something about different colors at some point too, you can find my Frost T1 guide in the new player section and I almost finished Nature T1 too which will be released soon. So thank you for reading this, enjoy your day and stay hyped.
 
Best regards,
RadicalX  

Don't feel like reading? Toggy will go over the patchnotes in his stream tonight around 19:00 CEST at https://www.twitch.tv/dastoggy
 

Greetings Skylords!
A new month; a new Community Update! It's time to bring you up to speed with everything going on in Skylords Reborn!

• Survey Results

Once more, a big thank you to everyone who provided feedback in our 2022 Survey. 2.227 of you provided feedback regarding various topics, from general opinions regarding the project, to balance and upcoming features. We have collected the answers and provided them in a short presentation. 


• Upcoming Patch 

Last month we promised more information about our upcoming new content patch. We are almost ready to bring you a new patch that will include a ton of balance changes, map changes, bug fixes and new cards! While we sadly can't give you a concrete date on the patch yet, we are aiming for a release around mid-September. We are also planning to release some additional achievements in a small follow-up patch soon after. 
As for the upcoming content patch; we have added new Transformation effects to T2 and T3 Twilight cards, aimed at making Twilight's Transformation ability worth using. We have also made substantial changes to Fire T4 cards, while continuing our work on Nature. At the same time, we are making some much-needed changes for the health and future of the game. This patch will implement changes to Batariel, Decomposer, Frenetic Assault and mindcontrol-effects like Nightguard and Parasite Swarm. These cards have been the topic of many heated discussions over the years, which is why we would like to take some time to explain why we are making these changes. 
 
• Why Nerf Cards?

It has been the conscious choice of the Skylords Reborn Team since we began balancing the game nearly 2 years ago to avoid any PvE specific nerfs. The reasoning was twofold:
(1) Nerfs feel bad and continued nerfs of popular cards can be demoralizing to players, and
(2) There did not exist a sufficient number of strategies such that nerfing top performers would actually lead to more diverse gameplay. The top performing strategies were sometimes the only viable strategies in the game, and removing them would have just lead to an ever decreasing set of viable archetypes. 
Instead of nerfing cards, we in the faction design and balancing team have endeavored to create an increasingly large set of viable strategies, both between and within factions. Within factions, Bandits has been our greatest success, with several top tier Bandit deck archetypes being viable across all maps and game modes. Across factions, we have also steadily been succeeding in our original goal. Pure Frost and Pure Fire do not have as much intra-faction deck diversity as something like Bandits, but both do have viable archetypes capable of succeeding at all levels of play. Slowly, but steadily, we have also been working towards this same goal with Pure Nature, Pure Shadow, and their non-pure derivatives such as Shadow's Death Ray archetype. In the next few patch cycles we are hoping to touch the Stonekin, Lost Souls, and Twilight factions as well, simultaneously adding new unique strategies while also fleshing out their existing viable archetypes. All in all, we think we have come a very long way in creating both fun and viable strategies for the majority of factions, and we will labor every patch to continue this work. 
Unfortunately, despite the work that has been done, there is still a perception among much of the playerbase that decks like Pure Frost are not strong, despite Pure Frost being viable against all factions even in RPvE 10. This is because, with the exception of the addition of Banzai Lord and Plague, the top decks have remained nearly identical from release until now. This is unsurprising. In T4, Batariel-Enlightenment and Bloodhorn decks are so strong that if we attempted to make all archetypes compete with them, we would thereby trivialize the game through power creep. In T1, we have made substantial changes to ensure that every faction has a viable opening for all maps and game modes, but by and large a majority of players still progress through the campaign using Nightguard in at least a plurality if not a majority of maps. This situation of having a large set of viable playstyles but a few select ones that outshine all others, creates the impression that Skylords Reborn lacks gameplay diversity and leads to players defaulting to the same few decks over and over again. This is not a recipe for long term success. Even after the most recent patch, you can still see messages in global chat to the effect of "I wish there were other strategies than Batariel or Nightguard." There are many more strategies, it is just that some strategies are so strong that everything else seems paltry in comparison. 
Given the current state of the game, we as a balancing team have determined that it is finally time to nerf some of the game's top performers and that by doing so we will actually be expanding the set of strategies players view as viable, thereby hopefully leading to increased in-game deck diversity. Yet, our goal is not to remove the existing top strategies from the game. We want them to remain top strategies, but to be closer to the strength of other archetypes which have proven themselves to be viable alternatives. We are truly convinced this is the best course of action for the long term health of Skylords Reborn. The other options are increasing the strength of all cards to the level of these very few cards, thereby trivializing existing content, or accepting a perpetually stagnate meta where the same few strategies continue to dominate forever. 
As a final note, we want to assuage any fears that we will be going through and nerfing any and every strong card in the game. We are convinced that there are less than 10 total cards problematic enough to justify large changes. Balancing is more music than algebra. There is a band of viability within which cards sit. It is okay if some cards are better than other ones, as long as those cards are neither too powerful nor too weak. As long as a strategy is not so dominant across multiple game modes that it warps the game around itself and adversely affects the playerbase's perception of what is acceptably strong, we can and will happily turn a blind eye to it and allow it to continue unchanged. 
Our upcoming patch notes will dive into what exactly will be changed about these cards. These will be posted alongside the patch release.

• New Card Reveal: Tranquility

The results from our feedback survey shows you really like new cards, so we are excited to reveal our new Amii spell: Tranquility!

This card holds the record for longest development cycle, going all the way back to November 2021. Having changed names, effects, art and visuals multiple times during its long process since then. We are very happy with the end result though, and we hope you look forward to playing it.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy about it, numbers and effects might still change before release.
Let's break down the card: 

Tranquility is a tier 2 spell for Nature/Shadow. Upgrading the card increases its effect and reduces its Power Cost. It will be a rare and won't have an affinity. As with the card Transcendence, the effect of this new Amii spell changes depending on if you cast it on an enemy or friendly unit:
 
Soothing Whispers
Empowers a friendly unit to fight more joyfully. Target friendly unit will deal 20/30/30/30% more damage and regenerate 50 life points every 2 seconds if the unit deals at least 80 damage every 5 seconds. Lasts 20 seconds. Reusable every 25 seconds.

Foreboding Whispers
Weakens an enemy unit and makes it unable to fight. Target hostile unit cannot attack or use special abilities and takes 20/20/30/30% more damage for 10 seconds. Reusable every 25 seconds.
 
Tranquility offers Skylords a flexible early game Amii spell that can be used in both PvE and PvP.
For its buff/debuff visual, we have created a completely new flower model, another milestone in our development for Skylords Reborn! 

 
• Phone Wallpaper

The artwork for Tranquility was created by Tweeto, and went through many iterations (as tends to happen with our team full of perfectionists). The final artwork goes beyond the size of what we can show on a card, which is why we decided to release the full artwork as a Phone Wallpaper. We hope you like it!  

• Skylords Reborn Instagram


Want to see more art, exclusive content and giveaways? Be sure to follow us on our new Instagram! Rumors say you might even catch a glimpse of a new and not yet revealed card in the upcoming days! Follow us now to join our upcoming giveaway for a chance to win some Twilight boosters.
 
• Tournaments / Events

Now that the Community Updates moved to a monthly schedule, events might come and go in between Community Updates. Be sure to keep a close eye on the ingame event-tab and the forum calendar to not miss any events! 

• NEW - Community PvE League Season 1
In this Community-hosted PvE league, you will compete against other players of similar abilities and ranks in a series of challenges, consisting of campaign, community and rPVE maps. There are exciting prizes to be won, so be sure to click here for more information! 

• NEW- Crappy Community Contest #8
The contest-idea-contest (CCC#7) has brought some excellent ideas to light, and the yet unannounced winner will be presented tomorrow as a new contest. As always, if enough Skylords participate, there will be a booster code as prize for the whole community!

• FINISHED - Community event #4: Onslaught on the Ground
Can you finish King of the Giants Solo under 13 minutes - without using flying units? The winner of 'Onslaught on the Ground' was able to pull this off, check out his replay here.
 
• FINISHED - Battle of Tactics #1: Your actions count
How many clicks do you need to finish Encounters with Twilight? See a super-cut of how the participants tried to be as efficient as possible: watch the video. 


• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizer Metagross! We can help you out with various topics and are glad to discuss potential ideas. We can also sponsor the prize pool for your event. If you have a cool idea for a PvE event, or want to host a PvP tournament, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, we will gladly assist you. 
 
• Team changes 

A lot has happened in the team behind Skylords Reborn in the past month. 
Sadly nkmol, who worked with Freund and Maze on the web-interface, has left the team due to personal circumstances. We are grateful for his work and wish him all the best.
Luckily, we also have some good news to share! 

Ult has recently joined the team as a client and server developer. He has been working on something exciting we can't wait to show you on in a future community update! 
Katchau also joined the team as a client developer. He will be helping out in adding new features into the game that were previously blocked due to a lack of UI developers.  
Lebovim (one of our Skylords of Honor) has done a ton for the project already, but always worked alongside the team, not in it. He has now formally joined the team, and will be helping out with implementing map and card changes, among other things. 
Maxxxel is also new to the team and working on creating tools and workflows capable of editing and adding new 3D models. We hope we will be able to add new models to the game at some point, but no promises yet. 
Lastly, Dallarian will move from a Global Moderator role into the Map Department. Our survey showed loud and clear that you want more campaign maps, so he is currently exploring the map editor to make that happen.
Welcome, and we are grateful for all of you who spend their free time helping out with Skylords Reborn! 

• Contribute to the Project

As always, we hope you will also consider helping out the project. Please take a look at all our open positions on how you can do so. 
We have also opened the position of Global Moderator, and are currently in need of more Russian Translators.

 
• 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 Amii-booster: REAL-SOON-THIS-TIME

The code is valid until October 1st, 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 #26