I strongly dislike PvP but would still like achievements like this.
Anything that encourages play and ISNT a daily quest is a plus in my book.
If new players join to do this they can always start participating in the content i do enjoy like PvE, achievements like this would be a boon to the community as a whole.
Could even encourage non-pvpers to try it out for a bit in hopes of getting the rewards.
I do not want to lose PvP matches only because someone have better charges / upgrades, even if I slightly outplay them in decision making. I believe many players share that thought. However, I think you are familiar with that arguments already.
If you grant boosters or other large rewards for playing Collection PvP, then expect PvE players just to grind in afk those matches to get rewards.
Actually boosters as a reward can be interesting way to make PvP more popular. For example achievement "Play 100 PvP ranked matches", and reward for it 5-6 boosters. It's juicy enough to make many players interested in completing the achievement, and at the same time, I believe (well, I am naive), popularity of PvP side of the game would significantly increase - players from PvE would experience the gamemode quite and bit, and thanks to larger player base, they may avoid frustration from playing vs significantly superior players. Collection mod ecould benefit from this phenomena as well.
But, as the same time such achievement could lead to a lot of frustration and conflict of interests among many PvE players, they would feel forced to complete the achievement to stay on top with boosters, achievements work this way, and I do not think it would be a good thing to force players to play the gamemode.
Gotta be Viridya. Loved her in the campaign, love her voicelines for her card and she's just so bloody good! Especially given I main pure frost ha! I swear I wish she had a Lyrish blue outfit skin of some sort because no card synergizes better with Frost than her. Honestly being able to have the winter aspect version of her from Ascension as a promo card would be great lol.
Hopefully this will help reduce the fail rate of ascension. So many people go in with decks that a literally useless for it. Also I would like to note that a pair of imperials and frost sorceress' is all you really need to take t2. Usually I get the place secure and the powerwells up by around 4 minutes though I'm working to continue to improve that time. adding master archers in as power comes in can help speed stuff up and having some defense towers up makes life easy. One thing you don't go into either is how amazing mark of the keeper is on this map for shutting down the flyers and windweavers always harassing everything by the t2. Stone Hurler for that M knock back is also amazing for the map for dealing with maulers in particular but also flyers. OH and a healing well with 2-3 defenders + lightblade at each choke point handles pretty much everything coming indefinitetly, especially on position 8 where those 2 choke points handle 4 lanes. Really racks up avenger kills for the benefits those provide. If anyone's ever having trouble holding the line I highly recommend giving that a try to make life a lot simpler when everything handles itself with no repairs or action necessary.
One thing important to note is to make sure to get early avenger kills if you can. Getting that first big punch of power from hitting the first kill goal makes the map a lot simpler. Pays for your t2 and all it's defenses letting you get down to business right away.
After sending many emails, and tweet messages to game reviewers, I finally got the first article to be published.
This article was published by Jonathan Bolding a month ago:
https://www.pcgamer.com/skylords-reborn-brings-back-unique-rts-plus-ccg-battleforge/
I hope more will follow.
It obviously depends on what level you want to understand it. The basic mechanics are easy, getting a grip on the main objectives is also quite easy. Learning every matchup perfectly and bringing your decision making and micromanagement to perfection is very difficult and takes a long time though.
I personally only played PvE in the old days, watched a crapton of PvP replays during the downtime and played around 50~100 games (including the Stress test and sparring matches) until now, and I would say I have a basic idea on what I'm doing and usually know, why I loose when I do, but I still got no shot against the best players.
So don't be discouraged, if you loose most/all of your games in the beginning, that's just normal and will get better over time.
This game is not at all hard to understand. You will get the basics after playing the tutorial and a few missions on standard difficulty. There is a bit of advanced stuff, but not a lot tbh, like how bound power and the vpid system function, which you will also learn rather quickly, especially if you ask experienced players for help about it. When playing with other people you will be able to pick up common strategies/combos.
Only if you want to get into the details about speedrunning and knowing the ins and outs of all the maps, you will have to invest more time. And of course, more time will also make you better at the basics.
If you want to get into PvP I would suggest checking out a beginner's guide before your first game, since not knowing what you are doing will result in a lot of losses at first. You can check out the PvP section in the forums for example.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy the game. Have fun!
I never thought of that, but you are right. This passive is based on the idea that you are going to either kill your unit on purpose (to maybe gain the 25% damage from Revenant's blessing), or that you are going to make a mistake. It's like a very expensive car insurance that gives you a supercar for 25s if you crash yours... Nobody in their right minds would buy that, or crash their car on purpose...
While the ability is underwhelming overall, you at least got to remember that the cost is refunded into your void power pool and with easy access to void manipulation for Lost Souls you can get that power back very quickly.
I think the problem here is more so about the nature of the ability as it is an effect that only does anything after you died already, which might help you recover a situation but that is 2 big if‘s in a situation where you still obviously made a mistake. That just does not feel very rewarding at all.
Maybe make it an L counter that passivly deals 50% more damage to units below 50% health? Gives shadow some options against Fire tier 1 rushing with a dazed sunderer.
The biggest problem I see in Executor is not it's ability. The problem is the abundance of (ranged) M counters for Shadow T1. Forsaken and Nox are both fantastic M-counters and Skeleton Warrior's also perform this role well. All of these units are commonly used and Executor can't take away their key roles. So why bother with having another M counter? For Executor to be worth taking, it's ability would need to be borderline overpowered and this is not desirable.
Instead I suggest this: Make Executor an S-counter.
Executor could be an alternative to Dreadcharger who trades "swift" for "less power cost". In pvp, Dreadcharger would still be a favourite because it's swift and has amazing synergy with Forsaken. However, Executor with S-counter would make for a superb pve unit. You can use Executor as front-line tanks that kill S-units, while your Forsaken/Nox Troopers kill the M-sized ones.
It would make for a greater beginner card, since it is common and would combo well with Forsken.
The goal should be to make each card useful, even if it is only a niche. If a small change can make a unit useful, you should always prefer that to a more exotic rework.
One of the most important things in a deck involving Tortugun is that you have a very good way to get back your energy. You need either shrine of war or fof with cultist master since those turtles will die very often. And therefore you definitely need offering as well.
The strategy I use with them is quite simple: Every time a Tortugun would get hungry, you have two options: Either let another Tortugun eat it or use cards like offering or sometimes motivate on it. You just need to pay very close attention to their hunger bar and which tortugun is about to become hungry and tell them the target to eat early enough. Else you could end up with two tortuguns eating the other two you just played and since they get hungry very quickly after eating an undazed Tortugun, they will then eat each other so instead of having 3 full tortuguns, you only have 1 which may even be at low life. Also, keep in mind you can't use offering or motivate on Tortuguns once they are in the amok state. So from that point on you either have to feed or eat them (You can also tell them to move right before they get in the amok state and they will walk to their destination even though they switch to amok state right away. That gives you plenty of time to pick another Tortugun and let that one eat the one in amok state. Another method is using the spell amok. As long as they are affected by amok, they won't eat your units).
Another little trick to that strategy: use both variations of tortugun and always play them in pairs. This way they get hungry simultaneously and you can tell one of them to eat the other. It's way easier to handle them like this.
Oh and it's very important to upgrade them to at least U2. You not only need the lower consumption of food but also the charges.
There are so many more things I could tell you about this unit but I think I covered the most important things.
Anyway. If you play Tortugun correctly, you will have lots of fun with that unit. The hunger bar is one of the most unique abilities in the game and that's why I'm highly against a major change to it.
I agree with the complaint about the animation though. It takes so long and because of that, it's barely useful to eat smaller units like Nightcrawlers from infect or the crawlers from Grim Bahir. A change I see fitting for Tortugun is to pause their hunger bar for a few seconds after they eat something. That would not only encourage people to play them the way it's intended, but it will also make up for the long eating animation.
The game doesn't have the playerbase to support grinding PvP cards.
Anyone whos interested in PvP and joins as a newbie is going to be slaughtered in a PvP grind system and be instantly demotivated to play.
If we had 10k players on all the time that'd be fine, there would be plenty of other newbies for newbies to be matched up with. But we dont.
Realistically we have 500-1500 players on at any time, and we have to keep in mind a large portion of them will be playing PvE.
Locking ranked behind collecting cards is an idea i find pretty revolting, if collecting cards is a thing it should be the other way around, collecting for unranked, all cards free for ranked.
When I transformed a twilight Slaver Red into a twilight Nightshade Purple my abomination charges dropped to 0 permanently for my blue twilight Abomination. I could click it and the summon circle icon for the abomination would pop up like I had a charge ready but clicking to summon just did nothing. Was on Passage to darkness advanced. Can't seem to reproduce it when i tried on encounters with twilight though. Don't have time to do another passage so not sure if it's map specific.
I see no reason to consider changing ranked to even allow for the option of collection only. The whole point of a competitive ranked PvP mode in ANY game is to provide an experience where players can use their skill to outplay their opponent(s) and obtain rankings based on their demonstrated skill. Once you have outside influences giving one player an advantage over another before the match even starts, it begins to trivialize any showing of skill, thus the "ranked" aspect is pointless.
I get that quite a few players enjoyed the fact that you could grind for a maxed out PvP deck and then stomp people who didn't put in that same effort, but this kind of gameplay only heightens the enjoyment of the players on top at the expense of those at the bottom.
Now separating the playerbase into brackets based on deck level would make these issues less apparent, but they wouldn't be removed completely. It would also be pointless to implement currently as there aren't enough players to consistently have matches in each bracket.
It was our goal to make PvP accessible from the start without forcing players to grind for cards and upgrades. If you are satisfied with only having two decks in PvP, then yes, you do not need any more cards next to the free PvP decks.
Let's say it's the year 2022. The game has been out for a year and plenty of people have been playing for a while now. A lot of them have multiple level 120 collection decks. Now, let's suppose you are a new player who exclusively wants to play the PvP mode. What sounds more appealing:
1. Constantly losing against other players because they have a high level deck and you have a low level deck, while completely ignoring any skill differences.
2. Having the same high level deck as all other players and have the skill difference actually be the decider of the match.
I'd argue the first option will essentially lead to a PvP environment, which will be unwelcoming for all new players. Everyone will be forced to grind PvE or play sparring before they have a reasonable deck. Considering sparring PvP only grants one third of the ranked PvP rewards due to it's potential for abuse, grinding PvE will be the only reasonable option again. In this scenario, does the first option really sound that much more appealing to you than the second option? To me it surely doesn't. PvP will end up with a dead player base after 1-2 years since new players will have a very hard time getting into it.
I'd support a display of the loottable in game but don't see any reason to make a rotation out of it. Kind of defeats the purpose of compleating different maps for different uprgrades (which you already are able to by disenchanting and crafting upgrades for gold).
Hi Team,
It would be lovely if we get to show the loot for the map ingame.
Also what about rotating around the loot table between maps from time to time?
We are not going to remove the free PvP decks and we are also going to keep them at level 120. We also are not looking to encourage the collection mode over the unlimited mode. The collection mode was added as a secondary option for players who enjoyed playing with messy decks in the early stages of the game against other beginners. Forcing players to use the collection mode in ranked play will eventually result in beginners facing veterans with fully upgraded decks, which they have earned after months of grinding. Do you think it's fair that the player with the low level deck loses, even if they might actually be better at the game than the player who just happened to start playing earlier? I will be moving this to rejected, as the original suggestion was to "Remove lending of free PvP decks". If you have any other suggestions, such as introducing a fee for the free PvP decks, feel free to make a suggestion.
Can really feel you there. Matches against opponents with different deck levels is almost pointless. I had to work a lot harder than any of my opponents ever had to when climbing with a low deck level. Spam grinding pve just to be able to play pvp was always a poor decision and I hope they don't ever take this suggestion of removing the free decks from ranked seriously. Most people who want that just want to get wins they don't deserve from being more grinded than their opponents even if they won't admit it. Pvp needs to be on the most even ground possible for anyone to actually play it and that means putting people on an even footing.
I'd invert this. In Ranked, it should be skill that decides where you end up on the leaderboard. Not capacity for grinding. And the reality is that if you fight with a non-optimized deck vs an optimized, you WILL run into situations where you lose against fairly simple unit spams because you don't own a specific key card for that matchup, or it simply isn't upgraded high enough.
Also, talking for myself and my friend group of 4 people who play RTS together from time to time, we play games longer if they're balanced and fun. Grinding purely serves as a barrier to entry. It's much more satisfying to notice how you actually get better at the game and thus win more, as opposed to winning more because you have plainly better cards.
Tbh I have a hard time even understanding the sentiment of wanting grinding for PVP. I can understand liking grinding in PVE, because there you're playing against a (rather dumb) AI and thus balancing makes no sense - if it was balanced, you'd win everytime. But in PVP, adding grinding just means that you're forced to play uninteresting non-games.
I remember back when BF was still an EA game and I started out with lvl ~60, reasonably decent shadow/frost deck on low ladder. Roughly a third of my games, I'd play against a clearly terrible lvl 30 or so deck and completely stomp the opponent, even though I wasn't much better in terms of micro etc. . Another third of the time, I'd play against a lvl 100+ netdeck (often pure fire) and get completely stomped myself and again, not because I necessarily played worse. Actually interesting games, against OPs with similar deck lvls that are similarly optimized, seemed like the minority of matches. Only after I got lvl 100+ myself, reached a higher rank and had all the important cards, games were decided by skill. I don't mind getting stomped if the OP is actually clearly better. But if I had as little time back then as I have now, I don't think I'd have persevered until then.
If you want actual people to play pvp against there needs to be free pvp decks. Deck level has always been the largest barrier to pvp. Was always my biggest gripe in battleforge.
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):
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!
One thing I'd recommend in any pure frost deck is Viridya. She's a godsend with her percentage health healing with frosts many damage reductions and high health pools. Stand her behind some defenders and let all comers try their luck. Even stays useful at t4 as she's a walking regrowth passive. Always get a ton of use with her.
White Rangers are also obscenely good, broken in fact in pve. Their ability ignores unit targeting and line of sight rules so you can bombard pretty much anything from safety. Very cheesy but you can't argue with the results.
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