Zeroo

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!

 
• Skylord Reborn 3rd Anniversary

Happy New Year, everyone! We hope 2024 will be a wonderful year for every one of you! 
December 2023 marked the 3rd Anniversary of Skylords Reborn, and we are happy you are here to celebrate it with us!
In case you missed it, we hosted a special Anniversary Stream last Friday, which you can rewatch here. 

In this Community Update, we would like to take a look back at 2023, and share what 2024 has in store for Skylords Reborn. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get started!
 
• Looking back at 2023

Can you believe it's already been a year since we added cosmetics? Here is a quick summary of every patch we released in 2023. 
 
January 14th, 2023

Early in 2023, we released our 2nd Anniversary Patch. The patch contained three new cards; Sanctuary, a Tier 4 Nature spell to go along with our ongoing Pure Nature rework, Raven Archwalker, our first Legendary card, and Worldbreaker Gun Promo, the first Promo building in the game. 


This patch also introduced cosmetics; unlockable ways for Skylords to personalize their banner and avatar border. We also added 32 new achievements, many balance changes, and a ton of Quality of Life features; like a longer Marketplace option, more advanced filtering options including a handy in-game guide, and an import/export deck function.


February 27th, 2023

As with most major patches, our follow-up patch was a small one, containing some bugfixes, and the QoL option for players to re-roll the same quest multiple times. The minimum quest reward after re-rolls was changed to 50 BFP. 
 
April 8th, 2023

After our successful Halloween Event, we wanted to surprise Skylords with an Easter-themed event. While the map and general idea were received positively, we probably should not have attached a speedrun contest to it. Players expressed playing the map once was fun, but grinding the clunky Egg-push mechanic for the top time turned out to be a bit tedious. 

Regardless, completing the special map ''The Easter Tree" on any difficulty resulted in the completion of the newly added achievement "Bunny Brawler", which automatically rewarded Skylords with a new Easter-themed banner. We saw that banner equipped a lot around the holidays, so we are happy to see it being received so positively. 

This patch also contained some bugfixes, and a change to the friend list to display only online friends by default, a much requested change. 
 
May 19th - 2023

In May, we released another big content patch, called appropriately called Nature's Awakening. Alongside many Nature-themed changes, the patch also contained one new card: Sleetstorm.

The spotlight for this patch, however, was on the addition of the Nature faction to rPvE, joining Fire as the second Skylords-Reborn exclusive addition to the game mode. Hodron spend a lot of time balancing the faction and making it fun to play against, which you can read more about in our interview. The patch also contained many balance changes, mostly focusing on our Pure Nature rework. 

The patch also included many Quality of Life changes, including a single-player pause feature, key-down vs key-up interaction, the ability to copy text or import a deck from the in-game chat, and gold chests being openable in combat. Lastly, the patch also included our first part of our Gold rework, a few campaign map changes, and a rework of the community map section. 


This rework allows Skylords to have an easier time finding great community-made maps, by showing more information, and having featured maps for maps that are especially good or unique. We also had an event on two of those great community maps: An Expedition South and Lyrish Uprising. We would once again like to stress that every Skylords Reborn installation comes with a Map Editor, so feel free to add your creations to the list! 
 
July 25th - 2023

Sadly, the major content patch came alongside some annoying bugs, the most infamous being the lag in the Forge after playing for a while. The issue should be solved, though we still sometimes receive reports of similar behavior. If this is the case for you, please report it to our team to investigate. 
We also used this occasion to fix some inconsistencies in card descriptions and enabled playback for outdated replays. However, because replays are playbacks (instead of being a video), if cards were used that have since been changed, it can still result in not accurately reflecting the original gameplay. Regardless, it solved a major headache for our Event Department and Community Events to still be able to access replays if the game had been patched in a way that only effected a few cards that were not present in their replays. 
 
October 28th - 2023

For our Halloween patch, we added a new Pumpkin avatar for Skylords to unlock by playing the custom map Spooky Encounters once more during the Halloween season. The patch also contained one new card: the long awaited Soulstone. This card saw the longest development cycle yet, but we are very proud of how it turned out. 

There was one more thing for Skylords to unlock: we released a special Fire-themed Forge, locked behind an achievement we noticed not many players were participating in due to the old lackluster reward. We are happy to see an increase in the completion rate after adding the special Forge. 
Lastly, we also released a bunch of balance changes, bugfixes, and a batch of Quality of Life changes, like a higher deck-limit (500), a warning notification for queuing up with a low deck level for ranked (pointing towards the free PvP decks), and some improvements to comparing profiles. 

The Fire-themed Forge can be unlocked by completing the achievement "Never Thought of Him"
 
December - 2023 -> January 2024

Originally, our plan was to bring out a patch for our 3rd Anniversary in December. Sadly, we had to delay after crucial staff members became sick. Which brings us to...
 
• Looking ahead at 2024

We are kicking off 2024 with our first content patch, and today we are happy to announce the patch date:
January 26th - 2024

Our first content patch of 2024 will contain various previously announced features. You can expect to see the new card Lost Manabeast, our overhaul of the rPvE difficulty system, our Lost Souls Rework, balance changes, and quality of life features, like buttons in the Forge to pause, speed up and slowdown. While we are trying to include previously announced cards like Tectonic Shift and Bedrock, technical issues are plaguing their developments, so we can't make the promise they will be included yet. 
 
2024

While we are not able to provide a concrete roadmap for 2024, we are able to share some general information about what we have planned for the new year. We have spent a lot of 2023 working on map-content, and we are very excited to share what we have been working on! The following content can be expected further along in 2024: 
 
New Campaign Maps

2024 will see the release of some brand-new campaign maps! There are currently four maps in development, three 2-player maps, and one 1-player map. The first two maps you can expect will be Unexpected Visitors and Into the Jungle, which are part of our new Key of Ashia story campaign, filling in some of the questions the original campaign failed to answer. In Unexpected Visitors, you will face the Lost Souls to protect the last Amii tribe, while Into the Jungle tasks you with finding a new safe haven for them. We did a short live-play of Into the Jungle during our stream.

Unexpected Visitors will be the first new campaign map of Skylords Reborn.
 
New Cards

You can expect more new cards, including three for the Amii faction: Amii Golem, Amii Simulacrum and Amii Skydancer, bringing long-awaited higher tier units to the faction. We will reveal more about these new cards in the upcoming Community Updates. 
Besides new Amii cards, we also have a couple of other new cards in various stages of development. 
 
More voice-acting

Alongside voicing our new campaign-maps, we are also working on providing voices for both new and old cards alike. A teaser of the Amii Golem was already heard in the Amii-teaser above, but we also have talented people working on Burning Spears and other cards that patched without voice-lines. 

To navigate the players through the new campaign, we have also worked on a Frost Skylord named Gaeron, artwork made by our artist Tweeto. Gaeron was an Imperial Captain defending a Lyrish town. He is shortly mentioned in the original lore book in the game, and we thought he would be a fitting candidate to expand upon. We have found a great voice-actor to voice him during our search back in June.
 
Balance changes

We are always tweaking cards and looking for opportunities to make underplayed but cards with potential viable, and 2024 will be no different. Be sure to join our balance discord if you want to join the discussion and/or provide suggestions! A lot of the changes in SR are community suggestions, after all!
 
More Map Content

2024 will continue our vision of focusing on returning content. We are especially excited about Map Modifiers, special conditions that can be activated on campaign maps to provide new and exciting challenges. Modifiers that increase the defense of enemies, or cause them to explode once defeated, are simple examples that can already impact maps drastically. We plan to bundle these with a highlighted Map of the Day campaign map, resulting in additional rewards for Skylords facing the challenge. 

Example screenshot of Map Modifiers. Work in progress.

With new campaign maps, expanding on rPvE and Map Modifiers freshening up the original Campaign Maps, 2024 should be a good year for replayable content! 
 
• Events

Kicking off 2024 we also have a new event to enjoy!
 
• NEW - Amii Training Camp
While we eagerly wait for new Amii cards, let's find out if you fully master the excising ones! Play rPvE with only Amii Paladins and Amii Phantoms on Tier 2 and see how fast you can get! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. 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.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 10 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.
• Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer - Watch now.
• Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer - Watch now.
• Episode 6: Ultralord, Video Editor - Watch now.
• Episode 7: Zyna & Ladadoos, Admins - Watch now.


• New: Episode 8: Maze, Web Developer - Watch now.
In this episode, Maze and Kapo talk about the moderation tool, different APIs, and of course in great detail about Maze' wonderful website, the Skylords Marketplace Journal (www.smj.cards)
 
• New: Episode 9: Windhunter, Lead Designer - Watch now.
In this episode, Windhunter and Kapo talk all about design, the priorities of picking what to change next, the state of the economy and loads of submitted questions from Fire-Frost to Deepdives, and what's upcoming in the next months and years. 
 
• New: Episode 10: Emmaerzeh & Hodron - Watch now.
This episode is all about the art of map-making, in all variations from campaign, rPvE and PvP-maps; with a highlight on how (community) mapmaking is done.
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fueled by the passion and dedication of over 50 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn! More information.
Please consider applying for this position; we would love to gather both new and old players alike in 2024 to check out our new campaign maps. We are also looking for someone who can help us with our newsletter. 
Don't have time to formally join the staff, but still would like to help out? Please check out this guide on how to support Skylords Reborn as a community member.
 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: LOOK-BACK-YEAR-2023
The code is valid until February 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update December 2023

Great greetings, people of the Sky
Battle of Tactics is trying something new: Time for a Tactical-Tome-Tournament!

Different to a normal Tome-Tournament?
1. Public visible boosters
The content of all Boosters of each player will be visible publicly
2. Booster Types
Players have multiple general booster but also Wild-Boosters.
With these they can open all types of boosters, like a Pure-Fire-Booster to increase the chance of a key fire card for their planed deck.
3. Boosters per Player
The number of boosters is linked to their ELO. A higher experienced player has to work with a lower amount then a beginner:
S-Tier 139k-999k ELO  -->  9 General Boosters + 1 Wild-Booster
A-Tier 124k-139k ELO  -->10 General Boosters + 2 Wild-Booster
B-Tier 112k-123k ELO  --> 11 General Boosters + 3 Wild-Booster
C-Tier 100k-112k ELO  --> 12 General Boosters + 4 Wild-Booster
D-Tier 000k-100k ELO  --> 13 General Boosters + 5 Wild-Booster

Managed via Website
To support this event and future Tome games ,I have made a new website:
https://tome.t1421.de
On this website, players can open their boosters and have a public view on all opened ones.
There is also a filter code which can be added to your "custom_filter_extensions.json" for easier deckbuilding in game.
I have made a video about the features of the page, as well on how to use it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMLBZydTQPE

Rules
The tournament will be on the testserver, so all players have all cards.
To start the testserver, use the "LauncherTest.exe" in your BattleForge folder. The match format is Best Of 3 with no looser bracket. There is a group phase with a max of 8 players per group.
Only the best of each group will go into the final rounds. 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. The map of round one will be Haladur, after that its losers choose.
Against the second opponent, you start with Simai. third Elyon, etc.
(I will make notes in Challonge) First deck lock is done by a coin flip. (/roll 1) 
After that, the winner has to lock in first.
How to join and schedule
The event starts on                            10.12.2023 12:00
You can join till                                  10.12.2023 11:00
I will stream the event starting at      10.12.2023 11:20 Here is my twitch.tv/ultralord_t1421
Player can start opening boosters at 10.12.2023 11:30
You can join the tournament by messaging me directly over
Discord
Forum  

There is a maximum of 32 players for this tournament.
If we end up with with fewer players, we might reduce the groups or the players per group.
I will have a discord server of easier communication. You still need to have a Challonge account!
https://challonge.com/de/xejiknwu

Prizes
There are prizes for everyone that joins and participates in the event. (if you don't show up - you won't get anything)
Group Prizes:
Group Place 4: If you lose your first set of matches (max 4 players per group) you will receive:
                      1 random rare or ultra rare card
20.11.2023   + A split of 5.000BFP
Group Place 3: If you lose your second match (max 2 players per group) you will receive:
                      1 general booster + 1 random rare or ultra rare card
Group Place 2: If you lose the group final (max 1 players per group) you will receive:
                      2 general booster + Wheel of Gifts
Group Place 1: If you win the group final (max 1 players per group) your go into the final and receive final Prizes
Final Prizes:
Final Place 3: If you lose your first finale round you will receive:
                      4 general boosters + Amii Monument
Final Place 2: If you won the first match of the final, but lost in the final match you will receive: 
                      6 general boosters + Firedancer
Final Place 1: If you win the tournament you will receive: 
                      8 general boosters + Promo Lyrish Knight
 
So in total the prize pool is:
     24x Rare and Ultra Rare cards
       4x Wheel of Gifts
       2x Amii Monument
       1x Firedancer
       1x Promo Lyrish Knight
     38x General boosters

Thankyou:
@Maze                                                  For providing the SMJ-API and providing feedback on the webpage
@RadicalX                                              For giving a lot of input to the rules like ELO-System and Wild-Boosters
@Metagross31  &  @Minashigo Hiko For input, feedback and finalizing the event
Anonymous                                               For sponsoring Firedancer, Amii Monuments, Wheel of Gifts and a lot of the Rare and Ultra Rare cards
@triggz                                                  For helping as Co-Admin on the Tournament day
SLR-Team                                                   For the 38x General boosters
@Vysnia                                                 For 5.000 BFP
 

Closing words:
You want to host an event or tournament of your own as well? Contact our Event Organizers, they will be happy to support your event:
@Metagross31 (metagross31), @Minashigo Hiko (minashigohiko)
I hope you all will have fun playing or watching the new type of Battle of Tactics. See you in the Forge!
Ultralord

FAQ:
 

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!

 
• Halloween Patch

Happy Halloween Skylords! Last weekend, we released a surprise Halloween patch. This patch contains various bugfixes and quality of life changes. Additionally, we have implemented some balance changes, including the previously announced Stronghold changes. 
We have also added the Fire-themed Forge. Keep yourself warm this month with this special themed Forge (active as a featured Forge till the end of November), or complete the achievement ''Never Thought of Him'' to permanently unlock the Forge in addition to 100.000 gold. This reward is retroactive, meaning those who already completed the achievement in the past automatically have the Fire-forge. 
Skylords might remember our Spooky Encounters Halloween Event from last year. We have now implemented a returning achievement, where you can earn a Lost Souls booster and a special Pumpkin-avatar for beating the map during the Halloween season. 
For those looking for a more classic event, we also have a Halloween event that went live earlier today. 
We hope you enjoy this special Halloween patch. You can find the full patch notes here. 
 
• New Card Reveal - Soulstone

This patch also contained the surprise reveal and release of Soulstone!
Today we would like to dive a bit deeper into its design, and how the release is both sudden and overdue.  
 

 
Soulstone is the very first building card we have introduced in the Rebirth Edition (if you don't count our Promo Worldbreaker Gun). It is a Frost card requiring only a single Frost orb, but with a unique twist: Skylords are able to upgrade the card to tier 2 once they have a second orb available. This allows the card to transition throughout the game, powering up alongside the other tools at your disposal. 
Upgrading the card reduces the cost for its memorial ability, and increase its lifepoints. Soulstone is a rare card and can drop from boosters or be reforged into. We also have a special Halloween event where you have a chance to earn it, more about that later in this Community Update.
 
 
 

Let's break down the card: 

Frozen Ward
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 120 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was built. Reusable every 60 seconds.  
 
Memorial (mode change)
Activate to regenerate the full power of the Soulstone. After 2 seconds, the building gains Soul Armor and loses Frozen Ward. Requires 2 orbs to activate. Has a 60 seconds cool-down after the building was build. 
 

Soul Armor
Activate to trigger a global shielding spell that enchants every friendly structure to grant friendly units within a 20m radius an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 180 damage for 10 seconds. Units that already have an Ice Shield are unaffected. Each unit can only be affected once every 10 seconds. Lasts for 30 seconds. Also affects structures that are still under construction. Reusable every 60 seconds.
 
Soulstone has been in the making for quite a while now, and we would like to share some behind the scenes' information about its road to release. To do so, Lead Designer Windhunter will take you all the way back to 2021.
 
• Soulstone Design Notes

The release of Soulstone is a testament to how far the Skylords Reborn team has come in its development capacities. The original design concept for Soulstone dates back to June 2021, where it was one of the first cards ever designed by the faction design department. Soulstone's initial design pattern was very closely on the Soulstone players encounter in Defense of Hope, similar to how Banzai Lord is patterned closely on its eponymous mini-boss in Mo. The idea was that the player Soulstone would achieve its full its strength upon reaching T2 just as the Soulstone in Defense of Hope regenerates its strength partway through the mission, summoning Skyelfs to defend itself. We did not think that Frost needed a Skyelf spawner, but we did believe that Frost needed early game sustain and that providing shields would fit well with Soulstone's existing identity. In terms of initial vision and final design, the Soulstone we released a few days ago and the Soulstone we originally designed 28 months ago are highly similar. So why did it take so long?
The challenge of creating a card like Soulstone that could transform into a stronger version of itself upon reaching a higher tier was riddled with technical hurdles. Despite how much we have achieved, it is important to remember that we do not have the source code for BattleForge. Much of what we do is a slow process of reverse engineering and subsequent tool development to allow ourselves to make use of that reverse engineering. Many of our new cards and major redesigns to existing cards have required at least one new mechanic to be successfully reverse engineered before they could proceed. It is a frequent occurrence for our team's faction designers to put forward an idea, have it be accepted as worthwhile to pursue, only for development to hit a wall while we wait for our developers to play Marco Polo with the game engine until they can isolate the correct variable that then allows our card implementers to make the card a reality.
For Soulstone, the primary challenge was the description length. Embedding the functionalities of two cards would result in an exceedingly lengthy description, unprecedented in the game. When we run into major issues like this, we ask ourselves, can we design around it? The best idea we had was to make the Memorial ability self-destruct the existing Soulstone and summon a new, better Soulstone in its place. Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus both summon new buildings, so this was clearly possible. A little janky, but a promising workaround nonetheless, except that both Altar of Chaos and Portal Nexus' summon abilities are hardcoded, meaning that if we add the ability to a different building, it will always and only summon the building from the original ability. Additionally, even the ability icons were hardcoded, so even if we got it to work, Soulstone would have had an Altar of Chaos icon on it. For regular followers of our Community Updates, you may have pieced together that this same issue would seem to be true for our upcoming card Bedrock, which summons its own Stone Launcher, and if so, you would now have a better understanding of one reason for why said card is not yet released. Anyway, the workaround also proved impossible, so we decided to adjust the design so both the T1 and T2 version could reasonably fit into a single card.
While lacking its originally intended evolution mechanic, Soulstone would have still made a good addition to the game. We implemented the global shields and found that it worked fine. Then we started designing a slightly frostier texture for the building, the original is quite gray, only to find that when we tried to construct the Soulstone in-game that the building got stuck under the ground. It was there, but completely buried. With no knowledge of how to fix this issue, we had to abandon the possibility of using the Soulstone building itself. What we knew we could do was retexture existing buildings with functioning build animations, so we decided to change the name and use a different building instead. Our most promising attempt was trying to retexture Fountain of Rebirth, turning its roots into icicles in the process.
After a half dozen aborted tries leading to more and more frustration from the art team, and in light of the ongoing implementation struggles, we made the decision to shelve the development of Soulstone for the time being. This, while the right decision, became very awkward for us as a team because we justified several changes to Frost T1 cards with the reasoning that a new "Frost T1 sustain option" would be releasing next patch. Obviously, this was no longer true, so we scrambled to make changes to Northern Keep as compensation. Instances like this one are one reason we are careful not to announce things until we are sure they are possible.
For nearly two years, Soulstone sat untouched and largely forgotten until early this summer one of the team members pointed out that the original Soulstone design was now fully possible. We did a few preliminary tests and discovered that the team member was correct. In the course of two years, we had advanced our understanding of the game to the point that what was previously impossible was now relatively simple. Once the various card and ability artworks were finished, the building retextured, and the 3D FX crafted, the card implementation took a little under a week. At long last, on Oct. 28th 2023, Soulstone made its way into the Forge.
 
• Events

If you want to get your hands on the brand-new Soulstone card, be sure to participate in our official Halloween event! We will distribute the card among 50% of the participants, and there are also Lost Souls boosters to be won! 
 
• NEW - Official 1p rPvE Contest - Resurrection of the Lost Soul
The Bandits have disturbed our rest for too long! It is time for the Souls to hunt the Soulhunters, show the Power of Lost Souls in this rPvE 1p Contest. The more participate, the more Soulstones we will Raffle! More information.
 
 • FIRST PHASE - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• FINISHED - PvP Rookie Tournament
Last weekend, Triggz hosted a special Rookie 1vs1 Tournament. 22 inexperienced players entered the ring and battled it out. The tournament was streamed live, and can be rewatched on the YouTube-channel of Eirias. More information. 
 
In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. 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.
 
• Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. There are currently 5 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator - Watch now.
• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator - Watch now.
• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator -  Watch now.

• New: Episode 4: RadicalX, Faction Designer
In this episode, Kapo and RadicalX talk about Radicals fame as one of the best players in speedrunning and PvP, but also about design (decisions) and loads of topics submitted by user questions. Watch now.

• New: Episode 5: Ult, Server Developer
In this episode, Kapo and Ult talk about the server side of the game, especially about systems like the achievements or cosmetics, as well as future projects like map modifiers. Watch now.
Episode 6 will be hosted live on the 4th of November and feature Ultralord, Video Editor. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Team changes

During the past month, WaterMelonLord, Nukie and Dallarian have moved on from the team for various reasons. All three of them helped us out with moderation. Additionally, Nukie managed the Event Department, where Dallarian helped the Map Department set the first step into new campaign maps. We appreciate their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavors!
Meanwhile, Noah.K has joined the team as our second Audio Editor. He is helping us out with adding new voicelines into the game by providing editing and advice regarding the recorded takes we have received from our voice-actors. In the moderator department, Linkz has been promoted to Global Moderator. 
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to have a look at our open positions!


We are especially looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 
 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a Lost Souls booster: SOUL-STON-ENOW-LIVE
The code is valid until December 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update October 2023

Patch #400044 - 28 October 2023
🎃👻 Welcome to the Spoooooky Halloween Patch! 🦇🕷️
Skylords, gather 'round as the shadows lengthen and the nights grow cold! We're thrilled to present our ninth balance patch, teeming with delightful treats and perhaps a trick or two.
Dive deep into the abyss to discover a mysterious new card, unveil chilling new achievements that await the brave, and embrace the night as you light up the forge with a hauntingly beautiful new theme.
Happy Halloween in the Forge, Skylords!

Achievement Updates
[New] Happy Halloween! Rewards: Halloween Pumpkin (Avatar) + 1x Lost Souls Booster
Win the PvE community map Spooky Encounters on expert difficulty during the Halloween season. (One week from Oct. 28th)
[Updated] Never Thought of Him
Now rewards a brand new Fire Forge theme in addition to the 100,000 gold. Reward is retroactive.
Corporate Downsizing
Added 2 additional levels to the achievement with 2 additional progressive avatars.
General Changes
The deck limit has been raised to 500 total decks, inclusive of PvP, Tutorial, and General decks. Please note: Performance issues may occur at higher deck counts. A warning for this will be displayed once you reach 100 decks. Players using a deck level below 100 will now receive a notification encouraging them to check out the free PvP decks. High-res textures are now used for "Flightblocking" objects. Completed goals in maps will now be stored in replay files. The "Seasonal" forge theme has been renamed to the "Featured" forge theme. The new Fire Forge will be the featured theme until the end of November 2023. The game's file system logic has been updated to use UTF-8 paths for enhanced support. This feature is experimental and may be rolled back if necessary. Profile comparison section has been improved with filters allowing sorting by achievement group, achievement type, and locked achievements.
General Fixes
The 'Show Upgrades' button has been repositioned, creating more space between it and the 'Create Game' button. The brown background issue that occurred when clicking on the leaderboard entry in 2 player scenarios has been fixed. Leaderboard filters no longer reload incorrectly after choosing the map from the dropdown. Flying units are now restricted from opening gold chests. This rectifies an issue introduced by a previous change. Issues related to entities like power wells, monuments, and walls not updating their position correctly when teleported via map scripts have been fixed. Achievement Fixes
The tooltip for the forge spring theme locked achievement now correctly displays (8 maps) instead of (10 maps). Corrected faulty achievement descriptions with missing placeholder values in the profile comparison section. Resolved issues with the type filter not functioning properly in the profile comparison section. Chat commands in the chat menu will remain visible when switching chat regions. Community Map Fixes
Removed misleading error messages that appeared after downloading a community map when joining an open game. Resolved issues related to rapidly switching between community map entries which affected the minimap load. Private maps will now be deleted after 3 hours as intended. Downloaded maps will now properly replace older map versions on the filesystem. The "Local" map type filter will from now on display all locally available community maps, including those downloaded and already on the server. Fixed the issue of daily quests not progressing when playing featured community maps. Rectified the error where maps were counted multiple times for the 'complete different featured community maps' achievement. Resolved inaccuracies in the text for hardcoded local community maps.  

New Cards
Soulstone  - 70p T1 Frost ()
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map Defending Hope.
A common complaint among players is that Frost lacks good shield spells and abilities for PvE before T4. This hole in Frost's design is real, and leads to other issues, such as a lack of teamplay oriented utility and army sustain in the early game. Soulstone, a Frost-like version of Fountain of Rebirth that grants ice shields, fills this gap. It is also the first card to make use of a new evolution mechanic we are adding to the game. Once the player reaches T2, Soulstone can be transformed into a stronger version of itself. This allows it to scale with the player, without being overpowered in T1. We hope players enjoy this new card and the many synergies it brings to Frost, and we cannot wait to see what you do with it.  

Card & NPC Balance Changes

Global Changes
Standardize Basic Class Types:
Added missing faction & affinity class tags to all player buildings. Fixed wrong affinity class type on dozens of units. Added missing class type to dozens of units and buildings.  While technically a balance change as it fixes several card inconsistencies, such as some affinities not working with the correct elemental crystal card, this change also improves the accuracy of the card filtering function.

Description Fixes:
  Cleaned up the descriptions of dozens of player cards and NPCs for improved clarity in each language.     Introduced a new standard description for rage on all cards with the ability. Bug Fixes:
Shrine of Martyrs: Fixed a bug preventing alive units from being affected by a shrine if they had already been affected and the current one was destroyed. Sun Reaver: Fixed various faulty interactions with linked fire.
PvE Balance Changes
 Earthen Gift:
1. Charges: 8 ➜ 12
 Frontier Keep:
1. Power cost: 250p ➜ 125p
In truth, we have little idea how strong Frontier Keep is as a card, merely that it is overpriced for its current effect. As such, we are cutting its price in half and seeing what happens. 
 Grinder(r):
1. Infused Provoke (r): The damage buff is now stackable with external effects. 
Grinder's built-in damage buff after using provoke will now stack with effects like Earthen Gift(r) and Wheel of Gifts. 
 Mindweaver:
1. Fixed a bug where the population cap would be permanently increased beyond the 120 limit if a controlled unit died.
2. Edict of Command range: 30m ➜ 40m
3. Added a 40m radius indicator for Edict of Command on card play-out.
 Parasite Swarm:
1. Can now takeover T3 units on upgrade 2 instead of upgrade 3. 
Make Parasite Swarm more accessible to new players by reducing the total gold investment to reach T3 takeovers. 
 Sleet Storm:
1. Radius: 15m ➜ 20m
2. Spell delay: 5 seconds ➜ 4 seconds
Sleet Storm released below the power level we wanted for the card. We have increased the effect radius and decreased the time it takes for the root and gravity surge effects to activate to ensure the player can ensnare faster moving L and XL-units more consistently. 
 Stone Launcher:
1. Orb cost: 1 Frost, 1 Nature, 1 Neutral ➜ 1 Frost, 1 Nature, 1 Hybrid
2. Power cost: 70p ➜ 100p
3. Life points: 1700 ➜ 2200
4. Rock shot
   A. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
   B. Now damages both air and ground units
5. Pulldown power cost: 80 / 80 / 75 / 70p ➜ 50 / 50 / 45 / 40p
Stone Launcher is now a normal tower. We think that T3+ AA-only towers are largely a bad design, and, on top of that, we needed a normal T3 Stonekin tower for our upcoming card Bedrock to be able to summon and Tectonic Shift to teleport.
 Stronghold:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p
2. Displayed attack value: 2850 dp20 ➜ 4950 dp20
3. Life points: 3600 ➜ 4500
4. Cannon Turrets: 
   A. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 10m
   B. Turret firing arc: Allow up to 3 turrets to attack a target at a time.
   C. Damage: 74 damage, up to 110 in total ➜ 164 damage, up to 246 in total
5. Bombardment:
   A. Now an active ability
   B. New description: Activate to shoot a mortar shell that deals 800 damage to enemies in a 15m radius around its target, up to 3200 in total. Knocks back small, medium, and large units. Has a range of 40m. Reusable every 30 seconds.
6. New passive, "To the Last!" 
   A. Description: If the fortress has equal to or less than 3000 life points left it will deal 25% more damage and take 25% less damage. If the fortress has equal or less than 1500 life points left it will deal 50% more damage and take 50% less damage.
7. New passive, "Slowed Construction:" Construction time is increased by 50%.
Stronghold has been reworked from the ground up and is finally worthy of being an Ultra-rare card. We encourage players to experience the card for themselves and we hope that we have done the card sufficient justice so that it will live up to its name and model. 
NPC Balance Changes
[ Existing NPC Changes ]
The changes discussed in this section pertain to the non-player versions of these entities which players encounter in campaign and random PvE.
 Flame Crystal:
1. Can now be frozen and disintegrated.
 Howling Shrine (rPvE variant):
1. Root Network connection radius: 25m ➜ 40m
 Mindweaver (rPvE variant):
1. Added small and medium knockback.
2. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m
 Nature Random PvE Boss Units:
1. Removed the "Nature" class to prevent unintended interactions with player cards (such as Protector's Seal)
2. Boss Tier: T5 ➜ T4
 Primal Defender (rPvE variant):
1. Orb cost: 3 Nature ➜ 2 Nature
2. Power cost: 150p ➜ 100p 
Now able to be overtaken by both affinities of Matter Mastery.
 Root Network Units (Nature rPvE Variants):
1. Fixed an issue where Treespirit, Thornbark, and Guardian of Nature would not aggro against flying units.
2. Increased ranged at which these units root to attack enemies from 20m to 28m.  
 Root Nexus:
1. No longer provides 2 support. 
2. Removed from Nature rPvE and replaced by the new Earth Crystal.
 Stranglehold:
1. Tower range: 30m ➜ 40m
[ New NPCs ]
These new NPCs are available to map makers to use for community maps. 
New NPC Units:
   1. Pest Creepers: A permanent version of the nature affinity Pest Creepers spawned by Sunken Temple. 
   2. Earth Crystal: Provides 2 support to root network entities within a 20m radius, replaces Root Nexus in Nature rPvE. 
   3. Fortress of Nature: Boss variant of Howling Shrine with 50m range.
   4. Bramblethorn: New Nature variant of Stonekin Rockstorm which roots on-hit. 
   5. Amii Phantom: Ranged-only with swift. 
 

The collection is growing and growing. New we also have the Ravenheart 🙂
Check it out in the first post.
Also the votes has been reset for the next card.

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!

• General Update

It's been a while since our last content patch, and we'd like to provide a brief update on the project. Skylords Reborn relies entirely on the free time of our dedicated volunteers. While we strive to address sudden spikes in inactivity as effectively as possible, there are occasions when unexpected delays are inevitable. Our aim is to strike a balance between revealing upcoming new content and features and getting them into your hands. Currently, this balance is a bit off, resulting in the announcement of some upcoming features a while ago, while they have not yet been implemented. We hope for your understanding in these matters and that you still appreciate us showing what we are working on.
We'd also like to inform you that progress on our upcoming campaign maps is proceeding smoothly. Although we haven't disclosed specific details yet, this decision was made deliberately. The process of map creation can be complex, and even in the late stages of development, maps can undergo significant changes. We want to ensure that our new maps earn their place alongside the existing campaign, so we've invested substantial time in establishing the foundational elements to build upon. Our dedicated testers are currently working to ensure these maps provide an enjoyable playing experience, and we're confident that the end result will be something you'll greatly appreciate. Please stay tuned for more updates!
 
• New Card Reveal - Bedrock

In June, we unveiled the artwork for our highly anticipated tier 4 Stonekin turtle. Since then, people have been curious about the card and its associated effects. Today we are excited to show you the design for the upcoming Stonekin unit: Bedrock.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers, effects, and its rarity might still change before release. 
 

 
Delving further into the building-focused Stonekin archetype, Bedrock offers Stonekin players an exciting and versatile tool for the endgame. If you want to learn more about this archetype, please check out the Stonekin Deep Dive!
Bedrock stands as a formidable elemental destroyer, capable of both laying siege to enemy buildings and constructing new ones. Additionally, it possesses the ability to fortify friendly structures with an Ice Shield. This card has a ranged auto-attack, siege, two active abilities, and, naturally, the Stonekin passive ability.
Bedrock will be available in two different affinities, each influencing its unique Sculptor ability. Once released, the card will drop from boosters and can be reforgable. 
Bedrock will be the first Ultra Rare card from the Rebirth Edition. To make sure enough players will be able to enjoy the card, we are considering hosting an event around the release where you can earn the card. Stay tuned for more information.  
 
 
 
Let's break down the card: 
 
 Rock Throw (auto attack)
Range: 30m
Every 3 seconds, unit fires a molten stone dealing 633 damage, up to 950 in total. Knocks back small and medium units.
 

Blessed/Tainted Sculptor
Range: 30m
Place a Stone Launcher with an affinity towards Frost/Shadow that deconstructs after 30 seconds at a target location within a 30m radius. Only one tower may be placed at a time. Can be placed nearby enemy units and structures. Reusable every 30 seconds.
 
Living Rampart
Cost: 50p - Range: 30m
All friendly buildings in a 30m radius will be fortified, gaining an Ice Shield that absorbs 1800 damage for 15 seconds. The Ice Shield renews itself once after 15 seconds to absorb an additional 1800 damage. Reusable every 30 seconds.
 
 Siege
Deals 100% more damage against structures.
 Adamant Skin (Stonekin faction passive ability)
The unit takes 15% less damage
 
Bedrock has been in the making for quite some time now, and we still need a little more time to work on some technical implications. Alongside the new Tectonic Shift card and some upcoming balance changes, we hope to improve and explore the playstyles of the Stonekin faction. We are currently not able to communicate a release date yet.
 
• Look reveal - Bedrock

And finally, here's a sneak peek at how Bedrock will appear in the game!  We hope you are looking forward to our new favourite stone turtle!
   • Community Spotlight - Masters of the Forge

Skylord of Honour and CCC-host Kapo started a new project this month: Masters of the Forge.
In this podcast-like series, Kapo interviews various staff members to discuss the project and personal stories about their interaction with BattleForge and Skylords Reborn. In his own words:
Masters of the Forge will shine a light on all those people working so tirelessly on Skylords Reborn - for the average Skylord, [Game Masters] are elite, mythical creatures too many know nothing about, and we will hopefully change that. So, in this dev-talk-like podcast series we will meet several Masters of the Forge in person, and hopefully I will be able to ask them questions that are interesting to you. And, you will also get the chance to ask them some questions! The series will be streamed on Twitch and afterwards uploaded on YouTube.
Please note that while the content created is supported by the SR Team and will be all about Skylords Reborn, this is no official event or dev-talk. The focus will be around the guest, what their duties are, how they feel about the game and its development - we will not elaborate future changes in depth or announce anything fancy. But hopefully we will know more about the guest and how It's like to be part of the SR Team.

There are currently 3 episodes to watch:
• Episode 1: Dutchy, Lead Moderator
In this episode, Kapo and Dutchy discuss various moderator-related topics. Find out about how our moderators keep Skylords Reborn a fair community. Watch now.

• Episode 2: Majora, Project Coordinator
In this episode, Kapo and yours truly talk about the Community Updates and Project Coordination. We also go over what goes into creating a new card for Skylords Reborn, and which departments are needed to make it happen. Watch now.

• Episode 3: Volin, Testing Coordinator
In this episode, Kapo and Volin dive into the topic of testing, a crucial part of the game. As a special treat, Volin showcases the new rPvE difficulty 9.5, as previously announced in our community update. Watch now.
Episode 4 will be hosted live on the 7th of October and feature RadicalX, Game Designer and PvP expert. Tune in live on Twitch, or watch back on YouTube the day after.  
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
 • NEW - PvP AI programming contest
We are gathering players for a new type of event. Get ready for an AI Programming Tournament, where the submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist! More information.
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31or @Minashigo Hiko. 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.
 
• Contribute - Spotlight

If you are interested in helping out with our upcoming new campaign maps, Map Tester might be of interest to you!
 
• Open Position - Map Tester
As a map tester, you get early access to new maps and game modes and are responsible to playtest them and provide feedback to the other map developers about possible issues or improvements. This includes checking how balanced the map is, how fun it is to play, if there are any exploits, if areas on the map need to be prettified etc. Map developers/designers/artists should be able to rely on you to make sure maps that are released or changed are done so properly.
More information.
 
But there are more roles available. Below, you can take a look at all our open positions. 
Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to take a look at our open positions!
 

 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a Stonekin booster: DOYO-ULIK-ETUR-TLES
The code is valid until November 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update September 2023

Skylords and Skyladies;
Masters of the Forge will shine a light on all those people working so tirelessly on Skylords Reborn - for the average Skylord, [Game Masters] are elite, mythical creatures too many know nothing about, and we will hopefully change that. So, in this dev-talk-like podcast series we will meet several Masters of the Forge in person, and hopefully I will be able to ask them questions that are interesting to you. And, you will also get the chance to ask them some questions! The series will be streamed on Twitch and afterwards uploaded on YouTube.
Please note that while the content created is supported by the SR Team and will be all about Skylords Reborn, this is no official event or dev-talk. The focus will be around the guest, what their duties are, how they feel about the game and its development - we will not elaborate future changes in depth or announce anything fancy. But hopefully we will know more about the guest and how It's like to be part of the SR Team.
As my third guest, I invited [GM] @Volin, Testing Coordinator; who is very well known for his stream, but is working tirelessly behind the scene to organize testing feedback for new content. Maybe we will see some yet unreleased content on stream?
 
Quick Overview:
Guest                         [GM] Volin, Testing Coordinator Date                          23. 09. 2023 Time                          19:30 CEST Link                            www.twitch.tv/kapostream
If you got any questions you would want to see asked, you are very welcome to drop me a DM here on the forums (@Kapo) or on Discord (#kapojones).
Kapo
 
Previous Episodes:
#1 [GM] Dutchy, Lead Moderator
#2 [GM] Majora, Project Coordinator
 

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!

• Yearly Survey Results

Once more, a huge thank you to everyone who took part in our 2023 Survey. This year, more than 1700 of you generously shared your feedback on a wide array of topics, ranging from general perceptions of the project to thoughts on balance and upcoming features. As always, your insights will be instrumental in shaping our future updates and guiding our areas of focus. Just like last year, we have gathered all the responses and condensed them into a brief presentation.


 
• New Card Reveal - Tectonic Shift

Today we have an exciting upcoming Stonekin card to show you, first teased in our Stonekin Deep Dive. Take a look at Tectonic Shift!

 
Terrestrial Gate
Grants the targeted friendly Stonekin building the ability to relocate to another spot within a 100m range. After the relocation, the building will be more vulnerable, taking 50% more damage for 20 seconds. Reusable every 20 seconds.
 
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers, effects and artwork might still change before release. 







By casting this spell on your Stonekin building, you grant it a permanent teleportation ability, akin to the mechanics of the Phase Tower. Once the spell is cast, you'll have the liberty to teleport the building multiple times throughout the match at no additional cost. It's worth noting that the teleportation range spans an impressive 100 meters, which is twice the distance covered by the Phase Tower (50 meters)
Tectonic Shift is meant for the building-focused Stonekin archetype. If you are interested in more information about this archetype, please take a look at our Stonekin Deep Dive! 
Below, you can see the teleport effect in all its glory:
 
• Voice Acting – Update

We have successfully completed our search for voice actors to bring our upcoming new cards and characters to life!
The next steps will be to finalize the scripts and get the voice actors to record their lines. We are very happy about the chosen candidates, and can't wait to show you more in the future. 
Everyone who applied as a voice actor should have received an e-mail about the results of their trail take. If, by any chance, you haven't received this email, please don't hesitate to reach out to me (Majora) directly via Discord or by sending a direct message on the Forum.
Thank you, and to be continued!
 
• Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!
 
• FINISHED - CCC #12 - Say Goodbye To One
This CCC was a throwback to the very first CCC, where Skylords had to complete rPvE on difficulty 1 as fast as possible. Enough players participated to unlock a scratch code for the whole community! More information.
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31 or @Minashigo Hiko. 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.
 
 • Gameplay Trailer

Continuing from our cinematic trailer, we're thrilled to present a fully voiced gameplay trailer for the game! We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Dreamlord for once again lending their voice to this project. We are already seeing an increase in new Skylords finding out about the project after watching the trailer, which is lovely to see!
As a volunteer project, we are very limited to what we can do on the marketing side, so this trailer reaching the masses is super important for us. Please help us out by liking and sharing the trailer! As a thank you, we have also added a scratch code in the comment section of the video. Please don't share this code with other players directly, but point them towards the trailer instead!
We hope the community can come together to make this trailer a great success!

As a labor of love carried out by volunteers, Skylord Reborn's growth has been dependent on word-of-mouth recommendations and reconnecting with BattleForge's former playerbase. With over 130,000 registered accounts, we've been pretty successful in doing so. However, we remain convinced that there is still a lot of untapped potential. While a substantial portion of our player community comprises BattleForge veterans, there exists a vast expanse of real-time strategy (RTS) and trading card game (TCG) enthusiasts who are yet to discover this unique blend of genres. The above trailer was created with this in mind, showcasing the game for what it is in a way that does not require BattleForge knowledge. The next step is to actually reach those players, which brings us to....
 
• Contribute - Spotlight

There are two roles in specific we would like to highlight this month.
First off, we are looking for an active and passionate outreach coordinator, helping us reach new Skylords by contacting streamers, influencers, media, and other potential parties. This role can make a drastic impact for Skylords Reborn, so please consider applying.
 
• Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator
As a Marketeer / Outreach Coordinator, you are responsible to spread the word and create awareness about Skylords Reborn, attracting veteran and new players alike. 
Your tasks will include actively researching and reaching out to potentially interested streamers, YouTubers, Discord channels, game magazines, among others. You will be responsible for the communication to and from interested parties and for any promotion deals (for example involving scratch codes). Please note that Skylords Reborn cannot do any paid promotions. 
More information. 

Second, we are looking for someone to help us in the Event Department. Where an Outreach Coordinator draws in new players, Event Managers try to keep them invested by providing fun events to participate, either by hosting them or supporting community members in doing so.
 
• Event Manager / Organizer
As an event organizer, you are responsible to design and organize official events and tournaments from start to finish. This process includes research for new and fun event ideas, design the event and rewards, promote and organize the event and ensure it runs smoothly as a whole. 
Furthermore, you will also be responsible for the communication from and to the community for anything event and tournament related and to guarantee all rewards are handed out accordingly. Lastly, as an event organizer, you are also the contact person for unofficial community events and tournaments seeking for sponsorship from the project. 
More information.

But there are more roles available. Below, you can take a look at all our open positions. 
Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fueled by the passion and dedication of over 45 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to take a look at our open positions!
 

 
• New Team Members

We had five new members join the project the past month!

We have two new moderators; Linkx is our new Discord Moderator, while Vultagx is our new Global Moderator. Feel free to contact them if you have a question or run into any issues in the game or on our Discord.
We also have two new developers; Pierakor is our new Tool Developer. His initial focus will be on the Special Effects Editor, which we use for editing and creating new special effects in-game. He will work closely with our two Tech Artist to improve our tool according to their needs. Lucas Ansei is our new Web Developer. He will be working with our other developers on the internal web-interface.
Last but not least, Kayrie has joined the team as a Map Artist. He will help out the Map Department who are currently working on new Campaign Maps, making sure they will look visually appealing. 
 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a Stonekin booster: NEWT-ECTO-NICS-HIFT

The code is valid until October 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update August 2023

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!

• QoL Patch

Last week, we released the long-awaited quality of life patch, resolving various minor bugs and improving the Forge's performance to ensure smoother gameplay. Additionally, this update now allows you to watch outdated replays, although replays impacted by patches will still experience desync issues. Check out the full patch notes here.
We are also still hard at work on our next content patch. We apologize for announcing the Lost Souls changes too early. Our bottleneck in card descriptions has been underestimated, as all cards in Skylords Reborn require translation into English, German, French, and Russian. This translation process, especially for the changes made to cards, can significantly impact our progress when translators are occupied or inactive. If you would like to assist with this effort, please check the contributor roles available for translators.
 
• Cinematic Trailer

A few months ago, we released a video showcasing the significant changes and improvements made to Skylords Reborn compared to the original BattleForge over the past 2 years. As part of our ongoing effort to attract more new Skylords, we have now created a cinematic trailer designed for RTS players unfamiliar with the original game.
Please support the game by sharing it with your friends who might be interested in the game!
 
• Card Rework Spotlight - Stronghold

While new cards usually get the spotlight, reworking existing cards can be just as exciting and impactful. Skylords Reborn has a lot of unused and underpowered cards, which, if reworked, would functionally constitute an entirely new tool for players to use. Stronghold is one such card. The T3 Frost tower is beautiful and imposing, promising an unconquerable fortress, a powerful and immovable bastion able to hold off hordes of enemies by itself. Unfortunately, anyone who has used the card knows this description is fantasy. We have been working on Stronghold for a while now, and are happy to showcase our new design, which we think will make the card worthy of its name and image.
To help Stronghold become a fearsome fortress, we intend three major changes to its existing design. First, we are increasing Stronghold's single-target damage from 2420 dp20 to 4000 dp20. Second, we are giving Stronghold two new abilities. The active ability will allow the player to defend against 50m siege units like Lost Dancers without needing an additional unit or building, and “To the Last!” will make Stronghold more deadly as it loses life points. This will synergize well with Frost building supports like Glacier Shell and Shield Building, allowing the player to keep Stronghold at a lower health threshold without endangering their defenses. The idea of "To the Last!" is to tap into the image of Frost as a faction which does not easily give up. Instead of losing hope in difficult situations, the Lyrish defenders manning the Stronghold dig in their heels and fight even more tenaciously in the face of danger. 
 
Cannon Turrets
Every 3 seconds, turrets deal 164 damage each to enemies in 10m radius, up to 246 in total.
 
 
Bombardment - Active Ability 
Cost: 40p
Activate to shoot a mortar shell that deals 800 damage to enemies in a 15m radius around its target, up to 3200 in total. Knocks back small, medium, and large units.
 
To the Last! - Passive ability
If the fortress has equal to or less than 3000 life points left it will deal 25% more damage and take 25% less damage. 
 
 
To the Last! - Passive ability
If the fortress has equal to or less than 1500 life points left it will deal 50% more damage and take 50% less damage.
 
 
Slowed Construction - Passive ability
Construction time is increased by 50%.
 
 

We also added a new visual indicator to show the various states of "To the Last". Below, you can see the Bombardment ability in action:
 
 
We hope you are looking forward to these changes coming to Stronghold! They are planned for release alongside our new content patch. We are not able to share a release date yet, so stay tuned!

• Survey - Update

A big thank you to the 1500 Skylords who have already submitted their feedback in our yearly survey! The survey will close at the end of the week, so if you haven't shared your thoughts yet, please take a moment to do so. Your feedback will be anonymous.
As Skylords Reborn is a community project, we value knowing what our players like and what could be improved. Your feedback is crucial for our continuous game improvement and player base growth! As a token of appreciation, everyone who fills in the survey will receive two boosters.

• Voice Acting – Update

A quick update on our search for new voice actors: We're thrilled to announce that we've received 24 trial takes, offering a diverse selection of voices to choose from.
Now, our Audio Editor will carefully assess the sound quality of each file, followed by selecting the voices that best match the characters. We're excited to bring these unannounced characters to life and can't wait to share what we have in store for you!
 
• Fire-themed Forge

As we progress with the development of upcoming campaign maps, we have also been working on a new Fire-themed Forge skin as a side project. Although it is not officially a Summer Forge, players will soon have the option to select from the default Forge, the Winter Forge, the Spring Forge, and the upcoming Fire-themed Forge. Check out the teaser below:

Players automatically have access to the Winter and default Forge, while the Spring Forge is initially locked behind the "Outsourced Content" achievement, which requires completing 8 different community maps on Expert.
The Fire-themed Forge will also be associated with an achievement called "Never Thought of Him," which tasks the player with completing the Mo campaign using only Fire cards on the maps Convoy, Mo, Oracle, Ocean, Raven's End, and Slave Master. We have received feedback that the current reward for this achievement feels insufficient, and we plan to enhance it to provide a more appealing incentive for completion.
Players who have already completed this achievement will receive the additional reward once the Forge is released. Please note that the Forge is not yet available, but you are able to start working on the achievement in advance.

• Mapmaking fundamentals

We always strive to keep the playerbase informed about upcoming changes and the rationale behind them, whether it's through Community Updates, balance discord discussions, or Deep Dive documents detailing our design decisions. Originally intended as an internal guide for our current developers of new campaign maps, we decided to share the following guide with interested players, hoping it will also serve as a useful tool for aspiring community mapmakers. Don't forget, every Skylords Reborn download includes the Map Editor!
BattleForge campaign maps have a particular feel to them, and this feel is a fundamental component of the unique experience which is playing BattleForge. The goal of this design guide is to use existing campaign maps, particularly the best campaign maps, to understand and to categorize the distinct features of the camps in BattleForge’s campaign, such that we can better design future campaign maps. This guide is therefore intended to categorize the design choices of the original devs and to act as a reference for future development for both community and official map development.
Click here to check out the mapmaking fundamentals guide.
 
• Team Changes

Nukie has decided to step down from his role as Event Manager to allocate more time to his new job and personal life. Despite this change, he will continue to support the project with Moderation duties. We are grateful for his dedicated work during his time as Event Manager! 
Want to host a tournament or event? Please reach out to our other Event Organizers, @Metagross31 or @Minashigo Hiko. 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.
 
• Contribute

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fueled by the passion and dedication of over 40 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to take a look at our open positions!
 

 
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: THAN-KYOU-SKYL-ORDS

The code is valid until September 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features. You can also sign up to our e-mail newsletter here. 

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update July 2023

Can't talk for the whole team but:

Love for the game. Me and most of us were there when the original servers were down, and I was pretty devastated about it, having wonderful memories of playing it with my brother, ex girlfriend and friends. Its quite rare (especially for an online-only game) to be revived, so I personally count my blessing to be able to enjoy it once more. 

Potential. This game is super unique. I have not encountered anything like it. While it has some issues because of this (how on earth do you market this?) I still fully believe in what this game has to offer, and still hold on to hope that sometimes it will be discovered by the right group of people. 

New players. We still have an influx of new players coming in, either returning from the EA days, or finding the game as its own thing. This is not a case of a group of people slowly dwindling, there are people coming in and going out. 

Non-active players. While active players go up and down, there is still a large number of players with warm feelings towards Skylords Reborn, as we tend to see with, f.e. the Yearly Feedback Survey. As was mentioned in this topic already, we also see numbers go down a bit during summer time in general. I also don't expect people to continue playing daily for 2+ years straight. There is only so much content to experience and replay. But most of them keep a close eye on the project and return for big patches or other exciting changes. Leading to:

Upcoming new Campaign Maps. When I joined the team, one of my first pushes was for new cards to enter development. The team achieved bringing back BattleForge into a playable state, but if we wanted it to not face the same fate, we had to keep improving on it, and the easiest way to communicate new stuff is new cards. But new cards only do so much for time spend playing the game; we need people to actually have new content to play. Achievements, rPvE Nature and Fire and the upcoming 9.5 difficulty are good examples of this (and previously mentioned Map Modifiers will also do a ton for replayability) . But the biggest ask from the Community has been New Campaign Maps. We still have this up our sleeve, and I fully expect a lot of those non-active players will return to take a look once we start releasing them. Non-active players need a hook to come back, and I expect this will do the trick.

The Community. Skylords Reborn has an amazing community. Its a bit of a cliché for a Community Manager to say this is the best community to be in, but honestly, the absolute majority of our players are amazing! When things get rough, I sometimes take a look at the kind words our players mention in f.e. the Survey. At the end of the day, everyone is grateful for all the hours we pour into this, and its important to remember this.
Though I will admit, sometimes I wish some players remember a bit more that we do this in our free time as well 😅 There have been a couple of moments where some of our teammembers, myself included, got very demotivated by the way certain players expressed their disagreement. So to everyone reading, if I could ask for a single favor to keep the motivation up for both me and the team; please keep in mind we are all volunteers. We do not get paid, yet we show up day after day, working on the game while we have a lot of things to deal with, both in Skylords Reborn and outside of it. Most of us combine the hours we pour into this game with a job, study, kids, marriage, etc, to the point where we don't even have time to play the game we put so much hours in as much as we would like. We love the game, and want to see it succeed, and for that we absolutely want to hear your feedback, we create this game for our players after all. But be constructive, and be kind. It really goes a long way for our motivation and the health of the project. 
Thank you for being a part of this game. ❤️
 

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!

• Huge Announcement

Today, we have a very special surprise for you! Many have requested Skylords to be available on other platforms besides PC. After years of hard work, we are super excited to bring Skylords to the palm of your hand!
 
• Upcoming Lost Souls Changes

Recently, we shared our Stonekin Deep Dive, giving you a sneak peek at the changes coming to the faction. It is only fitting for the Lost Souls faction to mess with the timeline, resulting in their balance changes actually releasing before our Stonekin rework.
Over the past few months, we have been hard at work on the Lost Souls faction, tackling many of their issues and finding design space to improve the feel of the faction as a whole. 
We have enlisted the help of @Volin and @T1421 (Ultralord) to give you an overview video of some of the changes coming to the faction. Please take a look!
We hope you are excited about these changes! Here are some of the concrete changes coming to the faction:
Lost Banestone - Lost Banestone is receiving one of the largest reworks. The building's aura have been reworked and now indefinitely extend the lifespan of friendly revenant's in a 30m radius. This makes it ideal for turning your leftover T2 units into a free defensive force. Additionally, its ability no longer prevents enemy spawns. It now damages a target enemy, and if that enemy dies during the duration, a Lost Shade revenant spawns out of its remains under the player's control. This allows Banestone to slowly grow its revenant defensive force over time. 
 
Lost Warlord - Lost Warlord's Onslaught ability and affinities have received major changes. Onslaught no longer teleports Lost Warlord. Instead, it spawns a revenant of Lost Warlord within a 40m radius. Additionally, the Fire affinity now provides all revenants spawned from Lost Warlord a +50% damage bonus, while the Frost affinity provides the unit's revenants a strong 3000 strength Ice Shield that refreshes every 25 seconds. 
 
Lost Spirit Ship - Lost Spirit Ship has received a number of changes to its stats, alongside a cost reduction to 230p. Most importantly, its Recycling ability is now capable of working on revenants and buildings. This synergizes strongly with revenant generating abilities such as Lost Warlord's new Onslaught ability, as well as Lost Banestone and Lost Evocation. These changes will help Lost Spirit Ship to better fulfil its role as a hybrid damage dealer and supporter in pure Lost Souls decks, while remaining useful on its own. 
 
Ethereal Storm - In its unchanged state, Ethereal Storm remains one of the worst cards in the game with poor payoff, high requirements, and bug-riddled functionality. We are reducing the spell's requirements so that only one revenant is required in the area to achieve its full effect, doubling its charges from 8 to 16, and reducing the power costs. The spell's damage has also been substantially buffed to 100 damage/sec with new affinity effects. The Fire affinity causes enemies to receive 20% more damage, while the Frost affinity removes the damage reduction from frozen enemies in the area. 
 
General Changes - In addition to these major reworks, we have several other buffs. Lost Priest's debuff has been increased, and it can now affect up to 10 targets with a larger cast range. Revenant's Blessing has received numerous buffs, including to its radius, affinity effects, and charges. Lost Evocation's Fire affinity now increases allied unit damage by +100%, up from +50%. Finally, the power cost of Revenant's Doom now scales by tier. The ability now costs 75% of the power cost of Tier 2 units, 65% of the power cost of Tier 3 units, and only 50% of the power cost of Tier 4 units.
Envisioned Playstyles:
Tier 2: Lost Shades will be the primary PvE unit, which will be supported by buffs to Lost Priest and Revenant's Blessing.
Tier 3: Lost Banestone will allow the player to maintain their revenant army of Lost Shades from as a static defensive army, as well as replace losses through its new Underworld Gate ability. For easy maps, players can continue with their army of Lost Shades, but otherwise they can transition into using Lost Horrors like currently. Ethereal Storm is being buffed to work with only 1 Revenant and will provide a good AoE damage spell which is currently lacking in Lost Souls. The red affinity will amplify damage, while the blue affinity will allow the player to bypass freeze's damage reduction.
Tier 4: Lost Evocation(r) will be buffed to enable the unit-based damage playstyle of Lost Souls while the blue affinity will continue to provide strong sustain through damage reduction. Evocation and Lost Warlord's new ability will be able to be combined with Lost Spirit Ship, which can now recycle Revenants as well as buildings. This gives the player the choice between extending Revenant lifetimes or utilizing their remaining life points as fodder for LSS's Crystal ability. Lost Dragon will be useful as a support unit. We are also working to add @UltDragon's Lost Obelisk card from the card creation contest into the game, more on that later!
 
• New Card Reveal: Sleet Storm

While we have shifted our focus to map-related content, there are still new cards in development, one of which we can reveal today! Take a look at the upcoming new card Sleet Storm.
Please note: We are still testing the card. While we are generally happy with it, numbers and effects might still change before release. 
 

Sleet Storm is a new tier 3 frost spell that can fit into multiple decks, requiring only 1 frost orb. The card will be Uncommon and will not have different affinities. The effect is as follows: 

Heavy Rain
Covers an area of 15m radius in freezing rain that fetters enemies to the ground. Enemy ground units which stay in the area for 5 seconds are rooted for 15 seconds, while flying units are enchained to the ground and can no longer move. Ground units will be able to attack it while it is bound. After the effect ends, targets are immune to root and Gravity Surge respectively for 10 seconds. Lasts for 10 seconds. Reusable every 20 seconds.
While our changes to Pure Frost over a year ago have proven to be a success, one of the persistent issues we have faced is making it worthwhile to invest in only one or two Frost orbs. This card is intended to provide a reason for players to splash into a single Frost orb in exchange for receiving access to an area of effect Gravity Surge spell. In order to make the card effective even in cases where enemy flies might be lacking, we also attached a rooting effect for ground units. The effect itself synergizes perfectly with Frost's Construct, which also only requires one Frost orb. Overall, this card should provide a boost to archetypes which struggle with flying units, even ground melee decks which we have been trying to improve for more general usage in PvE.
Sleet Storm is planned to release in our next patch. 
 
• Art Spotlight: Sleet Storm 

For the artwork of Sleet Storm, we used ArtRhino's old wallpaper as a base. You can see his wallpaper for Cold Snap below.

To utilize this base, our artist @Tweeto first aligned it in a 1:1 ratio required for card artwork. Then, he auto-filled the empty areas, corrected the colours, added hue shifts in the background, and multiple missiles to accurately depict raining, more in line with the spell's description. (1)
Afterward, Tweeto added more details to the foreground by covering it with Smokey Snow (2).
   
Although we liked the direction it was taking, there were still some aspects to address. Version 2 depicted the units completely frozen, which was not entirely accurate. Also, it was not clear enough that it was raining in the artwork, rather showing the impact of a spell in the distance. To address these issues, Tweeto made some additional changes, resulting in version 3. Here, only the legs of the units were frozen, indicating that the affected units could still fight.
However, the artwork still did not adequately depict the effect of the spell on flying units, a crucial element of the spell. With Gravity Surge already depicting a dragon being pulled to the ground, we thought it would be interesting to show a different model falling to its presumed doom. The final artwork version shows Spitfire caught in the rain.

 
• Tournaments / Events

In between our monthly Community Updates, we host various events and tournaments, so be sure to keep a close eye on the in-game event tab and the forum calendar to stay informed and not miss out on any exciting events!

 FINISHED  – The Stonekin Hunt
Over a year has passed since the successful bandit hunt. This time, players had to fight the Stonekin faction. The results are in: check out the winner reveal stream, hosted by Ultralord and Volin: More information.
 
  COMING SOON - Official Event: Easter Hunt – 08.04.2023 until 16.04.2023
An Easter Egg has been stolen, and only the legendary Easter Bunny can return the missing pieces. Will you come to his aid? Maybe there will be a reward! More information soon!
 
COMING SOON - Through Ice and Flames - 21.04.2023 until 14.05.2023
We bring to you not one but TWO new community maps courtesy of @Damo and @Hrdina_Imperia! Look out for this three week event starting later this month.
 
• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizers, @Metagross31, @Minashigo Hiko, or @nukie! 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 happy to announce two new members joining our team. After they contributed so much to the game already, we decided to create a proper staff role for both @Titan and @CrazyCockerell, who have joind our team as Tech-Artist! 
Both will help us out with spell animations, adjustments to models, and other visuals that come with adding and changing cards. You will already have seen some of their work in action, f.e. Wasteland Terror (CrazyCockerell) and the raven effect from the ability of Raven Archwalker (Titan). We are looking forward to their creations!
 
• Contribute

We have made a name change to one of our critical roles in the project. We noticed a lot of people were not applying for the role of Balance Developer because they thought they had to have development experience, which is not the case. Additionally, players thought balance developers are the ones who adjust the balance of the game. While that is technically true, because they are the ones who adjust the card values for implementation, the Game Designers are the ones who make the actual balance decisions. To more clearly communicate what the role is about, we have changed it to "Card Implementer". 
As a Card Implementer, you will be able to help out Skylords Reborn by making the needed adjustments to cards, either for balance purposes or completely new cards. This is a very important role that can really make a difference in our patching schedule, so if you are interested, please check out the position. 

Skylords Reborn is a community-driven project fuelled by the passion and dedication of over 30 volunteers. We are always on the lookout for like-minded individuals. If you have a passion for gaming, programming, design, or marketing, we invite you to take a look at our open positions!
 

• Newsletter

While we aim to keep our community in the loop with monthly news through our Community Updates, we understand that sometimes these updates might not reach you. That's why we offer a newsletter that will notify you when a new patch or update is released. Don't worry, we respect your privacy and promise not to send spam or use your data in any other way. Click here to sign up.
 

 
If you provided your email address during our summer survey to stay up to date, then you are automatically subscribed to our newsletter. We recently sent out our first newsletter, which announced the release of our latest patch.
• In Conclusion

That's all for this Community Update! We appreciate you taking the time to read through it.
As is tradition, we're including a scratch code as a small token of our appreciation for your support.
The code will reward you with a General booster: SKYL-ORDS-HAND-HELD

The code is valid until May 1st, when we will bring you another Community Update. 
We're always looking for ways to improve and value your feedback. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share them with us. We'll be back next month with more updates on our ongoing projects and upcoming features.

Archive
• Skylords Reborn Documents (Deep Dives, Behind the Scenes, PvP Guide)  
• Overview Community Updates
• Community Update March 2023

Well, I hope that it gets resolved soon, thank you for your efforts. If there is anything that we can help with like logs and stuff please tell us. I'll be more than happy to help.

I really dislike the current Bad Harvest Solo method - giving up your base is not worthy of a real Skylord. And while I came close to a new strategy, yet I am unable to get it really to work. I wasted way too much time on this, but I think it is possible for sure, so I'm setting up a bounty for someone who is able to send me a replay that meets the following criteria:
* Full solo, no other player joining for orbs/wells
* Expert difficulty
* Defend the starting base - do not lose an orb or well
* Must be repeatable - e.g. do not profit from a rare occurrence, like getting the units stuck on the wall way longer than usual
* Of course: win the map 😉
Disclaimer: I reserve the right to refuse an entry if anything goes against the spirit of the challenge - like, if I forgot to add a rule or condition. It's win the map + keep the base in any way you like, but I will not allow for any rule-lawyering. Also, if some heavy bug-use or exploit is involved, I may refuse the entry - I want to see a gameplay solution similar to the Codebreaker Achievement, not a shady trick 😃
Also, by entering the Bounty, you accept that your entry (replay) will be made public.
REWARD: 15.000 BFP + Promo Rogan Kayle The bounty has been completed by @Hirooo.
If I get inpatient, I may add more BFP to the bounty, but I think for someone who is an excellent player, it's worth investing an hour or two to see if they can do it. Also, if you invest some SERIOUS time, please send the replay anyway to me, I may reward you with some BFP and make it public, so others can develop from that point on further.
Good luck to all the Bounty Hunters!

wow another awesome Community update, love that community maps are getting a chance to shine because there are so many great ones. Keep up the great work!

Greetings Skylords!
A lot has happened in the past month! In this Community Update, we catch up with the recent developments, while also looking towards the future and upcoming Skylords Reborn changes.

• Anniversary Patch Release

We hope it was hard to miss, but our latest patch is out! On the 14th of January, we released our 2nd Anniversary patch. The patch contains new cards (Raven Archwalker, Sanctuary), a new promo (Worldbreaker Gun), many balance changes, and new achievements that reward cosmetics! You can find the full patch notes here.

The introduction of cosmetics and their matching new achievements has also resulted in some issues, most of which have already been resolved with hotfix updates. We are aware of remaining issues with the leaderboard achievements and are working on a fix which includes retroactive reward distribution. We are also aware of major stuttering issues some player experience in the forge and are investigating the problem.

As is tradition, we have also opened up our patch feedback thread. Please provide feedback to us on the changes we have made to the game. Below are some of the topics which we are most interested in soliciting feedback, though feel free to offer any suggestions regarding the patch and the current direction of the game. 
Do you like the changes to cards and factions (PvE and PvP)? Why or why not? Where did we hit the mark, and implement something exciting you'd like to see more of? Where did you miss the mark, and what should we avoid in the future?
Do you enjoy the new cards, are they balanced, etc.?
What do you think of the new achievements? Which ones are fun and exciting? Which ones are frustrating and boring? Do you like the shift to cosmetic rewards instead of gameplay rewards like boosters and gold?
You can also join us at our balance discord to further discuss changes to cards. 

 
• Stonekin Deep Dive

In our Deep Dive documents, we share our thoughts and plans for a faction as well as give you some insight into our balancing process. Previously we explored the state of Pure Frost, Bandits and Pure Nature.
Today, we are excited to share our plans for the Stonekin faction. After exploring what the faction is all about, we took a look at its strengths, weaknesses, and play patterns. To expand on the Stonekin faction, we are working on a new spell called Tectonic Shift. Be sure to check out the Deep Dive if you want to know more!
    


Stonekin_Deep_Dive.pdf
• Recap Video

We have created a special recap video showcasing everything that was added to Skylords Reborn since the release. Catching up on Skylords Reborn should be easier than ever!
The video is voiced by Dreamlord, and we would also like to give a big thank you to Dutchy, Kapo, and Ultralord for helping create it. 
 

Being a volunteer project greatly limits our marketing options, so we hope we can count on you to spread the word about this great game.
Please share the video with your old BattleForge friends, show it to people who might be interested, or simply give it a like on YouTube. As a thank you for your support, we have also added a scratch code in the comment section of the video. 
 
• Card Creation Contest Results

Our official card creation contest has concluded. A big thank you to everyone who sent in their design. For this contest, we asked you to create your own Skylords Reborn card, which would be judged by our jurors. Entries were made anonymous, so the designs had to speak for themselves. 
We received 140 designs, ranging from hilarious meme cards to interesting designs and abilities.


The winners were revealed during a stream that you can rewatch here. You can also browse through all the results on the forum post here. 
A big thank you to Kapo for gathering all the entries, Ultralord and Volin for hosting the stream, and RadicalX, Windhunter, and Hirooo for judging the entries and providing feedback.
And most importantly, thank you to every one of you who send in a design! We hope you liked the contest, and we are already exploring our options to add some of the ideas into the game, so look forward to that!  
 
• Upcoming Community Map Rework

Last Community Update, we mentioned we are going to focus more on map content this year. Alongside official map content, we have been hard at work to improve the Community Map section in the game.
In an earlier patch we already implemented a search function, and currently the Community Map section looks like this: 
 


While the search function certainly helped players to find specific maps (like our Spooky Encounters Halloween Map), the rest of this section of the game is currently severely lacking in user experience. We are going to make a couple of changes to greatly improve the experience for both community maps creators and players trying to play the maps they create. 
 
• Featured
A star icon to the left of the map overview will indicate whether this map is featured, which can be done by the Skylords Reborn Staff to highlight certain maps, for example because of their high quality, or for certain events. Our plan is to also give rewards for playing featured maps, like gold and progress towards daily quests and community-map achievements. 
 
• Voting
Everyone will be able to upvote or downvote a map. An upvoted map counts towards the upvotes for that map, but the downvote is purely for personal tracking. Downvotes will not be shown publicly, but they can be used to keep track of maps you personally dislike, so you can filter them out by using the new vote-filter. 
A player can only vote on a map after they have played (not necessarily won) the map once.
 
• Filtering
Players will be able to filter the maps based on a search term (map name, uploader name, and creator name), the number of players, the rating, and the map type. Map types are Community, Official (for PvP maps) and Featured.
 
• Sorting
There will be four sorting options: map name, amount of players in the map, upvotes, and last edited. For each sorting option, you will be able to choose ascending or descending sort order. 


• Description and Minimap
Currently, unknown maps will show a [ ? ] on the minimap. With the rework, clicking on the map name will allow players to view the minimap, without downloading it first. Hovering over the map name will also show a tooltip with the description of the map.
Because there are a lot of maps available, it is a lot of work to find an interesting map in the current system. You will need to download the map first to view the minimap, and then create a match to view the description. Those two additions (minimap and description preview) will make that process easier and faster.
 
Below is our work in progress of the rework of the Community Maps section.

We hope these changes will encourage players to interact with more community maps, while also rewarding creating new maps by making them easier to find. We are currently finalizing our changes, and hope to patch them in the future. 
 
• Team changes

Nukie, one of our Global Moderators, has joined the Event Manager team. Besides continuing his moderator tasks, he will help out with organizing both community and official events.
If you are interested in helping out the project yourself, please take a look at our open positions. There is a range of areas you can help!  

 
• 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! 

• FINISHED  – Battle of Tactics 3: Energy Investment 
For this contest, players had to build all power wells and monuments on the map "The Treasure Fleet" on standard difficulty as fast as possible, without losing any gold wagons. More information.
 
• STARTING SOON - Community PvE League - 06-02-2023 until 03-04-2023 
PvE League Season 2 is starting soon! The PvE League has challenges for all skill levels and ranks, and you don't need to be a speedrunner to be able complete the challenges. You can earn boosters/cards by completing the challenges with enough points, and there are also bonus challenge. Please sign up now if you still want to join. More information.

• Host your own tournament / event
Want to host a tournament or event yourself? Please reach out to our Event Organizers, Metagross, Minashigo Hiko, or Nukie! 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. 
Going forward, sponsored prizes for community events will be increased, while the prize pool of official events will be slightly reduced. We want to bridge the gap between official and community events to support them better. 

• Newsletter

While we do our best to make it easy to follow Skylords Reborn by providing monthly news through these Community Updates, we are limited to the Forum and our Social Media channels to reach you. You can now sign up for our newsletter, which we will use to give you a heads-up about a new update. Don't worry, we hate spam as much as you do and won't use your data in any other way. 

If you provided your e-mail during our summer survey to stay up to date, you are automatically subscribed. Our first newsletter was sent out last month, announcing our patch release. 
 
• 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 Stonekin booster: STON-EKIN-DEEP-DIVE

The code is valid until March 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 January 2023

How to play Frost T1
a PvP Guide by RadicalX
- General talk -

Hey everyone, apparently I didn't plan on releasing this guide so early, but since I have this finished guide lying around for such a long time I'll just post it now. This time I will talk about Frost T1. I'll try to do pretty much the same I did with my shadow guide: I'll try to provide some basic informations for new players combined with some deeper analysis of matchups and tips for more experienced players too.
The stuff I wrote refers only to 1v1, because 2v2 is different in many ways (I said the same stuff in the other guide).
General question: Why should I play Frost T1?
Let's start with an essential question here. Why would somebody consider playing Frost T1? Because Frost T1 isn't as reliable as Shadow or Fire T1, since Frost has got 2 major weaknesses:
1. no access to a T1 swift unit
2. Frost does very poorly in open fights without a near power well
Those two weaknesses combined make Frost very inconsistent in a way, because the difficulty of your game depends primary on the map you are playing on and not the opponents deck-color like in other matchups. Alot of people consider Frost T1 as too risky and that is a big reason why next to no high ranked players used it (only nature T1 was actually even less common). But lets take a look at the upsides of Frost T1. 
First of all Frost Units are the strongest T1 units in the game in terms of combat stats. Their cost efficency is amazing and they have such an incredible amount of hp which makes aoe damage useless unless your opponent is already T2. Frost may be weak if you can't get a close well situation, but when you manage to take a favourable power well you can smash your opponent from that point on. Frost T1 is unbeatable in a close well fight as long as your opponents doesn't build turrets or is T2 and even then it's possible to win due to the incredible stat efficency of Ice Guardians next to buildings. In addition to that Frost T1 offers a very strong late T1. There is pretty much  no colour that stands a chance against you at the late-T1 stage (not even nature as some people may think). Your units already have got an incredible amount of health and homesoil adds another scaling effect in terms of damage which lets you outscale your opponent easily. 
I guess you can describe Frost T1 like this: "High risk, high reward"
 - the Deck -

This list is going to be short like the one for my Shadow Guide. It just gives a slight overview about the cards to show what was essential/viable/trash.
Group 1 - The "must have" Units (You would suffer alot if you decide to play without them):

Master Archers
Frost Mage
Ice Guardian
Ice Barrier
Home soil
Glacier Shell
Group 2 - Very strong additional cards, which provide safety for some matchups:

Lightblade (purple)
Frost Bite (purple)
Ice Shield tower
Glyph of Frost
Group 3 - Cards that are only useful for higher Tier combinations:

Frost Bite (red)
Frost Sorceress
Group 4 - Cards that are only useful in a single certain scenario (usually not viable):

Imperials
Lightblade (red)
Wardens Sigil (both affinities)
Northern Keep (blue)
Glaciation (blue)
Wintertide (both affinities)
Group 5 - Trash

Northern Keep (red)
Northguards
Glaciation (red)
Construction Hut
Defense Tower
 
Some of you may noticed the surprising fact, that I included Wintertide in group 4 despite the fact that the card used to be pretty popular. I want to talk about it a little bit more in detail, because alot of players rated it pretty highly even tho it was a very unnecessary card and pretty much a wasted deckslot. And this is the reason for it:
The only unit, that has any kind of synergy with Wintertide are the Master Archers. The other M Units, don't get anything from the knockback immunity and even if you can give your units insane amount of effective hp for a good amount of time, it wont make a difference due to its self-root. Wintertide + Masterarcher spam is not useful against any deck and there is always a better option for Frost T1. 
-> Master Archer spam + Wintertide loses against Dreadcharger spam if the shadow-player stops every movement command so he doesn't kill his own units with the reflect damage through stomp and it is not really hard to execute that. Motivate makes it even worse in this matchup.
-> Master Archer spam + Wintertide is useless against nature, because you wont have enough burst to kill units effectively. Hurricane will at least do a single knockback before you can react unless you are a master at predicting the enemies actions and even tho it seems like hurricane does no damage at all it can deal up to 500 damage in total against a massive unit spam (10 damage that gets applied 5 times against up to 10 units). That is at least a respective amount for 50 power. 
-> If you try Master Archer spam against Frostmagespam you are going to have a bad time. A very bad time. Frostmages will just demolish you, because it's an S-counter and has a constant knockback. This means you have 0 damage without the use of wintertide and still less damage when you decide to use it and this is just bad.
-> In the matchup against Fire Scavenger is just a better version of Dreadcharger, because there is no stomp-effect, which makes it even more reliable (Therefore the blue affinity of Wintertide would be actually better in this matchup). Apart from Firesworn there is no real knockback (Sunderer doesn't count) that makes Wintertide useful in any way.  
You may think Wintertide helps you to scale better into the late T1 stages since you get a higher efficency the more units you affect with a buff, but honestly ... you already outscale every deck in the late T1 stage due to homesoil, which is the superior buff in every perspective. Wintertide just doesn't have any kind of synergy that makes it worth a slot for a 1v1 deck. I consider Wintertide a 2v2-only card and this is why I would recommend to take this card out of your Frost deck.
- The maps -

I want to mention the maps right away, because they are super important as a Frost player. I want to give you a little overview about the strength of Frost T1 on each map, because  in case your opponent plays shadow or fire as his T1 (which happens probably around 80% of the time) he will try to prevent you from getting map control and close wells. Against nature things are much different, but I'll talk about that a little bit later. 
Haladur: It alawys felt a little bit weird to play on this map. The middle of the map was pretty much perfect for you, because the power wells were pretty close to each other and it was not possible to get zoned from the first power well. Sounds great at the first look, but there was a massive downside. The main base was super far away from the middle position. This allows swift unit spam for the shadow/fire player and this is pretty nasty to deal with. Your opponent attacks your power well in the middle, but if you try to play units to defend he can just run down to your main base and leave your slow units on the other part of the map. You have to spend your power very carefully on this map, otherwise you'll end up with a massive amount of bound power, that does litereally nothing for you.
Uro: This Map is your worst enemy. If your opponent starts immediatly with his swift unit he can block every spot on the map. You are pretty much forced into a dazed fight, which isn't favourable for you at all. Many Frost-players tried to start with 2 units immediatly and sent them to different positions to aquire at least some sort of mapcontrol, but that only works as long as your enemy doesn't pay attention. If you are in a tournament and your opponent picks this map you should consider playing something apart from Frost T1. 
Lajesh (standard version): You had a wellcluster next to your main base which is easy to defend. But on the other hand it's very hard to apply pressure due to the walls. Your T3 spot could get blocked pretty fast, but if your opponent takes the position himself it opened up opportunities for you to launch a strong attack. 
Lajesh (without walls): If both player agree to play without walls this map got just so much more interesting. When the power rises you can take an aggressive power well and force your opponent into a close well situation. Even though you had to spend 100 power into the power well  you will come out on top. But take care of mortar & phasetower!
Yrmia: I loved playing Frost T1 on Yrmia. The well distance is very short and the map in general is very small, which helps you alot to defend yourself against early aggression. If you get yourself into a safe position you will be able to launch super powerful attacks in no time. In my opinion this is the best map you can get as a Frost T1 player.
Simai: A very passive map. It is very easy to defend yourself against aggression and you can take alot of power wells on your side of the map without losing to much map control. On the other hand it was very difficult to attack your enemy if he decides to stay on his side of the map. Pretty much an antifun map, but pretty favourable because it allows you to scale. 
Elyon: This map causes alot of problems, because it's small and mid centered. Since you wont be able to win dazed fights against fire or shadow you would lose the control about the mid position which means you would lose the entire map control. You have next to no available power wells & no T3 spot which causes serious issues. At least your T2 spot was very save, so it's not as bad as Uro.
Whazai: It always felt a little bit weird to play on this map. You have no control about the middle of the map in the early stage of the game and your opponent has the pressure advantage. That said, Whazai isn't that bad for you. The map is small and that increases the power of your Ice Guardians (you can spawn dazed IG's with active shield over the cliff at your starting wells). If your opponent gets a little bit too greedy and takes a power well in the middle you can punish him for that. By way of conclusion I want to remark that Phasetower is broken on Whazai.
Generated maps (small): The small maps were very threatening, because they are super mid-centered. The player who controls the mid position (usually 1 orb + 4 wells) controls the entire game, sometimes you could even deny T3 spots. In most cases you had at least a save well spot with a T2 orb, but you lost so much map control and you had to fight really well if you try to reclaim it.
Generated maps (big): These maps are just bad designed. You need 2 entire minutes to walk up to the enemy. At least the maps were favourable for you, because no early aggression means you can take safe wells and scale into a T3 which should be not too bad for you since Frost T1 allows you to play a timeless one T3 regardless of your T2 colour. Still not the most enjoyable type of maps ...
Frost may be very map dependend which makes the T1 a little bit unreliable for your casual ladder games, but just imagine how strong it can get in tournaments. There were a good amount of players, who used to play only pure fire. In a best of 5 you would get at least 2 free wins by picking a good map for Frost T1, because Pure Frost naturally beats Fire in T2. Mastering frost T1 can help you alot in these situations and can make yourself a way more threatening player even for opponents with superior micromanagement and decisionmaking when they aren't flexible in their deck choice.
 
- Matchups -

Frost  vs Shadow

Time to take a look at the specific matchups. I'll just start again with a short look at the core cards in this matchup:
Frost:
1. Master Archers 2. Ice Guardian 3. Ice Barrier 4. Homesoil
Shadow: 
1. Dreadcharger 2. Nox Trooper 3. Motivate
Core Strategy:
There are 3 possible scenarios that can happen in this matchup and I'll descirbe all of them.

First scenario: You don't get a powerwell
If your opponent get's the opportunity to deny you a powerwell and forces you to go into a dazed fight you will just lose. Master archer spam is the best thing you can do here, but you need at least 10-11 units with homesoil to stand a chance, because the Dreadcharger just demolishes Master Archers due to its bonus damage against S units. Ice guardians on an open field won't help you, because they have no iceshield and that leaves them as super squishy units. Lighblade costs too much & even a well placed Glyph of Frost won't save you, because there is just not enough dps early into the game to make good use of it. The shadow player motivates the focussed Dreadcharger and destroys you when he gets out of the cc.
This is why you want to avoid this situation at every cost! Even if you have to give up alot of mapcontrol, getting a power well is the first very important step to keep yourself in the game.

Second scenario: You get a powerwell and your opponent attacks you immediatly.
This is the most common situation in high ranked. The shadow player has a 100 power advantage and alot of strong players will attack immediatly at this point because this is a very micro intensive fight. The Shadow player tries to pick off your units immediatly, because your units are more cost efficient and if he waits to long or doesn't get his picks you outscale him, defend the well with glacier shell and get a massive advantage. This is why you have to micro your units as well as possible to survive up to the point where you can fight back. 
The units you need to play are Master Archers and Ice-Guardians. How much of each kind is decided by the units your opponent plays. If he plays many Dreadchargers, Ice Guardians are your way to go, Master Archers perform better against Nox Troopers on the other hand. Be careful with the use of spells at that point.Only use Glacier shell if your well drops really low. Otherwise your enemy can just switch his focus back onto your units immediatly and you wasted 50 power which could be invested into another unit. Only use Frost bite if you are 100% sure to finish off the unit & don't use home soil on just 2-3 units. It's better to get more units into the battle and micro them to build up a huge army. If you defend this attack successfully, the game is nearly won.

Third scenario: You get a powerwell and your opponent takes one too
Unless you are a really high ranked player this will be the most common scenario. And luckily this one favours you. If both players just take a well you are pretty much save due to the high cost efficiency of your units around your power wells. Just don't let your units die for free and wait a little bit up to a point where alot of power is in the game. Because at that point you can take another power well without any risk. Your opponent lost his momentum and can't attack you at a high power level even with his advantage due to the strong stats of your Frost units. 
This often results in a situation where your opponent decides to take a power well himself. And this is how you can take advantage of this: Try to take your wells in a way to close the gap  between yourself and your opponent. If you reach a point where you just have to build 2-3 Ice barriers for your Ice Guardians so they can walk up to the enemies well without losing their shield to crush your opponent. Your unit composition should consist of 2-3 Ice Guardians + Master Archer spam. The Ice Guardians are a big threat to the Dreadcharger and Master Archers naturally outscale a nox trooper spam espcially since Nox Trooper needs so many extra hits to take down an entire Master Archer squad. The last missing piece is the homesoil that gives you the needed boost to wipe out the entire shadow army. In smaller skirmishes it's important to use Frostbite to pick off units and prevent yourself from getting outmicroed by swiftunits. 
 
Tips & cards to watch out for:
Starting unit: Always start with Master Archers and don't get baited into the Lightblade start. Yes, the card allows you to skirmish well due to the taunt ability if both players take a well, but if the shadow player attacks immediatly, the card is useless, because it gets demolished by nox troopers while binding more power than other units, that would be more useful in combat. This will make a rush much easier for your opponent. 

Phasetower: This card can stop your aggression entirely, so try to figure out if your opponent plays it or not. Phasetower is strong enough to allow Shadow fighting in close well positions, therefore even at a mid/late T1 stage it can be risky going too aggressive against it, especially when the Shadow-player can make good use of terrain to protect the turrets from your Ice Guardians. But as long as you make sure to avoid being overaggressive there is not too much to worry about, because your units are strong enough to deal with Phastowers when the port ability gets used.

Motivate: Not every Shadow player uses it, because Nature & Frost were sort of underplayed! If your opponent doesn't use it you will reach your power spike earlier to punish your opponent harder. So always be aware if your opponent uses motivate in the first skirmishes or not.  
 
Replays:
- coming soon -
 
Frost vs Nature

Core cards:
Frost:
1. Frostmage 2. Ice Barrier 3. Home Soil
Nature:
1. Swiftclaw 2. Surge of Light 3. Dryad
Core Strategy:
This matchup is pretty easy to describe. Spam Frostmages ... and win. Honestly, that's pretty much everything about this matchup. Frost mages negate Windweavers & Spearmen entirely, outdamage Shamans & Dryads by a wide margin and outrange Swiftclaws, who are the only real threat to you. In the early game Swiftclaws do a massive amount of damage to M units and therefore you need to keep Distance from your opponent up to the point where you get enough Mages to oneshot the Swiftclaws in one attackrotation (you need around 8 Frostmages with homesoil support to do so -> 930 damage per rotation, which is enough to kill a swiftclaw even with the dryad damagereduction). 
The most dangerous thing for you is an early T2 from your opponent. Therefore you always have to be in a good position, where you can threaten a T2 rush while being in a safe distance to be not caught out by an early swiftclaw spam. The most popular decks with nature T1 were pure nature & stonekin (nobody played shadow nature or fire nature with nature T1). Executing a rush against pure Nature is pretty easy, because it lacks an M/M counter in T2 and as long as you split up your Frostmages against Curse of Oink there is nothing that can stop you (kiting Deep One with Frostbite is an easy task). Against Stonekin it gets a little bit more difficult, dependend on the cards you are playing against. Stonetempest for example can perma cc 3-4 mages, but Lightblade hard counters him, so try to play one if you see your opponent switching into T2. Razorshard got nerfed, which makes it easier to outmicro them, Stormsinger doesn't have enough dps to stop you and the other cards are also S units, so as long as your micro is on point you can rush against stonekin aswell even with alle the cc & building protects.
 
Tips and cards to watch out for:
Treespirit: The honorable nature players wont use him, but you will still encounter this card due its ridiculous strength. But the good thing for you is the fact, that your Frostmagespam can't get caught out by treespirit, because you can build up Ice Barriers pretty fast to block their entire damage. It's a little bit more difficult to build them in an offensive position, but if you manage to do so it isn't a big deal to win a fight against them. 

Primal Defender: Never underistimate the influence turrets can have on the game in this particular matchup. While bound power is usually a really bad thing, Primal defender can create a huge zoning are & on some maps (Haladur for an instance) your main base is super far away which allows to to stop any type of aggression. Your opponent can switch into T2 safely, which allows him to stay in the game. Primal Defender & Mark of the Keeper map have a big influence on this matchup, so keep that in mind. You probably won't play against Mark of the Keeper, because it's useless against Shadow (outranged by Phasetower), but people definitely used Primal Defender! But if your opponent doesn't use any buildings be confident try to finish your games in T1! Pure Nature does pretty well against frost splashes in T2 and you really want to avoid that unfavourable gamestage.

Tip: Keep your Frostmages at one spot in T1 and don't split them up! You want all of them shooting at the same time at the same target (The damage can be bodyblocked by other units otherwise & having delays between the attacks allows your opponent to time more efficient heals betweeen the attacks)
Replays:
 -coming soon-

Frost vs Fire

Core cards: 
Frost:
1. Ice Guardian 2. Master Archers 3. Lightblade 4. Ice Barrier 5. Home Soil
Fire:
1. Scavenger 2. Sunstriders 3. Mortar
Core strategy:
To play against Fire T1 you need to follow one golden rule, that will bring you alot of success:
Don't get Greedy!
It sounds a little bit silly, but it's really important to handle a pure Fire player and I will explain this in detail now. Like in every other matchup you will be in an defensive position right from the start. If you survive the first attacks against fire you will gain a massive advantage and be able to apply alot of pressure or force your opponent into an early T2. So let's take a look at the different type of attacks a fire player may launch at you and how to defend them properly. 
How to defend a scavenger rush? 
I mentioned this scenario already a little bit earlier. It is a really dangerous strategy to play against when the distance between your power wells is really high. So I will choose Haladur to explain how to play in this situation, this map is a prime example due to the high distance between the main base & the middle. 
What's my starting unit?
You have 2 viable starting units: Master Archers & Lightblade. Theses units will be needed in the defense. Lightblade allows you to make easy picks & is super tanky against the Scavengers. But I personally prefer to use master archers as my starting unit, because they are more reliable in the other scenarios against fire and if you see your opponent goes for the scavenger spam anyway you can still play the lightblade (pretty much as a surpise spawn to get a free taunt). 

- Do I even take a power well in the middle? -
Yes, definitely. You stand no chance winning a dazed fight and you have to get access to at least 1 spot in the middle. Take the closest well next to your base (don't worry to much about map control, if your opponent takes the aggressive well on Haladur he puts himself into a close well situation which forces him to either bind power into a defensive mortar or he will just straight up lose the game from that point on). 
- My opponent started spamming scavenger, what shall I do? -
Don't panic! You got less power, but way more efficient units, try to taunt one scavenger with your Lightblade! If your opponent runs away you got a very efficient trade, if he tries to attack, play maybe one additional Ice Guardian. Don't play more than 3 units immediatly! And DON'T use homesoil. If your opponent goes for the powerwell and it drops to 66% health start playing more units, only use glacier shell if it drops below 600hp! Your power management is the most important thing here. While it's usually good to play at your power limit it is important to keep some energy in you backpocket, so you will be able to react when the scavengers start moving down to your main base. Don't get too greedy and spend all your power at one spot, your other base will be left entirely helpless. Keep this in mind: If you play your defense perfectly you can ALWAYS defend a Scavenger spam, so stay calm!
Second possible scenario:
While the scavengerspam is just one possible scenario there is also one big threat, that is really dangerous to you, when you decide to take an overaggressive powerwell. I'm talking about the mortarrush. The threat of an offensive mortar is really big and forces you to make bad trades, which allows the fire player to snowball. Scavengers will rip Masterarchers apart while Sunstriders are a big threat to Ice Guardians. I finally found a great replay to showcase why this is the most dangerous thing you can encounter in this matchup:

How to play this scenario properly:
Sometimes you need to give up map control as a Frost T1 player due to bad map conditions. Even though you put yourself at a small disadvantage by taking a defensive power well, beeing too greedy may cost you the game against a top tier player and this just isn't worth the risk. 
Third possible scenario:
You can also be lucky and get into a close well position, where your opponent has next to no chance of winning. But be careful at some positions. If the position is protected by terrain your opponent may try to build up a mortar, which can be really annoying to deal with. It's usually wise to have a well distance around 70-80m, which allows you to spam Ice-Guardians & Master Archers (their stats are faaaaar superior to Scavenger & Sunstrider) from a save distance. In later T1 stages you don't even have to worry about that. It is possible to beat out Fire even with a Mortar, your units have a great health pool and don't die immediatly, and with homesoil you can destroy the Mortar in about 3 seconds. Afterwards feel free to kill every unit around you. 
Tips & cards to watch out for
Wrecker: This card is also used from time to time in a rush due to high dps & the rallying ability. But your Ice Guardian are stronger in theory, so keep in mind that you can take a well against a wrecker spam, but if you lose 1 or 2 units in addition for that things may snowball really damn fast. 
Firesworn: I didn't mention the card at all so far, but the S knockback can be a problem for your Master archers, so don't rely too much on them!  
Mine: Some people may try to protect their offensive mortar turrets with some sneaky mines for zone control. It's usually  not worth it, because it's easily dodgeable (for the majority of people atleast) but always try to think about it so you don't get caught off guard! 
Replays:
-> another mortar rush by Obesity vs freemka
- coming soon-

Frost vs Frost

Core cards:
1. Ice Guardian 2.Frost Mage 3. Homesoil 4. Ice Barrier 
This matchup is pretty simple in terms of explanation, but pretty difficult when it comes to execution. First of all I recommend starting with frost mage (I know it's pretty uncommon, but that is pretty much because there were next to no experienced frost players around the high ranked ladder, since everyone played shadow & fire due to the high reliabilty). Master Archers don't have any particular use (there are no unitsquads to finish off and also no S units in general) and they get permacc'd by Frost mage. Lightblade isn't too bad, but it's just really useful against careless opponents who let their units get to close to their opponent before the true fight starts. Otherwise the Lightblade is just too expensive (with the taunt ability nearly as expensive as 2 Iceguardians, who have far superior combat stats).  Apart from that there are 2 types of possible fights.
1. Ice Guardians vs Ice Guardians
This occurs on small maps with close well positions. The winner of this matchup is going to be the player who has better micro management. So make sure to always keep track on your Ice Shields and move your units properly. In addition to that it's important to play at your absolute power limit, otherwise you will ultimately lose out due to lower dps. Try to have homesoil constantly active in combat (An Ice Guardian spam usually involves more than enough units to make it worth is), but don't get baited into using it too early at the start of the fight, otherwise your opponent may be able to retreat without losing any units and that would be a pretty huge loss for you. 

2. Magespam
This is why starting with Frostmage is so damn important and valuable. On maps without proper wellpositions to fight at, the Frostmagespam outscales Ice Guardians pretty fast. The amount of mages you need is higher than against nature so don't even think about attacking too early, but after 10+ Frostmages you will be able to oneshot Ice Guardians with a single attack rotation (75*10*1,55= 1163 single target burst damage). If you face a magespam with your magespam make sure to get off the first damage rotation. That's enough to win fight, because at some point your opponents counterattack won't deal enough burst damage to kill mages and your additonal splash damage also adds up over time. So make sure to get a clean & fast damage rotation at the start. 
Tips & cards to watch out for:
Glyph of Frost: Just make sure to respect its threat and you should be able to dodge it. But if you walk into it with your entire army, it can be pretty dangerous, because the enemies dps is really high in such a big spam and getting hit by a good Frost-Glyph can possibly cost you the game. Also be careful when playing a magespam, because you will have all of them pretty close to each other since you need to do this for better focusfire. This may lead to a full 7 unit freeze, which is pretty dangerous. So just dodge it & take the free 50 power advantage.
 T2 timings: Dependend on your T2 colour you should chose your T2 timing wisely. As a pure Frost player you can negate even a big disadvantage by just going T2, if there is at least some void power in your pool. War Eagles demolishe entire M unit armies. 
Replays:
-coming soon-
 
Frost T1 vs T2
This section will be added for Frost T1 specificly, because it's one Frosts biggest advantages over every other T1. It has enough power to even beat some T2's in a close well situation and I'm not talking about just defending with an extra well, I'm talking about straight up aggression. Here are the decks Frost beats in a T1 vs T2 scenario.
1. Pure Nature: I mentioned this already, Magespam can't be stopped by a pure Nature player. Ghost Spears & Spirit Hunter are useless against the S knockback, Deep one will end up getting kited with Frost bite, and pure Nature doesn't have any other swift units. You don't need a close well to do this, but Ice Guardians will also do the job pretty well combined with the additional mages. 
Careful: Dependend on your opponents deck you may have to play a lightblade to counter a potential Spikeroot. This is especially important against people who used Tresspirit, because it's often an indicator for root decks. 
2. Stonekin: Pretty similar scenario. The Frost Mages will do a great job against stonekin and Ice Guardians  are almost impossible to kill (Stonekin lacks high dps units, which leaves the deck with no option to kill any units, while beeing forced to spend more and more power for cc and building protects). Having a Lightblade as a hard counter for Stonetempest can be valuable too (even though Stonetempest isn't too popular anymore). Just make sure to split your units as well as possible against cc and aoe knockups (razorshard).
3. Pure Fire: If the pure Fire player goes T2 early into the game you can punish him by taking a close well. Your Ice Guardians have a great hp pool to survive initial Enforcer charges. Pure Fire has no cc and therefore has to rely on a combination out of units & wildfire to defend attacks properly. On a low power level you can just play either units or spells and that lets the efficency decrease by alot. In later game stages you shouldn't rush Pur Fire players because their defense gets much stronger and you don't want to allow the fire player to scale into the late game (Especially when you are playing pure Frost, T2 is such a great opportunity for you to win the game).
4. Fire Nature: This also works really well, because Lavafield doesn't do enough damage to deal with the hp pool of Ice Guardians. Try to split your Master Archers against Hurricane and focus single Skyfire drakes with Frost bite. The lack of cheap & spammable T2 units will allow you to apply alot of pressure in the close well situation. 
5. Bandits: Well Bandits has no cc, the aoe spells don't do enough damage and this makes it alot easier for you. But Bandits has spammable high dps units (Nightcrawler & Darkelf assassins), who can punish you really hard if you micro poorly, so try to kite nightcrawlers with Frost bite and play a Frostmage to deal with the Darkelf assassins. 
6. Fire Frost: The success against Fire Frost was really dependend on the situation. Most of the time you should look for a close well against a wellcluster to reduce the efficency of Glacier Shell. Otherwise Coldsnap & Building protects may stall the game up to a point with enough room for Skyfiredrakes and Scythe Fiends. Fire Frost has pretty expensive units though, which means you got a big advantage in the early fights. 
The other decks had some cards that were to strong to allow a favourable close well situation unless you've got a tremendous lead. 
-> Shadow Nature has the cheapest cc and the cheapest high dps units
-> Pure Frost has War Eagle (The Ability is too damn powerful)
-> pure Shadow has Shadow Mages
-> Shadow Frost has Lyrish Nasty, cheap high dps units & building protects
Overall playing pure Frost was always a great experience for me and I hope we see at least some Frost T1 players in the game, when everyone is able to play again. So I hope you like the guide and I hope it will be useful for some of you in the future. I'll update it with replays, when I found some good ones, currently there are sadly no impressive Frost matches on youtube. If you are interested in more content about playing T1 check out my Shadow T1 guide aswell!
 I guess that's about it, thanks for reading and have a nice day!

Best regards,

RadicalX 

BattleForge PvP Guide - by Hirooo & RadicalX (Last Update: Q1 2023)  
Hello and welcome! Since this has been requested for a while we made an update for the PvP 1vs1 deck preview Hirooo and I ended up writing more than 5 years ago. The meta has changed since then, mostly due to recent balance changes and the introduction of brand new cards. We also expanded our matchup descriptions a little bit to provide some additional information and hopefully some useful tricks. With the official release of Skylords Reborn, free PvP decks were added to the game. They have replaced our previous "deck examples". 
 
Where to find the free PvP decks
- Select the sword on the top right of the menu to select your 2 free PvP decks, see image below.
- Free PvP decks are fully upgraded decks, that can only be used in PvP. 
- You can select two new decks every day, if you want to switch things up.
- You can freely swap around cards in those decks with cards in your collection to customize the decks to your liking. You can do this by clicking the tab in your inventory on the top left and changing General to Free PvP and vice-versa.



What will you find in this PvP guide?
Here is what each of the sections in this guide contains:
• Regularly updated power rankings, followed by our top 3 deck recommendations for new players
• Basic deck descriptions where we point out major strengths and weaknesses and explain how to play and possibly adjust the presented free PvP decks.
• Comprehensive matchup discussion, sorted by favorable, skill based and difficult matchups. 

[ POWER RANKINGS ]
These rankings should give you a rough overview of the state of each deck on this current patch. Do not get discouraged if your deck of interest isn't rated highly. Any deck can perform well and with a good strategy or strong micro play you can overcome matchup dependent differences more often than not. 
 
#10 Fire Frost (↓)
Currently the weakest deck on this patch, has rather unclear win conditions whenever shielded Skyfire Drakes do not dominate the matchup. Other decks that were previously considered weaker received strong buffs leaving Fire Frost a little behind. Due to the lack of faction cards Fire Frost solely relies on splash synergies whereas other factions have much more powerful carrier cards. Some strong new combos like Warlock + Core Dredge emerge, but fundamentally the faction is just less well rounded than others. That said, Fire Frost offers a very unique, fun and micro rewarding playstyle and can still be worth playing for that reason.  
Final rating: 4/10 
 
#9 Amii (↓)
This might be a surprise for some as Amii received 2 new cards, which are both reasonably strong. The reason for Amii being listed low on this ranking is the Nightguard nerf combined with other faction buffs. Amii relied the most on Nightguard usage out of all Shadow splashes as the faction does not have a very powerful response to melee L-Units. You are forced to win at early T2 in almost any matchup. While some of the most critical counter decks are a little bit more forgiving now, Amii’s major weaknesses are maintained. The lack of both large and flying combat units makes Amii incredibly susceptible to strong AoE damage effects and limits the T2 scaling. It might be the hardest deck to execute as micro-managing a lot of low energy units non-stop is a tough task, but when mastered the deck is still absolutely viable with a lot of new tricks you can make use of. 
Final rating: 6/10
 
#8 Twilight (↓)
As Twilight is receiving numerous changes, this rating is rather preliminary and might change in the near future. Twilight units are getting more and more powerful, but do not entirely compensate for the faction's downfall compared to its old times (Fire Nature was considered top 3 before the first balancing changes). Melee unit dependency and hefty deck slot limitations made it harder to keep up with other factions that kept improving. Twilight Transformations add depth to the faction in late T2 nowadays, but this can be complex in execution. Twilight can still play with very high tempo and its late T2 pushes are one of the most rewarding ones in the game. Even though the deck’s performance is not at its prime we can still recommend learning it if you are interested, it will definitely pay off in the long run. 
Final rating: 6/10 
 
#7 Pure Shadow (↓↓)
The biggest downfall compared to the last rating where the faction received a top 2 rating. Pure Shadow’s performance got worse in almost any T2 matchup. Major changes with an impact: Nightguard nerf, Burning Spears release, Twilight Crawler release and buffs, Parasite Swarm buffs, Creeping Paralysis buffs & Tranquility release. Is pure Shadow a weak faction now? Definitely not! Even though Harvester is less dominant than before, the pure Shadow T3 still is one of the most flexible and powerful ones. On top of that the faction has a lot of deck building options and unique units creating leads throughout the game. Nether Warp’s playmaking potential is beyond crazy and in the right hands pure Shadow can still turn into the overly dominant faction we used to see in the past. 
Final rating 7/10 
 
#6 Pure Nature (↑↑)
Pure Nature is on the rise. After taking the bottom spot in our last rating the recent set of changes turned out to be strong buffs overall and helped multiple nature players secure a position at the top ranks of the PvP ladder. With much more versatile tools to deflect attacks and buy time, the faction has seen a lot of improvements compared to when it was rated as the worst faction in the game. Energy Parasite might be the most micro intensive unit in the game as it is spammable and vulnerable, yet so valuable it will pay off in the long run. Great map awareness, strong micro and an easy to use L-unit make for a very well rounded and strong deck. The main weakness of this faction is its slow start as nature T1 is susceptible to high tempo play and pure Nature does not have the best defensive tools to balance this out at early T2. But once you gain control of the game, it will be hard to stop you. 
Final rating: 7/10 
 
#5 Pure Frost (↑)
Pure Frost probably has the most powerful T2 defense in the entire game. Strong counter units, endless building synergies and solid crowd control options can even compensate for power deficits. When fighting around your own wells and orbs, pure Frost has the potential to outtrade any faction in the game. It is very easy to well up and scale towards later gamestages when playing this deck, but it can be hard to obtain enough map control in the first place. Due to mobility restrictions and reliance on building synergies Frost can not cover great distances without losing out on combat power. Your enemy will be able to pick fights on his terms, block important positions on the map and disjointed units will easily be outmaneuvered. But through good unit control and resource management you can overcome this and maintain a compact defense until your Eagles get to strike back.   
Final rating: 8/10 
 
#4 Pure Fire (-)
This one streamer telling you pure Fire is bad is lying! Do not believe him, it is a deception! The faction has very dominant trading tools for combat on the ground. Firedancer is the best Siege unit to break a defender's advantage, Enforcer is overwhelmingly strong, Wildfire is extremely versatile and Juggernaut is a simple brute force siege tool, strong enough to win games on its own. No deck can leverage tempo leads as well as pure Fire does, which leads to a rating at the upper half of this list. On the downside the faction’s air control is still weak and combined with the lack of hard cc some factions can take advantage of this in T2. But pure Fire is a very powerful deck that performs perfectly fine regardless of your skill level. 
Final rating: 8/10 
 
#3 Bandits (↓)
Bandits remain to be the biggest winner of balancing changes ever since Phasetower/Mortar nerfs enabled more T1 options. The faction has a wide set of strong ground combat tools, powerful air control, reliable attacking patterns and solid defensive options despite the lack of hard cc. Unique mechanics like Bandit Sniper ability and a reasonable T3 scaling through tools like Bandit Lancer, Cultist Master or buffed Soulhunter round this up extremely well. Bandits is a versatile deck with little weaknesses to take advantage of. The faction scales fairly well throughout all stages of the game. But unlike the decks that are listed higher on this tier list, Bandits does not have this simple win condition you can use to break up evenly matched games. After various balancing changes Bandits is definitely not as oppressive and less powerful than it used to be, but it is still a great faction that deserves a spot in the top 3. 
Final rating: 8/10 
 
#2 Lost Souls (↑)
Lost Souls is just outright solid at every stage of the game, extremely powerful scaling. This makes it the most well rounded faction you can play. You have a plethora of counter tools, strong spell synergies and except for the lack of air units the faction has anything you would want from a good PvP deck. Lost Souls is the most stable deck in the game, but also a rather slow paced faction. It is harder to apply pressure throughout the early stages compared to more aggressive factions and you can leverage your tempo leads by welling up instead of attacking your opponent most of the time. This makes it easier to play compared to most other factions, but also limits its potential at perfect play. Overall Lost Souls mostly benefits from the decline of pure Shadow and Bandits and reclaims a top 2 position in the current meta. 
Final rating: 9/10 
 
#1 Stonekin (-)
Stonekin is the best T2 faction by far. Stormsinger + Nature splash support is so good, it can either carry the deck by allowing big T3 scaling set ups or simply synergize with remaining faction tools in T2 to build up a constantly growing deathball. The faction does not have very clear weaknesses as they only emerge from slot limitations. The only issue to point out is the lack of burst leading to a minor weakness to equalize early tempo deficits when getting attacked by strong Siege tools (i.e. Firedancer). But with its overwhelming dominance across multiple matchups, this won’t stop Stonekin from defending its top spot this patch. 
Final rating: 10/10 
 
[ NEW PLAYER RECOMMENDATIONS ]
If you are new to the PvP, it can be difficult to find out where to start. Usually the best way of learning the basics is by sticking to one faction you enjoy playing. Get to know your cards, matchups and improve step by step. Look up some content from veterans using your faction and most importantly, play the game even if the matches end up being very tough. You will naturally improve over time and after learning the basics PvP is so much fun and offers incredible strategic depth. For that reason I would highly advise to pick a faction that you enjoy playing, even if it's not rated super highly by us. Every faction (except for Fire-Frost) is can be viable at the highest level and if you like pure Fire for example, just pick it from the free PvP section and play it. 
For anyone unsure about which faction to pick, we will list our top 3 starter recommendations. This list will be updated with every patch to make sure it is not outdated and provides some basic information. We think the following factions will give an enjoyable experience for newer players while teaching you important game mechanics, but again it's more important that you have fun with the faction you are using. 
 
Pure Frost
Pure Frost wins a lot of matches through defensive play and strong air control. War Eagles are arguably your most powerful T2 unit, but due to their low mobility and inability to attack air, you need time and more units to protect them well in order to get something done. Overall you have a very well rounded deck with strong defensive mechanics and due to its reactive nature you are not force to perfom a lot of micro actions in oder to succeed. 
Lost Souls
Lost Souls offers a lot of versatility that usually makes it appealing for most players. The faction's core cards and mechanics can be understood rather intuitively and you have the tools to compete with other decks throughout every stage of the game. Lost Reaver + Lifeweaving can be a simple, but effective tool to attack in T2 and your late game scaling is rock solid. The high hp frost units synergize incredibly well with Shadow spells like Liveweaving and Nasty Surprise and with Tremor/Grigori you can overwhelm opponents at T3 almost effortlessly. 
Stonekin
Stonekin wins games by stacking up unit masses over time. Use your crowd control spells to win unit trades and add more pieces to your army step by step. With a lot of knockback tools the faction can be infuriatinng from ahead. Most mechanics are easy to learn, but hard to master. This faction is an ideal choice for players that don't like to follow a meta path and like to experiment with deck building. The majority of our free PvP cards could be replaced in stonekin and the deck would still be able succeed at any level (just keep the support spells, they are really great). 
 
 

[ MATCHUP DISCUSSIONS ]
Structure
The following ratings will go from easiest matchup (1) to the hardest one (9) for each faction. In addition to that, the matchups are divided in 3 categories: favourable, skill based and difficult matchups. The matchup description with details and a rough gameplan follows afterwards.
 
[ PURE FROST ]

1. Deck description
Pure Frost is a very defensive oriented faction, that can be very dominant in close base encounters. War Eagles are one of the most powerful T2 units and with proper support they will provide full control of the game. Your various units are reliable and your scaling into late game is fantastic, but the deck often follows a slow playstyle limiting your options. In T1 the lack of a swift unit can get exposed, therefore you may have a lot of trouble acquiring map control. The risk of playing Frost is not as big as it used to be and with the introduction of buffed White Rangers/Mountain Rowdy there is a lot more variety making the deck interesting to play. You will be highly rewarded for learning this faction. Pure Frost dominates some decks, that are fairly strong in the current meta. Your T3 scaling is fairly solid with interesting deck building options, but late T2 air dominance is what makes this deck shine the most. 

2. Matchup discussion
Favorable matchups:
(1) Pure Frost vs Pure Fire (-)
Used to be one of the most one sided matchups during EA times and still is clearly Frost favored at the T2 stage. Going even in T1 without taking too many risks is the way to go. Skyelf Templar, while being nerfed, still plays an essential role to establish air control, which is so important to attack pure Fire. With Skyfire out of the way, War Eagle can freely counter any M sized ground unit, which includes more than half of pure Fire’s arsenal. Be careful with using Area Ice Shield too early as Global Warming has been buffed and could counter massively. Rather try to time the spell  i.e. when a Skyfire projectile is in the air about to kill a War Eagle/Skyelf Templar. With a very controlled T2 you can dominate this matchup, but  you shouldn’t be overforcing. Upon establishing control with a strong Skyfire Drake split, pure Fire can either protect Firedancers for potent counter attacks or safely scale towards T3, where Juggernaut will outmatch you most likely. With Amii Ritual you can build a counter T3 though as the spell can block Stampede and buy time for Skyelf Sages to remove the Juggernaut before your wells and orbs get taken out. Then again pure Fire lacks tools to attack air as long as you split your units against backlash.
Skill matchups:
(2) Pure Frost vs Pure Shadow (↑↑)
With Nightguard getting nerfed, you have the upper hand in this matchup now. War Eagle being less contested means pure Frost has better chances in various trading situations and can only be matched by Darkelf Assassins. With White Rangers getting buffed you also have a solid answer to them, as their ability punishes any reckless activation of Unholy Trance. Heavy unit spam can be deflected by mountain rowdy as the ability counters low hp ground units and the slow buys time to catch and out-micro your opponent. Harvester usually does not work against Lighblade + War Eagle + Frostbite. Stormsinger will always be a good addition into your unit mix and should establish full control in T2. Since most Shadow units are pretty cheap it will get harder to split them up later into the game, strengthening your AoE tools i.e. War Eagle scream is more efficient. Just keep in mind to avoid heavy unit stacking yourself, because Aura of Corruption counters low mobility single area attacks. Play around the high spell cooldown or split up your attack. Freezing units with Liveweaving is extremely effective, because the two damage reductions don't stack. A nice micro trick in this matchup is to cancel out War Eagle screams in order to bait out a Nether Warp dodge attempt. The T3 stage is rather dangerous since Frost relies on unit spam to finish the game, which can be hard countered by Voidstorm. The newly buffed Nox Carrier might be a soft counter to stalling base gameplay around Amii ritual.
(3) Pure Frost vs Lost Souls (↑)
With nerfs to Nightguard, pure Frost tends to have the upper hand at T2 given that you don’t lose out on T1. Giving up a little bit of map control is fine as long as you have enough space to take a couple wells and don’t get locked out of T3 entirely. Lost Souls will mainly use Darkelf Assassins + Stormsinger + Frostbite in trades, which can be easily matched by Mountain Rowdy and White Rangers as long as you don’t run into a large tempo deficit. Taking extra wells is safe more often than not. Souls does not have any air unit, so try to get a good position for your War Eagle. Cliffs are ideal as they protect against the Stormsinger ability and also ensure an escape path whenever necessary. Be careful with putting too many resources into a single area attack though as a slow army will always be susceptible to an Aura of Corruption. Defending Lost Reaver is not a big deal due to Lightblade and War Eagle, but you still need to split against him as the Nasty Surprise combo can be devastating. In T3 both decks are fairly similar, but Lost Souls is slightly stronger here due to access to stronger spell synergies and the more flexible slot distribution usually leading to a bigger T3 investment overall. You don’t need to close games on T2, but building up a lead early on is advised.
(4) Pure Frost vs Twilight (↓)
Twilight will be able to match and outmaneuver you on open ground as superior mobility and cheaper crowd control will allow your enemy to pick fights whenever he wants to. Skyfire Drake and Twilight Crawlers are fast and very dynamic units that can build up leads even though your units tend to be more stat efficient overall. The easiest way to get rid of mobility concerns is securing a close well position. Even if your slow units, especially the War Eagle, get outmaneuvered you can still set up powerful counter attacks and reinforce appropriately. Vileblood attacks can be defended with War Eagle and Lightblade, but are not to be underestimated once your opponent gets ahead. The siege damage is massive and will drain a lot of power for building protects or cc. You need to intercept any minor attack as early as possible, making sure you can weaken the attack as much as possible before it gets close for transformation. Always try to build up some Stormsingers count from neutral states as kiting works very well in trades against the melee unit heavy Fire Nature deck. Keep an eye on any attempt to play Breeding Grounds as the card generates ridiculous amounts of value. If you see it being used you have to be proactive in order to shift attention to another base quickly. If your opponent is forced to spawn at another base the Breeding value gets negated for some time. Ideally you get to punish the initial investment and take down a power well. On higher energy levels you start to outscale Fire Nature in T2. War Eagles are a dominant force and with enough power to protect them you will consistently win trades. Fire Nature has limited options to contest air units (Eruption, Gladiatrix, Skyfire Drake, Twilight Transformation). War Eagle beats Gladiatrix, Area Ice Shield can protect against burst combinations around Eruptions, so Skyfire will be the most dangerous unit to play around. If you have some cliffs for your Eagles, try to make use of them as Twilight Transformation does not function here. Depending on how many counters you have to establish air control (Gravity Surge, Defenders, Skyelf Templar), your life might be even easier in this particular matchup. Nightshade Plant transformations can be a major threat in T3, so consider playing for Skyelf Sage + Amii Ritual to block early tempo pushes. As Fire Nature often does not have deck slots for a large T3 your enemy will burn out of charges way earlier. 
(5) Pure Frost vs Stonekin (↑)
Even though Aggressor can be quite annoying for your War Eagles the matchup got easier since Stone Tempest received some nerfs. Stonekin still has what it takes to prevent you from executing successful attacks. Stormsinger & Spirit Hunters are fairly efficient against air units in the early T2 stage and the mix of building protects and cheap crowd control is always hard to overcome. Crystal Fiend might also play a big role in this matchup, shutting it down as quickly as possible needs to be high priority (Gravity Surge may be a very useful addition here). The constant healing over time can start a snowball that will be impossible to stop once you fall behind. Never take additional wells in early T2 without a good reason and try to scale slowly, because you might give your opponent an opportunity to play an uncontested Breeding Grounds, which almost always out-values an extra powerwell in slow paced matchups. Keep an eye on how many different cards your enemy uses in the T1/T2 stage. Stonekin often has a weakness based on slot allocation and it is important to identify which stage is the weakest. Some players might skip T1, others might try to play without a T3 to pressure you a lot in the mid game. If the energy level is high enough you can even overcome some power deficits, but you sometimes need to reconsider based on deck building whether it’s best to play for a mass War Eagle push in T2 or a T3 win.
(6) Pure Frost vs Fire Frost (↑)
This matchup might be a little bit harder than you might expect initially. Skyelf Templar and White Rangers contest air units and War Eagle gets rid of any M ground units that might try to attack them (Icefang Raptor vs White Rangers, Gladiatrix vs Skyelf Templar etc.) . Overall Fire Frost has a limited amount of playable units and you have fairly solid answers to these options, even the famous Frost Sorceress + Skyfire Drake combo. Mountaineer can be easily matched by Lightblade after losing his M knockback as you can force him into shield mode whenever you want. Defenders can be a strong niche option to keep contesting air control in this matchup. While everything looks very good on paper up to this point, there is one thing Fire Frost can take advantage of. With lots of slow and high health units the unit count during skirmishes is very high in this matchup making Coldsnap + Warlock a deadly combo. If a buffed Skyfire dodges your Coldsnap and the enemies one hits, you are in serious trouble. Also never use Mountain Rowdy against Warlock as the self freeze will also trigger the damage amplification. On top of that Warlock will also ensure superior T3 scaling, where Timeless One provides endless access to the Freeze mechanic. Combined with some high energy scaling T3 unit (i.e. Core Dredge) you will have a very hard time matching this. This is why a good unit split against Coldsnap in mid T2 will often make the difference between winning or losing this matchup. 
(7) Pure Frost vs Pure Nature (↑)
Frost Mage spam is not as oppressive in this matchup anymore, but can still win the game at the early stage. The strategy is still very powerful against Nature T1 on small maps and strong enough to rush greedy fast T2 attempts. Ghost Spears and Spirit Hunters are useless against knockback without cc support and Deep One gets kited against Frostbite. If you manage to get a critical amount of units (7+ Mages) while being close to the enemy's base you are set up to win. Try to stack your army to avoid getting caught and isolated by ensnaring roots and slowly push forward. Nature can shut this down by playing a very aggressive early game which confines you at your base. This is especially annoying on large maps. Try to snipe overextended units with Frostbite or Glyph of Frost to shut this down. At T2 the matchup got better for you considering Mountain Rowdy is another strong L counter for Deep One with a strong ability to shut down supported attacks. White Rangers also add strong defensive capabilities that allow you to defend every kind of attack. Your absolute main priorities need to be never letting an Energy Parasite reach your Power Wells and never allow a Parasite Swarm take over one of your L units. This is still true if it means you have to take bad trades. Investing a Coldsnap for one Energy Parasite is still 10 times better than allowing him to use the ability. Usually Stormsinger + Frostbite are your main counters, add Gravity Surge to your deck if you keep struggling. Also sacrificing L units is much better if you can not prevent a Parasite Swarm ability from getting through anymore. It is more likely to lose to nature's energy manipulation than getting overwhelmed in trades even with some energy deficits. Whenever you manage to defend successfully you can transition into counter attacks. Nature is fairly weak at defending, especially if you can split your low cost units well against crowd control. With Area Ice Shield support you can quickly opt into a well focus. Whether T3 can be used as a win condition solely depends on whether you have a solid XL unit in your deck or at least some sort of counter for Parasite Swarm. Otherwise the nature player could stay in T2 for a very long time and just zone/take over your T3 units. Energy Parasites get even more annoying because you don’t want to play a lot of Stormsingers after investing power into your T3 orb. Skyelf Sage might help, but is also rather expensive. Therefore, keeping the 250 energy for stronger T2 attacks could be the better move here. 
 
(8) Pure Frost vs Amii (↑↑)
With Nightguard being removed, Shadow Nature can not be considered a hard counter to pure Frost anymore. Mountain Rowdy and White Rangers are strong defensive tools to shut down the early aggression Amii is known for and with superior high energy scaling this might be enough to turn the tides in this matchup. A combination of Darkelf Assassins and Amii Paladins still functions dangerously well and needs to be respected when playing on 3-4 wells early on. But if you keep sufficient map control you will be able to endure these attacks and slowly scale up. Make sure to play around the Amii Paladins active ability as a reflected War Eagle scream might be devastating. The level of early pressure you need to deal with is highly dependent on player proficiency, much more than in other matchups. In late T2 War Eagles control the Battlefield, but you usually won’t be able to attack as Aura + CC is very strong and small unit attacks get shut down by Amii Phantom spam. You should be able to reach a good T3 transition, where Amii Ritual will be a key card to defend heavy Cultist Master attacks. Fortunately the spell counters Evocators Woe making your defense very reliable. A niche counter option to decimate any attempt of Cultist Master stacking would be Frost Shard. Timeless One handles any small scaled attacks. Buffed XL units like Brannoc will be weak against Coldsnap + Lightblade taunt granting ideal set up for a late game win once charges start running out.
Difficult matchups:
(9) Pure Frost vs Bandits (-)
Bandits arguably have the best tools to remove War Eagles from the map entirely making it the best deck to pick into pure Frost. Windhunter is an excellent L counter and combined with well splitted Darkelf Assassins pure Frost starts to struggle a lot. Your advantage lies within your reliable trading tools and strong defense. Fortunately Bandits do not have the strongest Siege units and need to get ahead to make good use of Rallying Banner attacks. This gives you a chance to play very defensively and stall games out until reaching T3. Stormsinger and White Rangers might be enough to play a safe mid game to then win through good trades around your crowd control or T3 scaling. Mountain Rowdy (purple) is a great counter tool to large rallying banner attacks. Counterpressure into the Minefield/Bandit Sniper combo will be extremely difficult though. If you can slow down the game and play a very controlled match you might have the upper hand. With little ways to trade into stacked Windhunters you somewhat rely on your opponent making a mistake in order to stabilize though. The T3 pattern is fairly similar as Bandits have the tools to play faster and aggressively, whereas pure Frost wants to slow down and scale into T3. Amii Ritual will be very helpful to buy time against split attacks and Frost Shard might be a card worth considering for this matchup as it counters Rallying Banner + Cultist Master spam. Soulhunter might be hard to trade against unless you play Skyelf Sage, make use of your building protects and cc tools including Lightblade. If you manage to drag out the game in T3 you should win in the long run. 
 
 
[ PURE FIRE ]


1. Deck description
If you want a deck with offensive strength, this deck provides it. Crazy dps units & spells and an immense siege potential with Firedancer. In addition to that pure Fire has one of the best T3 units also known as Juggernaut, which makes closing out games seem quite easy. Your downside is the lack of deck variety and limited air control. The amount of viable cards is insanely limited and you end up with a fairly predictable set up. On the other hand a very clear deck structure allows you to focus on improving your execution and micro management, especially in T2. Strategic matchup approaches are not overly complex and learning the faction in a reasonable amount time is possible. In many matchups you attack with the same unit setup (2x Enforcer, 1x Fire Dancer, 1x Skyfire), which is simple but effective.

2. Matchup discussion
Favorable matchups:
(1) Pure Fire vs Stonekin (↑↑)
The release of Burning Spears relieved a lot of pressure in this matchup. You don’t have to trade with M-units into Stone Shards anymore and with their steadfast passive the Burning Spears are extremely reliable against the knockback centric Stonekin deck. Your opponent now has to fall back to Stormsinger/Spirit Hunter + Root or Stoneshard spam, which can be outscaled rather quickly. With a certain energy level or a tempo lead, pure Fire will take over, because Firedancer can always force the Stonekinplayer away from his power well, making him lose the defender's advantage. A unit mix around Enforcer, Burning Spears and Skyfire Drake supported by the strong AoE damage spells will always come out on top in this situation. A high energy level is usually helpful for you. If the game reaches T3 and your opponent tries to play Stone Warrior (blue) + Timeless One against your Juggernaut, try to disenchant the Stone Warrior ability mid air. At this rate the ability cast goes through, enemy loses energy, the ability goes on cooldown, but you don't receive any damage. With Stampede being this powerful, snowballing is not a problem.
(2) Pure Fire vs Amii (-)
Amii solely relies on small and medium low hp ground units to trade and apply pressure. The powerful AoE spells like Lavafield & Wildfire can shut this down, which is almost the entire story of this matchup. The only unit capable of contesting the Fire army are Amii Paladins. The unit trades well into your M-units and can reflect Wildfire damage if timed properly. You need to kite them well, play around the high ability cooldown and wait until energy level rises. Lavafield gets more and more valuable over time as the spell is expensive in the first place and the high damage cap automatically adds late T2 scaling. Amii can’t diversify its unit composition, because the faction has no access to flying/large units. A slow and methodical early game usually is the best way to approach this matchup, because Amii spikes very early while falling off in later T2 stages. Getting to this position without a deficit is usually winning, because Amii lacks the tools to stop powerful Rallying Banner attacks. With little threats to your Firedancer the enemy has to walk up to you instead of playing around his base. This often exposes units that can be picked off by an Enforcer. Whereas Tranquility is not very relevant in this T2 matchup, it can be a big nuisance in T3. The spell can force out your disenchant, creating a positive trade and indirectly strengthening the threat of all remaining cc spells and buffs from Amii. Brannoc with Surge of Light and Lifeweaving support will beat Juggernaut in a direct encounter as a result. So either try winning on T2 or ensure reaching T3 with a clear tempo lead so your Juggernaut can strike first.
(3) Pure Fire vs Lost Souls (-)
Pure Fire performs fairly well into Lost Souls. Enforcer is superior to Nightcrawler/Stormsinger and Firedancers are really hard to remove. This gives you a solid advantage in open field trading as well as siege scenarios. L units are the only ones that are difficult to deal with. Mountaineer & Lost Reaver can apply a solid amount of pressure and also synergize well with Live Weaving. But with well timed disenchants and good uses of wildfire you can deflect these attacks without losing a powerwell to then start a powerful counterattack in return. In this particular matchup it's extremely important to always consider the potential impact of Nasty Surprise. It is the most disruptive spell Lost Souls can use against pure Fire and if you get caught off guard it might turn the tides in this matchup. At higher void levels you will start rolling over your opponent due to damage ramping up and overloading building protects. In T3 Juggernaut may be the best tool in the game to break through a Timeless One defense, so scaling is on your side as well.
Skill matchups:
(4) Pure Fire vs Pure Nature (↓) 
The nature matchup got more difficult than before. Parasite got added into the mix and needs to be respected as it is another tool capable of attacking heavy usage of Skyfire Drakes. You can always Disenchant the Parasite or counter with Ravage as long as no damage sources are around. The green Disenchant is recommended here, because it does not only remove the Parasite Spell, but also can grant immunity against other poison effects or Mind Control. Parasite Swarm always needs to be defended, because an unbound Skyfire Drake with Nature spell support is scary. Your overall gameplan didn’t really change. A short and aggressive T1 leading towards a low void T2 usually is the best way of controlling the game pace and preventing fast scaling. Once you win a trade you can try to push towards your opponent's power well immediately with a Rallying Banner set up. Firedancer & Enforcer convert tempo like no other faction, but with Creeping Paralysis there is another tool you need to play around in order to get consistent results. The cc duration is very long and might enable a successful well repair, but you often get to dodge the spell due to its long animation. Nature can win at a high energy point by snowballing with Deep One + Spirit Hunter setups that are still fairly hard to counter once there is enough power for heal-spam support. HP nerfs to Deep One and the Burning Spears delay this scaling point fairly well, but do not prevent it entirely. Always keep a good unit split due to the high amount of cc spells from pure Nature.If you can’t avoid high energy counts, you need to try winning through T3, because Juggernaut is still unrivaled in this matchup.
(5) Pure Fire vs Twilight (-)
A pretty specific matchup, but not too complicated to learn. At the early T2 stage Twilight Minions + Skyfire Drake is really hard to beat, because your own Skyfire Drakes get oinked and die without dealing damage at all. Twilight Minions are M Counters and stronger on a low void base than Scythe Fiends. Vileblood can be matched with Burning Spears partially, but crowd control can buy enough time to put pressure on your power wells. With energy level rising you'll have an easier time, because pure Fire will be able to match air control once Skyfire + Oink can be countered by an immediate double Eruption (155 power vs 150 power). Skyfire charges are also limited at 8, so keeping track of that might create further opportunities to win. Burning Spears trade stat efficiently into any Twilight unit except for the Crawlers. This makes them very strong considering Twilight lacks ranged units to kite them properly and Crawlers can be annihilated by an Enforcer. With Wildfire support on top of this you will win trades on the ground. Scythe Fiends can also help leveraging tempo fairly well and T3 is Juggernaut’s playground.
(6) Pure Fire vs Bandits (-)
Bandits can be a tough opponent due to its strong T2. With the tremendous buffs to Windhunter, your Skyfire Drakes lose a lot of value in this particular matchup. Gladiatrix will be an essential tool to burst down Windhunter in combination with Eruption and it is extremely important to disenchant Life Weaving that could block this combination. Bandits can build up incredible pressure even with small leads, so there might be a reward for playing a risk aversive early game in order to prevent a T2 snowball. Winning a trade against Bandit Spearmen and Windhunter in early T2 is fairly unlikely, but with Burning Spears you can at least prevent straight well focussing. If you get into a position to counter attack, look to play around close base attacks in order to utilize the high attack range from Firedancer. Saving the 50 power from Rallying Banner can make a big difference. If you manage to withstand the early attacks and trade evenly until T3 the game is almost won. Juggernaut will be unstoppable as he outtrades the Soulhunter as well as the Bandits Lancers with ease. Just make sure you don’t run into an Aura of Corruption with Stampede on cooldown.
Difficult matchups:
(7) Pure Fire vs Fire Frost (↑)
This entire match up comes down to surviving against the Skyfire + Frost Sorceress combo. It converts leads really easily and almost always comes out on top in trades. Stormsinger adds up to a really good unit mix that pure Fire will struggle against. Once you lose some of the open field trades, the snowball will be hard to stop. As the pure Fire player you want to play really passive early on to survive with the help of undazed respawns and more space for good unit positioning. Ideally you get to expose the Shield Sorceress and hunt her down with an Enforcer. The shielded Skyfire Drake can be disenchanted by Gladiatrix to allow bursting it even if it’s not entirely energy efficient. Global Warming can also be helpful in this matchup. A nice little trick to ensure better positions in this matchup is to extend your T1 and take as many power wells as possible during this stage. The Fire Frost player does not have the best tools to force an early T2 (very expensive set up and no cheap siege tools) and even then you could play T1 vs T2 for quite some time. This allows you to invest more power into your economy instead of getting a rather low value T2 very early. Once you get tempo at the late T2 stage or manage to break skyfire charges at any given point, pure Fire will roll over. Frost Sorceress will be too vulnerable without a Skyfire protecting her and units get bursted before the shield cast goes through. T3 also ends up being clearly in your favor. Fire Frost has no tools to fight against Juggernauts in T3, which can be very important on large maps that allow uncontested tech ups.
(8) Pure Fire vs Pure Shadow (↓) 
This is mostly a retrospective rating adjustment and not the result of any actual changes. We moved pure Shadow into the section of difficult matchups as we agreed that pure Shadow is just way easier to execute in this particular matchup. Burning spears might prevent a Harvester from turning games on its head, but you still can’t just sit back and wait for the Shadow player to make the first move. You are on a timer as removing Harvester power efficiently is not very likely. T3 is pretty hopeless either because Voidstorm can hard counter Juggernaut and even Netherwarp can stop stampede from destroying your base. This leads to a position where you need to create a substantial advantage at the T2 stage. You need to move out of your base and break the defender's advantage. With proper execution this is possible because of your superior trading tools, but any misstep might result in your opponent stabilizing until the first Harvester can be played. An approach to shut this concept down is to set up a Rallying Banner attack next to the enemy's base without committing entirely. You need to hover around the enemy’s base with a Firedancer, forcing the Shadow player to respond and push her away from his well. You can then summon Enforcers to protect your position and bait out further reinforcements. Your enemy either binds power into many units that can be countered by a Lava Field at some point or has to leave his base, losing the defender's advantage of spamming undazed Shadowmages safely around the power well. In both situations Harvester timings get delayed, which is good for you. Once you win a trade, you can just add pressure until you can steamroll with an Enforcer spam. A very useful micro trick here is using the Enforcers to dodge Shadow Mage attacks. During the charge animation they can outrun a shot consistently (try practicing this one in the Forge). If you dodge the first shot, your charge goes through allowing the Enforcer to win the 1v1 against the shadow mage without taking any damage.
(9) Pure Fire vs Pure Frost (-)
Even though this matchup is listed as the most difficult one for a reason, the level of pure Frost’s dominance is greatly overestimated in this matchup. Pure Fire has a very clear win condition in T3 and by making good use of tempo and defender’s advantage in T2 it is possible to reach this stage uncontested more often than you might think. If you carry Global Warming in your deck, your chances are even better. Overall it is important to play very defensively in T2 and avoid playing units that do not help you contest air control. Try to use Skyfire Drake against War Eagle and Gladiatrix against Skyelf Templar. Everything else is micro dependent. Your units are weaker in direct combat, but more mobile and you have more tools to retreat and reinforce around your own structures. After acquiring multiple units, always try to split your Skyfire Drakes against crowd control. Eruption can be used to add some extra burst, but don’t get baited into an Area Ice Shield. Try to keep as much distance from your opponent as possible as pure Frost is significantly weaker on open fields. Do not take any close wells and do not take risks like taking more power wells after winning a small trade. This will mitigate the pressure across this critical game stage. If you manage to outtrade your opponent heavily it’s better to counterattack and apply pressure by adding a Firedancer to your units mix. She can keep her distance from War Eagles and is easily protected by your army unlike the other melee units in your T2. If the Frost player starts switching to heavy ground unit support, you can always add a Rallying Banner later and run them down with Enforcers. If you trade well enough, you might get a shot of beating your opponent at late T2 or simply enable a T3 transition, where Juggernaut can take over. Considering you often want to take T3 before your opponent, Backlash can be extremely helpful whenever the Frost player decides to play extended T2 vs T3.
 
[ PURE NATURE ]


1. Deck description
Pure Nature might be the most skill expressive faction in the game as it has an endless amount of tools you can make use for micro and macro oriented playstyles. The deck has very strong crowd control and trading tools. With Energy Parasite there is a unique mechanic of generating resource advantages without setting up siege attacks in the first place. This leads to a fairly unique playstyle none of the other factions can offer. On the downside you lack defensive capabilities since nature does have limited access to defend its power wells, especially from a power deficit. High tempo attacks will always end up problematic. In T3 you have decent scaling since Parasite Swarm scales super well into the higher tech stage. Creative deck building can also be rewarded. With various tools like Mumbo Jumbo, Tunnel, Rootnetwork or even Enlightenment you can quickly adjust the deck to your personal playstyle and surprise opponents.  

2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Pure Nature vs Fire Frost (↑)
This matchup is solid for you. Pure Nature is a soft counter to Fire Frost, since it's able to trade well into its units during the early stage of the game and in addition to that Parasite Swarm is a huge threat for the buffed 100+ power cost units. Fire Frost needs to establish good trades by using Stormsinger and Icefang Raptor (which got better after it received a mobility buff), which is something you can shut down especially after Ghostspears received stat buffs. Energy Parasite can always cause some trouble even though you probably won't get to use the ability too often against Skyfire Drakes, but you can slow down the tempo to safely scale up to the later game stage where Deep Ones are available, which guarantees successful trades. With Parasite against unsupported Skyfiredrakes there is more room to play out the game from ahead. In T3 you can close games fairly well even against Timeless One defense as pure nature has access to strong game finishing tools.
Skill matchups:
(2) Pure Nature vs Amii (↑)
Pure Nature gained a lot of power in this particular matchup. Nightguard dropped down in priority and as she used to shut down Deep One entirely, this is a blessing for pure Nature. With increased cost and Parasite as a strong tool to target her, you can overcome the strong early phase of the Shadow Nature deck and outscale comfortably. You need to respect the strong Amii tempo play on low energy count (Motivated Burrowers, Darkelf Assassins/Amii Phantom + CC), but with Energy Parasites pressure and even stronger crowd control tools you can stabilize more often than not. Creeping Paralysis will buy enough time to keep your Spirit Hunters safe and establish Deep Ones on the board. With more energy income nature will win out on trading and reach a position for a strong counter attack. Attacking on low unit counts is not advised as Tranquility is extremely powerful on low energy levels. On T3 the decks are rather evenly matched with a slight edge to Amii, but this also depends on deck building. That said this matchup usually ends beforehand, because both decks are good at applying pressure and none of them is built to ensure late game scaling.
(3) Pure Nature vs pure Shadow (↑)
After recent changes Parasite Swarm reduced Harvester pressure, making Rogan Kayle less mandatory for this single matchup (full duration oink -> rogan kayle ability -> full duration oink still works though). This opens up more freedom in your slot distribution and you can build the deck more towards your preferred choices. The shadow matchup doesn’t change dramatically as a result, but you will get more consistent results against other decks. For Shadow in particular Deep Ones are still solid, but with buffs to Knight of Chaos and nerfs to Nightguard it is less snowbally. Energy Parasite needs to be used carefully since Shadow Mage can one shot them, but on the other hand you can force mage spawns far away from map relevant positions and abuse the fact that they are much slower than your Energy Parasites. Your trading tools are solid and Creeping Paralysis can be very strong against the slow Shadow Mages. Root + Parasite can be useful against unitstacking. But you need to outmaneuver the Shadow player at some point in T2, because Voidstorm scaling is really powerful. T3 definitely goes in favor of pure Shadow and puts you on a timer. You could play a T3 with Abyssal Warder here as a niche soft counter to Voidstorm, but he would be less effective in other matchups.
(4) Pure Nature vs Lost Souls (-)
Pure Nature does pretty well against Shadow Frost in T2. If you don't lose tempo during the T1 the odds should be in your favor generally speaking. Energy Parasites can generate a huge amount of pressure and if you micro them very well you are in full control of the game pace. Ghost Spears & Spirit Hunters beat the core trading units in Souls, but make sure you don’t get picked off by Frostbite. After acquiring a power lead you can use Deep One & Burrowers to attack the enemies economy. Nightguard is no problem anymore since her costs have been increased and the recently buffed Parasite can remove her reliably. Try to split up your army and attack multiple areas to play around Aura of Corruption. Surge of Light is your main tool to keep up pressure for an extended time and will give you a change to overload building protections. It is very powerful, but keep in mind you immediately run out of steam once Surge of Light charges are gone. There are different gameplay options in T3, but against Lost Souls building around Mutating Maniac and Nightshade Plant can really help. Without an appropriate XL counter Lost Grigori might cause you trouble.
(5) Pure Nature vs Pure Frost (↓)
The dynamic between pure Nature and pure Frost has changed to some extent. War Eagle dependency in T2 is much lower nowadays, because Frost received more tools to trade. This reduced Parasite Swarm’s hard counter function within pure Nature. Unpunished Frost Mage spam can be hard to deflect in the early game even though T2 + Creeping Paralysis is offering a newly buffed tool here. You need to neutralize this strategy by playing a very aggressive early game with your Swift unit, which is snowballed by a Shaman spam. The constant free healing will be a major threat as frost lacks burst early on. Use your mobility advantage to confine the enemy in his base. To contest Shaman healing other units than Frost Mage will be required, allowing you to delay the critical Frost Mage stacking as long as you keep up the pressure. In an ideal scenario your opponent over invests into mages and loses the game right here. But keep in mind that stacking T1 M units in this matchup might be heavily punished if your opponent finds an opportunity to take T2 and clear your army with War Eagles. In T2 you have to make use of Energy Parasites to force Stormsinger spawns far away from any potential fighting area. Frost is much better at trading around its own structures with various counters to everything your T2 has to offer (White Rangers, Mountain Rowdy, Stormsinger, Lightblade etc.). Use the terrain to get a mobility advantage and also sync up your Energy Parasite movements with the rest of your army. This forces a choice where your enemy either trades with less energy or allows the Energy Parasite to use its super powerful ability. Ideally your opponent gets mentally overstrained and messes up on both ends. Against War Eagle Parasite Swarm still works very well. Try to hover around cliffs as flying units will be immune to any sorts of Gravity Surge at those areas. Deep One spam is weaker than before, but still very potent. in T3 you can use Nightshade Plant to break through Timeless One defense, making high energy games less concerning especially considering the extra value Parasite Swarm generates against T3. Just keep in mind that you are not allowed to waste too many healing charges early on as your T3 heavily depends on Surge of Light.
(6) Pure Nature vs Bandits (↑↑)
While listed as the worst matchup previously, the T2 interactions changed drastically. Deep One is not a beast anymore giving nature a much more reliable counter to Bandit Stalkers. Ghostspears and Spirit Hunters have been fairly vulnerable to Bandit Minefield in the past, but Deep One can easily move out of the radius and pull one of his enemies away from your wells negating the zoning effect entirely. Energy Parasites can apply constant pressure, especially if you prevent your enemy from getting the map center, to slow down Bandit Sniper. If you make good use of nature's skill-expressive tools you should be slightly favored in T2, because Creeping Paralysis & Hurricane are an excellent way to shut down Rallying Banner + Darkelf Assassins. Strong AoE damage tools like Thunderstorm or Mutating Maniac can stop heavy Bandit Lancer/Cultist Master spam. If your deck can handle the pressure from Soulhunter, you are set up to win. While nature favored on perfect execution, Bandits late T2 pressure can still be extremely difficult to deal with and always needs to be respected.
(7) Pure Nature vs Pure Fire (↑)
While still challenging, pure Fire can be dealt with nowadays. Parasite is a new tool in your kit to attack Skyfire Drake spam at power limit and Creeping Paralysis can be used frequently to catch Firedancers and Enforcers off guard. You need to focus on trading well through the early game, because you are not allowed to fall behind ever. Fire can take down your wells very quickly, but as long as you get to diminish the pressure from Fire’s strong Air control you will be able to scale. Deep One + Spirit Hunters is a very strong trading combo, because Deep One can draw a lot of attention, enabling Spirit Hunters poisoning all the counter units constantly. Don’t tunnel on power wells, because the damage from Burning Spears & Wildfire can’t be ignored. Try healing up your Deep One right before it drops below 300 hp unless you know your enemy already reached his power limit. You might bait greedy enemies into wasting an Eruption. Don’t spam too many units at one area to avoid Lavafield value and use excess energy for spell support, split attacks or Energy Parasite distraction. Another option of winning this matchup would be a successful Parasite Swarm swap. You can’t rely on it, but getting an unbound Skyfire Drake is close to game over. In T3 Fathom Lords can be really solid trading tools, but they can not outpace Juggernaut so do avoid T3 if possible. You can make use of another trick here though and add Mumbo Jumbo to your deck. Juggernaut often walks alone and the spell can take his ground presence away, making it impossible to disenchant any cc spells.
(8) Pure Nature vs Stonekin (↑)
Stonekin slowly outscales pure Nature during t2 as Stormsinger stacking is more effective compared to other Frost splash matchups since Stonekin has the nature cc sources to support them against Ghostspears, Spirit Hunters or Deep One. With Crystal Fiend support this used to be unbeatable, but you can potentially remove the unit with Parasite nowadays. Burrower spam also is less of a problem unless you are behind considering Creeping Paralysis can buy time with its long cc duration. Even if it’s dodged the spell can force Burrowers to move away from power wells making them susceptible to Ensnaring Roots. But as you won’t win through normal unit trading it all comes down to Energy parasite micro to generate power leads. Deep One pressure, Parasite Swarm swaps, cc chains etc. can work, but only if you get ahead. In T3 Mutating Maniac can be a game changer as the poison cloud is a lot cheaper than before, which allows you to counter heavy unit stacking more efficiently. Overall the matchup is still stonekin favored, but only to a lesser extent.
Difficult matchups:
(9) Pure Nature vs Fire Nature (↓)
This matchup got more difficult than before. Deep One lost some of its hp as a compensation for the buffs Nature received across the board and Fire Nature benefits the most from that power shift as the faction has solid counterplay to Pure Nature's newly buffed tools. Burrower/Twilight Crawler + Skyfire is the most mobile set up to create pressure on the map and Creeping Paralysis gets outmaneuvered. Parasite can be helpful against Skyfire Drake, but with Disenchant you can’t guarantee a removal, because unlike in the pure Fire matchup Fire Nature usually saves up power for spells instead of investing everything into the initial unit set up. Slaver can stop Deep One in its tracks and has dangerous burst potential with the 450 damage passive that can be triggered any time. Again, Mumbo Jumbo is a potential gamesaver. As Fire Nature often doesn’t invest too much power into units during an attack you often face 1x Burrower + 1x Skyfire attacks. This can be countered by Parasite Swarm + Mumbo Jumbo on the Burrower denying ground presence for a Hurricane. Your opponent has to sacrifice the Skyfire or even allow the swap, which  would be a game changing trade with how powerful unbound units are. T3 is extremely risky, because Fire Nature has more flexible options in terms of summoning the Nightshade Plant. 
 
 
[ SHADOW NATURE / AMII ]


1. Deck description
Shadow Nature is my personal favourite deck. It rewards proactive and aggressive gameplay during the early game and it's playstyle is really fast paced. You've got no L-unit to rely on in offense, neither do you have any building protects or high defensive capabilities. Your strength lies within strong split attacks and aggressive open field skirmishing by combining the powerful shadow splash units with the cheap nature crowd control. At later T2 stages the deck doesn't offer as much as most decks, but you can still rely on a very solid T3 to close out your games once you managed to get ahead.

Alternative deck

2. Matchup discussion
[Reminder: Amii Paladins just got released, so some of these matchup impressions might change a little bit based on how well the unit performs - I will update the overview during the process]
Favorable matchups
(1) Amii vs Lost Souls (-) 
Amii has been known as a specific counter for Lost Souls for a long time and this functionality has not changed. Whereas both factions have almost the same set of core units, Amii has much more effective crowd control. This leads to distinctive advantages in trades. Your early T2 is clearly superior and you can set up constant pressure to a point where your opponent gets overwhelmed. The best way to snowball an advantage would be to activate frenzy on multiple Nightcrawlers at different bases and overload building protects with a well timed Motivate. Ideally you look for a timing where Coldsnap is on cooldown. In mid T2 Shadow Phoenix can also be a very powerful finisher against well clusters that synergizes extremely well with the cheap nature cc to secure strong dives. Lost Reaver + Live Weaving is the most powerful tool for counter attacking you need to respect, make sure to cycle through Nature cc and Tranquility to keep him busy. Darkelf Assassins and Amii Phantom can be used to kite and deal significant damage, even without a direct L counter. Even though the matchup is Amii favored, the main downside is the high micro requirement for execution pressure all the time. The Souls player has the luxury of scaling, he can play defensively fishing for a good Nasty, Aura etc. in order to scale up to T3. At this stage Amii ends up losing so you need to be proactive and put your units into much more dangerous territory. But if you practice this matchup enough and constantly force these beneficial T2 unit trades, you can toss any Lost Souls player around like a puppet.
Skill matchups
(2) Amii vs Pure Shadow (↑) 
Pure Shadow is easier to play against nowadays. As Tranquility allows you to kite Harvesters into infinity you don’t really sit on an early timer to get something done. Shadowmage might deflect your early attacks effectively, but as long as you play on an open field and use your cc well, you should be fine. Shadow Phoenix provides a great AoE damage tool against low pure Shadow units and Ensnaring Roots can counter Netherwarp dodge attempts. Amii Phantom is very strong in this matchup too as she leverages tempo lead very well. Against Harvester you need to play chain cc. Do not play Aura of Corruption carelessly as buffs or Skeleton Summons might counter this. From a leading position an Amii Phantom spam is able to stop a Shadowmagespam since you can use an oink to set up an engagement. With their melee mode they can disable ranged attacks, which allows them to win a duel against both Shadowmage or a squad of Darkelf Assassins. Nightcrawlers are a big threat, but for that you can switch some of your units into ranged mode and kite well due to the slow effect. Amii Paladins can be useful to trade into M oriented compositions as well, while also granting the setup for a strong nasty surprise. But at some point you need to make your move as T3 is difficult to play. Voidstorm/Aura of Corruption/Netherwarp are way too good at shutting down any aggression Shadow Nature has to offer in the late game.
(3) Amii vs Fire Frost (-) 
Fire Frost is another faction you need to beat down in the early game. Fortunately Amii has the tools to do so, but you need to make sure you don’t mess up. One massive Freeze or Lavafield might shut down early aggression which is something you want to avoid. Fire Frost is rather weak against S units. Therefore, you want to rely on Darkelf Assassins and Amii Paladins to get ahead. Icefang Raptor always needs to be respected and Amii Phantom can help kiting the unit. Amii has a pretty clear advantage in the early T2 stage. Nightguard is still an option in this matchup to deal with expensive shielded units despite the nerfs. Fire Frost usually needs a lot of time and resources to set up their unit mix, which grants your Nightguard enough safety. If the game goes to a higher void level you need to solidify a strong power lead as Lavafield can be used more frequently and you do not have the tools to match that outside of micro intensive split attacks. Your units don't have a very large hp pool which makes them vulnerable. Fortunately you can still close out games by reaching T3 as Cultist Master + CC is absurdly strong when ahead, but you should never underestimate the potential scaling options of a frost splash deck.
(4) Amii vs Pure Frost (↓)
Pure Frost used to be a very easy matchup for Amii considering Nightguard + cc used to shut down any attempt of pure Frost staying in this game. But as Nightguard got a tremendous nerf and Mountain Rowdy ends up being extremely good against ground unit stacking the matchup dynamic changed. Tranquility is a worthy replacement and the new card can help you with low energy skirmishing, but Frost will try to stall out the early T2. With the ability to scale by defending around their own base, this sets up Frost to win in this matchup. You need to break this set up, because even though you can prevent War Eagle pushes with Aura of Corruption, Frost's late T2 scaling is clearly superior. You need to make use of your cc tools, stack Darkelf Assassins and build up leads through high pace gameplay. Use Amii Paladins to circumvent Area Ice Shield with their reflection ability if necessary. A small trick that can turn the tides in this matchup is the green Dryad. Her passive negates the unholy trance downside from Darkelf Assassins and allows them to attack for 20 seconds. On top of that the aura can block poison/DoT effects, which is extremely powerful against Mountain Rowdy and might surprise even a very experienced opponent. If you play high paced in T2, you will most likely stay ahead on the power curve and even though your scaling might be inferior, T3 can be a very powerful weapon to close out leads as Ashbone + cc and Cultist Master split attacks can be overwhelming, even against a powerful Frost defense. 
(5) Amii vs Stonekin (-)
Against a player, who it not familiar with this matchup, you can probably just win this matchup by disabling some of the expensive stonekin ranged units like Stonetempest or Aggressor with Amii Phantom. She can disable half of the units and match Stormsinger equally in ranged battles. Supported with Dark Elf Assassins and crowd control you often get to overwhelm your opponent and snowball out of control. Make sure to split your Darkelfs against Hurricane (Triangle Formation) and chase down any ranged unit with one Amii Phantom. Throwing in Burrowers or Frenzied Nightcrawlers to increase pressure onto buildings is a valid strategy, but make sure to get rid of Stone Shards quickly. Against well clusters Phoenix can help to overload building protects, especially if you manage to secure a revival. T3 can be used to finish off persistent opponents as split Cultist Master or any supported XL unit can overload Stonekin T2 defense. But be careful with focussing too much on T3, because Stonekin might also play for that dependent on slot distribution. A 4 card stonekin T3 will beat your setup most likely.
(6) Amii vs Pure Nature (↓)
With pure Nature’s additional tools to punish early aggression and functional counterplay against Nightguard through Parasite, Amii is at a slight disadvantage in this particular matchup now. That said, your early trades are still powerful and especially with tranquility you can shut down the high cost trading units by surprise. The spell is very versatile and can be useful against nature across the entire game. As your trading tools are heavily outmatched by Deep One + gifted catch at higher energy levels, you need to get ahead. Burrowers can be great tools to apply pressure and outmaneuver the nature defense and leverage leads, but one misstep and a Creeping Paralysis might put an end to your push. In T3 your best chance is winning through a buffed XL unit as Cultist Master usually ends up being unable to overload the nature cc sources.
Difficult matchups:
(7) Amii vs Bandits (↑)
With the introduction of Mine Field it became difficult to utilize the Darkelf Assassin spam in order to break through the enemy's base. With Bandit Stalker being a strong counter to both Nightcrawler and Burrower this matchup get really tough. Fortunately it is not as oppressive as before, because both of these troublesome cards received nerfs. Amii Paladins can be an interesting choice as they trade well into Bandit Stalkers and even reflect Bandit Minefield damage with their ability. They might grant your Darkelf Asssassins a lot more breathing room to trade well as Amii will clearly come out on top whenever Minefield is on cooldown. Always try to split accordingly and make use of your cc advantage in order to build leads by winning trades over and over. If you outmaneuver a Bandits player once this quickly results in a destroyed powerwell as the faction neither has crowd control nor building protects. You need to avoid high void level games at all cost as Bandits is another faction that can make good use of Lavafield to outscale you. Determine the pace of the game by trading a lot. As Bandits usually tends to stack a lot of units around a Rallying Banner, it might be a great opportunity to set up a powerful phoenix + cc combo to relieve a lot of pressure. 
(8) Shadow Nature vs Twilight (↓)
Twilight does have a certain advantage in this matchup as the efficiency of Skyfire Drake & Twilight Crawlers increases tremendously due to the strong synergy with nature support spells.This strictly limits the trading advantages you have. Your best way of applying pressure is to play on a low power level. Most Twilight units are expensive and the faction is reliant on melee units. This makes Nightcrawler and Darkelf Assassins really strong in skirmishes with very limited power. In order to achieve this you want to play hyper-aggressively right from the start. Constantly look for trades, punish extra well attempts, offer base trades and don’t wait too long before taking T2. This is your best shot at winning this particular matchup, but if you don't get a substantial advantage before Lavafield spamming is an option, you will most likely lose. Burrower + Skyfire attacks are really hard to defend at some point and once multiple Vilebloods enter the field, the lack of an L counter will be noticeable. Therefore, Twilight has an easier time playing this matchup once there is a reasonable amount of power available. On T3 things will turn into your favor again as you can delay and remove Nightshade Plants fairly consistently, but you won’t reach that stage so easily when playing this matchup.
(9) Shadow Nature vs Pure Fire (↑)
This matchup used to be one of the most one sided and brutal ones in the entire game. Pure Fire remains as the most difficult matchup, but it is less oppressive than before. Amii Paladins can be a really useful tool since it’s the only unit that does not get totally outmatched by Enforcer. They are a much more suitable M counter, that matches the raw trading power and dps pure Fire has to offer. With a well timed ability a Wildfire can be even utilized to burn down the Fire player instead. But Amii Paladins are prone to kiting especially since their powerful ability does have a long cooldown. If you lose tempo at any given point, pure Fire can always use this to immediately deal damage to your economy by taking out 1 or even 2 power wells with Firedancers. Without access to air units or a high damage nasty surprise it gets rather tough to deal with the Rallying Banner siege set ups. All of your other units are very susceptible to Enforcer + Wildfire combos, your cc is weaker against the ability to resummon undazed units at any time. Wildfire might also prevent powerwells from getting repaired. With the strong aoe damage tools to block almost any counter attack, it gets really difficult to stay relevant at higher energy levels.  If you manage to survive and reach T3 though, Brannoc + Heal + Lifeweaving can outmatch a Juggernaut in a duel. As the new Amii spell Tranquility can disable a Juggernaut more effectively, the fire player needs to decide whether he wants to get rid of the effect or removes the Life Weaving from your XL unit. Either way you will come out on top.
 
[ FIRE NATURE / TWILIGHT ]


1. Deck description
Fire Nature is probably known as one of the most solid decks, because it has pretty much tools for everything. You have a solid counter for all unit types and sizes, instant damage spells to remove spam based attacks, crowd control to ensure good trades, strong siege units to launch attacks and control at both ground and air department. The big variety within its T2 is Fire Natures biggest strength and makes it one of the most well rounded decks overall. That said, Fire Nature might struggle at other Tech levels due to slot issues. In order to play towards its T2 strengths most players prefer cutting slots in T1 or T3 which might hurt the deck.

Alternative deck

2. Matchup discussion
Favorable matchups:
(1) Twilight vs Pure Shadow (-)
You come out on top in the various unit trading patterns. Twilight Minions, Crawlers and Skyfire Drake combined with the damage and crowd control spells tend to win all kinds of skirmishes on open ground. Pure Shadow tends to struggle against that, especially in the mid T2 stage, because all of its low cost units are vulnerable to Lavafield, especially Shadowmage. You need to be aware of flanking units to prevent a nasty surprise against your Skyfire Drake. Your defense against Harvester is also pretty nice due to the highly efficient Root & Disenchant combo. Just leave some Skyfiredrakes and a Gladiatrix behind that and they will take the Harvester down before he reaches your power well/orb. To stay relevant during mid and late T2 you can add Vileblood into your deck to increase the amount of pressure you can apply to the power wells. While this matchup is listed as one of the easy ones, keep in mind that at a really high level of play the matchup starts turning around, because Netherwarp really has an unparalleled amount of playmaking potential.
(2) Twilight vs Pure Nature (↑)
Your early T2 is superior due to the lack of an M/M counter in the pure Nature deck. This is something you can use to dictate the pace of the game right from the start with Burrower pressure. All you need to take care off are Energy Parasites. Defending them during the early game is your top priority, because it probably is the only way you might fall behind outside of losing in T1. Air Control usually pays off, because Skyfire Drake trades well into most units, but be careful with the newly buffed Parasite spell. With the use of crowd control you can easily prevent Parasite Swarms from controlling your units. With Burrowers and Skyfire Drake you can set up high tempo attacks, avoid high value cc spells and easily take down power wells whenever you have a little bit of tempo. Slaver is great tool against melee L-units, which deflects any attempts of Deep One pressure until mid T2. As long as you defend Energy Parasites and don't play too slow in matchup, you should be set up to win.  
(3) Twilight vs Amii (↑)
In this matchup your defensive capabilities are straight up better, which leaves you in a very comfortable position. You have good ways to counter Nightcrawlers, Dark Elf Assassins & Burrowers around your own base and in case your opponent over commits at some point you can launch insanely powerful counterattacks, that are way harder to defend in return. Fire Nature is just a little bit more well rounded in T2 and can attack Amiis weakness of being built around small and medium ground units exclusively, which increases the efficiency of Lava Field over time. Amii Paladins need to be respected here and might be a setup for some strong damage combos, but apart from that you can keep them in check with Hurricane. Vileblood is an extremely effective tool on higher power levels, because besides Tranquility there is nothing that can keep melee L units in check. T3 is all about tempo as both set ups are fast paced, but not that strong in defense. Nightshade Plant can always turn games by surprise if it’s used in a creative way, but it usually is more wisely to look for a late T2 victory.
Skill matchups:
(4) Twilight vs Fire Frost (-)
A very interesting matchup. The early game is about Twilight Minions vs Icefang Raptor. Your support is slightly better, giving you an early advantage in this matchup. To some extent the matchup feels similar to the pure Fire one play style wise. Twilight Minions + Skyfire Drake can be used to trade very efficiently early, but at the later stages of the game you might start to struggle due to the value of Frost Sorceress in multi-unit compositions. Shielded Skyfire Drakes are hard to remove and Twilight Curse might be a consideration to surprise the enemy by disrupting his unit composition. The shielded drake usually guards more vulnerable units like the Frost Sorceress or Warlock and an unexpected removal might expose the remaining army. Either way you want to keep up the pressure and try to attack the enemies units constantly before the Frost Sorceress ends up generating too much value. Nightshade Plant can be an excellent game finisher, but on the long run Fire Frost will come out on top in high energy late game battles.
(5) Twilight vs Pure Frost (↑)
Twilight Crawlers make a major difference in this matchup. On large maps they outmaneuver War Eagles due to mobility and they easily contest White Rangers to create more space for your Skyfire Drakes. As pure Frost plays a very slow game, Breeding Grounds has to be mentioned in this particular matchup. The card is overpowered anyways and I usually don’t want to promote such things, but the mechanic is so good against low mobility scaling T2s. Otherwise pure Frost will be able to secure air control in late T2 and establish a strong set up.You want to utilize your crowd control advantage at the early T2 stage to gather a better position on the map and ideally a certain energy lead. If your opponent is too greedy and goes aggressive too early, you can outtrade with Skyfire + Minions/Crawlers + Oink. If Twilight Minions get matched by White Rangers or Ice Fang Raptor consider transforming them into a vileblood to outmatch the counter system and also put a powerful damage buff on your unit. If you keep up a high pace, pure Frost will be unable to stabilize. Otherwise Skyelf-Templar and White Rangers get to contest Air Control at some point and with War Eagles added, counteraggression starts to be a possibility. T3 is something you want to use to close out games, but shouldn’t be considered without any lead. Nightshade Plant is literally built to close out games quickly, because the Transformation spawn will allow you to play nasty mind games whenever you have a tempo lead. But if this early aggression can be stopped, Coldsnap, Lightblade and Building Protects might be problematic. Thunderstorm can be extremely good in this matchup as Frost often stacks up big armies. Especially a large T2 push against a seemingly greedy T3 can be shut down by a Thunderstorm potentially turning the tides in this matchup. 
(6) Twilight vs Pure Fire (-)
Twilight shines during the early T2 stage with Twilight Minions + Sykfiredrake, while Pure Fire will outscale in late T2, where Scythefiends + Ravage + Wildfire take over. Since Pure Fire scales with high void power you should actually try to play your T1 accordingly to avoid this. Playing a short, but aggressive T1 is highly beneficial. Try to get a small advantage, but then don't hesitate and make your fast transition into T2, ideally on 3-4 wells. Also look out for a timing where your enemy binds too much energy into Thugs, because this unit scales poorly into T2 in particular. With a small tempo lead in T1 you can consistently snowball and finish the game. If you still struggle in this matchup consider the addition of Vileblood in your deck, because pure Fire struggles against L units, especially the ones with high dps against buildings. Burning spears need to be respected and either need to be focussed or cc’d. Twilight Brute can be a strong addition as their trading pattern against Scythe Fiends is very strong which reduces the amount of counter pressure on the long run. Avoid T3 unless you are far ahead, Juggernaut can be scary.
(7) Twilight vs Lost Souls (-)
I think this is one of the most intense matchups in the game. You have the upper hand in later stages of T2 due to the efficiency of Burrower + Skyfire Drakes during attacks, but once the game reaches T3 Shadow Frost can turn the tides and straight up outscale you with its Timeless One T3 based set up. This really puts a very high emphasis on the early stage of the game, because a small lead can determine whether the Shadow Frost player is able to hit T3 safely or not. Utilizing your crowd control to win open field trades is very important. When attacking, always consider positioning your units in a way so Coldsnap or Nasty Surprise don’t hit your entire army. Once you reach the high void T2 stage, lots of counter unit setups can be cleared with double Lava Field, because Shadow Frost doesn’t have access to air units. This can be a very efficient way to convert your high power income into pressure at later stages of the game. Shadow Frost probably does have the easier win condition, but once your micro is on point and you get to generate early tempo leads consistently you will be able to produce very good results in this particular matchup. 
(8) Twilight vs Bandits (↓)
After Bandits received changes, this particular matchup was not rated correctly. As your T2 is built around melee units you need to play around Bandit Minefields cooldowns to get something done. Especially before the Bandits nerfs this was extremely opressive combined with Bandit Stalker shutting down beast units entirely. You either had to go for split attacks or try to bait the minefield and launch a strong attack immediately afterwards while facing strong counter units. Bandit Stalker are weaker than before, but still do shut down both Twilight Crawlers and Burrowers effectively and without tempo you can't really use them well during attacks. With Darkelf Assassins being a constant threat to any of your units, you rely on good crowd control usage in order to protect your weaker trading units from running into their counters. Twilight Curse can be useful to shut down Windhunters by surprise to regain air control. It’s most effective right after the enemy buffed the Dragon as this buff would be negated through the forced Transformation. At T3 Mutating Maniac is amazing and the sole reason this matchup is listed in the even category. The unit is amazing against Bandits, because it hard counters Bandits Lancers. The 1vs1 is a stat efficient trade and once multiple ones get used, poison cloud + root straight up annihilates them. With a spammable XL counter for normal trading this directly lowers the impact Soulhunter has, granting a clear win condition. 
Difficult matchups:
(9) Twilight vs Stonekin (-)
Stonekin can be extremely uncomfortable to play against as there is little to no room to attack it. Stormsinger + Spirithunter + nature cc is such a brutal combo, that easily wins trades in almost any situation. Stonekin has very powerful tools to convert early leads into victory from constant pressure to building up armies around a Breeding Grounds for infinite value. Crystal Fiends are also quite scary and always need to be removed by Skyfire Drake + Oink/Eruption. Otherwise it will just generate too much free value by applying healing auras over and over. With Burrowers around the corner your power wells are always in danger whenever you lose a trade. To strike back you usually rely on a mistake by your opponent. Fortunately your snowball tools are fairly strong whenever that happens. A well executed Burrower spam usually is your best option and really benefits from a power lead. Stonekin has no strong burst tools and investing power into building protects and cc will leave them with really low dps options, allowing you to keep up the pressure for a very long time. Another way of attacking with a power lead would be the Vileblood + Ravage set up on low energy level, because you should be able to make sure Aggressor can’t be played (or even try to bait the aggressor and cheese it with Mauler). You will get opportunities to gain full control of this matchup, but if your enemy really knows what he’s doing, the stonekin matchup is completely doomed in T2.  
 
[ PURE SHADOW ]


1. Deck description
Pure Shadow is one of the more unique decks, because it has its own powerful faction carriers with Shadowmage & Harvester in T2. This gives pure Shadow big powerspikes, that can then be utilized to create leads across many situations. You lack hard-cc in this deck, but you have the highest dps/power unit & the only XL unit in the entire T2 as a trade off. While easy to learn, Pure Shadow scales extremely well with execution level and mastering it at the highest level can be extremely challenging. Shadow is a deck with a lot of playmaking potential, as most of your spells and abilities can be combined with Nether Warp in some way. One of the main weaknesses is the T2 charge limitation, since Shadow Mage got only 12 of them. In T3 you have multiple powerful options, which depend on the element of your T3 orb. Staying pure shadow gives you access to Voidstorm, a global removal tool. Satanael has also been buffed to a very powerful state for more offensive set ups. However, splashing towards Frost in T3 can set up things like Lost Grigori taunt + Nether Warp combos, which can be deadly as well.

2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups
(1) Pure Shadow vs Pure Fire (↑)
Not too much changed about the matchup dynamic, but we rated this into the easier range considering it is easier to execute from the pure Shadow side. As already mentioned in the Pure Fire section, this matchup is all about timings. As long as you play for a Harvester spike attack there is not a lot of counterplay left for your opponent even with the addition of Burning Spears. The can not be ignored easily, but with some support spells like Nether Warp and Life Weaving is will be really difficult for your opponent to remove him without losing at least one power well. In order to reach this particular power spike Shadow Mages and Darkelf Assassins will be able to buy time in the early T2. Let your opponent come to you and invest the extra energy for a Rallying Banner, then try to warp mispositioned units into your base. This makes it much easier to keep a good unit split and avoid getting targeted by a strong lava field. Another option to take out pressure is an extended trade around the Rallying Banner finished by a well timed Corpse Explosion. If you get ahead you do not want to well up, but wait for your Harvester. Pure Shadow might be winning at T3, but in late T2 you do not stand a chance against Enforcers supported with Lavafield and Wildfire. You want to get ahead substantially before this stage hits. Using leads to set up a Harvester attack is the best way to achieve that. If that isn’t enough to win the game, try to stabilize and play for the next Harvester. If you run out on Harvester charges before the game is over (unlikely), you can still fall back to a very strong T3 as Voidstorm harcounters Juggernaut & even Netherwarp could straight up cancel a Stampede. While this matchup is still winnable on both ends, it is now listed as an easy matchup for pure Shadow as a straightforward Harvester attack is much more forgiving and easier to execute.
Skill matchups
(2) Pure Shadow vs Fire Frost (-)
Fire Frost shouldn't be the biggest threat to you. Shield Drakes and Icefang Raptors are not too hard to play against and as long as you respect the potential of a well placed Lavafield, Fire Frost shouldn't really give you too much trouble. Harvester can be really effective, but this depends on deck building and requires your opponent to play without Lightblade. However, most of the time you will face combinations around Stormsinger, Gladiatrix & Skyfire Drake and with any tempo lead your Harvester won't be stopped anyways. Coldsnap can be countered as it has a cast animation, which is long enough time to dodge it with a Nether Warp. This can be great in trades or simply get a Harvester in a position to destroy powerwells and orbs with the enemys cc being put on cooldown. But in many games you will end up in a T3 position, where you can utilize Cultist Master for pressure and combine the dead Nightcrawlers with either Shadow Insect for strong follow up trades or Corpse Explosion to blow up the economy buildings, even against buildings protects. Always try to attack well clusters and make good use of you high AoE burst. Voidstorm can negate any counter pressure, which lowers the risk of high energy investments during your attacks even when they don't succeed immediately. 
(3) Pure Shadow vs Bandits (-)
Pure Shadow has clear counterplay to Bandit Minefield, which immediately reduces the pressure in this particular matchup. Whenever the spell is played you just warp away from any danger. As a result it is important to not waste Netherwarp and use this spell reactively. Most of the time you will be trade into a mix of Bandit Spearmen, Darkelf Assassins and Windhunters. Removing the air units from Bandits is a tough task and you always want to look for opportunities to either attack them with motivated Shadow mages, Nightcrawler + Nasty surprise or straight up remove them with Aura of Corruption whenever they get double or even triple buffed. Knight of Chaos (b) can always buy time against heavy Rallying Banner attacks and Corpse Explosion or Shadow Phoenix can annihilate stacked ground units effectively after any extended combat. If you defend successfully, power level will rise and Harvester or T3 become an option. While it can be tought to get something done with Harvester from an even position, because Windhunter ability and Bandit Minefield are fairly powerful tools to keep him away from wells, the card is excellent whenever you have some tempo. Bandits neither has hard cc nor can protect its buildings in any way, which is ideal for your Harvester. T3 is another reliable win condition for you as Bandit Lancers are not that impressive against Cultist Masters and Voidstorm is a hard counter for Soulhunter. If you even play something like Satanael, you will be unstoppable at this stage of the game.
(4) Pure Shadow vs Amii (↓)
The release of Tranquility gave Harvester a hard time in this matchup. As the unit can be cc'd permanentely, you need to be a little bit more creative in order to win this matchup. Shadowmage functions decently well as an all round counter, but her usage is limited by her charges. Avoid giving away too much tempo, Amii Phantom spam can be a serious threat. The unit might be more expensive than your ranged ones, but she can heavily outduel them due to the antimagic melee form, which snowballs whenever the amii player gets a significant lead. Split your units against nature cc and play for high energy skirmishes. Once more units get involved into trades, there will be more opportunities for you to make use of Corpse Explosion. More targets to hit and higher corpse counts are highly beneficial here. On the other hand you need to respect Shadow Phoenix + cc combos for the same reason. This matchup will mostly come down to some sort of outplay, may it be strategic or mechanical, as these factions are matched rather equally now. Shadow might have the upper hand at T3 due to more slots and voidstorm, but Amii's cc and healing spells scale well enough into later tech stages and definitely shouldn't be understimated.  
(5) Pure Shadow vs Lost Souls (-)
Lost Souls can be difficult to play against. Darkelf Assassins & Stormsinger with Frostbite support are hard to deal with, even when using Shadowmages. Both factions like to work with higher power levels and as both factions tend to play on a lot of wells for that reason, Harvester will be usable frequently. Sometimes you even get to set up a double Harvester attack, which overloads building protects in seconds. Since you can dodge Coldsnap with Nether Warp there is absolutely no time left for the Souls player to recover unless Lightblade is available. After Nightguard got nerfed this is not the most unlikely and might have made this strategy a little bit more difficult for you. Fortunately Knight of Chaos ability cost reduction tremendously helps against Lost Reaver pressure and allows you to counter any brute force siege attempts, where the Souls player just buffs the unit constantly. You usually want to set up a close base scenario to reduce the impact of your mobility disadvantage and maximize your combat advantage (Shadowmage vs Stormsinger). Try thinking about this during your power well selection, even at T1. Close base scenarios often end up being played out very aggressively, leading to high value Corpse Explosions. Be a little bit more careful with Shadow Phoenix as the card is more foreseeable and Lost Reaver could soak up all the corpses denying the revive ability. T3 is somewhat similar, you want to play around short distances to maximize your Cultist Master efficiency, while the Souls player will try to outrun you with Silverwind Lancers and attack with Tremors if they find a good opportunity. Try to overload the protects with burst damage if you can. If you manage to take down a power well it leaves you in a great spot, because Voidstorm always allows you to reset the tempo. In such high energy level matchups Satanael scales really well and definitely should be considered. 
(6) Pure Shadow vs Pure Nature (↓)
Any pure Nature matchup is about defending Energy Parasites appropriately. Shadow Mage seems to be an excellent counter due to her ability to oneshot the bug, but her low mobility is a concern. A good nature player will just hover from base to base forcing a lot of bound power. This will slow you down in terms of tempo, but keep in mind it’s one of your enemies most powerful win conditions. Preventing Energy Parasite abilities with a high investment is much better than ignoring them. Apart from that your early trades are fine, just keep in mind that heavy unit stacking will be punished by cc + parasite combos. Unit micro and a good unit split are crucial in the matchup. Knight of Chaos (b) is a solid tool against pure Nature as the faction is fairly reliant on melee units when it comes down to dealing damage against structures. He is even more important now after Nightguard received a hefty nerf and lost her position as a Deep One hard counter. Harvester can be strong from ahead, but with Parasite Swarm being fairly good at countering XL units now, you need to look for a good timing rather than playing the unit whenever you get to 300 power. If you want to play it safe you can always try to scale towards T3 and win this matchup there, considering pure Shadow has really powerful options at this stage and nature will not be able to keep up with that most likely.
Difficult matchups
(7) Pure Shadow vs Pure Frost (↓↓)
With Nightguard being less powerful, this matchup got much more difficult to play. You can aim for strong Darkelf Assassins + Netherwarp play to catch opponents off guard, but apart from that Frost has the better trading tools in T2 and a strong defense against Harvester on top of that. Your best win condition would be a strong and aggressive early game with heavy open field trading where you contest as much map control as possible followed by a rather defensive mid T2. Attacking against Eagle/Mountain Rowdy is rather pointless with your unit set up. You try to use a better position on the map in order to endure the mid game. Use Netherwarp to dodge Coldsnap or War Eagle screams and Aura of Corruption to punish strong single area attacks. If you manage to reach T3 your chance will be better as Cultist Master generates early pressure and your late T3 scaling is exceptional with powerful options like Satanael. Another niche way to attack pure Frost in T3 would be the newly buffed Nox Carrier as the unbound Rippers can build up constant pressure which is working nicely against the Amii Ritual design.
(8) Pure Shadow vs Fire Nature (↓)
Skyfire Drake + Twilight Crawlers in combination with cc is difficult to deal with as a pure Shadow player. There is quite a large amount of playmaking you can do around your Nether Warp to make advantageous trades, like warping out of Lavafield, catching high priority units off guard or using the spell on your Harvester to dodge Ensnaring Roots by prediction (if this works you literally win the game off that). Splitting your units against cc & Lavafield is criucial. As long as your Shadowmages are well positioned you can take down the Skyfire Drakes (a motivated Mage oneshots a Skyfire Drake). Knight of Chaos can slow down heavy Vileblood attacks and upon getting a tempo lead you can transition towards very explosive attacks. Corpse Explosion usually grants many opportunities to finish off a damaged power well. That said you play a very risky matchup here as one mistake will allow Fire Nature to start a snowball you can not control anymore. If the match goes to T3 you should be in full control again regardless of your T3 color choice (Shadow or Frost). Lost Grigori + Netherwarp can shut down any attempts of ranged unit kiting (just activate the ability and port the units towards your Grigori), Nightshade Plant can be stopped by Aura + Netherwarp or Voidstorm. This matchup is quite challenging for you to play, but you've still got a very good chance to win it as long as your micro is on point.
(9) Pure Shadow vs Stonekin (↓)
The difficulty in this matchup is pretty much card choice depended. Stone Tempest & especially Razorshard can give your Shadowmages trouble and make this matchup close to unplayable. The high mobility, extra range & M-knockback of Razorshards are a real threat for your slow Shadowmages, especially in the later stages of T2. Teleport and knockback immunity also grant even more power against Netherwarp. It feels like the card was built to counter your deck. Numbers quickly add up and you need to be really good at trading to win this matchup, considering Stonekin has much more breathing room in T1 compared to the past. Removing big Stonekin attacks can be pretty annoying too, because Aura of corruption is a double edged swort in this matchup. The Stonekin player might just use the Aura for himself as protection to build up offensive Cannon towers (Corpse Explosion can be useful as a counter measure). Forcing a close well scenario in the early stages of T2 should be your best move because it makes Shadowmages much more efficient, similar to the Lost Souls matchup. It is easier to split them during an attack and you can always retreat with low hp units to heal them up quickly. On top of this you can utilize Darkelf Assassins and Nightcrawlers with their active damage abilities in a much more aggressive manner, considering you can react quicker once CC sources are on cooldown since you don't have to deal with the summoning sickness in these scenarios. Stonekin does not have strong burst tools, making the faction a little bit more vulnerable to constant pressure than others. Since Lightblade (purple) is a more and more established tool in Stonekin due to the increased popularity of pure Shadow, Harvester is not a good choice in this matchup and won't pay off, unless you are already ahead and look to close out the game. Most of the time you want to slow down the tempo in this matchup and look for an economy game leading to a T3 win, since Voidstorm can be a hard counter for T2 only decks (Stonekin often cuts T3 to play around more powerful T2 set ups) and even against a large T3 your tools are good enough to compete. 
 
 
[ FIRE SHADOW / BANDITS ]


1. Deck description
Bandits is one of our top decks right now and very popular around high silver/low gold elo. The T2 is explosive with powerful rallying banner attacks and a wide arsenal of single buffs and damage spells to strenghten your attacks. On top of that the faction has an appropriate counter tool to almost any unit in the game, making it very effective in unsupported skirmishes. Major downsides are the lack of cc and building protection spells, which will make you vulnerable whenever you are behind in tempo and Minefield is cooldown. Due to its strong set of previously released core cards, there is more room for different deckbuilding options. This grants a lot of freedom to individualize the deck based on your personal playstyle.

Alternative deck

2. Matchup discussion
Favorable matchups:
(1) Bandits vs Fire Frost (-)
With Windhunter you have superior air control in this matchup even when facing shielded Skyfire Drakes. Your T2 trades very well into anything besides Stormsinger and Lavafield, which probably will be your biggest threat. Minefield can zone the Stormsingers and a Bandit Sniper in the backline can always generate strong value by sniping them with the ability. Once you get a lead you should be able to snowball it quickly by setting up a Rallying banner and spam Darkelf Assassins with instant ability activation. Overall a really good matchup for you due to the strong tools for converting tempo leads and since your T3 should perform quite well too it will be easy to break through defensive setups.
(2) Bandits vs Pure Frost (-)
A Bandits favored matchup, because Windhunter contests air control, limiting the impact of War Eagles. Pure Frost might have strong defensive capabilities with Templar, Stormsinger and White Rangers, but can’t really break out from its defensive formation during any stage of T2. Whenever you get a good trade you can use this position to snowball with air superiority and extra pressure from Minefield for zoning. Adding Bandit Spearmen to the unit mix can be a good choice as they attack Stormsingers and are rather durable against any War Eagle attempt. You want to accelerate the game as much as you can. Once you have enough energy to set up a strong attack, put down a Rallying Banner, chase down the War Eagles with Windhunters and walk up to White Ranges with Darkelf Assassins making sure your opponent has no room to recover anymore. You can keep up pressure forever and even if the Frostplayer manages to survive to T3 the matchup dynamic does not change here. Pure Frost usually lacks a good M counter here, which is ideal for Bandit Lancer split attacks. The ability can cancel Timeless one Freeze and Soulhunter can seal the deal, but keep in mind he requires Disenchant support to deal with the Freeze + Lightblade cc chain. 
(3) Bandits vs Amii (↓)
As Amii is more reliant on small units than most factions, Bandit Minefield is absolutely cruicial to control this matchup. The cooldown nerfs had an impact as a result. Bandit Stalker shuts down Nightcrawler/Burrower pressure effectively, making this matchup fairly comfortable to play. Lavafield alone grants a scaling advantage against Amii. Getting outmicrod during low energy trades is your biggest threat, because with strong unit split and cheap cc Amii tend to win these. The Amii Paladins can be dangerous if you don't respect their active ability, the unit needs to be kited. They can reflect minefield damage and also counter your Bandit Stalkers when combined with Amii Phantoms. Windhunter can be a great addition to your unit mix even though Amii does not have any L units. The faction is fairly weak at contesting air on open field, giving you much more options to play with in trades. Diversifying your unit compositions makes it harder to counter in most situations and Bandits has a plethora of powerful units to do so. A good strategic approach in this matchup is a rather passive and prolonged early game (T1) with many power wells. Great energy income will be highly beneficial for your faction. Once you get to spam your spells, it will get incredibly difficult for Amii to keep up through unit micro. Due to the nature of this matchup it will rarely go to T3, which should be slightly in favor of Amii due to cc scaling and a fairly similar pool of meta units.  
Skill matchups:
(4) Bandits vs Twilight (↑)
Due to the previous lack of playdata the matchup wasn’t very well rated on our previous list. We had predicted this matchup to be rather even, but Bandits used to be a strong counter to Twilight the last time we updated the guide. A T2 faction reliant on expensive melee units got shut down by the area control Bandit Minefield established. With a double beast target (burrower + scythe fiends) for the Bandit Stalker it was quite an oppressive combo. With Minefield and Bandit Stalker receiving small sized nerfs and Twilight Minions +Twilight Crawlers being cheaper options than old Ghostspears + Scythe Fiends, the matchup is less oppressive than before. You can quickly break the map wide open by attacking multiple locations at once to reduce the impact of cc. Darkelf Assassins can deal fairly well with Twilight Minions. With Twilight Transformations being stronger now, Twilight Brute might also show up, which is a strong response to Bandit Stalker. Windhunter should beat Skyfire Drake and limit the pressure from any Vileblood attempt. Gladiatrix doesn’t really contest the air matchup as she loses horribly against Bandit Sniper. Be careful with double buffing Windhunters as Twilight Curse counters that otherwise. Avoid T3 at all cost, because Mutating Maniac + cc can turn this matchup on its head. Try to win this matchup at T2 by setting up powerful Rallying Banner attacks whenever you get ahead and only use T3 as a game finisher from ahead.  
(5) Bandits vs pure Fire (-)
With Windhunter you can straight up reduce the zoning presence of Skyfire Drakes. As a result you will face a very ground unit oriented unit composition most of the time, which is an ideal set up for your AoE damage spells like Lavafield or Minefield. With Bandit Spearmen as a main trading unit you have a very strong tool to match the Enforcer and with Windhunter in the mix you also keep yourself safe from getting burned down by a really efficient Wildfire. The melee bonus damage is also useful against Burning Spears, that can not be ignored due to their ramp up damage. You can add Darkelf Assassin to counter them properly. Making good use of Ravage and Live Weaving to support your units against the high dps from Fire cards is crucial. You can keep up the pressure in T2, but this is a necessity in order to win. Even though you have the upper hand in T2, your units are straight up outmatched against Juggernaut. The XL counter is a threat for Soulhunter, Bandit Lancers get knocked around and you lack tools to protect you from Stampede. 
(6) Bandits vs pure Nature (↓↓)
This matchup used to be one of the most brutal ones last patch. With recent changes to Deep One you are much more reliant on playing around Windhunters to gain control over the map. Playing around nature's strong poison and DoT effects here is crucial. Bandit Minefield is good against Ghostspears and Spirit Hunters, but fairly weak against Deep One. He can keep distance and take one of your units with him negating the zoning effect and limiting usage during siege. Bandit Stalker doesn’t counter Deep One anymore and Rallying Banner attacks are weak against Creeping Paralysis. In order to win the matchup you need to fall back to a much more dynamic approach by winning open field trades with a good unit split and utilizing your wide pool of units with strong combat power. Whenever you get ahead you can still make a strong transition towards a powerful Rallying Banner siege attempt. You can get a better position on the map most of the time, which can ultimately give you small advantages for trading. But always track the opposing Energy Parasites as they easily negate your tempo if you don't pay close attention to them. Zone them as effectively as possible and accumulate small advantages rather than brute forcing too early. Nature's defensive capabilities should not be underrestimated and if you lose a Windhunter to a Parasite Swarm, you will be in trouble. Late T2 is in your favor, but avoiding T3 should be a wise choice. Pure Nature could make use of Mutating Maniac, which is a big threat to your entire T3 (see Twilight matchup). Cultist Master is also less of an option against pure Nature with how many crowd control tools are available within the faction. 
(7) Bandits vs pure Shadow (-)
Trading into pure Shadow can be tough, Minefield can help to force the use of Nether Warp and put pure Shadow’s most powerful spell on cooldown. Bandit Minefield can also be used as a tool to defend your power wells against the Harvester attempt, so the spell has great value here to buy time. Your trading units are solid and Lavafield is another precious AoE spell that pure Shadow often struggles against. Their smaller units usually lack high hp or reliable sustain options. Attacking against well splitted Shadow Mages can be difficult and pure Shadow has many ways to force them into good trading positions across the game, so this probably ends up being one of the more difficult matchups. Minefield nerfs might hurt your Harvester defense, but you can still fall back to Aura of Corruption for zoning in this matchup as buffs can just be removed. T3 will be very dangerous, because Voidstorm easily deals with Soulhunter and Cultistmaster gives Bandit Lancer a hard time. Pure Shadow can easily opt into T3s with 5 or even more cards, which will be hard to match with 2-3 T3 cards at best.
(8) Bandits vs Lost Souls (↓)
You do have a lot of tools to neutralize Lost Souls in T2. Bandit Sniper can deal with Stormsinger heavy compositions, Bandit Stalker out-trades Nightcrawler and the Minefield performs well against heavy Darkelf Assassin compositions. Attacking souls in T2 can be tough on the other hand even though Bandits are really good at it in most matchups. Rallying Banner attacks often get deflected by a strong Nasty surprise and without a strong siege unit you might be unable to punish a Souls player taking more and more power wells throught the game. To break through the Souls defense the early T3 stage has a high priority. Bandit Lancer will be a key factor to win this matchup, because even though Shadow Frost has an amazing T3, the faction lacks a proper M counter. Therefore you can put up insane amounts of pressure in T3 by spamming them at multiple locations. Use their ability to block Timeless One from activating the ability. Rallying Banner attacks can also be supported with Cultist Master spam to overload Timeless One defenses. Don't let the void level rise that much, you really need to put up the pressure to win. Soulhunter can help to finish games, but ideally requires good setup since Shield Building can delay attacks forever. If Grigori tries to disintegrate your Soulhunter, cancel the channel with your Bandit Lancers. Never let the Souls player stabilize, because he will win an extended fight in T3 due to charges and limited answers to Tremor attacks.
Difficult matchups:
(9) Bandits vs Stonekin (-)
In T2 you will have problems to stand a chance against a good Stonekin player. Stormsinger stacking + Heal/CC can be really difficult to trade into and with its high tempo stonekin has some really brutal options to snowball from winning initial trades. Utilizing your Bandit Sniper well will be a key factor to survive this matchup and avoid being overwhelmed by a Stormsinger spam. Fortunately proper Stormsinger spam execution is not that easy when playing Stonekin and any other unit compositions in Stonekin end up being significantly weaker. This makes this matchup a little bit more playable outside of upper echelons of play. Minefield shuts down small and immobile units fairly well. Once you get ahead you can set up pressure by Rallying attacks, because Stonekin lacks AoE burst damage options to counter heavy single area attacks. The knockback and cc tools still need to be respected here and might shut everything down. As long as you split a little bit against crowd control you can keep up the pressure. Your scaling with high energy level is good and winning through T3 can work as well, but Lancers can be stopped by extended T2 + Stormsinger spam, so you rely on fully buffed Soulhunters to break through. This works against T2 heavy decks, but can also backfire when facing Stone Warrior + Timeless One T3. Always keep an eye on the amount of different cards your opponent uses during the game to assess whether you play against T3 scaling or full T2 decks. The effectiveness of some units rises drastically dependent on card choice (i.e. Windhunter priority increases dramatically if Aggressor isn't used). 
 
[ FIRE FROST ]


1. Deck description
Fire Frost despite having no own faction cards so far is a very unique deck, that lives around its interesting synergy between Frost Sorceress and Skyfire Drake. It has received some buffs towards its current playstyle, which can be really rewarding once you get to play around the bigger shield setups, but with additional improvements to other deck still seems to be on the weaker end as it lacks a little bit of siege potential in T2. Warlock purple received a change to its buff mechanic and now increases damage against Frozen targets, which ends up being a good scaling tool, which synergizes well up to the T3 stage, where Timeless One might take over. Overall Fire Frost is a very unique deck and also has some specific matchups, where it performs exceptionally well making it worth to play.

Alternative deck

2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Fire Frost vs pure Fire (↓)
A really valuable strength in Fire Frost is its excellent matchup against pure Fire. Shielded Skyfiredrake grants superior air control and you have a really strong mid T2 power spike, whereas pure Fire doesn't have the units to react properly. Stormsinger adds some safety to the matchup, because you can kite Enforcer in the early T2. Stormsinger hit + Frostbite + Eruption also is a good way of bursting Skyfire Drakes. Burning Spears can be hard to remove and Mountaineer lost priority in this matchup as a result, but as long as you win the air battle you are set up to win in T2. It is very important to stay proactive to avoid getting outscaled, because once pure Fire starts turning the pressure onto you it can be rough. You might get forced to trade before your units can receive their shield, so you either lose them to the opposing Skyfire Drake or your Frost Sorceress gets overrun by Enforcers. Losing Skyfire Drakes charges or a T3 (Juggernaut) are turning points in this matchup, so don’t lay back and allow your opponent to play towards his win conditions. A good rule of thumb is to avoid exceeding a well count of 6 as inflated energy income makes it harder to play a methodical and controlled mid game.
Skillmatchups:
(2) Fire Frost vs Amii (↑)
Fire Frost has solid tools to match Amii on higher power levels as Lavafield provides an inherent scaling advantage over small and medium sized ground unit stacking. The most critical part is the early T2 where you can not win open field fights. Amii Paladins can be fearsome opponents and you have to kite their reflect ability at all cost, keep it mind it circumvents any ice shield. Icefang Raptor is a very valuable defensive unit to zone the Shadow Nature army from your powerwells and keep up with Amii Paladins + Darkelf Assassin combos. At a certain unit count you can always look for a moment, where the hostile army is not well positioned, allowing you to catch them with a coldsnap. Warlock can be a strong reinforcement to hold your ground at this point. Amii Phantom can be matched with Stormsinger, but you should only engage combat proactively if you have enough power for Lavafield support. Try to use your Lavafield combined with unit damage to make small burst combos on a target. This removes potential Surge of Light counterplay. If you hit multiple targets and remove at least one of them, Lavafield is almost guaranteed to generate value. At a higher void level you can also add your Frost Sorc + Skyfire Drake combo to apply a lot of pressure. As long as you don’t run into a strong cc + aura combo you have good chances to take down some power wells. In T3 you need to make sure that you keep your distance to the enemy's base. Cultist Master is very powerful on close well scenarios and applies an enormous amount of pressure. Frost Shard can be a niche counter to Cultist Master stacking as Amii loves to play for that particular win condition due to the strong synergy with cc and healing. Removing 2 Cultist Masters with a single Frost Shard can be worth it even though it’s not energy efficient. The same applies for Backlash, but this one requires roughly 500+ void to function properly. If you manage to drag out the game, you are most likely favored as the standard Amii T3 quickly burns out of steam from charge issues. That said Amii T3 can function extremely well on low energy levels, which is why you should avoid very early T3 transitions.
(3) Fire Frost vs Pure Frost (↑)
Pure Frost needs to be respected because of the powerful air control, but with Frost Sorceress you can match this with your shielded Skyfiredrakes most of the time. On the other hand Warlock + Freeze can push off almost any attack pure Frost might throw at you. Try to utilize cliffs during combat if possible to make sure your Skyfire Drake doesn’t get targeted by any type of Gravity Surge (Spell or Stormsinger ability). Defenders or White Rangers can be dangerous too as they help contest air control and you need to target them with Icefang Raptors if possible. If you get ahead Frost Sorc shield supply with 2-3 units (i.e. Skyfire + Stormsinger + Icefang Raptor) can be very powerful. On higher energy levels you want to add more Skyfire Drakes, but keeping up shields on many units is fairly micro demanding. In many cases Frost vs Fire Frost ends up being played on high void leading to T3 on both ends. Timeless One + Silverind Lancers + Coredredge has seen lots of success in this particular matchup mainly due to the strong Warlock synergy creating overwhelming trading advantages long term. But at this rate you might find yourself in trouble due to slot issues dependent on your choices across other gamestages. Finding a well balanced allrounder Fire Frost deck can be tough and you often find yourself in a matchup that would be much better under the right circumstances.  
(4) Fire Frost vs Twilight (↓)
Twilight Minions can give you a hard time in the early game, but with Icefang Raptors or Lyrish Knight you should be able to stabilize more often than not. Fire Nature can play a strong mid game around the newly buffed transformation tools (buffed vileblood+skyfire combos) combined with the cheap nature crowd control spells. Stormsinger will be essential to trade well and keep Burrowers away from your base, but be careful with trading on an open field. Shielded Skyfire Drakes + Stormsinger can be essential to secure air control in the mid game and after winning trades your Shield value will allow you to set up strong counter attacks. Twilight Curse might slow down pushes by transforming Shield Drakes, but with Frost Sorc in the backline you should be able to protect the unbound bug and build up even more pressure with your next push. T3 should be primarily used as a game finisher and help you close games from favorable positions. Tremor spam is your best option here, because Fire Nature has the damage to stop Giant Slayers even from T2 (Skyfire Drake + Root).
(5) Fire Frost vs Pure Shadow (-)
Shield Drakes with Lavafield support are rather decent against pure Shadow, but with severe scaling issues and lacking siege damage it can be rough to apply enough pressure to destroy power wells before you end up getting outscaled by a superior T3. Harvester can be a serious threat to deal with, but as long as you carry either Disenchant, Lyrish Knight or Lightblade in your deck you should be good to go. Also make sure you don't waste your Coldsnap for a Nether Warp dodge. Wait until the Harvester gets close to your powerwell so the Shadow player is forced to warp away from your base. You generate additional time and ideally follow up with another Frostbite to restrict movement further. Skyfire Drake can also be used to counter Harvester, because they are faster and also transition well into counterattack after a successful defense. With Lavafield and Frost Sorceress you can put up some solid support for them to break the enemies defense and turn this matchup. This is fairly essential as in T3 your chances are significantly lower due the high variety of options pure Shadow has. Voidstorm can clear out the map, Satanael + Bloodhealing creates insane high energy scaling, Cultist Master and Shadow Insect can be used for tempo and Corpse Explosion adds a permanent threat of burst to negate the value of building protects. It is not unwinnable on perfect execution, but the amount of threats alone and the potential map reset that voidstorm provides is very threatening. As the void level itself raises as a result, Backlash can be used as a strong counter in this particular matchup to withstand the strong pure Shadow attacks.
Difficult matchups:
(6) Fire Frost vs Lost Souls (-)
Lost Souls usually doesn't feel that hard to play against during T2, but its scaling is vastly superior leading to a very uncomfortable position, where you end up being forced to attack your opponent at some point even without an advantage. With nerfs to Mountaineer you need to rely much more on shield synergies to get ahead despite the Nightguard nerfs. The constant micro load around shielding up units while allocating resources ideally is a very tough task. Stormsinger & Darkelfassassins are really strong in a defensive position, because they trade well against the Skyfire drake. Icefang Raptor can help here to deal with Darkelf Assassins, but even if you get ahead you always need to respect strong damage tools of Nasty surprise and Aura of Corruption. In T3 Souls usually has access to better synergies as a lot of the lower tier cards scale better compared to the Fire cards. Nasty Surprise & Life Weaving are exceptional when combined with high hp Frost units. On top of that, Lost Souls usually offers more room to put additional slots into T3, building up to this powerful late game setup without opening up weaknesses in T2. Warlock can help to counteract to a certain degree, but isn't enough to turn the current matchup dynamic entirely.
(7) Fire Frost vs Bandits (-)
Bandits are very hard to play against, especially in T2 as Windhunter can contest air control even against shielded Skyfire Drakes. Stormsinger + Lavafield is your best setup to keep up trading wise, but you mostly have to find an answer to Bandit Spearmen as they can trade up against Icefang Raptors on an even power level. With no unit that trades up against Bandit Spears it is really dangerous to give up tempo against Bandits at any given point. You can stop Rallying Banner + Darkelf Assassin spam from even power by using Icefang/Lyrish Knight, but if you fall behind the endless spawns and immediate unholy trance activations can be extremely annoying to deal with. You need to play a really slow and controlled mid game and kite units with Frostbite to accumulate small advantages over time. For counterpressure try to play around your mobile units as they can outmaneuver the Bandit Minefield. T3 scaling usually isn't a win condition, because a well executed Bandit Lancer split attack can be overwhelming, but if you manage to stabilize at T3, you might have a reasonable chance to strike back. Frost Shard can be very strong to stop Rallying Banner + Cultist master pushes entirely and Shield Building or Lightblade can buy an enormous amount of time against Soulhunter. Try to play for late T3, because your enemy will most likely run out of charges first.
(8) Fire Frost vs Stonekin (-)
Stonekin is a very tough matchup as Stormsinger supported by Stoneshards and Spirit Hunters are really hard to trade into. The faction has better tools to trade and you main advantages lie around shield Drakes and defensive Warlock + Coldsnap set ups to potentially scale towards T3. But if Stonekin manages to acquire power leads, they will be snowballed by Burrowers, Stoneshard spam or even a Stonetempest. The variety of tools stonekin has in order to generate advantages is really wide and it’s hard to be prepared against each of them. Which stonekin version you end up facing solely depends on the deck choice your opponent made. Therefore, identifying the deck structure during the match is a key factor to determine your win condition, because you either might deal with additional trading and siege tools in T2 or a large T3 built around Timeless One and Stone Warrior. Stonekin won’t be able to provide everything at once. A T2 heavy stonekin deck can be beaten by a passive scaling approach, where you use defender’s advantage to trade better until you can get to T3. If you face a multi-slot T3 you should be better off by playing aggressive during T2 as the potential lack of important cards like an Aggressor i.e. could amplify Shield Drake value. Making the right call here is tough and it still doesn't guarantee success, but once you get to know your opponent you might be able to guess what he wants to do depending on his playstyle.
(9) Fire Frost vs pure Nature (↓) 
Pure Nature was already hard to deal with and now received buffs on top of this. Trading into Ghostspears is extremely difficult as they are more stat efficient than Icefang Raptor, Deep One + Spirit Hunters is a strong combo on its own and with Parasite and Parasite Swarm your air units aren’t safe either. You usually have less siege options compared to other Firesplashes when it comes to taking down power wells early. This is problematic as you will get outscaled rather often. You can deal well with Energy Parasites, because with Stormsinger and Skyfire Drake you do have two counter tools granting a little bit of flexibility, but trading well into Deep Ones at the later stages of T2 is problematic anyways. Your best way of staying in the game is a strong defense against Energy Parasites, a ranged unit heavy composition to avoid high value cc and shield support for your air units whenever you attempt to attack. Try to kite the melee units and focus priority targets like Deep One or Spirit Hunters with Frostbite. If you get pushed back you can always try to look for a strong Coldnsap + Warlock combination that helps to keep up with nature’s scaling for some time. T3 is not your best option either, because Parasite Swarm can take care of your L units (you might consider adding Gravity Surge as an extra tool to prevent this, but deck slot issues arise again) and Mutating Maniac/Fathom Lord are powerful answers to any XL unit based strategy. In order to win this matchup you most likely need to acquire a lead by outmicroing your opponent at some point.
 
 
[ NATURE FROST / STONEKIN ]


1. Deck description
Stonekin probably has been the biggest winner out of all balancing changes, since Frost and Nature T1 are both playable by now. Playstyle wise you have great units and spells to win trades and accumulate small advantages by building up large and powerful armies to the point where you can overwhelm your opponent entirely. It arguably has the most powerful T2 in the game and the combination of crowd control and building protects leaves you with insanely defensive options. You only lack burst damage to quickly break free from large attacks when being down in tempo, but that should be the only true weakness I can think off. Anyone who likes to experiment with deckbuilding will find find a lot of options, because stonekin probably has the most amount of viable cards you can play. Also playstyle wise you can do almost anything from micro based snowbally gameplay to super slow cannon tower stacking decks, that will throw opponents into despair.

Alternative deck

2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Stonekin vs pure Shadow (↑)
With Lightblade (purple) being more and more of a standard pick in Stonekin your matchup against pure Shadow has gotten better and better with every patch. Due to its basic design Razorshard still is an amazing tool to face off against pure Shadow. It is immune against Netherwarp in its ranged stance, counters unit stacking due to the strong AoE, can outrange Shadowmage & Darkelf Assassins and also ends up being immune against knockback. Since Shadowmage is not as mobile as the Stormsinger it can't outrun the Razorshard attacks really quickly. This also makes the matchup simple to play from a strategic pattern. stack Razorshards, add stormsingers against Nightcrawlers and intercept Harvester with Lightblade (purple). At this rate you only have to play around the enemies AoE spells (Aura of Corruption, Corpse Explosion, Nasty Surprise) and accumulate advantages up to the point where power wells start dropping. Due to Nightguard nerfs Stonetempest and Crystal Fiend are strong snowball options in this matchup again. You usually get a time window to attack the enemies base once all 12 Shadowmage charges are depleted, because the power level of pure Shadow T2 drops significantly at this rate with void level being too low to take a T3 successfully. It’s best to play around choke points and small areas to increase the efficiency of cc spells and Razorshard AoE. If you get ahead you should always consider blocking T3 positions if possible (use Ice Barrier when starting Frost T1), because Voidstorm will be really annoying to play against in the later stages of the game.
(2) Stonekin vs Fire Frost (-)
This is a great matchup for Stonekin after your T1 options got buffed to secure an even early game. Stoneshards and Spirithunters can support your Stormsingers in this matchup to outtrade the Fire Frost player in any situation. You need to respect shielded Scythe Fiends, but with Aggressor this shouldn’t be a major threat. Stoneshards trade well into any ground unit besides Icefang Raptor, which gets attacked by Stormsinger. Your setup to find good open field trades is excellent and once you find them you can start leveraging your tempo leads by including L units into your composition. Stonetempest is a great option in this matchup due to its powerful M-knockback. Due to the stonekin passive + surge of Light synergy Tempest can also outlast extended trades against shielded Skyfire Drakes to overwhelm your opponent on the long run. Aggressor would be another great tool in multi unit compositions because the L knockback is just amazing against Skyfire Drakes and as long as there are enough damage sources you even get value from his knockback without any L units around. Once Skyfire Drakes are out of the way you can also add an uncontested Crystal Fiend. This should help overwhelming your opponent by outtrading him at his own base and countering the entire Fire Frost kit on the long run. Once your enemy can’t use his unit spell combos to burst your units, the Crystal Fiend healing will generate endless value over time. Playing for T3 is also a possibility, but keep in mind that Timeless One mirror scaling might favor Fire Frost due to the access to Warlock. 
(3) Stonekin vs Bandits (-)
The most valuable advice we can give in this matchup is to play the correct units. Bandits has great tools against Stoneshards, Spirit Hunters and Stone Tempest, but absolutely no answer to Stormsinger + CC support. Playing around this simple pattern is the most reliable way of generating an advantage against Bandits. Bandit Stalker and Spearmen can be kited, Darkelf Assassins can’t be stacked due to Hurricane and Minefield is way too slow to catch Stormsingers in time. Leveraging tempoleads from this trading advantage should be easy by adding Burrowers considering Bandit Stalker can be zoned off by your Stormsinger army. Bandit Sniper always needs to be pressured considering the ability can oneshot Stormsinger if left uncontested. This shouldn’t be a major concern due to your mobility and strong cc options. Your only enemy in T2 will be  energy scaling. If the void level rises, high tempo execution gets more and more difficult over time, whereas Bandits have amazing tools to dump energy without losing significant value. Rallying Banner spam attacks are incredibly strong on higher energy counts and with more units to take care of across the map it is much more likely to walk into a Minefield or get caught by an Aura of Corruption. If constant spell weaving allows Bandits to trade towards a stage where T3 is a possibility, the matchup also starts to be much closer again. Bandit Lancer split attacks are very powerful and can only partially be matched by using your M-knockback tools from T2. Combined with the threat of facing a double buffed Soulhunter this can be really tough to deal with. Timeless One + Stone Warrior would be the best response here. Overall it might not be the easiest matchup in terms of execution, but you can dominate it with some practice.
(4) Stonekin vs Twilight (-) 
Twilight is a melee unit heavy T2 faction which is countered by Stormsinger stacking with CC support. This will be the core feature of your unit army, apart from that you can just adapt based on your enemies unit choices. Try to split well in order to avoid getting hit by Lavafield or CC and stack up advantages by using your own spells. Spirit Hunters & Frostbite can provide some extra dps against ravaged units and with either Lightblade or Aggressor you have solid counters for Vileblood. You usually struggle the most when falling behind in the early T2 stage, because Siege attacks might force you to invest all your power into crowd control and building protects, so you can't really start stacking units to generate value. Once there is 1 Vileblood or 2 burrowers the dps often is high enough to outvalue your defensive capabilities. Avoid taking risks in T1 to avoid such scenarios. You need to be proactive and win on T2, because at T3 Nightshade Plant mind games might be very dangerous to play against.
Skill matchups
(5) Stonekin vs Pure Nature (↓) 
Stormsinger stacking is a great tool to deal with nature, because the unit is immune to most of its crowd control sources. Nature often has to rely on Deep One (+ability) to get any good trades done, which rarely ends up being power efficient if you kite well. Zoning Energy Parasites with Stormsingers is the highest priority, because you will need some time until you have a critical mass that can push the nature player back into his base and threaten power wells. Blocking Energy Parasites from getting their ability off needs to be prioritized as it’s the only option for pure nature to come out ahead. Crystal Fiend can be a great addition to the unit mix, because pure nature does lack burst damage leading to much higher healing values. But playing the card early is very risky because it dies to a single Parasite spell after the card received some buffs. It requires Surge of Light support in return to stay alive. As Nature often relies on Deep One scaling to stay relevant, Lightblade can be really useful on higher unit count. In T3 the player with more slots usually ends up being favored, but Parasite Swarm can be annoying if you play without XL units, so finishing the game in T2 usually is preferred. On a side note: Even though you might start in a mirror matchup in T1, Stonekin T2 is much better at dealing with larger T1 armies than pure nature T2, making it much more flexible and forgiving in the early game.
(6) Stonekin vs Shadow Frost (-) 
This matchup favors you on T2. Considering most trading patterns consist of Stormsinger versus Stormsinger it ends up being beneficial, because you have superior crowd control. Using this to build up small leads by constant trading you can accumulate these small wins and increase the pressure constantly. Once you get to remove all units from your opponent you can start adding Burrowers for increased Siege potential to finish the game. Shadow Frost often tries to play defensive and utilize undazed Darkelf Assassin spawns as well as Nasty Surprise. Playing with tempo is extremely important, because if you fall behind heavy use of Lost Reaver + Stormsinger can be difficult to deal with. You often lack dps to remove the Reaver in time when utilizing the Aggressor against tempo deficits. Aura of Corruption needs to be respected, but when playing around mobile units you can avoid it, offensive Cannon Tower might be a niche counter too. Don’t let the game go to 6+ wells quickly, because Souls T3 usually ends up being problematic to deal with unless you invest at least 4-5 deck slots into your own T3. But even then you aren't favored, so opting for a win at T2 usually produces the best results. Force open field trades by contesting T3 spots and put pressure on your opponent if he tries to well up. If you get ahead try to take map control and stay close to your opponent. A greedy T3 attempt is a great opportunity for you to close a game with a Burrower spam.
(7) Stonekin vs Amii (↑)
This matchup often results in a traditional Stormsinger vs Amii Phantom micro war. The M/M ranged unit management really determines the outcome of this matchup and if Shadow Nature gets ahead the deck can be an overwhelming force rather quickly. But as long as you play very controlled, split your Stormsingers against cc and don’t make major mistakes you will be able to win in later stages of T2. First of all Stormsinger does have more charges than Amii Phantom and on top of that a few extra Razorshards get really strong at later stages once many Stormsingers are on the board. The extra range on Razorshard allows you to root down Darkelf Assassins and Amii Phantoms and with heavy unit stack it is so difficult to dodge the AoE damage and M-knockback leading to great trades. With enough Stormsingers to protect them from Amii Phantom’s melee disable mode this usually leads to an overwhelming force that ultimately wins you the game. After Nightguard received a nerf you also can consider playing Crystal Fiend in this matchup now, which works incredibly well during such extended trades. Do not get baited into Stonetempest as Amii Phantom still hard counters it. Amii Paladins are not a big threat to you as long as you play around the ability cooldown. T3 should be avoided as Shadow Nature has various options to apply strong pressure from split pressure to fully buffed XL unit. 
(8) Stonekin vs Pure Frost (↓)
Usually the T2 is played in a very slow manner, which is good for you to establish very powerful unit setups, but also problematic as you might struggle punishing well stacking to a point, where T3 becomes a realistic option. Frost usually has more slots available to build a powerful T3, therefore wins these types of scaling games. Winning T2 is very important due to that and requires very aggressive gameplay at some point, where you ideally contest T3 positions or cut off map control by attacking Frost’s mobility restrictions. Stormsinger + Spirit Hunters usually do trade very well on low energy count, but get outscaled by War Eagles. Once you get ahead or establish map control, Aggressor or Stone Tempest might be valuable additions to deal with War Eagles, especially when you get to force the enemy to trade with you. Crystal Fiend is a great tool in this matchup to leverage leads, because Frost doesn’t have very reliable tools to burst it down. Avoid close bases at all cost, because it strengthens War Eagle gameplay and also supports White Rangers. Burrowers are not an option during T2, but can be strong at punishing both a long T1 and an early T3 giving you an edge during transitions. T3 will be difficult to play unless you invest little slots into T2, Thunderstorm is very useful for such strategies as it enables faster T3 timings. The high AoE damage can remove T2 pushes easily and effectiveness is even amplified due to War Eagles being too slow to outmaneuver it. 
Difficult matchups
(9) Stonekin vs pure Fire (↓↓)
The introduction of Burning Spears highly changed the dynamic of this matchup as pure Fire now has an entirely new option for early game trading. This makes it much harder to establish leads and snowballing with low dps L-units is not an option either. Stoneshards remain as your best trading tools in this matchup as they outvalue Scythe Fiends and counter Enforcer, but to beat pure Fire entirely you will need ranged and spell support. If pure Fire manages to survive the early gamestage by utilizing defenders advantage the matchup dynamic quickly turns around, because the traditional s-sized melee units lose their value at higher power counts due to limited focus fire options upon being spammed and their weakness against zoning dps spells like Wildfire. At some point you may collapse to the relentless aggression pure Fire can throw at you. To prevent this from happening you need to be proactive during T2 and constantly acquire advantages by trading around your powerful cc tools. With many small wins you might be able to opt for a power well focus as long as you avoid high value wildfire or Lavafield. Your decision making and micro needs to be on point here as your Siege damage in this matchup is rather low, Burrowers against Enforcer is definitely not advised. In T3 you need to stabilize around Stone Warrior and try to match the Juggernaut pressure by playing around the Disenchant cooldown to utilize the Shatter Lance ability. This can work, but isn’t a guaranteed success, because one misplay around the Stampede ability is game over.
 
[ SHADOW FROST / LOST SOULS ]


1. Deck description
Lost Souls was one of the most played decks in PvP... for a good reason! The deck is the most solid one with no big weakness and an outstanding defence. A wide pool of units allows you to adept to any situation. With a fantastic T3 as backup you can play a very controlled game, whenever you get ahead in a match. You can constantly stay ahead in powerwells (the +1 game) up to a point where you can afford to switch into the T3 stage, where you'll most likely win.

Alternative deck

2. Matchup discussion
Easy matchups:
(1) Lost Souls vs Fire Frost (-)
Fire Frost is rather easy to play for you, because you aren't forced to make proactive decisions in T2. You just need to defend incoming attacks and scale into your superior T3. As long as you stay even in T2 there is nothing you need to fear in T3. In T2 you can defend Scythe Fiends & Skyfire drakes easily with a combination of Darkelf Assassins and Stormsinger with Frostbite support. Try to split well against Lavafield at later T2 stages and try to target Frost Sorcs during skirmishes. This will heavily limit the amount of pressure Fire Frost gets to apply on the long run. Try to utilize your spells for burst oriented trades (Frostbite, Nasty Surprise) rather than extended ones (Coldsnap) to avoid maximized shield synergy and Warlock value. If you get ahead during trades, you can try to utilize Lost Reavers to launch powerful counter attacks. T3 will be in your favor as you have better units, more slots and superior spell synergies. 
Skillmatchups:
(2) Lost Souls vs Twilight (-)
You can defend Burrower attacks with a very high efficiency in the early game and establish a very solid lead, that can be used to transition into a T3, where Fire Nature doesn't stand a real chance. If you get strong leads you can either opt for split attacks or Lost Reaver to apply pressure. The latter one might struggle against Slaver though, who is powerful against melee L units specifically. The most dangerous game stage is late T2, where double Burrower + Skyfire attacks with massive nature cc support are powerful enough to overload your building protects. Make sure to respect their mobility and try to take down Skyfire Drakes as early as possible. Try to split your units well when defending because once the void level gets really high, double Lavafield is a dangerous tool to remove all your small units (Stormsinger, Nightcrawler and Darkelf Assassins die to it). Try to find a good time window in order to tech up to T3 as this is your main win condition in this matchup. On a sufficient energy level Timeless one can withstand a massive Burrower push, if the Fire Nature player decides to rush you at that point. At T3 Mutating Maniac and Nightshade Plant both need to be respected but your T3 trading is superior and you will come out ahead in the long run.
 
(3) Lost Souls vs Pure Nature (-)
You are slightly favored in T3, but at a disadvantage in T2. Therefore, it is important to play towards your win condition in order to come out ahead. Deep One is really hard to deal, especially with Parasite being a cost effective counter to Nightguard. On top of that you always need to zone Energy Parasites with Stormsinger. This has to be your number one priority before you start thinking about anything else. If you want to attack nature you need to make sure to either split attack or surround your enemy. A good unit split will allow you to catch the more expensive nature units by using Frostbite without running into a cc spell with your entire army. This concept is extremely helpful to get rid of Spirit Hunters quickly. A strong split attack is the best setup for any Motivate -> wellfocus plays. L units aren't a reliable option against Parasite Swarm or Deep One, so generally try to stay away from Lost Reaver when facing pure Nature. T3 remains in your favor, but be careful whenever your opponent splashes towards Fire here. Mutating Maniac, Parasite Swarm, Disenchant is not as easy to beat and Nightshade Plant can overload your building protects. Apart from that Timeless One dominates the field and buffed Lost Grigori is very strong at taking out structures. Always track how much Surge of Light got used during T3 as this heavily impacts your chances of winning T3. You win the game whenever Surge of Light charges are depleted.
(4) Lost Souls vs Bandits (↑)
Bandits are fairly challenging to play against nowadays. You can't really utilize Nightcrawler against Bandit Stalker, Windhunter + Minefield limits the impact of Lost Reaver, Stormsinger always runs into the danger of getting targeted by the Bandit Sniper and Darkelf Assassins might struggle with the Minefield. Getting ahead against this setup is really difficult, but if you manage to do so the lack of cc and building protects will allow you to take down power wells very quickly. In return your defensive tools are fairly solid. Bandits do not have access to Siege units and Rallying Banner attacks are not as threatening due to Nasty Surprise, especially when combined with any high hp targets (lyrish knight, phalanx, lost reaver). Even though your T2 is a little bit more stable overall, T3 is very scary to play. Bandit Lancer spam can be really annoying to trade into, because you usually don't have a very powerful M counter in T3 and the active ability can prevent Timeless Ones from using theirs. Pressure only gets amplified if your enemy plays Motivate or Rallying Banner + Cultist Master. As all of these units are rather low hp ones, Frost Shard could be a strong addition to limit the early game pressure and enable scaling towards the later T3 stages. Bandits will run out of charges way before Lost Souls and Soulhunter is only a real threat whenever your opponent is far ahead. On the other hand Tremor can always build up pressure against Bandits even despite being matched by strong L counters. 
 
(5) Lost Souls vs Pure Shadow (-)
You do have solid tools to deal with pure Shadow, especially when playing Lyrish Knight. He is a great target for Nasty Surprise, an XL counter for the Harvester and also withstands the M-knockback of Shadowmages due to being steadfast. Darkelf Assassins + Frostbite are always good at trading and in combination with Stormsinger you can defend against most attacks. Once you get ahead, Lost Reaver is a strong option for attacking. Try to play him with Stormsingers, because pure Shadow likes to use the Knight of Chaos as an L-counter and protect the Lost Reaver with Liveweaving from incoming burst damage sources like Shadowmages or activated Darkelf Asssassins. Harvester needs to be respected, but its effectiveness is limited, unless the Shadow player has a lead beforehand. Frost Bite is really valuable against him and a combination of buildings protects and Coldsnap usually can buy enough time. If you have problems countering Harvester you can always add Lightblade (purple) to your deck. You ultimately want to build up towards 6 wells and a T3, but avoid having a power well close to the enemy's base. In close well scenarios pure Shadow is heavily favored because Shadowmage reaches its maximum potential at these kinds of fights. On top of that, close well fights end up getting really bloody increasing the risk of running into a super high value Corpse explosion. As the damage aoe damage cap is extremely high, it often pays off to avoid building full well clusters and expand at different positions. Your T3 usually is a little bit better, this pays off the most on large maps, whenever Cultist Master value is reduced. If you expect a Voidstorm to be played either try to save some power or force counter units beforehand if possible so you avoid a huge negative trade allowing you to apply pressure with your Tremors once the Voidstorm is on cooldown. Keep in mind Voidstorm only has 4 charges and spell cooldown is vastly increased afterwards.
(6) Lost Souls vs Pure Frost (↓)
Nightguard nerfs were very strict nerfs to Lost Souls in this particular matchups. You mainly need to rely on Darkelf Assassins and Frostbite when trading against War Eagles, but it will require further support whenever you want to break throught the strong Frost defence. Avoid cliff areas to make War Eagles more vulnerable overall and be careful with activating the unholy trance ability from Darkelf Assassins when near your opponents base, because the immobility can be heavily punished by White Rangers. After accumulating unit advantages you can throw in Lost Reaver to build up pressure, but without Stormsinger support he won’t perform well against Mountain Rowdy and Lightblade. Overall beating pure Frost at T2 is difficult, but as Frost T1 will be unable to contest map control, you can stall games to T3 more often than not. Aura of Corruption is a basic tool to punish the slow War Eagles. You can also make use of Nasty Surprise defenses when comboing the spell with Lost Reaver. Phalanx + Nasty is even more effective at one-shotting up to 3 War Eagles, which is a niche combo worth considering in this matchup. This matchup has a very defensive play pattern at T2 because both factions do have severe advantages when playing around their own power wells. On open field trades you usually do have the upper hand, which can be used to establish a good position on the map. Combined with the higher mobility in T1 you might be able to block all T3 positions from your enemy. If the game goes to T3 vs T3, you mostly need to respond to Tremor attacks by using Timeless One + counter units and protecting your buildings with spells. Lost Grigori can shine in this matchup as he beats Tremor, Lancers, Timeless One combos with his taunt and also hard counters any cheese attempts around Avatar of Frost. Nasty Surprise tends to scale very well in this matchup, because it often adds the needed extra burst to take down power wells.
(7) Shadow Frost vs Stonekin (-)
Stonekin can be a really uncomfortable matchup, because its defensive capabilities match yours in T2 and with superior cc their Stormsingers usually are better on open field. Avoiding these types of trades is really important for that reason. Utilize defenders' advantage to adapt based on the enemies unit composition and set up some efficient trades by surprising your opponent with a good Nasty Surprise. If you get to achieve this you can well up as quickly as possible. You want the energy level to rise as quickly as possible considering you win at T3 most likely and attacking in T2 is not an option. Nightcrawlers get hard countered by Stoneshards and Reaver attacks only end up being an option when your opponent takes a greedy power well. In T3 your odds of winning are most likely higher considering Stonekin suffers from slot restrictions. But don’t tunnel into passive scaling whenever your opponent allows you to do so as stonekin could also play a large T3 and sacrifice deck strength elsewhere. But most people cut their T3 in Stonekin to have a more powerful and flexible T2. Whenever you play T3 vs full T2 Silverwindlancer + Nasty is a very important burst combo and will grant you incredible value.
Difficult matchups:
(8) Shadow Frost vs Pure Fire (-)
Pure Fire is really difficult to deal with, especially when you end up falling behind in this matchup. Enforcer is superior to Nightcrawler and Stormsinger which allows the Fire player to protect a Firedancer who constantly throws fireballs at your power well. This forces you to spend many resources into protecting your buildings. If you don’t break free by finding a good nasty, this leads to very inefficient trading patterns. In case the Firedancer is able to use a cliff as protection you are in serious trouble so avoid taking any of these positions when facing a pure Fire player. Your best chance of getting good trades is a powerful nasty surprise and good use of Frostbite during trades. If you get ahead you can try utilizing your Lost Reaver to destroy a powerwell. It is ideally paired with Darkelf Assassins as they can help deal with Burning Spears without getting hard countered by Enforcer like most M units. Lifeweaving will help against Wildfire, especially when you are aware that your opponent has not enough energy to follow up with an immediate disenchant. In addition to that Juggernaut is insanely strong, even strong enough to break through a Timeless One T3. Tremors do not keep up in tempo and whereas Aura might be enough to remove one Juggernaut, experienced Fire players will fully commit once they have two. Double Juggernaut can not be matched unless you are very far ahead to counter them with the Lost Grigoris disintegration spell (not reliable due to significantly higher upfront costs.
(9) Shadow Frost vs Amii (-)
Amii has a distinctive advantage in the early T2. The faction has similar units (Nighcrawler + Darkelf Assassins + Amii Phantom vs Night Crawler + Darkelf Assassins + Stormsinger) and superior cc which allows your opponent to set up better trades all the time. This leads to a survival game, because low hp unit spam can be removed through AoE tools (Nasty Surprise, Aura of Corruption) and split Lost Reaver attacks get more value over time. Try to spawn him very close to the enemies base, because Shadow Nature likes to play Darkelf Assassins or Amii Phantom + Root against them. Do not send your Reaver alone as Tranquility might lead to constant cc rotations which are really hard to break otherwise. Your main goal isn't necessarily kicking power wells, it is more about relieving pressure and buying time. T3 stage is highly beneficial for you as Timeless One can minimize the impact of Cultist Master attacks unless you play a close base scenario and Amii straight up collapses to Tremor spam whenever you get to set up a counter attack. 
 
Conclusion

This overview is getting longer with every overhaul. I hope this wall of text is not too intimidating (>27.000 words) and provides helpful information to you!
 
What to expect in the future and last words:
We will keep this guide updated every few patch cycles (tier list at the start will be adjusted more frequently). We all know PvP is difficult to get into, but we will try our best to lower some of the barriers whenever possible. If you have any questions feel free to ask us in this thread or on one of the skylords discord servers. If you are entirely new to PvP, test some of the free PvP decks, look for a deck you like to play and adjust it until you find your own playstyle. External ressources (guides, videos etc.) can help a lot to understand the basics quicker and get to the point where PvP starts to be the fantastic and enjoyable game mode, that kept us playing for so many years. Hope you enjoyed reading, let's keep the PvP community active and see you in the Forge!
Best regards,
Hirooo & RadicalX

Just wanna add that I'm also experiencing the same issue not just since this mornings update but since the recent patch. And seems to worsen over time you spend sticking around and playing. On fresh run of the game everything is quite smooth for a while before it become extremely laggy over time.

Card Balance Changes
 

Global Balance Changes
Ranged attack delays standardized: 
   - Towers and ranged units are now assigned a standard 0.5 second delay on spawn instead of a semi-randomized number between 0.1-1 second in 0.1 second increments. This only modifies cards affected by the bug, many ranged units and towers will be unaffected by the change. 
If a tower or ranged unit's attack has a longer resolve timer than its attack speed, a number is assigned to said tower or unit on spawn between 0.1-1 seconds, which is permanently added to its attack speed. For examples, this means that while a certain tower might be capable of attacking every 2 seconds, if it is affected by this mechanic any particular instance of this tower spawned has an actual attack speed of between 2.1 seconds and 3 seconds. This means all affected towers are not created equal, even among towers of the same kind, and can have widely varying performances. Ranged cards with high attack speeds are impacted more strongly than ranged cards with low attack speeds, but all affected towers and units are inconsistent. Given that we have already begun to balance around the average attack speed of each ranged attack after we previously discovered the discrepancy, we did not want to simply remove the attack delay as it would potentially require us to once again rebalance all affected cards. Instead, we have opted to standardize the delay timer to 0.5 seconds, which is on average a slight buff to all affected cards, and which will henceforward make all ranged cards consistent with themselves. 
Card attack speed descriptions do not currently reflect the change. We will work to slowly remedy this over time as we continue our work to fix existing descriptive issues.

PvE Balance Changes
While changes are split here between PvE and PvP sections, many of the changes have important consequences for both game modes. Our PvE and PvP balance teams work closely together to ensure that the impact of all changes are evaluated for both game modes. Below, we have listed both the changes and our reasoning behind them. 
[ Tier 1 ]
 Nightguard:
1. Damage: 60 damage (450 dp20)  ➜ 90 damage (675 dp20)
2. Add "Swift" ability to both affinities.
3. Gifted affinity ➜ Infused affinity:
   A.  Add "Infused Fury" - Deals 50% more damage against elementals. 
Give swift to both affinities and make their difference be in species damage type. Substantially increased combat stats to make the unit more valuable when unable to immediately swap, but still primarily useful for swapping.
 Amazon (g):
1. Wildlife Protection healing amplification: 50% ➜ 65%
Minor buff intended to make combinations like Amazon(g) + Werebeasts more rewarding.
 Strikers:
1. Remove "Looter" ability
2. Add new passive "Gang Up!": When being surrounded by at least 3 friendly orcs in a 25m radius, all incoming damage will be spread among all gang members relative to each unit's current life points. Additionally, affected units take 15% less damage.
3. Add new passive "Group Pressure": Unit is immune to Unity and its effects.
We are giving Thugs' "Gang Up!" passive to Strikers and changing both Strikers and Thugs' abilities to work based on friendly orcs instead of just friendly Thugs. This will allow Strikers and Thugs to form a gang together, creating a new Fire T1 combo. Additionally, we are fully removing "Looter" from Strikers. 
Our balance team is currently in the beginning stages of reintroducing a rebalanced Looter ability to the game for higher tier units as part of a project to allow each faction to have a power acceleration mechanic. Shadow's Resource Booster is the most obvious example of such an acceleration mechanic. Nature also has existing acceleration tools in the Breeding Grounds effect (unit cost reduction) and Promise of Life (unbinding units). We think Looter could be a good tool to enable a unique acceleration mechanic for Fire. More details will be announced on this topic when proposals become more concrete.
[ Tier 2 ]
 Earthkeeper:
1. Back Up ability rework:
   A. Can now be knocked back while ability is active.
   B. Duration: 30 seconds ➜ Until interrupted
   C. Power cost: 0p ➜ 25p
Earthkeeper has a very powerful ability, particularly the blessed (b) affinity. By making it last indefinitely absent interruption, Earthkeeper can be used by Stonekin decks to set up incredibly durable defenses that do not need to be constantly maintained. We removed immobile to allow Earthkeeper to be knocked back, requiring good positioning, and added a 25p cost to increase initial set up cost in exchange for the indefinite duration.
[ Tier 3 ]
 Abyssal Warder:
1. Power cost: 250p ➜ 240p
2. Crystal Spikes ability damage: 725, up to 2175 in total ➜ 800, up to 4800 in total
3. Class change: Giant Destroyer ➜ Ancient Destroyer
Abyssal Warder has been much more viable since the buff to Promise of Life. Players can send Abyssal Warder on a suicide mission, cast Promise of Life just before death, and be rewarded with 2 L-sized warders and a new XL-sized one. This same Promise of Life can then be used in T4 to quickly unbind the player's initial Forest Elder. Even so, Abyssal Warder remains a weak option, and it struggles greatly against masses of weaker enemies. We are over doubling the total damage of its Crystal Spikes ability to allow it to clear crowds of weak enemies quickly and slightly decreasing its power cost to make it more efficient. 
 Deepfang:
1. Damage: 150 damage per second (3000 dp20) ➜ 165 damage per second (3300 dp20)
2. Life points: 3200 ➜ 3500
3. Stonekin Critter (unit):
   A. Damage: 60, up to 90 in total (500 dp20) ➜ 72, up to 108 in total (600 dp20)
   B. Life points: 550 ➜ 750
Deepfang is currently underwhelming, particularly as a good portion of its strength relies on the continued existence of two weak support units. Once they die, Deepfang has worse stat efficiency than the almost pure support unit Rageflame. We are giving a general buff to the damage and life points of both Deepfang and its Stonekin Critters. In the future, we also intend to rework the unit's summoning mechanic and to allow Deepfang to cast Union even if its Critters have died.  
 Rageflame:
1. Frostshower (both affinities):
   A. Now able to target air units.
   B. Freeze duration: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
2. Blessed Frostshower (b) new affinity effect: Units frozen by this ability will receive full damage when attacked. 
3. New passive, "Shatter Ice" (both affinities): The unit is able to ignore the usual damage reduction of frozen targets.
Rageflame is meant to be a hybrid damage and support unit, but it does neither well. We are leaning more into its support aspects, while also removing the card's built-in anti-synergy by allowing it to always deal full damage to frozen targets. The unit's freeze duration has been increased, and it can now target air units, removing one of its major weaknesses. Additionally, the blue affinity's freeze allows all units to continue dealing full damage, giving players a choice between ignoring freeze's damage reduction or disabling buildings when choosing between affinities. 
 Unity:
1. Gifted Sharing (g) regeneration: 40 life points every 2 seconds ➜ 50 life points every 2 seconds
2. Blessed Sharing (b) damage reduction: 25% ➜ 20%
After the recent Fire changes, Unity(b) has proven too strong. The damage reduction double stacks (once when the initial unit is attacked, once when the remaining damage is transferred). This means that the actual damage reduction granted by the blue affinity is often substantially more than 25%. On the other hand, the green affinity has been the weaker of the two since the beginning. We are giving it a slight boost to hopefully make the decision between which affinity to bring more meaningful. 
 Ward of the North:
1. Units under the effect of this spell can no longer be knocked back.
Minor buff to the card to give players a reason to use it over its competitors Revenge and Stone Shell.
[ Tier 4 ]
 Batariel:
1. Stage Duration (both affinities):
   A. Stage 1: 4 sec ➜ 5 sec
   B Stage 2: 4 sec ➜ 5 sec
2. Stage Threshold Value (both affinities): 
   A. Stage 1: 1200 damage ➜ 800 damage 
3. Damage per Stage Batariel (fire affinity):
   A. Stage 1: unchanged (100 dmg)
   B. Stage 2: 150 dmg ➜ 200 dmg
   C. Stage 3: 200 dmg ➜ 300 dmg
Follow-up on previous changes which left Batariel's fire affinity too weak.
 Death Ray:
1. Leech Guns ability:
   A. Damage buff: 100% more damage ➜ 150% more damage
   B. Stored life point cost: 1 additional damage per 1 stored life point ➜ 1 additional damage per 0.66 stored life points
Death Ray is a well-designed card which currently demands a substantial amount of deckbuilding cost and in-game micromanagement to make it work. While decent, Death Ray should give more to justify its high investment costs. This change increases Death Ray's damage buff while charged with life points, without otherwise increasing the amount of life points required to be harvested via Leech Guns. This should leave the current experience of the deck unchanged, except that it is now stronger. 
 Fire Sphere:
1. Cooldown: 10 seconds ➜ 20 seconds
The last round of buffs left Fire Sphere too strong. Instead of taking away from the aspects of the card that have quickly made it a top tier option, we are reverting a previous change to its cooldown. This should reduce the ability to spam the card, making its initial 10 second wind-up a more important factor to account for when using the spell.
 Forest Elder:
1. Pest Plants is now a basic ability that exists on both affinities of Forest Elder.
   A. Radius: 30m ➜ 20m
   B. Damage: 30 damage per second ➜ 40 damage per second
2. Forest Charm ability rework:
   A. No longer applies an effect to allies. Now functions more like a mobile Regrowth.
   B. New ability description: "Activate to release the power of the forest, creating a regenerative zone of 30m radius. Every 2 seconds, friendly units within restore up to 300 life points, up to 3000 in total. Also affects the caster. Lasts for 30 seconds. Reusable every 60 seconds." 
3. Gifted Flower Power: The +25% damage buff now also applies to Forest Elder itself. Also affects Pest Plants.
4. Shadow Affinity (p) ➜ Frost Affinity (b): 
   A. Blessed Flower Power effect: Friendly units now ignore slow caused by unit collision in a 30m range. Also applies to Forest Elder itself. 
5. Class change: Beast Dominator ➜ Beast Commander
Our testing found that Pest Plants was an essential component of Forest Elder's ability to clear early T4 camps and for all melee army compositions to succeed. As such, we added it to both affinities as a basic ability and adjusted its power level accordingly. To enable the all melee deck styles that arose during our testing, we added the ability for the new blue affinity Forest Elder to enable its allies and itself to ignore unit collision based slows. This makes melee armies substantially more dynamic. In general, the green affinity Forest Elder works best combined with Primeval Watcher, while the blue affinity Forest Elder works best when combined with Colossus and Grimvine. Finally, we reworked the Forest Charm healing ability. It is now substantially stronger than previously, as well as much more consistent in terms of expected healing. With these changes, the changes to Mind Control, and the release of Sanctuary, Pure Nature should be comparable in strength to other pure deck archetypes. 
 Gemeye:
1. Damage: 550, up to 825 in total (2750 dp20) ➜ 650, up to 975 in total (3250 dp20)
2. Tainted Spit (p):
   A. All damage is now piercing
   B. Contamination damage: 55, up to 165 in total every second ➜ 50, up to 150 in total every second
3. Gifted Spit (g):
   A. Paralyze targets: 4 ➜ 5
   B. Paralyze duration: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
Minor buff to Gemeye in general. Gemeye's two affinities widely vary in usefulness. The purple affinity can deal up to 3300 additional damage over 20 seconds, increasing its actual attack value to 5450 dp20. This damage also stacks if there are multiple Gemeyes. By contrast, the green affinity can paralyze up to 4 targets after a 5 second wait period for up to 10 seconds. 10 seconds is already a short duration for crowd control in T4 and the 5 second wait timer makes it even worse, as it is actually much longer when accounting for Gemeye's attack animation and projectile travel time. Additionally, paralyze effects cannot stack, and they quickly run afoul of crowd control's diminishing returns penalty if the player casts spells such as Curse of Oink or a freeze effect. Overall, this leads to the situation where in the vast majority of situations the purple affinity is far superior. 
The goal here is to break the two affinities into two different deck paths. By allowing the purple affinity to always pierce through damage reduction, it means that its damage will not be reduced when attacking frozen targets. On the other hand, the green affinity's built-in crowd control will synergize with splash options lacking CC and Noxious Cloud which deals a lot of damage but needs time to work. The changes should also allow the green affinity to do a better job when utilized as part of static defenses for its built-in crowd control.
 Grimvine:
1. Strangling Vines ability radius: 20m ➜ 25m
Quality of Life change intended to make Grimvine's ability slightly better. 
 Mind Control: 
1. Power cost: 300p ➜ 250p
2. Charges: 4 ➜ 8
3. Takeover limit: 300p ➜ 350p
4. Allow to be used past population limit
5. Now cleanses all debuffs and makes mind controlled unit immune to all major debuffs for 15 seconds after cast. 
Mind Control is one of those cards which initially seems awesome because it enables you to take over your favorite enemy units, but soon after results in frustration. NPC enemies mostly lack abilities making them no more than stat sticks, charges are extremely limited, the card becomes useless when you hit population cap, your ally's Incredible Mo permanently debuffs the unit even when it becomes yours, and taking over major threats inside a camp usually results in almost instant crowd control into death. We have tried to address all of these issues at once. After the changes, Mind Control should provide a strong incentive to use 3 Nature orbs as well as provide a means by which Nature can bolster its unit-based strategy without binding power in the process. 
 Shadow Worm:
1. Damage: 400, up to 600 in total (4000 dp20) ➜ 440, up to 660 in total (4400 dp20)
2. Life points: 3500 ➜ 4400
3. Mass Disintegration ability targets: May only disintegrate units ➜ May now disintegrate units and buildings
4. Earth Dive ability damage: 250, up to 1000 in total ➜ 325, up to 1300 in total
Shadow Worm is the only T4 Pure Shadow unit in the game. While the previous buffs helped the card a lot, Shadow Worm remains by itself an insufficient payoff to give up a splash orb. It also, despite the buffs and its high orb restrictions, remained one of the lowest stat efficiency units in T4. With these changes, we are both giving a general buff to Shadow Worm's stats and making some changes to enable the two unique aspects of the card, its Mass Disintegration and its Earth Dive mechanic. 
Mass Disintegration will now be able to target buildings (but not spawns which have building immunity), giving the ability much needed flexibility. Shadow Worm's life points increase will also allow the unit to survive 5 seconds longer when disintegrating the maximum number of targets simultaneously. Additionally, the 30% damage increase to Earth Dive damage will enable a particularly unique playstyle given that Life Stealer also affects Earth Dive. 
 Thunder Wagon:
1. Remove "Tainted Death" from shadow affinity
2. Change Shadow affinity (p) ➜ Frost affinity (b)
   A. Blessed Flamethrower (b): Now able to target air units.
[ Building Changes ]
It is the general principle of the faction design team not to change abilities or introduce complex mechanics needlessly. Cards should generally perform a single function and perform that function well. A lot of the buildings in the game are already well-designed, but lack sufficient stats or possess too strict of requirements. As such, we have opted wherever possible to introduce simple changes to bring the tower to the appropriate power level. If you would like to learn more about our thought process behind the tower changes, please head to Skylords Reborn Documents to read our design Deep Dive on Towers, as well as other design documents. 
 Artillery:
1. Range: 50m ➜ 60m
2. Increased turret turn speed.
Allow Artillery to damage siege units even when placed behind a wall.
 Bandit Launcher:
1. Flame Arrow splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m 
2. Life points: 1500 ➜ 800
3. Add "Fast Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%.
4. Firebug:
   A. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m
   B. Power cost: 20 ➜ 25 Energy
   C. Infused Firebug damage: 400, up to 1200 in total ➜ 600, up to 1800 in total
   D. Tainted Firebug damage: 600, up to 1800 in total ➜ 800, up to 2400 in total
Differentiate Bandit Launcher from its more defensive oriented brother Rioter's Retreat by focusing it around attacking and using its suicide ability to quickly and cheaply clear enemies.  
 Deepgorge:
1. Cold Clutch radius: 25m ➜ 30m.
Deepgorge has substantially increased in strength since the most recent changes, particularly in connection with North Star(b) with which it naturally synergizes. Unfortunately, due to the tower's large size, its ability radius is still too small when the tower is placed behind a wall making it difficult even for a well-placed Deepgorge to hit all melee attackers on long walls. 
 Fire Bomb:
1. Damage: 715 up to 1650 in total ➜ 720, up to 1800 in total
2. Add "Fast Construction" - Construction time is reduced by 50%.
3. Allow to hit air units & enable splash overflow fix.
Small buff to Fire Bomb that should allow it to be used more aggressively. 
 Hammerfall:
1. Increase turret turn speed.
2. Breeze of Life (g) / Breeze of Strength (b):
   A. Maximum capacity: 1500 ➜ 3000
   B. Recharge rate: 15 per second ➜ 40 per second
   C. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m
3. Breeze of Strength, Ice Shield cost: 495 capacity ➜ 600 capacity
Increased turret turn speed should increase damage output due to faster target tracking. Change to affinity effects: Higher maximum capacity should make both affinity effects better, but especially Hammerfall (g) which is only drained as required. Higher recharge rate means that a new Ice Shield can be bestowed every 15 seconds instead of every 33 seconds, even with the higher cost. Radius increase will make it easier to place units around it. Total charge time is now 90 seconds. Additionally, Hammerfall's shields do not decay while within the aura. This makes them a stable source of extra health for allied units. Hammerfall's recharge and healing is still less than Healing Well's, a T2 60p card, with the same maximum capacity.
 Howling Shrine:
1. Essence Bolts damage: 600, up to 900 in total (3000 dp20) ➜ 750, up to 1125 in total (3750 dp20)
2. Crowd control duration (both affinities): 10 sec ➜ 15 seconds
Howling Shrine is feeling better after the buffs both to itself and to the root network in general. When the initial changes were proposed, some people suggested larger buffs to the card, but we urged caution due to the difficulty to account for how things would change once the full set of root network changes came through. Now that we can evaluate the changes more fully, it appears that Howling Shrine is still on the weak side. To remedy this, we are giving it a +25% damage increase and increasing the duration of both its root and paralyze to help it keep dangerous melee units at a safe distance. 
 Infected Tower:
1. Damage: 114, up to 172 in total (1215 dp20) ➜ 138, up to 207 in total. (1466 dp20)
2. Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 8m
A +20% damage increase and small splash radius increase. Changes to Infected Tower's ability have been postponed until we can properly rework it.
 Lost Converter:
1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range.
2. Corpse cost to freeze: 200 ➜ 250 stored life points
All corpse support buildings should have a way to gather corpses from further away. As such, we are adding Soul Splicer's Soul Suction ability to both Lost Converter and Waystation, as well as any future buildings of this type. 
 Morklay Trap:
1. Enable splash overflow fix
2. Explosion Blast total damage: 2640 in total ➜ 4400 in total
Increase total targets from 3 to 5 and enable splash damage properly transferred even when units die. This should make Morklay Trap a viable option to clear T3 camps or defend against incoming waves. 
 Stone Hurler:
1. Damage: 100 damage, up to 150 in total (834 dp20) ➜ 120 up to 180 in total (1000 dp20)
Align actual damage with stated damage on the card through an approximately +20% damage increase.
 Twilight Bombard:
1. Remove "Siege" from Infused affinity
2. Add "Rage" to Infused affinity. 
   A. Stage 1: +25%; Stage 2: +50% damage
   B. Attacks per stage: 3
   C. Reset timer: 10 seconds
3. Increase turret turn speed. 
The red affinity of Twilight Bombard has Siege as its affinity effect, which is largely useless. By changing it to Rage instead, we make the choice between the two affinities one of increased damage versus crowd control.
 Waystation:
1. Add Soul Splicer's "Soul Suction" ability to the card, allowing it to gather corpses outside its passive range.
2. New passive, Fast Construction: Construction time is reduced by 50%.
3. Infused damage buff: 30% ➜ 40%
4. Tainted poison damage: 30 life points every second ➜ 40 life points every second
5. Corpse storage: 2500 total ➜ 4500 total
6. Corpse cost per potion/poison (both affinities): 180 ➜ 400 stored life points will be used up.
7. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m
The first step in what will eventually be a full rework of Waystation. For now, the addition of fast construction means it can be set up offensively as its name suggests and the addition of Soul Suction means it should be able to easily gather corpses to fuel itself. Gave a small boost to both affinity effects and increased the radius to require ranged units to enter its effective radius to damage it.
 Worldbreaker Gun:
1. Life points: 4500 ➜ 5400
2. Descriptive: Add "Has a long range of 50m" to its Ground Attack description.
WBG is the best defense in the entire game, but that is achieved primarily through its Heavy Snowball ability augmented by Skyelf Sage. In terms of functions as a tower, it is still good, but has uncharacteristically low life points for its cost and tier. We are giving it a slight bump in total health, which should help it when functioning as a tower, while leaving it unchanged as a long range artillery piece. 

PvP Balance Changes
[ Twilight Follow-up ]
After the first round of Twilight buffs and the new introduction of Twilight Crawlers, the faction did not reach the level of performance for which we had hoped. Making good use of Twilight cards and transformation mechanics in a dynamic environment turned out to be too difficult. We will buff some cards to add further incentive of mastering Twilight decks. This might not be the last Twilight iteration as we will continue to monitor the situation moving forward.
 Slaver:
1. Life points: 780 ➜ 820
Increased durability to make Slaver better when used on open ground, where the unit is prone to kiting.
 Twilight Brute:
1. Life points: 780 ➜ 820
2. Bloodlust ability duration: 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds
Increased stat efficiency and also extended buff duration upon Transforming, making it a little easier to utilize.
 Twilight Crawlers:
1. Damage: 940 dp20 ➜ 1000 dp20
2. Chitin Shell ability damage reduction: 20% ➜ 30%
Whereas Twilight Crawlers scale decently well into high energy game stages, they don’t provide enough stability in early game. They had problems dueling some units they were supposed to counter making it incredibly difficult to play from behind. Increased stat efficiency and higher absorption rate on their passive should settle this and make Twilight Crawlers a worthy S-counter.
 Twilight Minions:
1. Incentive ability duration (both affinities): 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds
Extended buff duration upon Transforming, making it easier to make use of the effect.
 Vileblood:
1. Power cost: 130p ➜ 120p
2. Damage: 1400 dp20 ➜ 1250 dp20
3. Life points: 1350 ➜ 1250
4. Transformation ability cost: 111p ➜ 102p
5. Infused Liquids (r) ability: 130 damage per wave (520 total) ➜ 150 damage per wave (960 total)
6. Gifted Liquids (g) ability: 250 healing per wave ➜ 300 healing per wave
Reduced unit cost and adjusted stat efficiency to reward multi-unit set-ups and transformation effects. The decreased damage ratio will limit the impact Vileblood has on its own, but with less bound power, there are many more options to combine it with other cards and abilities.
[ Tier 1 ]
 Executor:
1. Burnout ability:
   A. Damage buff: 60% more damage ➜ 80% more damage
   B. Damage debuff: Now 60% less damage on all upgrades
   C. Damage buff duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
   D. Damage debuff duration: 30 seconds ➜ 20 seconds on all upgrades
After Nightguard received nerfs, Executor's performance as a compensation tool has been a bit underwhelming. These changes should address early L-counter issues and diversify Shadow’s defensive options in T1.
 Forsaken:
1. Frenzy ability initial cooldown: 0 seconds ➜ 7 seconds
With this patch, we intend to distribute the power of Shadow T1 more evenly and improve faction design overall. Shadow T1 is very Forsaken centric against Fire T1 and in the mirror matchup. The Frenzy ability allows them to be good in skirmishes, defense, and siege at the same time. While this can’t be changed fundamentally for slot reasons and due to available design options, we can shift a bit of Shadows' defensive strength from Forsaken to Wrathblades and Executor. This should add a bit more depth to the mentioned matchups and goes more in line with what would be expected from the counter system. 
 Thugs:
1. Damage: 720 dp20 ➜ 750 dp20
2. Gang Up! ability: Now works based on nearby friendly orcs, not just friendly Thugs.
As newly buffed Wrathblades will have a certain impact on skirmishing against Fire T1, Thugs will receive a slight damage increase as well.
 Warden's Sigil (g):
1. Gifted Sigil Ice Shield regeneration: 25 strength per second ➜ 35 strength per second
Providing clear identities to both Sigil affinities and granting more reasons to pick anything besides the frost one.
 Wrathblades:
1. Burnout ability:
   A. Damage buff: 60% more damage ➜ 80% more damage
   B. Damage debuff: Now 60% less damage on all upgrades
   C. Damage buff duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
   D. Damage debuff duration: 30 seconds ➜ 20 seconds on all upgrades
[ Tier 2 ]
 Moon:
1. Necroshade ability cost: 50p ➜ 40p
Moon has access to fairly strong abilities, but very high upfront costs put her into a very niche position, especially for a legendary card. Necroshade cost being reduced should add more room for skill expressive gameplay and reinforce her identity as an assassin type unit.
 Ripper:
1. Cannibalize ability regeneration: 25 life points per second ➜ 35 life points per second
Buffed the corpse interaction for increased card value in extended combat and better survivability of dazed summons. This change will also affect the Rippers spawning from Nox Carriers.
 Viridya:
1. Damage: 90, up to 135 in total (750 dp20) ➜ 108, up to 162 in total (900 dp20)
2. Unit's attack radius now applied around the unit hit instead of the squad's center.
Viridya’s autocast is nothing but frustrating to use. Attacks apply such a widespread knockback against squad units, to the point where she stops dealing any damage to them after a single attack. These changes should alleviate the mentioned issue and add a fair reward for utilizing her as an S-counter overall.
[ Tier 3 ]
 Amii Ritual:
1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 80p
2. Duration: 20 seconds ➜ 25 seconds
3. Cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 100 seconds
In the past, Amii Ritual has been underwhelming as its high cost made it fairly difficult to use the spell when needed the most. With this change the drawbacks of the card will be shifted to a long cooldown instead. This puts more emphasis on good strategic usage. Payoff can be significantly higher, but additional time between activations makes it easier to punish a mistimed use.
 Mo:
1. Mo's Better Blues ability:
   A. Duration: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds
2. Group Hug ability:
   A. Minimum healing: 500 life points ➜ 1000 life points
   B. Maximum healing: 3000 life points ➜ 4000 life points 
Whenever Mo sees occasional play, it is due to Stampede being one of the most valuable abilities in the game. More often than not, the cost and cast animation of his remaining abilities make it better to just not use them at all. These buffs should address this without reinforcing his base-nuke oriented play pattern.
 Nox Carrier:
1. Power cost: 180p ➜ 80p
2. Charges: 8 ➜ 16
3. Life points: 1500 ➜ 1050
4. Necro Strike ability (both affinities):
   A. Initial cooldown: 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds
   B. Damage: 3400 damage ➜ 900 damage
5. Tainted Necro Strike (p) poison duration: 15 seconds ➜ 10 seconds 
Nox-Carrier has been fairly problematic due to its one-dimensional design. The ability to destroy full health orbs turned the unit into a raw stat check, especially when combined with cards that can remove the downside of heavily reduced movement speed. In order to buff this card to a viable state, we needed to get rid of this pattern. As a result, we strictly nerfed the siege ability followed by a drastic cost reduction. This puts higher emphasis on Ripper spawns instead of ability damage. With Rippers also getting buffed, this should add a lot of room for creative card usage and remind everyone that Nox Carrier is actually carrying something.
 Queek Queek:
1. Damage per attack: 76 (610 dp20) ➜ 80 (640 dp20)
2. Attack range of normal Queek Queek: Now always 9m
3. Superpig ability damage buff: 120% (1340 dp20) ➜ 150% (1600 dp20)
Pushing unit stats to at least match other flying units in T3. The opportunity has also been used to clean up damage numbers.
 Shadow Insect:
1. Soul Shock ability damage: 500 ➜ 600
Shadow Insect is a strong unit with a rather unique ability design, but often requires too much micromanagement to outweigh the cons of having weaker stats compared to most other T3 units. We will strengthen the ability a little for that reason.
 Vulcan:
1. Conflagrate ability cost: 50p ➜ 30p
With buffs to many T3 units across the board, Vulcan was left somewhat behind in comparison. With lowered ability cost, it should be easier to make use of his strong damage spikes.

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

• 2nd Anniversary Stream

The 18th of December marked the 2nd Anniversary of Skylords Reborn! Two years ago, after many years of internal development and open stress tests, BattleForge was playable once again. We are very grateful for all your continued enthusiasm and support! 
On the anniversary, we hosted a celebration stream. If you missed it, you can view it on our YouTube channel. We will also cover most of the announcements in this Community Update.
Please note: The Anniversary Card Creation Contest ends today. If you want to participate, do so now! 
 



• Upcoming Content Patch

Sadly, our upcoming Content Patch which was planned for December didn't make it in time. The combination of many things to review (including our new feature Cosmetics) and the busy holidays proved to be a bit too ambitious. 
Since the upcoming patch will break replays due to the many balance changes deployed alongside it, we know it's far from ideal for events to not have a set patch date. We are doing our best to release the patch as soon as possible in early January, but sadly can't lock in a concrete date yet.
Please keep an eye on the Discord and the forum for more information in the coming days. 


• Upcoming Feature: Cosmetics

For our first anniversary patch, we had Reforging as our big new feature, focusing on improving the economy. 
For our second anniversary, Cosmetics will be introduced as a way to provide more challenges and collectibles. 
Players will be able to collect new borders, banners and titles, further customizing their experience. Here is a look at the new borders:  
 

 
Borders are the part of your profile that surround your character portrait. With the patch release, there will be two borders to choose from for each of the different elements/factions in the game. The first border is a simple but clean colour scheme, where the second level expands on the theme of the faction a bit more, like more vines for Nature or infestation for Twilight. 
Borders can be combined with Banners, here is an example: 
 

 
Banners, borders, and profile pictures can be freely combined to make unique combinations. There will also be new titles to unlock. An example of a title can be seen in the picture, above the name, in this case "Game Master". 
Your cosmetics will show up in the lobby, and when hovering over players in the chat list.   
 

 
Those new banners, borders, titles (and a few new profile pictures), are tied to new Achievements, which provide a variety of new challenges. Some will be rewarded simply by playing games with your favourite action, while others might ask you to complete the campaign using only cards from the Twilight Edition. 
We hope you are looking forward to a bunch of new challenges to explore, and new bling to show off! 
 
• Upcoming New Promo: Worldbreaker Gun

While our new cards Sanctuary and Raven Walker had already been announced in previous Community Updates, we had one more surprise in store in our stream: our next promo card and the first promo building: Worldbreaker Gun! 

In this year's feedback survey, people let us know loud and clear they would like to see buildings get the promo treatment. The newly buffed Worldbreaker Gun felt like the perfect candidate for being the very first promo building. 

You will be able to unlock this new promo by completing the upcoming achievement Urban Planner.

-- Please note: this achievement is not yet live! --
Urban Planner
Win the 2-player scenario The Sunbridge and the 1-player scenarios Mo and Ocean on expert difficulty, with all players in your team playing only building and spell cards
-- Please note: this achievement is not yet live! --
As with Mana Wing Promo, the promo will not drop from boosters, but will be tradeable. If you don't want to do the challenge yourself, you can buy the card on the market, or trade it with other players. 
 
• Advanced Filtering

We greatly expanded the search function in both the inventory and marketplace during the time of our first anniversary, which was probably overlooked by a lot of players in the new-patch-hype. Our developer Kubik wrote an in depth document about the way the new (and old) function worked, with handy shortcuts to find just the cards you need. 
But even the players who were aware of the new tools at their disposal, had a hard time remembering the search commands. Our UI designer Ult and Skylord of Honour Kapo worked together to provide a handy new ingame tooltip that should make searching for cards a lot easier for everyone. 
 

 
• Future Development Focus

We spend the last two years on improving and balancing many, many cards. We currently feel the balance of the game, while not perfect, is in the best place it has ever been. The campaign and rPvE are playable with every faction right now, and while PvE changes will continue, we intend a major pivot next patch cycle to map/game content with many of our balance developers and team members. 
This means we will put more focus on providing more map-based content, like our alternative Halloween map Spooky Encounters, the upcoming Nature rPvE faction, Defensive rPvE, tweaks to the difficulty levels of rPvE and new campaign maps. Basically, we want to focus on creating content that will lure back old players, and invite new ones in. 
This has proven challenging. While every player automatically has access to the map editor, map making is a long and patient process. We are very aware people are looking forward to new campaign maps, but their design is a huge undertaking, and due to the volunteer nature of the project, mapmakers don't always stick it out till the end. 
If you want to help out in the map department, please take a look at our open positions:
• Map Designer
• Map Developer
• Map Artist
We are also looking for an Audio Editor to help us with processing voice acting takes. Want to help out in another area? Check out our open positions.

 
• 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 Card Design Contest - UNTIL 01.01.2023 23:59 CET
A contest like this has often been suggested: create your own card! Entries will be judged by a jury of Designers and there are tiered prizes, including boosters and promos. Maybe your design will even make it into the game! Today is the last day to join: 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.

• Newsletter

While we do our best to make it easy to follow Skylords Reborn by providing monthly news through these Community Updates, we are limited to the Forum and our Social Media channels to reach you. You can now sign up to our newsletter, which we will use to give you a heads-up about a new patch release or Community Update. Don't worry, we hate spam as much as you do and won't use your data in any other way. 

 If you provided your e-mail during our summer survey to stay up to date, you are automatically subscribed. 
 
• 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-YNEW-YEAR-2023

The code is valid until February 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 #30

Name: Shrink
Tier & Orbs: T1 Nature
Type: Spell (utility)
Power: 60

Spell Effect: Miniature Warfare - Curse target hostile squad or unit within 'x' metres in a way that they go down one unit size for the next 30 seconds.
Target(s) under the effect of Shrink cannot be cursed again.


Explanation: I think a spell like this fits the color perfectly. It's a fun way to engage with units (in both pvp and pve) in a way like never before.
I don't know about the technical difficulties/limitations but it'd be cool to see an L-sized Juggernaut.

Since some of the discord user asked me directly if I can share my … “unique card drawings”,
I though why not make a post in the forum where people can fine all at one place.
Also, the newer ones have a speed drawing video on Youtube.
(If you want an image of the unit without the card around and in a better resolution, just PM me)
Promo Juggernaut
 
Promo Harvester
 
Promo Razorleaf
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm-gbnl7d2Y
 
Promo Lyrish Knight
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ePLaWtQiM
 
Promo Swamp Drake
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIqbTFv0yxA
 
Promo Rogan Kayle
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1pSzZryvxg
 
Promo Firedancer
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLCA-knvuT0
 
Promo Grinder
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeVJRF6eDP0
 
Promo Worldbreaker Gun
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcDg5c8y7h8
 
Promo Viridya
First of April Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kIP6QhVM9g
The gif version can be found: here
 
 Promo Fallen Skyelf
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oZKyvGrR-Q
 
Promo Ravenheart
Speed Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJaxHDE2MrI
 (Promo) Moon
The gif version can be found: here
 

These changes are amazing!

Twilight slayers looks so cool, the Artwork is really epic. I was one of those who hoped they would get a playable card at some point. Keep up your awesome work. 👍

Hi guys, I wanna talk about one of the new achievements "Not even my final form", the rules are simple, can't use cards of t3 and t4, I tried that after I completed the Soultree achie where you can only use t1 and t2 cards, I tried Encounter with the twilight with the same deck, but the last boss is hard, was there when I detected something, the achie description is different, one says that you must use ONLY nature t1 and t2, and the other achie says that you can't PLAY t3 and t4.
That's the clue, u can use the twilight transformation to use t3 and t4, and now I can confirm that, I just did this way, I used only t1 and t2, all the t2 twilight units transformed in T3 to clean.
Tips to complete it, the best t3 to transform is the treefiend, the damage is insane, recomend to play with root nexus if you will use the horn to pull all the enemies. But I don't recomend to use the horn, the drake destroy the treefiend, I lose all there, i killed the drake spaming windweavers.
I did the last boss with 3 skycatchers, 3 abominations and 3 nightshade plant, I bought one of each card, just waiting for the cd, I don't have twi cards.
All this t4 transformed from Twilight Minions t2, and I got the achievemente completed.
Hope it can help you to complete this achie xD