Treim

Even though you say that you simply didnt even mention most of the aspects going into balancing. I highly doubt that you are able to understand the game on a high enough theoretical level to regularly get good results with your balancing suggestions. Just a few things to consider for balancing a card: ranged/melee unit, air/ground unit, special abilities, orb requirements & possible synergies with other cards and the list goes on and on and on. You should probably just let this get into an open discussion on what could be changed, because i doubt you can work all that stuff out on your own

I think this thread is in the right section. I think even experienced players can learn something from this. Especially some combos are rather advanced and i doubt most players will ever think about those. That is especially true as most players probably go for the easier choices with heals and don't play a "standard bandits deck". Especially your explanations on the situational use of cards is probably extremely valuable to new players and even to players who are just new to the faction as bandits have a very distinct playstyle similar to Lost souls as both can not rely on conventional healing spells and the use of units and spells is getting vastly more important. So far great job. I am looking forward to the t3 and t4 section. I also hope you can do some examplatory decks in the end for different types of maps - like standard, defensive, offensive and rPVE. I'd also like to get a small summary of how to play those decks in a so to say compressed form. Like a few sentences on which card combos are generally the key to success in thos decks specifically. In addition maybe a difficulty ranking would be nice . I am not sure if you wanted to include those anyways but i think those things could be usefull. If you need any help with something feel free to contact me Great job so far.

In terms of rPVE speedrunning Bloodhorn is an option for either LSS and Batariel decks. It is frequently used when facing at least 2 XL Bosses with massive HP bars or against Twilight maps. It is especially usefull when facing Twilght Infester (i think it was named like that - the Twilight Juggernaut Boss) as it deals massive damage and takes less damage from ranged attacks. Additionally against Twilight ground presence is generally necassary to cast spells such as Earthshaker, Matter Mastery to deal with Willzappers and at lvl 10 cc spells to deal with Wrathgazers and as LSS are generally the way to go Bloodhorn is the best option if you can afford the fire orb in your deck. Alternatively Grimvine is the only other viable option, but slightly tankier but with much less damage. the shadow affinity Bloodhorn 3-4 shots any Boss with the inherent units buff + Unholy Hero + Unholy Power ( not exactly sure if unholy power was necassary for that), Only exception to this rule is Commando Walker, which is the other Unit Bloodhorns are especially valuable against. Bandits are always dealt with by LSS and it generally takes ages to deal with it, even with Fallen Skyelf. Bloodhorns are easily the 3rd most viable t4 unit right behind LSS and Batariel (4th if you count Rifle cultists) for rPVE I probably missed out on some things due the large time without playing speedruns. If you are interested in the exact use you should check out my speedrun guide which was written in 2015 with much fresher memories: Have fun in that forgotten thread For casual play Bloodhorns are great units due to their great abilities. Stampeding half a camp and destroying 4 buildings is easily one of the most satisfying things to watch in the game and even has the additional bonus of healing the unit. Both affinities have situations where one is better than the other. For the casual game fire affinity is way better in twilight maps due to the cc immunity while purple is way better at boss slaying. Both have their valuable spots in a deck based around Bloodhorns. Combining thos with spells such as Soulshatter, Frenetic assault, Infect and Cluster Explosion is probably the 2nd fastest way to clear an entire base right behind a buffed up Batariel. Overall really just a fun card with a great kit.

It is the one and only original brought back to you

You are correct. The naming of this part of the project was also discussed in another thread and the result was that it technically is not an open beta, but they will stick to naming it that way .

For rPVE you can really just make anything work at least on lvl 9, especially for the pre t4 phase. For post t4 you can run some t3 strategies around ashbone pyros or giant slayers with a bunch of healing spells and void manipulation. Lost Souls is a little rough due to the anti spell buildings though and Hellhounds though. Bosses are generally easily manageable especially with motivated pyros and Fallen Skyelf. For myself i found Pyros working more reliably than Giant Slayers as you can dodge a lot of damage with Netherwarp and Frenetic Assault. Those strategies work much better if you have a mate who is running the same strategy or at helps you out with Shrine of War so you can motivate pretty much permanently, which is pretty massive when running around with 15+ Pyros. You can play around Worldbreakergun and kobold inc with the damage increasing skyelf as well, bosses are a little bit hard though. Really good for oneshotting bases. Hard part is that it needs a lot of energy before you can really start and requires void manipulation at some point which kills your orb requirements and youll have to switch orbs at some point (or build t5 with amii monument which i do not recommend). You can run something like Batariel with Green Peace and Disenchant which is pretty fun, but requires pretty good charge managemenet as you will run out of them in no time. Also you get rekt by Lost Souls anti spell buildings pretty hard. I recommend having a mate that plays a supportive deck around this to help you out with charges and build stuff like Healing Gardens and SoW, especially when you are not yet used to this deck. You can run something around Tortugun which is pretty, but @Mental Omega can say much more about that than me. You can play with Constructs and Deepcoil worm with Burrowing ritual to get the Construcats from A to B without much time loss and do some decent damage. Doesn't work to bad but i found myself rather useless against strong incomes. As this is a slow deck anyways it doesn't really fit my taste of how a deck should work but you can get through maps with this just fine. You can also run the free 2 play frost t4 unit with rifle Cultists. you try to have enough cc to not get any enemies near you with a bunch of damage reduction and heals and then work your way into the base and kill the spawn with rifle cultists. Works okayish but is really weak against towers, long range and burst damage. Dont use this against Lost Souls or you will get wiped. For pre t4 strategies there is really a lot of diversity that you can use, especially when playing with a mate. I generally liked Lost Converter with shadow start for Soul Splicer to get collect souls for the converter. My mate would then teleport the enemies into the range of the converter where they get frozen for 15 seconds (not sure on the exact numbers) which is enough time to kill the spawn building and the majority of the base. Optional are Lost Wanderers which can increase damage to frozen units. Works better with netherwarp (frost affinity) as the enemies won't get healed. I didn't saw Phase towers with Dreadchargers or Skeleton Warriors in ages which i thought was always interesting for a t2 clear. i feel like due to the linearity of the map, the limited availability of card combinations due to limited availability of orbs and that basically everything can work makes it super hard to get something that is super creative for a solo deck as your deck slots are generally also rather limited for that phase of the game. You probably have to search for a strategy that requires 2 players to come up with something super interesting for t1-t3. That is what i can remember for existing strategies just now. Hope you found something to your liking

I have barely any impression of this card as towers are utterly useless in rPVE and PVP. Also i never used double frost orbs in PVE either. I feel like you can probably get by with Cannon towers and wait for t4 with Worldbreaker gun generally though. If you really need a t3 towers i feel like Necroblaster would be the better choice as well.

You're welcome . Healing gardens for speedrunning is generally at best optional. Generally it only really is worth it when you are facing massive amounts of damage which are hard to deal with just regular heals and defensive capabilities. That's generally only the case for Twilight lvl 10 maps where you face massive cc and rahter high damage output with very few units as t1-4 are so quickly cleared. There is a few Lost Soul maps which are hard to deal with even with 10-12 LSS as they simply put out so much damage that a few ships can get focussed down very easily. Even in those cases it is more of an optional card as you generally can play around those maps. It is more of a safety net if someone messes up positioning. I really liked using this in Death Ray decks where they constantly chunk of HP from themselves to charge themselves up. That is quite a bit of HP to loose in the process and without Healing gardens it is rather easy to run out of charges even with 2 or 3 healing spells, especially when not refilling charges with Offering accordingly. I feel like the biggest problem about this card is that you are binding a lot of power in a building that has a use that might or might not be necassary. 240 power to keep the effect running permanently is a lot of power when just reaching t4. This slows you down considerably. Also the problem is that you generally have enough void manipulation to get back power so quickly that it doesn't really matter to use a healing spell one more time. If you are running a support type of deck i'd definetly recommend this card as well. You will definetly not get anything going damage wise anyways, so building as much support as possible is the best way. So if you are the type of guy who wants to build Wheel of Gifts,, Inc. Mo and Shrine of War stick to that and just add Healing Gardens as you're damage will be negligable anyways - you spend so much power on buildings that your few units can't really go anywhere by themselves anyways. Btw when facing Lost Souls never build Wheel of Gifts in my games unless you have at least 2 people who only use air units only. The effect will get cancelled out for ground units by Lost Dancers anyways. If i see that it literally tilts me off the earth Generally this card also gets better the less void manipulation you have as the cost for additional healing spells in contrast to binding 240 power permanently gets increased as you cant back your power from the spell as fast. Summarizing: For speedrunning: -Only ever against Twilight lvl 10 or Lost Souls lvl 10 maps with massive bases For casual play: -Necassary when running out of healing charges - such as Death Ray deck -Highly recommend it in supportive decks -Better for low/no void manipulation decks -Otherwise at best optional as you will generally not need the extra healing effect if you play properly . If you mess up it will probably not save you anyways , but it is an option to help out teammates. The better option for helping out teammater though is Shrine of War.

Essential speedrunning card on rPVE lvl 10 maps against any Lost Vigils. The red one is preferable due to more damage against air units and ground units are taken care of mines. I'll just be lazy and quote myself on this one . Otherwise it will probably get to out of context as this only works if you have some kind of coordination. It's by far the most complex thing in rPVE T1 and applying to any situation is not as easy as it may look like. I underlined the parts where the most relevanant parts for Blaster Cannons are. I'd suggest to read the whole thing though. I'll leave the original source here as well: Please note that this is just a general rule of thumb and you have to apply it to every map indidividually. If you play decently with good coordination you will always be able to clear t2 bases in a fast and efficient way though. For 2 Player maps: For 4 Player maps: I rarely used this card on any other occasion as you can generally get by without it and due to it being against air only and t1 makes the situations where it actually is the best all around card rather rare.

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There's a bunch of threads about game theory, especially in depth guides about the competitive side of the game in this forums, mostly PVP and at least 1 about speedrunning. You can probably pick up some things about game mechanics and efficiency there . Especially @Eirias and @RadicalX have a bunch of threads on high level PVP. So if you're interested in that kinda stuff, it probably is worth a read. Bring some time though because those are pretty long posts

The nerf didnt change to much in the landscape of rPVE as LSS is still the domineering card in rPVE - same as before the nerfs to WoG and SC. It is just a little bit slower but still too good to mess up with it really when playing casually. To really get diverse decks in rPVE you have to hit especially LSS and probably also the "buff the Batariel" decks, which is by far the 2nd best thing to play. To completely throw everything on its head you have to hit void manipulation really hard as well which will probably result in rPVE 9 actually being a challenge that requires some kind of teamwork. In that case lvl 10 Twilight and LS maps need to get a whole rework probably though as they are already now a challenge with some LS maps already now being almost unbeatable, especially when not map of the month. I got a little off the rails here and will leave it at that

Wheel of Gifts was patched well before the shutdown. At least 1/12 years before. The whole Sexond Chance + Decomposer, Soul Splicer + FoF + Embalmers Shrine, Wheel of Gifts stacking + LSS were nerfed within 2 or 3 patches because the strategy gained populraity within the normal player base and made rPVE a joke tbh. Sadly LSS remained still to good for the casual playerbase and rPVE is still to easy for the most part - just not quite as much as before. The nerfes really affected speedrunning as it actually became easier to get good times as the pre t4 phase was basically untouched, bit t4 became way easier as the macranaging of units became much less complicated (before the nerfs you had generally 4 groups of LSS which all had to be managed and maintained with just 2 support spells (revenge + regwroth)). Nowadays you simply dont have the power nor the void manipulation to split up your forces. The times are generally about 2-3 minutes slower than before. The nerfes actually made it slightly harder for casual players, while making it easier for speedrunners. Also Second Chance was not a glitch^^