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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

As per the design documents, Bandits has always had problems with the identity of their cards and splash redundancy. Skyfire Drake is to Windhunter, Gunner to Ashbone Pyro, Frenetic Assault to Amok and further. Banditos faces the largest redundancies in the lineup as a S->S type, which even T1 unit cards are outperforming. This post is made as a long standing Bandit's player, and isn't meant to be any sole verdict on the state of cards within Battleforge, nor any effort to change the game beyond Banditos themselves*. First let us look at the card itself: Banditos are a swarm/anti swarm unit through their passive, Alliance. Swarms being within the Bandit archetype. Banditos have a Complexity Calculation of 2, having only passives, with Alliance containing external dependencies (sum of surrounding enemy/ally units). While Alliance stacks multiple times with itself, the function of the passive remains consistent and straightforward (though it may be interpreted as more complex or multi-stage, Alliance requires no further game knowledge). Banditos lack synergy with other Bandits cards, which is contrasted by other Bandits cards granting them a factional synergy. Banditos has the highest health value among Bandit unit cards in T2 at 840 HP (beating Bandit Spearmen by 30 HP). Banditos has a low attack power for a T2 melee unit at 660 ATK, which rises with 3 surrounding units up to 990 ATK, and a maximum potential of 1650 ATK at 9 surrounding units (comparable with Nightcrawler's Frenzied 1630 ATK). Banditos can be summoned four at a time by the T3 Corsair (Nature) for 120 power, a design choice seemingly made for Gifted Alliance to be active without needing the Corsair itself nearby, or for Motivate/Blood Healing to be more easily used underneath a supporting Corsair. Within PvE, Banditos can grant a significant advantage when swarming, but in practice suffers from a lack of support options such as Nature's healing spells. Earth Crystal and Ice Crystal appear to be heavily encouraged within Bandits, as many cards have a Nature or Frost affinity available, but these neutral buildings just help an already ahead player get further ahead. Banditos require a large power pool to make a difference, and only when they're not being knocked down or facing area damage. For PvP, Banditos face significant use-case issues: Army deterioration near immediately disables Alliance. Bandit's limited sustainability and high offense exasperates Banditos' lackluster statistics, especially when contrasted with Bandit Spearmen (who do not rely upon a conditional effect) having nearly the same statistics of a Banditos with Alliance active (without factoring in Bandit Spearmen's weapon change ability). Banditos (Nature) requires a significant lead to utilize fully, and in the situations 7-10 units can be massed up (and not lost to spells) the match has likely been decided first by other cards. Banditos (Frost) is a counter to swarms (without any ability to intercept said swarms). Banditos (Frost) are not useful against any swarm cards. Banditos do not counter Sunken Temple and its Pest Creepers, nor Undead Army or Harvester, while Thugs will always beat an equal power's worth of Banditos if Gang Up is active alongside proper targeting. Fire/Shadow has other S->S counter units, which Banditos offers no play advantages over. Thugs are more durable when swarming in T1 saving you a deck slot, Rippers will bounce back from spells and counter corpse use, while Dark Elf Assassins are already one of the most power-effective S->S units; and happen to be ranged. The primary issue with balancing Banditos is that they are produced by Corsair (Nature) for 30 power each, without binding power. While I personally believe the impact of buffing Corsair (Nature)'s Banditos will not shake PvE's balance, there may be significant problems in PvP if Banditos' are over tweaked. Corsair drops (especially Banditos) are currently in an okay spot balance wise for T3 PvP, but this is about the T2 unit, Banditos, not Corsair! So what can be done? Tweaking the units combat statistics to better compete with other cards in Fire/Shadow which are S->S unit counters. Again, this could be an issue with Corsair, but Banditos are not winning games outside of being the ability of another card. Raising Banditos' complexity, since the unit has a budget as an uncommon card for new effects. Maybe something which will support a swarm playstyle earlier for Bandits than T3 (as admitted to be the case by the Bandit Design documents). Perhaps a controversial take, but lowering Banditos power cost (maybe below 50 even) may grant the card some space in a deck without altering Corsair's functionality. Thugs are already outperforming Banditos with their Gang Up ability, but its questionable whether this approach would actually enable swarms, instead encouraging smaller trades over and over. Another route (which may be better as its own card) may be for Banditos to include a rapid constructing building, and over time it resummons these Banditos or has an ability which you can spawn another for a price. Again this isn't an effort to change the game beyond Banditos themselves, with Corsair it's a tricky subject to approach. The state of play for Banditos is defined by other cards in a deck of limited slots, and currently Banditos don't have a role alongside other Fire/Shadow cards.

Responsible members of the Skylords Reborn team recently met to discuss possible changes to campaign maps. What is outlined here are the proposed changes to the map Nightmare's End. These changes are not final and are only proposed. As a warning, other map projects such as more RPvE presets and Defensive RPvE have a much higher priority for our team. As such, these, or any campaign map changes, may not happen for a very long time. Some changes here are firmer than others, all italicized proposals have accompanying explanations for why we are considering them, but they are the most tentative of all the proposals. Proposed Changes: 1. Increase number of starter wells from 2 --> 3 2. Increase capacity of starter and T2 wells from 900 --> 1200 3. Study current spawn timers for the waves which attack the Amii Elemental Nodes to see if they need changes. 4. Add a reason to take and hold the Elemental Nodes during the map's duration and not just at the end by adding global effects for controlling a specific node. Below are some initial ideas for such effects. A. Nature Node: A1. Immediate effect - Global heal of 1000 to 2000 of all friendly units; A2. Long term - Wheel of Gifts healing effect (friendly units regenerate 3% of its maximum life points every 4 second). B. Shadow Node: B1. Immediate effect - Increase all charges by +1; B2. Long term - every 30 seconds all cards gain +1 charge C. Frost Node: C1. Immediate effect - Global repair of 1000 to 2000 of all structures; C2. Long Term - Friendly units receive 20% less damage. D. Fire Node: D1. Immediate effect - Fire Sphere around all controlled Elemental Nodes; D2. Long Term - All own units deal 20% more damage. Same reasoning as Nightmare’s Shard. This is a very long and hard map which can also have a lot of wait time at the beginning. This would increase well lifetime from 30 minutes to 40 minutes and substantially speed up the beginning.

Mapmaking Fundamentals - Spawn Design (Cont.) Practical Considerations In the course of testing and balancing new maps, a number of important questions have arisen regarding practical considerations which must be taken into account. Here we will examine the various practical concerns which have appeared during the development process regarding both spawn and camp design. Small vs. Large Spawn Buildings Each faction should have a small and a large spawn building. As a standard practice, the small spawner should have 1200 life points and the large spawner 3200 life points. There are a few exceptions to this rule, such as the Fire and Nature gateways in Titans, which have 2000 life points, and Lost Temple, which only has 1000 life points. In the case of Lost Souls, a large spawn building is currently in the process of being developed, after which the small spawner Lost Temple will likely see its health pool standardized. There are a few ways to utilize the different spawn buildings. The most straightforward method is to use small spawners for T1 and T2 camps, and large spawners for T3 and T4 camps. This creates a sense of progression and ensures that later camps are not easily cheesed through Eruption spam. On this topic, it is important to position primary spawn buildings within camps such that the player cannot easily destroy them without interacting with the camp itself. Spawn buildings, particularly the primary ones, should be the most protected things within standard camp arrangements. Another way to use the spawners is to differentiate them by purpose, such as objective spawners being of one type while standard camp spawners are of another type, though it is also common to use a spawner as a camp and an objective spawner simultaneously. Some maps alternative between small and large spawners as a way to differentiate between the type of units being spawned. A good example of this would be Encounters with Twilight. The various lodgement areas of Encounters are punctuated by small spawners which only spawn weaker units, while the main spawner is a large spawner which generates the main threat in each respective area. Beyond lodgement areas where the aforementioned type of design is common, some individual camps include both types of spawners with a similar goal, small spawners for weaker units and large spawners for stronger units. Higher tier camps with increased levels of complexity can create a sense of strategic depth and player progression by having a large spawner nestled in the back, with various minor objectives, such as small spawners and artillery buildings, placed in easier to access locations for the player to focus on and destroy. This allows the player to move forward and destroy an objective, thereby permanently weakening the camp's defenses, without requiring that he destroy the camp outright all at once. An example of this might be that in a Twilight map, the primary large spawner generates Abominations and Evil Eyes, while a small spawner closer to the player's expected point of entry generates Whisperers and Mindbenders. While the majority of damage comes from the large spawn units, the destruction of the small spawn would be a major win for the player because it would substantially reduce the camp's CC capacities. Time to Respawn & Player Downtime Imagine playing a Twilight map and moving forward into a well fortified camp. You destroy the frontline of Vilebloods, move forward to wipe out the archer line, and then just as you are about to kill the spawner a second wave of Vilebloods spawn and destroy your army. By the time you return, the entire camp has respawned and because none of it was towers or support structures, you essentially achieved nothing. What I just described is how a normal player experiences trying to destroy the Shadow camp on Nightmare Shard. In the face of this frustration, the player often chooses to learn how to cheese the map, or they decide to suicide their army for the spawn building from the beginning so they can feel like they actually achieved something. What this example illustrates is the problem of camp respawns and how they relate to camp design. A typical spawner in BattleForge has a time to respawn of 15 seconds. This is universal and encompasses nearly all maps and spawners in the game. It should be fairly obvious that the lack of granularity in what is an essential component of map design is a fundamental issue for the balance of both individual camps and maps as a whole. Time to Respawn Considerations: 1. Individual unit strength - If the individual units are weaker, the camp might be balanced around more frequent respawns. This can create a pleasure experience of fighting through waves of the enemy. If the camp's units are relatively strong compared to the player, such as our example of the player fighting Vileblood's with T1, the respawn timer should be longer because each unit that respawns is a substantially bigger threat. 2. Unit to building ratio - If the camp is entirely made up of units, thereby providing no ability for the player to permanently degrade its strength except through killing the spawner, it might be appropriate to exclude some key units from respawning at all or to increase the overall time to respawn. If a camp's strength is mostly concentrated in buildings, a faster respawn timer for units can be used because only a small percentage of the camp's total strength will be reviving. 3. Player Tier - In lower tiers, it is harder for players to reach and destroy spawn buildings due to a lack of available tools. In higher tiers, players have numerous options for disabling units and destroying key buildings, including spawners. This suggests that longer respawn timers are better for lower tier camps, because in these camps players usually have to fight through a significant portion of the camp to be able to begin damaging the spawn building. The same is not true for higher tier camps and therefore the respawn timers can be shorter. In general, the higher the tier, the more complex a camp can be in its design, and faster respawn timers are a component of camp complexity. 4. Distance to Spawner - In a simplified form: time to respawn + travel distance from spawn = player downtime. The farther the distance to the spawner, the longer the player has to recuperate. This is particularly important for defensive scenarios to allow time for healing, respawning, and repairing player defenses. Closer spawn locations will often correlate to longer respawn timers, and vice versa, but the map designer should really balance downtimes based on wall and building repairs and adjust according to the intended feeling of pressure. Group vs. Individual Spawning The general rule is that attack waves should be spawned as a group while units within a camp should spawn individually. By placing attack waves into groups, it means that the player does not have to deal with a constant trickle of units which either preclude any repairs because of a lack of downtime or fail to cause sufficient pressure due to lacking the critical mass needed to challenge player defenses. On the other hand, group spawning often leads to clever players trapping a few units to prevent the group as a whole from respawning. This will be discussed more below. Individual spawns in camps are necessary to allow the camp the dynamism to respond to player attacks. Group respawning, the timer for which only begins after the death of the last member of the group, would mean that the camp will likely never respawn any units before the player can destroy the spawner, but if the group can respawn, the entire camp, or at least a major sub-group, would respawn all at once. Neither of these options are desirable, so camps should use individual spawning. Preventing Spawn Trapping The majority of respawns in the game are based on timers that only begin after the unit which will be replaced has died. The standard timer throughout the game is 15 seconds. As mentioned above, some spawns are group and others are individual, with in-camp respawning typically being individual-based and attack wave respawning typically being group-based. Given that group-based spawns will not respawn until the entire group (or a particular percentage of the group) is dead, this leads to a situation where the player can "trap" units within the attack wave and prevent further respawns from occurring, functionally turning off the defensive aspect of the map. While this mechanic has been normalized on most existing maps and therefore will likely remain unchanged, the same need not be true for future maps. The best way to get around spawn trapping is to make the respawning of attack waves multi-conditioned. For example, if an attack wave takes 30 seconds to reach its destination and lives on average 30 seconds once it has reached its intended location, the average respawn time for that given wave would be once every 75 seconds (15 second respawn + 30 sec travel time + 30 sec fighting to death time). This means, when accounting for slow decks and the player being overrun, it might be appropriate to make the attack respawn on death of the group OR if 120 seconds have passed, whichever is shorter. That way if the wave gets trapped, a second attack wave still spawns after 120 seconds regardless. Another key point to consider with spawn trapping is abuse of waypoint markers. When attack waves progress towards their target location, they act by moving from one waypoint to another, wait for the entire group to arrive, and then proceed to a third waypoint. If a player is able to block one member of the group from successfully progressing to the next waypoint, the entire group will fail to progress. This is what allows the MotK spawn trap trick on Nightmare's End. When a ranged unit enters the spellbane aura, it immediately retreats in an attempt to move far enough away to attack. If the unit's attack range is less than or equal to the spellbane aura radius, it ends up in a loop where it continually moves in and out of the aura. If the waypoint location is within the spellbane aura, such that the other units can progress to it, but not so close that they will aggro on the source of the aura, the looping ranged units will fail to reach the waypoint marker and therefore lead to the entire group remaining permanently stuck (it should be noted that not all ranged units act like this. The flying units on Mo continue to patrol back and forth despite any spellbane aura, so their scripting ought to be studied to learn how to achieve a similar result). There are a few ways to avoid this. One is to include at least one long range unit within the attack wave, which can then destroy the source of the spellbane. A second, if the spawn trap is discovered pre-release, is to add a patrol along the path where the spellbane will be placed to destroy it and free the normal attack wave. A third is to look at maps like Mo and figure out how to circumvent the issue and allow the units to patrol regardless. Tier Emphasis & Camp Design by Tier Nearly all campaign maps will take place over all four tiers, but the emphasis of each map is different. Some maps will have long T1 sections, while others, such as Bad Harvest, will skip T1 entirely. While it might initially seem best to spread the map out equally between all tiers, this is often less ideal than it might initially seem. One of the largest limitations in BattleForge is the 20 card deck limit. By requiring the player to be able to respond to threats equally at all tiers, the designer encourages the player to opt for more generalist deck options. For example, if the map required the player to be able to respond to ranged, melee, and flying units at T3, the player would forced into using cards which can respond to all three threats. If that player were playing Fire, they will likely default to using Magma Hurler with Unity. If he wanted void return and had to defend a wall, he is also going to include Shrine of War and Tower of Flames. At that point, since the player needs to be flexible on all four tiers, he will only have 1 slot left for T3, which he might want to flex into other tiers given Magma Hurler can take care of most threats. If, instead of designing the map to have equal threats at all tiers. the designer instead decided to shorten the T2 and focus on a larger T3, the player will now have more deck slots to specialize versus any challenges the map might include. If there were large amounts of buildings in T3, the player might be able to include Virtuoso or Juggernaut as a response. If there were no flying units, the player could opt for Vulcan or Giant Slayer. If the camps had weak AA or if there were a lot of hard to reach flying units, the player could choose Spitfire. On their own, each of these options is unlikely to be the sole choice of unit for a Fire player, but each can easily become supplemental options when the camps a player faces in a particular tier allow for such specialization and the other tiers do not use up all available deck slots. The key takeaways here are that it is often better to focus on 1 or 2 tiers in a given map, so as to allow for more interesting deck building options within those tiers, and that unifying camp and spawn design across a tier can allow for and push players towards less typical options, for example, not including flying units but giving camps strong AA, can open up space for melee units to succeed. Defender's Advantage When fighting against camps, the general principle is to balance the camp's composition as equivalent to being 1 tier higher than the player (on expert, advanced can be equal strength). The reason for this is that players have an adaptability that NPCs do not. This is seen both in the fact that players can cast spells while NPCs must rely on unit abilities or inflexible events via map scripts, and that NPCs cannot rebuild their own camps. If the artillery piece keeping the camp together dies, it cannot come back. In contrast, if a player loses a unit or misplaces a tower, they can just summon a new one. So if the entities in an NPC camp are typically one tier stronger than those currently available to the player, what about when it is the player defending and the NPCs attacking? It would be nice if we could provide a simple rule here stating that attacking units are always one or two tiers stronger than the defending player, but it is not that easy. Defending scenarios are simply too varied for a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, let us consider some factors that might change the player's strength while defending. Defense Considerations: 1. Location Fortification Potential - Whether or not a player can easily fortify their location substantially changes the relative strength of incoming attack waves. Fortification potential is related to two key factors, (1) Are they buildable walls, and (2) how wide is the enemy's angle of attack? Buildable walls increase the relative defensibility of a location more than any other single factor. Walls add effective life points to the defending towers and units, while also impeding enemy progress, therefore providing the player with more strength depth. Attack waves which might overrun a player in an open field can become a joke to him when he is sitting behind a set of Amii walls. The width of an enemy's attack angle attacks in a similar way. If, similar to Guns of Lyr, enemies attack into a narrow chokepoint, even giant waves become trivial to defend against. At the same time, if the enemies can spread out such that area of effect spells and abilities cannot hit large portions of the attackers at once, the wave's overall threat increases. Therefore area with narrower angles of attack and buildable walls need stronger attack waves, while areas with wider angles of attack and no buildable walls need weaker attack waves. 2. Length of Defense - The longer a player is allowed to sit in a single location, the larger the attack waves will need to be to dislodge him. While small, low tier waves might threaten a player initially, even waves one or two tiers higher than him will seem insignificant if he has been given a large enough time to prepare. In general, if a player has only been given a short time to begin preparing his defenses, attack waves could be sufficiently strong even at tier and unit count parity. But once he has been allowed to settle in and build a layered defense, attack waves will likely need to be both stronger and more complex to overrun him. 3. Player Tier - Lower tier players have less defensive options than higher tier players. The higher the player's tier, the stronger the attack waves will need to be in comparison to the players on paper strength. 4. Total Areas to Defend - A key point discussed at length in this guide has been that the fewer areas a player needs to defend simultaneously, the easier it will be for him to succeed. While even the equivalent of a Tier 6 attack wave from a single direction might fail to overwhelm a player with T4 protected by a wall, even T3 units from enough different directions could overrun the same player. Creating multiple areas where a player must defend taxes not only his power pool, his charges, and his cooldowns, it taxes his mind. It becomes exponentially more difficult to respond to major threats that could undermine your defenses, when these threats are coming from different directions, and particularly if they are far enough apart to not be visible on the same screen. Particularly at higher tiers, where the tools available to players are so strong, it is essential to create multiple avenues of attack. At the same time, a map designer must be careful not to overwhelm the player's mental capacity with an excess of attack directions simultaneously.

I agree, that Frost is at an advantage in the matchup against pure Shadow right now. A few considerations for the matchup: - Nightguard is still very good against War Eagle. She will neutralize a lot of the pressure a Frost player can throw at you. Assuming you can make good use of Netherwarp to get your hands on some of the unbound eagles, it might open up a direct win condition too. - The main reason I mentioned Nox Carrier is the value that comes from stacking unbound unit counts over time against the low dps of Frost on T3. This is a different playstyle from building a lead through kicking powerwells, which can be tough due to Amii Ritual. In order to execute the strategy you prioritize getting a lot of rippers and keep them alive for some time so you can launch a major attack once void returned to your power pool. There will be a few buffs to some of the cards pure Shadow wants to use on T3 next patch, Nox Carrier is one of them. - A possible move to cheese Frost or hyperscaling players in general is to handshake a lot of bonus wells in the early game (ideally you want 8 or more). This opens up an economy which not only allows a fast T3, but also makes T4 an actually realistic move. Frost does not really get map control, so by contesting the center in the early game you can secure the orb spots for such a strategy. Pure Shadow has quite a few flex slots, so there is space to prepare for this without really sacrificing too much early game strength.

Most people play rpve not for beating a challenge but for simply farming gold and bfp. And why bother with spending way more time and effort on beating lost souls when you can simply restart? Same with incredible Mo and global warming. Why waste deck slots for a potential encounter when you can simply restart with an additional deck slot? And even if you don't have that mentality, when you play with randoms, it's almost guaranteed that at least one of them will either quit immediately or isn't experienced enough to beat the map. But the root of the problem is that Lost Souls is simply stronger than the other factions.

I like to request decks from other players after a game to copy and also play it later. If I am missing cards, those slots will be emtpy after copyingthe deck. That is understandable - but very sad because then the deck is basically useless. My suggestion (coming from Factorio): When I am missing cards, please let me still copy and save the entire deck - add missing cards in a kind of "ghost" mode with quantity 0. As QoL, add a reminder when trying to start a game with "ghost" cards in the deck.

As we announced in our Towers Deep Dive, our faction design team has been working on performing a balance pass across all attack buildings in the game. Some of these changes are relatively minor, while other changes are more substantial. This thread will function as the main thread for our second round of building changes. The original master thread can be found here. Minor changes are included here, while major changes have their own threads linked to below. Please note that all changes proposed here are provisional and as such as subject to change. Substantial Reworks and Balance Changes The following buildings have significant enough changes to warrant their own threads. Previously Announced: Rocket Tower Stronghold Newly Announced or Updated: Armored Tower Ice Shield Tower Fortress Changes One category of towers we spoke of in our Deep Dive were Fortresses. Fortresses are expensive towers from T3+ that have large models. Due to the way space works in BattleForge, larger towers should have higher stats in comparison to other towers as you can build less of them in a given area. We have decided, outside of the unique case of Church of Negation, to make 200p the base cost of Fortresses. This allows us room to pack more stats into a single building. Our goal is to move Fortresses in the direction of self-sufficient defenses that can hold positions even in those locations where you might only be able to build one or two. Deepgorge 1. Cold Clutch radius: 25m ➜ 30m. While 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. Howling Shrine 1. Essence Bolts damage: 600, up to 900 in total ➜ 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 in 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 a tad 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. Volcano 1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p 2. Damage: 581, up to 872 (3990 dp20) ➜ 766, up to 1149 (5270 dp20) 3. Life points: 4390 ➜ 5690 4. Infused Eruption's (red affinity) Rage: A. Rage scaling: 100%/200% ➜ 75%/150% B. Rage timer: 7 sec ➜ 10 seconds C. Attacks per stack: 4 attacks ➜ 3 attacks 5. Lava Sea A. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m B. Bugfix the ability so that it works Making Volcano more "dense" by increasing its power cost and then adjusting its stats accordingly. Total damage when enraged is slightly increased despite the nerf to Rage's percentile damage increase (12,000 --> 13175 dp20). Additionally, the rage should activate substantially sooner. Previously it took 29 seconds in combat to full scale, now it should only take 22 seconds. One thing we learned in the wake of Volcano's previous changes is that its Lava Sea ability is bugged and does not work. Fixing the ability to function as advertised should do much to make Volcano a larger threat. 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. Minor 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. All values below are U3. Artillery 1. Range: 50m ➜ 60m 2. Increase turret turn speed. Allow Artillery to damage siege units even when placed behind a wall. 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. 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 the healing one 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. Range increase to 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. 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 +20% damage increase and small splash radius increase. Changes to Infected Tower's ability have been postponed until we can properly rework it. Kobold Laboratory 1. Mason Mastery radius: 25m ➜ 30m 2. Material Research: A. Changed buildings ➜ buildings and walls B. Allow repairing while in combat C. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m D. New description: "Friendly buildings and walls in a 30m radius have 50 / 50 / 50 / 70% lower repair costs and are repairable in combat." Allow Kobold Laboratory to have a niche use in defense and to provide something beyond what Glaciation is capable of providing. Change is meant in preparation for DRPvE and will also be useful in maps with prolonged defenses, especially near walls. 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 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. 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. 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. Twilight Bombard (r) 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.

This part of the tutorial will go over placing and tagging entities, and it is where the fun begins. If you encounter any issues, don't hesitate to ask in Skylords Reborn Map Making Discord. • Content Moving in the Editor Placing Entities Moving and Deleting Entities Moving Entities Deleting Entities Entity Properties Tag Entity List Render Filter Next Chapter • Moving in the Editor Let's start by going over how you can control your camera in the editor. Arrow Keys to move your camera Home and End keys to tilt it up or down Insert and Delete keys to rotate Mouse Wheel to zoom in and out Alternatively, you can use: Space bar + Left Mouse Button to rotate the camera Space bar + Middle Mouse Button to zoom in and out Space bar + Right Mouse Button to move the camera If you want to adjust the speed of camera movement and zooming, or invert the direction. You can do that under Camera -> Configure You can also change the type of camera you will use in the editor - stick to the Editor Camera for now. • Placing Entities We went over how you can place entities in the previous step of the tutorial. But let's look at the entities you can actually place on the map. In the Entity Placement window, we have several tabs that each contain different types of entities. Squads gives you access to all the different units in the game Buildings contain all the buildable structures such as towers Objects are mostly map decorations, but there are some of them that have a functional use You will find MOST decorative objects in the Mapart folder, and some under Leveldesign folder Misc tab is only for placing the Starting Point, there is a dedicated tool to bring sounds to the map so ignore the Sound Emitter Power Slots are the Power Wells, they all give power at the same rate - so they only differ visually and in how much power they contain Token Slots are the Monuments Fortification is where you can find the buildable Walls Effect tab contains all the effects used in the game such as smoke, clouds, falling leaves, fire etc. In the Squads and Buildings tabs, pay attention if you are in the Current cards or Non-player entities folder. For NPC units, you want to use the Non-player entities - why? Because these entities are very unlikely to undergo any drastic balance or functional changes. They also automatically use their special abilities (if they have any), which the entities in Current cards do not do. Entities in Current cards may undergo major reworks, changing the difficulty of the map drastically. And again - they do not use their special abilities, you would need to script that manually. • Moving and Deleting Entities • Moving Entities Let's go over how you can move the entities around. With an entity selected, you can: Move it by holding the Right Mouse Button Rotate it by holding the Middle Mouse Button (not all entities can be rotated) You can change the axis along which you rotate the entity by holding down Shift / Ctrl keys Change its height with Shift + Right Mouse Button (again, not all entities can be moved up and down) You can also change the height in the Entity Properties window, if the entity allows it. You can drag-select multiple entities by clicking and holding Left Mouse Button and dragging - forming a rectangle over the entities you want to select. You can move multiple entities the same way as a single entity. With multiple entities selected, rotating them rotates the individual entities along their individual axes To rotate them all around a single pivot point, hold Alt while rotating them with the Middle Mouse Button This will rotate them around the location of your mouse cursor • Deleting Entities You have two ways to delete entities - the slow way and the fast way. The slow way would be through the Entity List window - we will have a closer look at that in a little while. The fast way is pressing Backspace to delete all selected entities - REMEMBER THIS SHORTCUT. • Entity Properties Let's look at properties of Entities. Properties for Squads, Buildings, and other entity types are very much similar. For this example, we will place a non-player Emberstrike onto the map. Our Emberstrike will show these properties when selected: Information - general info about the entity, this cannot be changed One useful information is the database ID which is used by some script commands World Coordinates - location of the entity on the map Rotation - self-explanatory Tag - The. Single. Most. Important. Thing. Player Kit - who controls the entity No Player Kit Acquire - doesn't work Team - entity's relation to other teams and fog of war vision Reset Properties - click this to reset any changes you made to the entity properties We already went over the Player Kit before, now the most important thing in map making - the Tag. • Tag While the Tag falls under Entity Properties, because of its importance, I've split it into its own little chapter. Tag is a text, or a number, that is unique to the entity. There cannot be multiple entities with the same tag on the map - the editor won't let you tag two entities with an identical tag. While tag on its own doesn't have any function, it is the only thing that you can reference when scripting. Name your tags carefully, it is easy to get lost in them. Same as the map naming convention, you should also follow some best practises when tagging entities. Don't use any special characters Use only lower case letters Use "_" instead of spaces or no spaces at all Tag names in English If you have multiple entities such as 3 Emberstrikes, and you want them to serve the same function, or be a part of one group - put numbers at the end of the tag such as - ember1 , ember2 , ember3 Don't tag an entity "default" - this is the only rule that you should strictly follow While these rules are not strict, it helps with debugging and readability. Remember - the BF Editor is very finicky, and you never know when the game works with uppercase letters, lowercase letters and when the game might crash because of this. To tag multiple entities at once, simply select them and write your tag (it's a good practice to put a "1" at the end). The editor will automatically tag the entities with that tag, and increase the number at the end for each selected entity. • Entity List Entity List is a window you won't use most of the time, but it can come in very handy. Let's have a look at it now. The top part of the Entity List are Entity Groups - you create these yourself. They are useful in some cases, where you want to have easy access to - for example - a landmark tower you built out of objects. These groups are only to ease work in the editor, they have no function in the game. The bottom part is the entity list itself - you can search for entities here by name, tag, or database ID (DBID). In this window, you can also Hide or Lock entities - Hidden entities cannot be seen when working in the editor and Locked entities cannot be edited in any way. To Unhide entities, you have to find them in the Entity List, select them and press the Hide button again. To Unlock locked entities, select them and press the Lock button again. You can quickly snap your camera to an entity, by double-clicking it in the list. Selecting an entity type parent in the list will select ALL the entities of that type on the map. In combination with Entity Placement window's change Entity button, Entity List can be a very powerful tool. To exchange an entity or multiple entities for another - follow these instructions: First select the entities you want to change - do that with the Selection Tool or in the Entity List Then click on the change Entity button Lastly, select an entity from the Entity Placement list Sometimes it is a bit finicky - repeat these steps if it doesn't work at first try • Render Filter Render Filter is another useful tool in the editor. You can find it in the top bar of the editor. In here, you can select which types of entities you want to hide in the editor. You can, e.g. filter out decoration Objects on the map, if you don't want them to get in the way of selecting and tagging your Squads or Buildings. • Next Chapter Now you have the knowledge to place entities and assign them to players. Feel free to place some enemy squads on the map. When you have something to fight against, the map is no longer as empty and boring! The next chapter will go over how you can sculpt the terrain and add cliffs. • Sculpting the Terrain and Blocking •

Mapmaking Fundamentals - Spawn Design This was originally written as an internal design document meant to guide our current development of new campaign maps. It has been shared here for interested players and as an aid for aspiring community mapmakers. Introduction 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 spawns 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. Legend Given the nature of map design, this guide uses a high density of visual examples to illustrate map design principles and standard practices. Across all examples, a standard legend is used. Purple – is used to highlight NPC camp formations. Purple text is used to describe the various dynamics occurring in the enemy camp. Light Blue – is used to highlight spawn locations and any special interactions which these spawn locations enable. Orange – is used to highlight non-standard flanking routes available to players. In the majority of cases, orange designates available paths for flying units, but it can also represent potential cliffing opportunities, particularly for artillery units such as Firedancer and Firestalker. Red – is primarily used to highlight player attack routes. It is secondarily used to highlight key features of camps which affect said attack routes. Black – is used to highlight terrain features. Green – is used to highlight map objectives and any locations that might be directly connected to those objectives. Table of Contents 1. Spawn Types 2. Defensive Maps (Defending Hope) 3. Hybrid (Attack/Defense) Maps A. Nightmare's End Analysis B. The Guns of Lyr Analysis 4. Escort Maps A. The Treasure Fleet Analysis 5. Conquest Maps A. Ocean B. Mo Spawn Types Enemy spawns come in four primary types: one-time, timed, conditional, and permanent. These spawn types are not exclusive, in fact it is normal for maps to have multiple or even all four types at once, and often specific spawn interactions constitute multiple types simultaneously. 1. One-time Spawns: These spawns are typically scripted based on the fulfillment of a map objective, such as the Raven fleet’s approach in Ocean when the player clears enough of the center island, or are based on proximity events, such as the many “ambush” events in maps like Encounters with Twilight. Regardless of how they trigger, these spawns only happen once. 2. Timed Spawns: What is meant by timed spawns are those spawns which are primarily triggered based on the passage of time in-game and not player actions or map conditions. These types of spawns are quite rare on their own but are frequently combined with other types of spawns. For example, the permanent spawns on Convoy and Nightmare Shard steadily scale in strength based on the amount of time which has passed. A time component is almost always included in the case of permanent spawns to pressure the player or to keep pace with the player’s growing strength. The attack waves on Siege of Hope and Blight are both conditional timed spawns. If the player fails to kill the spawn buildings in time, a large one-time attack wave is released after a specific period of time. Conditional spawns often contain an alternative time provision. The spawn actives after X objective is fulfilled, or if Y time has passed. 3. Conditional Spawns: Conditional spawns are tied to map triggers which change on their own or due to required player actions. They can be temporary or permanent. Spawn buildings are the primary example of conditional spawners. The spawns are directly tied to the building’s continued existence; destroy the building, and the spawns stop. Many spawners also have additional conditions which must be fulfilled before they begin to spawn units at all. Some spawners only replenish units tied to specific camps, while others only launch attack waves once the player has reached a certain location or has activated a specific trigger condition. In random PvE, only the spawners directly adjacent to the player’s location initially launch attack waves, but if the player attacks a camp and kills an entity within that camp, all adjacent camps also begin spawning attack waves from that point forward. Sunbridge and Slavemaster are examples of conditional spawns tied to player action. In both cases, while the spawns are permanent, the player has the agency to direct the spawn paths via a switch and a fire emitter respectively. In the case of Sunbridge, once the Amii Power Shrines cease to exist, the gate-based spawn waves also cease. 4. Permanent Spawns: Once begun, permanent spawns never stop. This type of spawn is a common feature in defensive maps such as Defending Hope and Guns of Lyr. Non-defensive maps do not typically have unconditional permanent spawns, and if they do, they are typically limited in either strength or location. Mo is an example of a non-defensive map with permanent spawns. Defensive Maps Defensive maps are those maps where the player’s sole primary goal is the defense of an objective or a set of objectives. Any expansion made by the player is meant to better facilitate his defense of the existing objective and not because he needs to conquer additional areas of the map to complete other required objectives. Defense of Hope is the only current official campaign map which is a pure defensive map (Ascension map 1 is the next closest example). Despite only having one such map as an example, we need not fear because Defending Hope is a superbly designed defensive map that contains all the necessary components to teach us how a map designer should design a defensive map’s spawn mechanics. Defending Hope - Spawn Wave Interactions 1. Well Defined Defensive Perimeter – The area which the player must defend is visually distinct from the surrounding area, being protected by naturally existing terrain and buildable walls. This defensive area has overhang spots, occupied initially by Defense Towers, which can attack in a wider arc, as well as plenty of space to build defenses behind the walls. Areas from which enemies normally do not approach are blocked by Lyrish houses, adding an aesthetic flair while also preventing players from building otherwise inefficient defenses. 2. Alternating Attack Waves – Spawn waves on Defending Hope alternative between approaching from the north and from the south side of the city. This allows the player to opt for micro-managing archer units on both the east and west sides, rotating archers between the northern or southern wall depending on which direction is currently under attack. A skilled player can then save up power more quickly to make the transition to T2 or T3. 3. Spread Out, Multi-directional Attacks – While the walls on the east and west sides are close enough that archers can be rotated between them in the early game, they are far enough apart that the player is required to invest in defenses for both the north and south walls on each side, or to invest in a permanently mobile ranged component which can be rotated as needed. This multi-dimensional nature of the defense is important because it keeps the player engaged while also reducing the power of spells. If the units all approached from one-direction, the player would only need to invest in one set of defenses while also being able to destroy most incoming waves with spells, quickly leading to a feeling of stagnation (An example of this stagnation would be position 4 on Bad Harvest, which is initially very challenging, but once defenses are established, becomes dry and boring). With four directions to defend, permanent defenses are encouraged at each location while spells function as a means to plug gaps that form in the player’s perimeter, as their charge limit and cooldown prevent continual usage. 4. Optional Non-fortifiable Expansion Zones – Outside of the singular exception of aiding Rogan Kayle to enter the city, the player need never wander outside of the city’s defined defensive perimeter. Yet, if he choices to, he is rewarded with the possibility of many Power Wells and access to T4. Notably, these areas of expansion are shorn of any means of fortification while also being under constant attack. These means that the player must calculate the potential risk of both venturing forth from the city and investing in additional hard-to-defend assets, but if he proves capable of doing so, he earns himself a permanent benefit in terms of additional power and access to higher tier cards. 5. Permanent & Conditional Spawners – Instead of only spawning enemies from caves, the original designer chose to introduce 4 spawn buildings which the player can destroy. This gives the player more to do, while also forcing him to balance the risk/reward between investing into an expeditionary force that takes power away from the defenses and the benefit of permanently reducing the enemy’s offensive pressure. The buildings themselves have significant defending forces and are XL-spawners with 3200 life points, meaning that the player must do more than just run around erupting them to death. Hybrid (Attack/Defense) Maps Hybrid maps are those maps which mix player responsibilities between attacking and defending. These maps require the player, and any potential teammates, to move forward and conquer new areas of the map while defending map objectives (not Power Wells & Orbs) in other areas. Hybrid Maps: Nightmare's End Nightmare’s End - Player Defense Points & Enemy Spawn Locations The issue with the spawn waves on Nightmare’s End is not so much that spawns can attack every player location on the map, though this is indeed an issue, but that none of the places the player is required to defend are capable of being fortified outside of the initial starting location (which eventually is no longer attacked as the player’s T3 and T4 orbs redirect enemy waves to themselves). Players are required to try and cram defensive structures and units into small areas where buildings often block each other from attacking. These same buildings cannot be built into a coherent frontline due to a lack of space, meaning that even if the buildings placed in the back can attack, they are blocked from reaching the ranged units targeting the building in the front. Additionally, there are no walls or other mechanisms by which the player can slow the enemy’s advance, meaning the frontline units or buildings must also tank the incoming wave. Combined with being the largest map in the entire game by far, making reinforcing areas with existing units nearly impossible, and the fact that enemy waves respawn nearly instantly in close proximity to their intended targets, the spawns on Nightmare’s End are truly a nightmare. Consider then, that after establishing all these defensive networks, the player is suddenly told to abandon them and defend yet another non-fortifiable location from a 5-minute-long onslaught. The fact that this last defense is in no way foreshadowed except for a small wall south of the Forge Shard, is a fitting illustration to how poorly thought through and poorly implemented the spawn mechanics are on this map. A final point worth mentioning about this map is that the trigger conditions for spawning new attack waves and increasing the strength of existing attack waves are poorly defined. For example, one side of the map allows the player to build their T3 without destroying the concomitant Amii Power Shrine within the same camp. This in turn prevents the map from spawning the intended attack waves to attack the player's T3 location, because the trigger for spawning these waves is not the player building their T3, but the Power Shrine being destroyed. Setting aside whether or not the T3 should even be attacked in this manner, the key point here is that the trigger conditions for spawn waves and map events need to be carefully defined to avoid player exploitation. This same issue occurs on Behind Enemy Lines, where the trigger for increasing attack wave difficulty is tied to destroying the Twilight spawn buildings in the T2 and T3 camps. Said buildings are placed in such a way that players can build their T2 and T3 without ever destroying them, thereby trivializing the map in the process. In both cases, simply tying the wave increases to the player achieving a higher tier would have fixed the problem. Nightmare’s End - Southwest Quadrant Hybrid Maps: The Guns of Lyr The Guns of Lyr - Defending Player Progress & Attacking Player Spawn Waves In my opinion, Guns of Lyr is an overly complex, badly designed, and badly balanced map that players have figured out how to exploit in a way that actually makes it enjoyable to play. An entire document could be written solely on how poorly thought through and executed the map's mechanics are in the final product we see in-game. While such a document could perhaps prove useful to the team, we will satisfy ourselves here in pointing out three issues with the map related to how its spawns function. The first is related to what triggers the infected Twilight camps to start sending out attack waves against the player in the "attack" position on each side. These spawns are actually triggered not by the actions of the attacking player, but the defending player. The map suggests to the player, with its set of retreating walls, that the initially defending player is supposed to forfeit their starting base and replace it with the wells and monuments found on the route of the Kobold Engineer which they are told to clear. Simultaneously, the respective side's attacking player is supposed to clear the 3 Twilight camps before transitioning into helping the defender. The issue is that the 3 Twilight camps do not actually trigger attack waves based on interactions with themselves or how much time has elapsed in the map, the camps only replenish defending units lost in attacks on the camp. Instead, the attack waves of these camps are triggered by the defending player attacking the units in camp 1 marked on the minimap above. This in turn leads to a situation where knowledgeable defending players simply do not expand past T2, but wait for the attacking player to reach T4 and trigger the final spawn wave early to end the map. Regardless of intention, it simply does not make sense that the trigger condition for spawning attack waves from these infected camps is tied to attacking that specific location on the map. A valuable lesson can be gleaned from this mistake, which is that spawn triggers for spawn waves need to be carefully defined so as not reward players who exploit the map while punishing those players who engage with the map in the intended manner. The second issue we will discuss in regards to Guns of Lyr is the ability for the player to avoid the map's mechanics and trigger the final spawn wave before actually achieving the necessary map objectives. Map designers need to be cognizant of the ability of players to damage locations behind "impassable" terrain features and take the necessary steps to safeguard these locations or punish the player (in a logical way) for doing so. In the case of Guns of Lyr, the original devs could have responded to the issue in several different ways. An easy method would have been to simply not spawn the final Twilight Manifestation building until the gate was opened, or to shield the building until said condition was met. A more creative approach would have been to immediately trigger other final spawn waves from any remaining Twilight Infestations on the map, making the condition of having to destroy these infestations meaningful, lest these other spawns bypass player defenses and kill Rogan. The Guns of Lyr - Northern Defenses The third and final issue to discuss is how the map's terrain stifles the ability of the primary Twilight attack waves to be meaningful threats by forcing them through single path chokepoints. The map is clearly designed in such a way that the original devs assumed player defenses would steadily move backwards in the face of increasingly difficult attack waves. The map even destroys the original walls in an attempt to force the player to abandon their already constructed fortifications. If players acted in this way, it would cause early waves to attack a single wall, while later waves would eventually attack two and then three walls, spreading out enemies and player defenses over a wider area. The issue is that players do not act in the intended way and are not incentivized by the map to do so. It is always better to defend a single location versus multiple, and it is a hard pill to swallow to voluntarily sacrifice both existing defenses and your starting location, thereby accepting a permanent weakening via lost power and charges. Besides these reasons, allowing enemies to spread out, when you can instead force them through a narrow chokepoint would just be silly. The funnel at the top and bottom of Guns of Lyr clumps together enemies for players to then smash with powerful area-of-effect abilities and spells such as Worldbreaker Gun, Cluster Explosion, and Frenetic Assault. At the same time, the closeness of player defenses means that a single Protector's Seal or Revenge can cover the entire defense, which would not be possible if players voluntarily spread themselves between 3 separate lanes. For the map's defensive gameplay to succeed, it would have to be either more forceful in removing players from the initial chokepoint via harsh penalties or more rewarding in terms of benefits accrued. Another better option would be for the map to spread enemies out initially instead of shepherding them through a perfect kill box. If the devs wanted players to have a last stand location, it would have been better to allow them to set one up directly surrounding Rogan's Stronghold in the center of the map. This would make the map reminiscent of a medieval fortress, with large hard to defend edges that eventually coalesce into a single fortified keep at the city's center. Long story short, do not funnel enemy attack waves through a single narrow chokepoint, spread them out of a wider area or create multiple points of attack to force players to do something more than spam spells and launch Heavy Snowballs. Escort Maps Escort maps are those maps whose primary objective revolves around protecting a non-player-controlled unit as it moves from one location to another. Escort Maps: The Treasure Fleet The Treasure Fleet is the purest form of escort map in the sense that the player has both a direct control of the area around the target being protected, unlike Convoy, and that the target moves forward before the player could have reasonably cleared the route of enemies in any permanent sense. King of the Giants is technically an escort map as well, but it does not feel like one for the vast majority of the map. This is because Rogan arrives far after the player begins conquering the map, so it is less escorting and more clearing a path, and because enemies do not threaten Rogan on the way if the player clears out the pre-existing enemies. These same conditions are not met on Treasure Fleet, and the player is consequently tasked with defending a wagon from the Treasure Fleet as it travels through enemy territory under constant assault. While The Treasure Fleet has a number of issues (which will be discussed later), such as monotonous gameplay, low replayability, and a fixed timer, these issues are largely unrelated to the spawn mechanics of the map. Both the spawn and camp designs of Treasure Fleet are well-done. As the Treasure Wagons move forward, the path itself is relatively unimpeded by walls or permanent enemy encampments, the exception being the Twilight encampment just before the target location which the player can then conquer for himself. Instead, incoming attack waves come from a mix of permanent caves and destroyable spawn buildings built adjacent to the wagon's pathway. The player can choose to only act as an escort for the wagon, or to invest resources into destroying the spawn buildings on the side, making future wagons safer but reducing the resources which can be used to defend the wagon currently en route. At the same time, there are 3 permanent spawn caves, ensuring that players cannot completely eradicate the enemy's capacity to attack. The area around these caves is open, allowing the player space to build defensives without impeding the forward progress of the wagons. There are also a number of optional areas into which the player can expand for additional resources. These side objectives are largely safe from attack, keeping the player's focus on the wagon travel route. The continual focus of the enemy attack waves on the wagon path, along with existence of some of the player's resources on the path itself, is an example of how map and spawn design go hand in glove. The player's own resources are only attacked where it makes sense for an enemy obsessed only with the Treasure Wagons to be attacking. Despite a well designed layout and well scripted spawns, The Treasure Fleet suffers from several balance problems and core design issues. I think these are worth pointing out because it is important to understand how multiple small issues can drag down an otherwise well designed map. The first major issue is that the map has a fixed time limit which cannot be meaningfully changed outside of early game exploits via killing one of the wagons. While this is fine for a few playthroughs, it severely damages the map's replayability, which is the second major issue. A good player quickly learns how to exploit a map's weaknesses to achieve objectives in creative manners and this accumulated map knowledge is typically rewarded with an easier playthrough, or better, a faster completion time. What happens with veterans in The Treasure Fleet, assuming it is played normally without the early wagon kill, is that veterans quickly and efficiently destroy enemy spawn buildings, grab early wells for fast power generation, and neutralize the spawn caves whose attack waves are easily destroyed due to not being guarded by map terrain or reinforcements. By the time the last 1-2 wagons spawn, the player has already beaten the map and merely needs to repair the odd tower while they scroll social media waiting for the wagon to meander its way to the finish line. In other maps, the player's high level of proficiency would lead to a faster conclusion to the map itself, providing a meaningful way for a player to measure their own improvement and to show off. While you could post a replay showing you cleared the map of enemies faster than other people, the fact is that this is not an easily quantifiable measure of skill because it does not show mastery of the map as such, in the same way that faster map completion times do inherently. Also, no one is going to watch the replay. This issue would have been fixable through mechanics such as the ability to reroute a wagon via a faster but more difficult route, or the ability to release multiple wagons at once but by doing so, the player triggers much harder attack waves as a result. Such mechanics would have required much more complex map scripts to achieve and given the time necessary to achieve this, and the fact that the original devs, based on the abilities of the Twilight Edition cards, seemed to believe PvP would be the more popular mode, it is not that surprising The Treasure Fleet was not given the love necessary to generate long-term replayability. Conquest Maps Conquest maps are those maps whose primary objective is to clear the map of enemies, potentially culminating in a boss fight which triggers the map's end. Lodgement maps, as discussed in the companion camp design guide, are a type of conquest map. Conquest Maps: Ocean The majority of gameplay in Ocean is fighting on different islands made up of different combinations of center and line-based camps. These sections of the map are largely uninteresting for our purposes here. Besides island hopping, Ocean has an additional mechanic, which is that Raven Battleships spawn in from 8 different locations around the edge of the map, and if these Battleships succeed in assembling a fleet of 5 ships, the player loses. This mechanic is a good example of creative spawn scripting, which is well integrated into the map and its lore, and which adds a dynamism to the map that helps make each playthrough a bit different. I would also note that I personally think semi-randomized spawn events of this kind make for a better map experience because they make the map feel more alive. In general, I think Ocean does a very good job of making the map feel like a real location and not just a videogame map to play in. While some islands feel silly, such as the tiny ones populated by ground troops, others like the Skyrake island do a good job of both sticking to the standard enemy faction of Bandits, while also feeling like a place where Skyrakes might actually populate and breed. This feeling of life is helped by a large number of one-time map events, such as the bird attack at the beginning, the mines which spawn on the western isle, and the ability to earn Skyrakes for yourself when you conquer their island. This is a good reminder that one-time spawn events play an essential part in making the level feel alive and lived-in. The existence of the Deathray summoner, which seems a bit random when reflected upon, but which is an iconic part of the map, is another reminder that sometimes it is okay to add a twist to the map. After the player reaches the main island, a second Raven ship mechanic activates which spawns Raven ships along the entire edge of the map hellbent on killing the trapped white juggernaut. This is an example of a bad spawn mechanic. The massive invasion comes out of nowhere, is never foreshadowed, and it is poorly executed. Most of the islands and base locations which get attacked by the incoming ships lack the ability to respond to attacks due to the twin factors of little space to build and the fact that Raven Battleships have a 50m range and can fire from fog of war. While this is functionally the boss battle of the map and therefore it is not necessarily wrong that the player's bases are put under real pressure, the issue is that the map itself is not built to facilitate such a fight. In the first part of the map the arrival of each ship is foreshadowed and the player can prepare by building towers and moving units, but the same is in no way true here. The confusing part is that this omnidirectional attack is then followed up by a single direction attack from Blight which seems much less scary in comparison. The final Raven fleet fight would likely be much better if the fleet came from 1-2 directions, instead of all directions, but that the chosen locations were still semi-randomized so that the player could not preemptively defend against it. I personally would have made the existence of the incoming fleet be foreshadowed similar to the singular Raven ships, while giving the player a 1 minute timer to rapidly prepare some defenses in the direction which got chosen. I then would have made Blight appear with ships from all directions to provide a better sense of hopelessness and impending doom, thereby making sense of Mo giving into QueekQueek's blackmail due to a real worry for his life. Conquest Maps: Mo Mo is simultaneously a well designed and a poorly designed map, which is why it alone has been referenced in both the spawn and camp design guides. The general idea of the map, the player getting to control a boss-like NPC unit which he needs to safely guide to the end, is simply a great map concept. The power fantasy of playing as Mo and singlehandedly smashing through Bandit defenses, helps to give the player a real sense of why Mo is treated as such a threat in universe. In terms of sections, Mo is split into three distinct parts. Each of these three parts have substantially different spawn patterns and each have a lot to teach us about good versus bad spawn design. In the first section, Mo smashes through half-camp after half-camp until reaching the player's T3. While passing through this section, Mo activates 3 permanent spawn caves which continue to vomit flying units for the entire rest of the map. These hostile fliers can kill every well and orb from the player's starter base to his T3. After reaching the player's T3, Mo turns north to fight a mini-boss in the form of Banzai Lord. Banzai Lord spawns Banzai Birds, which Mo can either kill or play hide-and-seek with on his journey northward. The layout of this section facilitates both playstyles, giving the player several safe zones where they can stop and heal their ailing juggernaut. Once the Banzai Lord is dead, the Banzai Birds stop spawning and this section remains permanently safe. The third section, which was discussed in detail in the camp design guide, is then mostly self-contained and functions as a lodgement map. The lodgement section makes use of conditionally permanent spawn waves. Enemies spawn from caves, the spawners are therefore indestructible, but once the condition is met (death of Raven Command Walker or Bandit morale reaching 0) the spawns permanently cease. If the spawn locations themselves were moved and the waves spawned less frequently, to allow players to avoid and hide from patrols while otherwise slowly gaining ground, the third section would be very well designed overall. While the third section's spawns feel less organic than the second section's, the concept of Bandit morale is very sound and lacking only in the fact it is hampered by the issues mentioned above. Speaking of the second section, little needs to be said. The whole area is done so well it is a clear example for how Skylords Reborn map designers should design such areas in their own maps. The real issue with Mo's spawn design is the first section. The spawns are clearly intended to place continued pressure on the player as a kind of failure condition. This was likely done because Mo can simply be held back and he is therefore never in real danger of death. If the player were to do that, the player would never be able to fail the map. In light of this, the original devs added the need for the player to continually defend his T1-T3. The issue is just how ham-fisted the whole thing feels in terms of implementation. Does it really make sense that there would be an infinite spawn of only Skyrakes and Windhunters? In terms of map art, it looks like the player disturbed some bird nests and it therefore makes sense that some flying units would spawn in response, but why do they eventually turn into Tortuguns? Overall, the whole bird spawn mechanic just feels like a band-aid to a mistake made in map design which likely could have been fixed in another way. If you look at the picture included above, you will notice that the first and second sections of the map have the same mountain + green field look. Given their connection in aesthetics, it would have been better to connect them in terms of spawn mechanics as well. If I were to remake the map, I would have tied the spawns in the first section to killing the Banzai Lord in the second section. This gives a reason for why the birds were attacking to begin with, because they belonged to the Banzai Lord. The fact that the player would no longer be able to lose permanently after that point is fine, there are plenty of other maps where this is true, and technically they can still lose by letting Mo die which is likely the more common failure condition anyway. The key lesson to takeaway here is that true permanent unconditional spawns should be very rare in maps; it is almost always better to implement conditional permanent spawns when you feel like you need to pressure the player in this way.

*In progress ***** slot list being reworked. I've been referring to wrong things. ****Kubik posted the actual melee slot numbers in his 2nd post below. To prevent further loss of game info, I have posted this guide on melee 1st off, split melee creatures into two types. And then split them by size. 1. Standard Spears 2. Small/ Medium Large/ XL For melee to kill even faster, you need to exploit the melee slot system to make use of your superior hp and dps. All units have melee slots. To fight a unit in melee, your unit or squad will go up and slot themselves into a slot and fight. Depending on the size of the melee unit you send and how many squad members your card has, the number of available slots changes Each squad member in a squad takes 1 melee slot and allows your enemy extra melee slots to attack you in melee. Standard melee and Spear melee use separate types of melee slots. Small/ med size unit melee slots are separate from Large/ XL size unit slots >As an example to see this in real time, in forge. Spawn 3 north guards, 3 imperials. Use the auction house click and play into forge for free if you don’t have. Now spawn the twilight crab from the twilight enemy menu and let them fight. >>Now spawn 2 Deep ones or an Overlord. Observe how you can now Triple dogpile an enemy. This is because the game currently counts all melee slots in units of Standard Small: Spear Small: Standard Large : 1 small squad member uses 1 standard melee slot 1 medium standard unit uses 2 standard melee slots 1 small spear type squad member uses 1 spear melee slot 1 medium spear type unit or squad member uses 2 spear melee slots. 1 large standard unit uses 1 large standard melee slot 1 XL standard unit uses 2 large standard melee slots. ----------------------------------- **numbers not accurate. See kubik's post below >> Still wrong. lets try another term fix. >>> This better? ---------- Standard melee slots: aka how many standard melee units of a size you can dogpile on your enemy *You attack them ---------- >Your size : Enemy size, Number of slots. S: small squad of 6 (24 slots), Medium ( 6 slots), large (8 slots), XL (12 slots) M : small 12, medium 3, large 4, XL 6 <M size squads: There's only witch claws. Im not doing one just for witch claws. L : small 12, med 2, large 4, XL 6 XL : small 6, med 1, large 2, XL 3 -------- Enemy dogpile you chart, Standard melee slot list. *They attack you. You victim. The winner is you. ....... >Your size. Assumed 1 card : Enemy size, number of slots. S: Squad of 6 example. (24 small slots), (12 medium), ( 12 large), ( 6 XL) <Squad of 4 example. (16 small slots), ( 8 medium), ( 8 large), (4 XL) M: 6 small slots, 3 medium, 2 large, 1 XL <M squads: Squad of 4 example. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) L: 8 small (due to knockback, probably more), 4 medium, 4 large, 2 XL XL: 12 small slots (due to knockback, probably more), 6 medium , 6 Large, 3 XL --------------------------- Spears again, use their own special spear separate melee slots and also have more slots. Meaning, you can more than double the possible melee slots for fighting an entity by using spears also or just use the spear type unit, who have more melee slots anyways. Unfortunately, this melee type is much rarer. ------------- Spear melee slots: aka how many Spear melee units of a size you can dogpile on your enemy *You attack them *not finished **numbers not accurate anyways. See kubik's post below ----------------- XXX Not done yet S M L XL ----------------- Enemy dogpile you chart, Spear melee slot list. *They attack you. You victim. The winner is you. .......... >Your size. Assumed 1 card : Enemy size and number of slots S: Squad of 6 example. (30 small slots), (10 medium), (Large +),( XL +) <Squad of 4 example. ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ) M: 6 small slots, 3 medium, 2 large, 1 XL <M Squad of 4 example. ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) L: *** No spear type here I know of. XL: *** No spear type here I know of. ------------------------ ----------------- So to review Standard normal: uses standard slots. dmg capped Spears: Uses spear slots. Better than standard type. much Rarer. Can double possible melee spots by using both melee types. S/M and L/ XL sizes have their own separate unique melee slots in addition to Standard and Spear slot system. You can thus triple melee a unit with S/M Standard slots+ Spears slots, then L/XL standard slots. -------------- >>>False spears. False standard unit.<<< ----------------- Now, here’s the rub. What is a spear type unit, what isn’t? You can not just eyeball the unit model. Nomads are not spear type despite them holding a spear. Wreckers are spear type. Spearmen are spear type. Amazons.... are not. Eliminators are spear type. Knight of chaos is not. Imperials are a VERY good spear type. Light blades . . . . are not. Basically, this guide is not finished yet because it would require me listing every melee unit in the game and classify it. Btw, off topic. Meme worthy Slavers.... are not spear type. Amazing how shitty slavers are. All XL and Large size units are standard melee type to my knowledge. All spear melee types must be S or M sized. After t3, there are none I know of. ---------------------------- List of all spear types I know of. As of Jan 2022. Dec patch 2021 *EA meticulously gave every color orb in t1-t3 combination a standard type and spear type unit except t3 fire, where they get a 2 fire orb Giant slayer. -- t1 -- F Imperials F Ice Guardians (Wow really? Weird discovery) G Spearmen R Wreckers P Executor -- t2 -- F phalanx F Lyrish Knight FF Mountain rowdy P Eliminators PF Lost Wanderer R Scythe fiends RR enforcers RP Bandit spearmen RG Twi Brute G ghost spears G mauler GF Earthkeeper (Yes. At least they're better than Slavers.) RG **Infected tower's Twilight Pest unit (Unique case) -- t3 -- F Silverwind lancers RR Giant slayer G Drones P shadow insect RP bandit lancer RG ** Fleshbender's Twi pests (Impractical case) (Actually produces the strongest spear type in game if you fleshbend correct unit, but you would need promise of life or second chance revive for permanent version of unit and fleshbender is just so troll.) >>>> To test small size slots, i used Wintertide blue and thugs a lot. Thugs have unity passive and are small size, Wintertide blue gives 40% dmg resist. *life currently in way, will get back to this later

Map Balance Changes PvE Map Changes Behind Enemy Lines: increased initial power wells from 2 to 3. All three have a capacity of 1200, equivalent to a 40 min lifetime. Behind Enemy Lines is a map with a high failure rate with non-Nightguard strategies, and is none to have substantial periods where the player is forced to wait. The primary goal is to keep the map strategic and difficult, while removing the tedious moments. A secondary goal is to buff non-Nightguard strategies in preparation for the upcoming changes to mind control. Convoy: buildings are now properly blocked from being built in the canyon in the center of the map in all locations. Nightmare Shard: increased initial power wells from 2 to 3 and increased the capacity of the T2 & T3 power wells from 600 (20 min) to 900 (30 min). Once the goal is activated to destroy the infected Twilight spawns (which occurs either after the player has reached the Shard or the first Twilight Witch spawns, whichever is first) the fog of war over each infected camp is cleared in a 35m radius. The average completion time for this map on expert is 48 minutes. The idea is to increase early power generation to reduce waiting, and to increase well capacity in-line with how long the map actually takes. Additionally, many players do not have a good idea of the strength of the various Twilight camps. The choice to remove the fog of war over the camps should help the players to make a better informed decision of where next to attack. Nightmare's End: increased initial power wells from 2 to 3 and increased initial well capacity from 900 (30 min) to 1200 (40 min). Increased the capacity of the T2 power wells from 600 (20 min) to 900 (30 min). Nightmare's End has an average completion time of 72 minutes. This makes it the longest map in the game, and it is notoriously frustrating, leading to low replayability. Initial power generation and well capacity does not match the map's actual difficulty or length, so we are hopeful these changes can help bring about a smoother gameplay experience. There are other issues with the map in need of changing, but they will need to wait for a future patch. The Dwarven Riddle: added a monument and 3 power wells on each side of the map, regardless of number of players. This change will allow both players to go T4. It should only affect players who play the map in a more "standard" method, in contrast to the speedrun method. Standardized all official single player campaign maps to have 4 gold chests. Defending Hope: added 2 gold chests to match the standard. Ocean: removed 2 gold chests to match the standard. The Soultree: added 1 gold chest to match the standard Introduction: added one gold chest to introduce new players to the concept of gold chests. PvP Map Changes While PvP has been moving steadily towards a more and more balanced state, a major issue we still face is the maps themselves. Just like we previously made changes to the 1v1 maps, we are happy to finally unveil our changes to all the 2v2 PvP maps (and Yrmia). These changes should create a more competitive and fair play environment, with many existing imbalances and cheese opportunities removed. All minimaps have been adjusted to reflect the changes and to be more accurate in general. [ 1v1 Maps ] Yrmia / Yrmia (Spectator Map): Decreased the capacity of all power wells with 900 capacity to 600 capacity (1). Decreased the capacity of all power wells with 1500 capacity to 600 capacity (2). [ 2v2 Maps ] Danduil: Removed the 4 fortification walls surrounding the Monuments on both sides. Added 1 power well of 600 power capacity at each of the 4 monument positions in the corners. Fixed an issue where it was not possible to spawn non-S-sized units by the ground presence solely provided by the outer power wells (2 and 3). Swapped the starting positions including the power wells and monuments of the teams, whilst preserving previous symmetry. Fyre: Increased the construction cost of the 4 outer fortification walls from 25 to 50 energy. Decreased these wall's distance to the power wells. These walls can no longer be built by enemies if the player or ally own the power well closest to the wall. Additionally, slightly narrowed the layout of the respective area around the wall in the bottom left to enable the same effect there. Added flying blocking at the 2 big lakes in the center to prevent sieging across them with long-ranged flying units. This is now visualized by permanently present clouds in the area. The power wells in the top left of the upper starting base now provide spawn presence for units and buildings. The power wells in the bottom right of the lower starting base now provide better spawn presence for units and buildings. Fixed various other minor blocking issues. Swapped the starting positions including the power wells and monuments of the teams, whilst preserving previous symmetry. Gorgash: Increased the construction cost of the fortification walls at each starting position from 25 to 50 power. These walls are no longer pre-built at the start of the game. Increased all player's starting void power from 400 to 425 to compensate for wall changes. Decreased the power cost of the walls at the central northern and southern bases at the border of map from 75 to 50 energy. Adjusted the position of the monuments and power wells in all 6 bases in the north and south of the map to decrease distance to the wall. These walls can no longer be built by enemies if the player or ally owns the power well or monument closest to it. Removed the 2 walls around the northern and southern bases in the center of the map. Changed the layout of power wells and monuments in these bases by rotating each cluster by 180 degrees. Moved the power wells and monuments in these bases outwards, hence further away from the center of the map. Removed the northern and southern power well in the well cluster in the middle of the map. Moved the 4 power well clusters near the outer left and outer right bases closer to the center. Swapped the starting positions including the power wells and monuments of the teams, whilst preserving previous symmetry. Koshan: Swapped the starting positions between players, whilst preserving previous symmetry. Added 2 ramps to the sides of the new start positions, granting access to the plateau behind. Opened up the plateaus in the corners by creating connecting ramps towards the diagonal of the map. Adjusted the positions of wells, so that they are further away from the nearby wall, and thus hostile units mounted on the wall cannot attack the wells anymore. Nadai: Added 1 power well of 1200 capacity at each side of the center monument position. Adjusted the positions of monuments and walls, so that 4 of the walls cannot be taken anymore if an enemy has taken the adjacent monument. Adjusted the positions of monuments, so that they are further away from the nearby wall, and thus hostile units mounted on the wall cannot attack the orb anymore. Swapped the starting positions including the starting power wells and monuments only within teams for consistency, whilst preserving map symmetry. Turan: Opened up the middle of the map by creating 4 connecting paths between the power well clusters and the central monument. Swapped the starting positions including the power wells and monuments of the teams, whilst preserving previous symmetry. Yshia: Adjusted the positions of the 4 outer fortification walls to prevent offensive walling, by moving them outwards and thus closer to the power wells and monuments there. Opened up the plateaus by adding 2 ramps to each of them. Widened one of the ramps leading up to the two small plateaus. Increased the cost of the plateau walls from 25 to 50. Moved the well clusters more towards the center of the plateau, but keeping them close to the wall to prevent offensive walling. Moved the monuments previously located off the plateau to add to each of them 1 power well of 600 power capacity. Swapped the starting positions including the power wells and monuments of the teams, whilst preserving previous symmetry. Zahadune: Added flying blocking at various places at the borders of the bodies of water to prevent sieging across them with long-ranged flying units. This is now visualized by permanently present clouds in the area. Fire Random PvE Balance Changes Fire was added as an enemy faction in rPvE in our Anniversary Patch. While we are currently working on adding Nature as the next faction to fight against, we have been keeping a close eye on the balance and player experience against Fire among all skill levels. With this patch, we will be making some changes to improve the experience. [ System Changes ] - Significantly reduced the difficulties 6 and below. - Volcano now only spawns in level 4 camps and beyond.* - Incoming attack waves should now be less oppressive on higher difficulties. [ Bosses ] Removed fire class from all fire boss units - Protector's Seal no longer blocks the damage of Fire bosses. Abaddon: - Rage: - Reduced the damage bonus from the second stage from 300% to 200%. - Gates of Hell: - Reduced the initial damage from 800 (2400 in total) to 400 (1200 in total). - Reduced the eruption damage from 2000 (6000 in total) to 1000 (3000 in total). Aspect of Summer: - Global Warming: No longer prevents ice shield from being applied to target units. Brannoc: - Reduced life points from 65000 to 60000. - Fire Sphere: - Increased channeling time from 3 to 5 seconds. - Reduced damage from 2000 (10000 in total) to 1500 (7500 in total). - Reduced the radius from 25m to 20m. - Reduced the casting range 30m to 25m. Fireback: - Increased life points from 30000 to 40000. Fiend of Fire: - Flamethrower: Reduced damage per second from 600 to 500. Molten Golem: - Blazing Surface: Reduced damage returned from 50% to 25%. Vulcanos: - Unit is now XL. - Can now damage air units. [ Units ] Emberstrike: - Fire Lance - Reduced damage from 1200 (3100 in total) to 1000 (2500 in total). - Only deals 50% damage to structures. Firesworn: - Fixed a bug that prevented the unit from attacking units other than L-sized units. Fire Dragon: - Rage: Reduced the damage bonus from the second stage from 300% to 200%. Fire Worm: - Earthquake: - Reduced the damage per hit from 1000 to 500. - Now properly deals L counter damage. Magma Spore: - Ground Blast: - Reduced the damage from 720 (1120 in total) to 350 (1050 in total). - Reduced the area Radius 15m -> 10m. Spitfire: - Fire Bomb: Reduced range from 50m to 35m. [ Buildings ] Pyromaniac: - Reduced the duration of the damage over time debuff from 10 seconds to 3 seconds. Tower of Flames: - Volcanic Ground: - Reduced the damage from 6 times 200/1000 to 6 times 150/750. - Reduced the range from 25m to 20m. Volcano: - Reduced life points from 5000 to 3500. - Reduced the size by 10%. New Building: Flame Crystal - Spawns in Level 4 and Level 5 camps* and will periodically remove debuffs and cc effects from allied units Fire can be extremely strong, but due to its high attack and low defense, it is extra vulnerable to Crowd Control spells. We want to counter this weakness with a brand-new building, while some major enemy damage dealers have been rebalanced * Level 3 camps are usually right behind the T3/T4 camp; Level 4 camps are the row behind Level 3; Level 5 is always the last row. Map Editor Changes Increased maximum allowed file size of community maps from 64 to 512 megabytes. Added optional verbose logging for LUA. This is relevant for mapmakers and can be enabled in the debug section of the configuration file at `/Battleforge/config.json` using the `lua` configuration. The logs can be found in the `/Battleforge/Diag` folder. Increased max brush size in the map editor. Fixed crashes for the height map generation for Random PvE in the map editor in certain cases. Allowed selection of the fire Random PvE preset in the map editor. Bugfixes Fixed issue related to character names becoming too long with the added `{GM}` prefix and not being able to be whispered. Fixed issue with deleting community maps while they are being downloaded by another player. Fixed incorrect ordering for all time rankings in the leaderboards. Fixed ability to add 21 cards or 21 boosters to trade, instead of 20. Fixed too large scroll step size for upgrade view when trying to scroll through the upgrades. It now scrolls with the same steps as the cards scroll view. Fixed inconsistencies in the Amii card frames. Card descriptions will no longer overflow into the card artwork. Fixed walk speed mismatch between respawned squad members and existing ones, causing the group as a whole to move at an unfavorable speed. This could be noticed for example with Werebeasts and Strikers. Fixed wrong displayed remaining card charges for Offering in rare cases Fixed incorrect handling of overkill stampede damage when destroying buildings. In general, this has a nerfing effect on stampede. Improved error handling and logging for issues related to starting BattleForge with DirectX10. and many more!

Gday and happy new years! Saw the stream after the fact, congrats on the 3rd anniversary! I rediscovered this a month or so ago and have gone back to my roots from the EA days by playing roots for most of my time! The sylvan gate really makes a difference, very useful and enables map wide networks! Have done every campaign map with roots including oceans (only 2 islands are unreachable by a single network if I remember right) and while I do take spore launcher in my deck, its advantages are fairly niche. The main difference it has positively is its damage is more 'spike' damage rather than over time. Only really useful on like bad harvest when trying to kill the shamans before their health jumps up, if you sync up enough spore launchers then they dont get that chance. The disadvantages when compared to razorleaf are significant, primarily the anti air capacity, and when fully supported they both do enough damage anyway. In order to separate them, you either nerf razorleaf (which id not suggest!) or buff spore launcher, but id say it needs to bring something different to the table as just slapping more damage on it might not be necessary when razorleaf fully supported kills most things in a shot! Ive got a few thoughts on potential options that might help! - Adding more range and potentially an artillery type arc that shoots over areas you normally cant (doubt thats viable though from the feel of those areas). Extra range is nice, opens up a few options on the offense, lets it counter other artillery type structures without being hit, but ultimately its not that much of an issue, can usually just tank thru it with forests vim. Increased radius would be nice too, but once again its just a luxury. - Adding a disable to its attack, say the spore causes a delayed cast of ensnaring roots to sprout, or is full of paralysing spores kind of like the gemeye. Something like parasite wouldnt be as good, as most things are dead, at least the delayed disable can catch the next wave, and stunning them lets the razorleaf hit them easier as it can struggle to hit moving targets. Unfortunately thanks to the damage of fully powered up roots, most of this is as irrelevant as its knockback small and medium, as they are just dead. Maybe if it can penetrate boss resistances it will have a more substantial niche? Could have 2 types, one with root spores one with paralysis spores I suppose, but root decks are already pretty packed, very hard to add things to them! - Delayed explosion spores, so there is the impact hit then afterwards the spores explode for a 2nd wave of damage. Could also cause the ground to quake and slow enemies, though I think the option above with roots bursting out of the ground from the spore seeds and entangling foes (and maybe bringing flying units to the ground if being really daring) would look cooler. - Having spore launcher add some kind of passive effect into the root network, perhaps when it kills units it absorbs them and restores void power or something, bit of a stretch there at long range but maybe the spores swiftly decompose them? Root decks main issue is energy, being the amount locked up by expensive units, supporters and repeaters, so a way to get power back is nice, though ways to return power from existing units/buildings or discount them are better. Dont really think spore launcher could do that though, and is too late to do a breeding grounds effect. Maybe if when it kills things it can leech stored power into the void pool from connected units, sort of like some shadow effects, but represented by decomposing its victims in the natural cycle. Once again, its probably a bit late for this kind of effect to work as you usually only need to add a couple of spores to the force at this point, having built the network at t3 and added the supporters and razorleaves, I find its just throwing in a few spores and extending said network for t4. I think if spore launcher can become the damage/disabler with razorleaf being the support that clears air it would become much more tempting. Given the damage of properly used root units, the better way to differentiate is if spores add alot of value to taking out bosses, as most well supported t2/t3 root units will clear out t4 comfortably, and if they cant 1 hit them then a 2nd unit with supporters just need to be added. As to rpve, ive tried roots, unfortunately its just too slow and expensive. At least in campaign mode you can settle in for a longer run! Not sure if it can be made to work, would need cheaper support and network costs (or increased power gain) to get it set up faster. As for forests vim, its pretty incredible being able to heal the entire network for that much over time, though the only one ive tried is shadow variant (havent got the other yet!). I tend to just put it on some unit in the back, a fortress or thornbark near healing wells which can take the damage rather than a front liner who might not survive with enemy damage + vim transferred damage. You could tweak the secondary buffs they provide, but as a healing spell its pretty solid. T1 roots is a bit weak, tree spirits take alot of preparation to be great, but do have a niche on empires when they have alot of shielding in the first attacks. The addition of more lost souls enemies with shielding would make them more tempting, but ive found archers with shamans tend to be faster and pretty much take you right up to t3 in most cases. Purple sylvan gates ability is also a bit unused, but with the addition of more shielding foes it might come into play more, but with current shielding I find its easier just to use the red ones damage buff and if they have shielding just brute force through it. Razorleaf could use 1m more range to avoid the annoying situation of other 50 m range units sometimes attacking while being safe! Not common but does happen! Other ideas could be a healing well variant that can link to the root network, a breeding grounds effect on a t3 root unit or support structure to free up a slot in the deck, spells or supporters that add interesting effects to linked units (like poisions or slows or whatnot), maybe upgradeable structures too (fountain of rebirth getting a bit stronger for higher tier upgrades, root nexus getting a larger range, living tower causing a root effect on impact, healing well adding some percentage regeneration) after the success of soulstone. This is getting a bit long so ill end it here. Congrats again on the 3rd anniversary, looking forward to the new content!

Mapmaking Fundamentals - Camp Design This was originally written as an internal design document meant to guide our current development of new campaign maps. It has been shared here for interested players and as an aid for aspiring community mapmakers. Introduction 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. Legend Given the nature of map design, this guide uses a high density of visual examples to illustrate map design principles and standard practices. Across all examples, a standard legend is used. Purple – is used to highlight NPC camp formations. Purple text is used to describe the various dynamics occurring in the enemy camp. Light Blue – is used to highlight spawn locations and any special interactions which these spawn locations enable. Orange – is used to highlight non-standard flanking routes available to players. In the majority of cases, orange designates available paths for flying units, but it can also represent potential cliffing opportunities, particularly for artillery units such as Firedancer and Firestalker. Red – is primarily used to highlight player attack routes. It is secondarily used to highlight key features of camps which affect said attack routes. Black – is used to highlight terrain features. Table of Contents 1. Player Agency - Angles of Attack: 2. Camp Formations – Line vs. Center Based A. Simple Line-based Formations (Blight) B. Complex Line-based Formations (Nightmare Shard) C. Center-based Formations (Crusade & Siege of Hope) 3. Area Formation - Lodgement A. Encounters with Twilight Analysis B. Mo Analysis C. Behind Enemy Lines Analysis 4. Appendix I: Standard Camp Layout Diagrams Player Agency - Angles of Attack BattleForge is a game well beloved for how much agency it gives to players. Players can choose which modes to grind for rewards, which cards they collect, how their decks are constructed, and how they approach each map. The continued cultivation of player agency has and must continue to inform map design. One of the most prominent aspects of player agency is how a player can approach a map, which enemies they fight, which paths they follow, and how they attack any given camp. Given this document’s focus on camp design, it is worthwhile to start our analysis by visually highlighting a good example of camp design which enables player agency by a multiplicity of angles of attack. In nearly every example shown in this document, there are a number of red and orange arrows highlighting some of the available angles of attack for each given camp. I strongly encourage the reader when following along in the analysis of each camp to also consider how the original devs used the terrain features and enemy layout to enable and disable different angles of attack; the reader ought to then consider how this affects the player experience in both positive and negative ways. The diversity of approaches both within and between camps is one of the major factors that contributes to BattleForge’s maps remaining interesting even after dozens of playthroughs. Blight Enclave 1 - Northeast Camp Formations - Line vs. Center Based In general, the vast majority of camp designs in BattleForge’s campaign maps fall into 2 distinct categories, line-based and center-based camps. Line-based camps are so called because the enemies in the camp are visually aligned into line formations, similar to real life pre-modern army arrangements. Each line is typically made up of only a couple different types of units and both the front and reserve lines are often supported by buildings. Center-based camps are so called because the enemies in the camp are clustered in the center as a group. While initially clustered, center-based camps quickly self-differentiate when attacked. Contrary to their line-based counterparts, center-based camps are highly diverse, utilizing as many different enemy types as possible but with a deemphasized focus on towers. Simple Line-based Formations: Blight The majority of camps in Blight fall into the category of simple line-based formations. What this means is that the camp is made up of 2 lines, a frontline and a backline. The frontline is typically melee units, a support building (Waystation), and towers. The backline is composed of support units or buildings (Shamans, Bandit Sorceresses, Waystations), long-range backup (Bandit Sniper, Artillery), and melee reserves. While higher tier camps have increased unit diversity, most simple line-based camps make use of only a small number of distinct units in each line. Diversity is more to be found between the lines than within them. While most camps have spawners, these are usually not the focus of the camp, with several only being triggered by the global map timers. In all cases, while the camp itself is fortified, it also feels lived in. When looking at the camp, the defensive formations are believable, and the player can imagine that the Bandit camps also double as homes. Blight Enclave 2 - Southeast Blight Enclave 3 - West Complex Line-based Formations: Nightmare Shard Nightmare Shard’s design revolves around defending the Forge Shard and destroying 4 camps, each of which is themed after a different element. Each of the four primary camps falls into the category of complex line-based formations. This type of formation is a more complex version of the simple formation illustrated above by the examples from Blight. While simple line camps only have a front and backline, often with no spawner, complex formations have multiple layers of defense and almost always make use of a well-protected spawner. The general design idea is that the frontline, largely made up of melee units, impedes the player’s initial progress, while being kept alive by a possible support line. Simultaneously, an archer line, made up of ranged units and towers often protected by terrain or walls, provides the primary source of damage. Once the frontline dies, the archer and support lines, still protected by towers or a fallback artillery location, delay the player until the frontline can respawn from the spawner farther back. These types of camps at their best create the feeling of a great ongoing battle where the player slowly and steadily advances against the enemy. At their worst, they feel like an unending slog against a never-ending horde. Nightmare Shard - Shadow Camp A major factor that determines if the camp is enjoyable or frustrating is how the camp manages strategic depth. In the 3 examples included here, the strategic depth of the camp is handled significantly differently. In the first example above of the Shadow camp, absent Mana Wings or leaving the camp until post-T2, the player is forced to attack into small chokepoints with no capacity to retreat due to the wild magic zones. Paired with enemy Vilebloods, whose death temporarily blocks any forward progress, this often leads to a choice between reaching the spawner but sacrificing a large portion of your army to Vileblood acid; or delaying to save your army but facing a second wave of Vilebloods. Choices such as these are frustration fodder because the player feels trapped into making a bad choice with little capacity to adapt. Still, the distance between the spawner and the initial engagement zone is very small, and if this were a T2+ camp it would likely be well balanced given stronger player damage and CC spells. In general, lower tier complex formations should have lower strategic depth, measured here as the distance between the initial engagement zone and the priority target, as well as the capacity of the enemy to continue fighting. Nightmare Shard - Frost Camp The Frost camp is an example of a fully fleshed out complex line-based formation. There is a center frontline, with both an archer line and support line directly behind. The sides have additional archer lines (towers + ranged units) which can continue to attack the player if they try to run for the spawner, which is well protected at the very back of the camp. This overlapping multi-layered defense is the major component of any complex line formation. It is also believable. Given the available troops, the arrangement of the Twilight forces makes logical sense. A player given the same troops would likely place them in a similar fashion. Another key part of all well-made complex formations is permanently destroyable strongpoints. In this case, the Frost camp is formidable not just because the units can respawn, but because the towers help to hamper forward progress. When the camp is originally encountered, it is at its strongest. But, if players are careful and destroy the towers before launching a full assault, they increase the chances of taking the camp without being repealed or losing most of their forces. This creates a give-and-take with the camp where it feels like the player and the enemy are actually matching wits against each other. The best complex line formations have a strategic depth that can be degraded or circumvented by smart players, but which acts as a formidable wall to the reckless. Nightmare Shard - Nature Camp Similar to the Frost camp, the Nature camp has multiple layers of defense. The Twilight Pikemen slow enemies while they get damaged by a substantial contingent of Twilight Slayers and a well-positioned Twilight Bombard. The camp has 3 forms of CC: slow, blind, and M-knockback. These make it very difficult to reach the spawner which is located very far back in the camp. While the ultimate goal is the spawner, the Twilight Bombard is provided as a solid secondary objective. By destroying it, the player makes any subsequent attacks on the camp much easier. Additionally, one of the most intriguing aspects of this camp is that, absent the single Bombard and Whisperer, all other defenses are T2 or below, while the camp is a T3 camp. It is the perfect example of how a well-designed camp with significant strategic depth can provide a challenge even to higher tier players without the need to utilize stereotypically powerful units. This camp also well illustrates that many complex line formations make use of only a few units with little compositional diversity in the camp as a whole. Center-based Formations: Crusade Crusade - West Bottom Camp Crusade - West Middle Camp Crusade - West Top Camp Center-based Formations: Siege of Hope Siege of Hope - Western Enclave Siege of Hope - Town Guard

In this part of the tutorial, we will go over how to create your first map, save it and make it playable. It may seem like a pretty lengthy post for something so simple, but I just wanted to make the tutorial foolproof and cover some additional not well known things. In reality, this step in the map creation takes about one or two minutes. If you encounter any issues, don't hesitate to ask in Skylords Reborn Map Making Discord. • Content Creating a Map Saving the Map Making the Map Playable Map Name and Description Team Setup and Player Kits Starting Location Starting Monument PAKing the Map PvP Maps Next Chapter • Creating a Map Now that we have the editor open, let's create our first map, shall we? In the top left of the editor window, click on File -> New... Now we can select the size of our map. To start with, we'll go with the smaller 256x256 map. • Saving the Map Now that we are greeted by an empty map, let's first try saving our map. (this step is optional, you can save the map at a later stage) Since we haven't done anything with the map yet, we'll need to save the map as. You can either open the File tab, or press Ctrl+Shift+S keys (notice the shortcuts next to the actions in the File tab) In the future, you can save the map after every edit you make with the Ctrl+S shortcut - this will be your best friend. You can save the map wherever you want on your computer, but the default save location is best. The reason is that the editor will pak our map into that same folder, so we have everything together. Be sure to follow the naming convention (see quote below). Unfortunately, the map editor is full of traps for map makers that crash the editor. I will try to point out any known crash or corruption causing issues as I go along (you can also check the FAQ). SAVE AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN - EVEN AFTER ONLY A COUPLE OF CHANGES • Making the Map Playable To actually see the map in the game, we first need to go through several steps: Update map name and description Setup teams and player kits Place and assign starting location for each player Place and assign starting monument for each player Let's look at the individual steps now. • Map Name and Description Now that we have saved our map, we can add an in-game map name and description. Open Map Settings -> Edit Map Description In here, we need to fill in the in-game map name and description (shown on loading screen and in map selection) for all languages. You don't need to actually translate the name and description, I used Google Translate for this example, but you can leave everything in English. Then click OK - you will get a pop-up that the map description has been successfully updated. • Team Setup and Player Kits After we've saved the map name and description, it's time to decide what type of map we'll be making - PvE / PvP and how many players. We do that by going into Map Settings -> Team Setup & Player Kits. In here, we can select if we want the map to be PvE or PvP, and how many players there should be. We can adjust the fog of war (FOW) settings for the players. And set the individual players starting power and void power (AI doesn't work with power, so there is no need to set the starting power for the NPC enemies). Ideally, choose one of the available presets! Fiddling with the teams can prevent the map from being playable. You can add more players to the teams, just don't change the team order. (Tip: Usual sweet spot for starting power and void is 200 / 200) If you want to fiddle with the settings, you can manually add more teams with the New Team button. And add Computer players to a team selected in the list with the New Player button. Adjusting the teams and players manually comes with some risk though. Be sure to be familiar enough with the basics before experimenting with teams. For each player, you also need a player kit - that is actually what determines which players control which entities. These can be created with the New button under the Player Kit section. Let's go with the PvE 2P preset, so we can have a friend to play the map with us. After we are done making changes, click the Save button at the bottom of the window. • Starting Location Now it is time to set the player's starting position. For that, we'll need to open our first tool - Entity Placement. We can find it under Windows -> Entity Placement or Shift + E shortcut. A new window will open up - for now, we'll need the Misc tab and under the root folder, we can select the Starting Point. Now we'll have this little object following our cursor around, we can place it by left-clicking the mouse. Congratulations! You've placed your first object on the map. But we still need to make it functional. For that, we will need another tool - Entity Properties. Open it again through the Windows tab. With the Entity Properties window open, you will notice that it is completely empty. Also, that you cannot click the Starting Point you just placed, you will instead place another one. That is because we are in the Entity Placement mode, and we need to get to the Selection mode. You can do that by pressing the blue "0" button in the editor toolbar, or by pressing the Q shortcut (remember this shortcut, it will be your second-best friend). If you need to delete any extra placed Starting Point, use the Ctrl + Z shortcut for now (already on our third-best friend, let's stop counting for now). Now that we are in the proper entity selecting mode, let's select the Starting Point we just placed by clicking on it. The Entity Properties window will now show some information about the selected object. We need to assign the correct Player Kit to the Starting Point. Do that by clicking None and selecting the pk_kit1. Why pk_kit1? If you look into the Team Setup & Player Kits, you will see that the pk_kit1 is assigned to our Human pl_Player1. You might remember that I mentioned that the player kit is actually what determines who controls what squad/building. Setting up the first Starting Point is a good time to make a quick-save (Ctrl + S). Instead of selecting the Starting Point from Entity Placement again, you can select our first starting point, press Ctrl + C to copy the object and then Ctrl + V to paste the object to the location of the cursor. Under normal circumstances, copy-pasting entities preserves their team setup and their player kits. But due to the nature of the Starting Points, the player kit gets reset to None - a player cannot have multiple starting locations. So let's select our new Starting Point and assign it to our Player2 (pk_kit2). You don't need to place and assign Starting Points for the computer players. Setting up the second Starting Point is another good time to save the map. • Starting Monument We could actually see the map in-game and play it at this point, but without any structures or monuments, the player will lose instantly at the start of the map - so let's fix that! In the Entity Placement, go into the Token Slots tab and select TokenNormal. This is a standard monument. All the monuments are functionally the same, the only difference is visual - so pick whichever you want. Place one monument near Player1 Starting Point (or right under it) and another near the Player2 Starting Point. Now, we will need to assign the players to the monuments - simply click them with the Selection tool active (Q) and set it up in the Entity Properties window, same as we did for the player Starting Points. This is another great spot to save the map - by now you certainly get the message. Awesome! • PAKing the Map Saving the map is not the same as PAKing it. The editor works with .map files - that is what you save with Ctrl + S. But the game only sees a PAKed version of the map. When PAKing, the editor takes all the files associated with the map - the .map file and the map's folder - and merges them into a new file (think of WinRAR or WinZip). This PAK file can be seen by the game as the final map. Lucky for us, the editor can PAK the map - simply go to File -> PAK Map If everything is set up correctly, you will get a pop-up saying the map PAKing was successful. The PAKed map can be found in Documents/BattleForge/map folder. Now we can start the game, go to the User Generated Maps node (remember, we made a 2P PvE map) and search for the map name that you set in the Map Description step. We can actually start our map now and have a look around, exciting! Notice that when playing solo - the monument we set for the other player is missing. That is because the game automatically deletes all entities set to a human player that is not present at the start of the map. • PvP Maps Creating a PvP map is just as simple. Set up the Map Description and in the Team Setup & Player Kits step - choose whichever PvP preset you want. Place the starting positions and monuments for all the players and PAK the map. You will find your PvP maps in the Sparring Grounds node. We will not be going into further detail about PvP maps in this tutorial. • Next Chapter Now you have everything you need to get to map making. In the next chapter, we'll talk about placing and working with entities. • Working with Entities •

I was thinking about increasing the population limit in order to attend to make viable squad (men battalions) builds because there are many intresting squad units that are not being played for obviouse reasons and i woulds like to see them being viable in game and not just being played by beginners for a short ammount of time. I'm sure there are many other ways of making squads more viable but I think increasing the pop cap maybe just for them is worth a try. What do you think?

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.

As we announced in our recent Nature Deep Dive, our faction design team has been working on performing a balance pass on Nature cards. Some of these changes are relatively minor, while other changes are more substantial. This thread will function as the main thread for all Nature based discussion. Minor changes are included here, while major changes have their own threads linked to below. Please note that all changes proposed here are provisional and as such are subject to change. Substantial Reworks and Balance Changes The following cards/topics have significant enough changes to warrant their own threads. Abyssal Warder Colossus Forest Elder Grove Spirit Mind Control Primeval Watcher Shrine of Memory Spore Launcher Sylvan Gate Minor Changes Tier 1: Fountain of Rebirth: 1. Healing: Regenerate 15 / 18 / 21 / 25 life points --> 20 / 23 / 26 / 30 life points every 3 seconds Treespirit: 1. Reduce power cost: 60p --> 50p 2. Reduce Gifted/Tainted Thorns damage: 100 up to 150 damage total --> 78 up to 117 damage total 3. Reduce life points: 880 health --> 730 health 4. Green Affinity: Fix poison bug, increasing total poison ticks from 4 --> 5. Tier 2: Healing Well: 1. Initial Capacity: 0 --> 1500 (50%) healing capacity 2. Recharge Rate: 20/sec --> 50/sec Sunken Temple: 1. Orb cost: 2 Nature --> 1 Nature, 1 Neutral Spikeroot: 1. Power cost: 120p --> 110p Parasite: 1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral --> 2 Nature 2. Reduce power cost: 100 --> 80 3. Increase Damage: 60 / 60 / 60 / 66 per second --> 70/70/70/80 per second 4. Increase max targets: 4/5/6/6 --> 8/9/10/10 Tier 3: Promise of Life: 1. Reduce Tier: 3 Nature, 1 Neutral --> 3 Nature Thornbark: 1. New Passive, "Strong Supporter" - Unit counts as 3 connected entities for the sake of determining root network supports while out of combat. Wheel of Gifts: 1. Change effect to aura to allow it to reapply if disenchanted. Tier 4: Lifestream: 1. Life Link: A. Absorption limit: 10000 --> 20000 damage B. Duration: 35 seconds --> infinite (until 20000 damage has been absorbed) C. Range: 200m --> 300m Noxious Cloud: 1. Changes Pending

Throwing in my a bit older ideas, to somehow create a Stonekin unit with good damage. It has its problems, I'm well aware, but perhaps it can inspire something better 😄 1. Solo iteration Cold veins - self targeted, 15 power - Refreshes duration and strenght of an Ice shield active on this unit. Maximum Ice Shield capacity restored is 1000 points. Reusable every 60 seconds. Lone Hunter - Unit is accustomed to fighting alone. Friendly melee units within 15m radius will actively hinder Crag Lobster, lowering his attack by 20%, to a maximum of 80% (4+ units in an area). Other Crag Lobsters do not provoke this attack decrease, instead they will refuse to fight completely. Adamant Skin - as usual 2. Group iteration Cold veins - self targeted, 15 power - Refreshes duration and strenght of an Ice shield active on this unit. Maximum Ice Shield capacity restored is 1000 points. Reusable every 60 seconds. Group Hunter - Unit gains attack power while being surrounded by allied Stonekin melee units within 20m radius. Every unit will improve Crag Lobsters attack by 200 dp20, which stacks up to 6 times. (Max attack is thus 1800). Territorial - If this unit is within 10m of other Crag Lobster, it will refuse to fight. Adamant Skin - as usual

Card Balance Changes Global Balance Changes Random PvE Boss Leader Immunity: - Added Steadfast to all rPvE bosses. Ranged attack delays re-randomized: - Towers and ranged units are now assigned a randomized 0.3-0.7 second delay on a per-attack basis instead of a standardized 0.5 second delay on spawn. This only modifies cards affected by the bug, many ranged units and towers will be unaffected by the change. Last patch, we changed the randomized attack delay assigned on spawn from ranging between 0.1-1.1 seconds to a standardized delay of 0.5 seconds. While this successfully achieved our goal of making each unit and tower a player spawns equal, it introduced other problems. The chief concern reported by the playerbase was an aesthetic one. While previously battles in BattleForge felt very alive, with units and towers on each side attacking continuously, with the standardized delay combat started to feel more turn-based. Your units would attack, their units would attack, then your units would attack again. This also led to easy kiting of enemies, particularly NPC enemies, because you could play around the standard delay to unleash volleys of attacks then retreat until the next volley was ready. Given the widespread and consistent feedback we received that something unique to the BattleForge experience had been lost by this change, we decided to pursue a few alternative solutions that would fix both the old and the new problems. The solution we settled on was to re-add the attack delay with a smaller range and to make it apply on a per-attack instead of a per-spawn basis. This means each affected unit or tower will have a slightly different attack speed for each attack, but will on average have the same attack speed over a long enough period. The chaotic nature of combat should also return, with both sides continuously attacking instead of engaging in a semi turn-based encounter. Revenant's Doom Costs Standardization: - Standardize Revenant's Doom costs by tier, with an increasing discount as the tiers progress: T2: 75%, T3: 65%, T4: 50% of unit's normal power cost NPC Building Power and Orb Cost Fix: - All NPC buildings now have an assigned power and orb cost. Similar to how we fixed the missing power and orb costs for NPC units several patches ago, we have now given each NPC building its own power and orb cost. One motivation for this change is to allow us to add new cards and card abilities that can be limited in terms of which buildings they can and cannot be taken over, which would otherwise not be possible. A second motivation is to create consistency between NPC buildings. Prior to this change, buildings added with Fire rPvE had properly assigned costs, which is also true of the new Nature rPvE buildings, while the original buildings did not. This created a major inconsistency between and within game modes in regard to Matter Mastery, making it difficult or impossible to know when to bring one or the other affinity. A third motivation was to create a real distinction between the two existing affinities of Matter Mastery. Previously, before this change, the nature affinity could overtake every building in the game, meaning there was no real reason to use the tainted affinity or for it to exist. At the same time, we do not want to strongly nerf the nature affinity, which we do not view as inherently problematic. As such, as part of this change, we are also changing the nature affinity of Matter Mastery to work on T3 buildings, up to a power cost of 140p. Below, we have listed each building affected by this change and what will be its new tier and power cost. Tier 2 - 100p Bandit Launcher, Stonekin Hurler, Twilight Infected Tower, Lost Launcher Tier 3 - 140p Bandit Sky Defender, Bandit Waystation, Bandit Wizard Tower, Stonekin Deepgorge, Stonekin Launcher, Stonekin Shatterer, Twilight Fleshbender, Twilight Hatecaster, Twilight Skyscorcher, Lost Banestone, Lost Converter, Lost Disruptor Tier 4 - 200p Bandit Artillery, Stonekin Hammerfall, Stonekin Shredder, Twilight Bombard, Twilight Willsapper XL-unit Turn Speed Increase: - Increased the turn speed of all player XL-units based on category. Ground XL: 25% faster turn speed Flying XL: 40% faster turn speed Worm XL: 200% faster turn speed Global Disenchant Hostile versus Friendly Root Distinction: - Disenchant's immunity no longer prevents the application of the Immobile, Immobileroot is still prevented. BattleForge has two types of root effects, one called Immobile and the other Immobileroot. The distinction between them is that Immobile is only applied by friendly effects, while Immobileroot is applied by hostile effects. This change makes it so that a friendly effect which causes a unit to be rooted in place is no longer prevented by Disenchant's immunity effect. The primary reason behind this change is that effects which self-root a unit or its allies are baked into the balancing considerations of a card and its effects. The ability to bypass this downside, which has become easier as we have added, and likely will continue to add, more ways to apply Disenchant, has therefore become a constant balance consideration for both upcoming and existing cards. We are forced to ask ourselves if we can really buff Forest's Vim if we have to account for a Razorleaf that can walk around at normal speed, attacking the entire time. As we work on campaign maps with longer T4 sequences, we have to consider that a player can summon a Dreadnought and have it permanently stay in its Pledge of the Giants mode while walking around, trivializing vast portions of the map with ease. In such cases, do we nerf the Dreadnought and the Razorleaf, or do we nerf the mechanic which is causing the issue? Our decision was to nerf the Disenchant interaction. Squad Position Fix: - Game now checks and updates the Squad position to the unit position if they are too far away from each other. Any unit has two positions. A squad position and a unit position, which is equal to what we see on screen. This position tends to be close or equal to the units position itself but seems to behave slightly different for some actions. For example,. a Magma Hurler will shift his squad position slightly behind himself when attacking. This is not problematic. But some actions lead to only the unit position being updated while the squad position remained stationary. Prime candidates for this are hold position orders or rooting effects. The squad position can remain at the initial spot while the unit including its unit position can move to attack. Squad position is used by many abilities and spells to check if they should apply to the corresponding unit. Meaning, a unit with a squad position far away from its unit position would no longer be hit by things like CC or AoE attacks targeting the unit position. The fix going live now checks and updates the Squad position to the unit position if they are too far away from each other. Worms are not included here due to issues with worm movement. 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 ] Banner of Glory: 1. Life points: 500 ➜ 300 2. Void return percentage: 33% ➜ 40% Higher percentage void return will allow more efficient cycling of lower tier units into real power. The life points were lowered to avoid situations in PvP where it becomes too strong, such as offensively inside an Aura of Corruption. Decomposer: 1. Void return percentage: 50% ➜ 60% Frost Mage: 1. Remove knock back from damage cone 2. Add non-damaging cone with reduced range, that applies knock back. A 33m knock back cone should result in Frost Mage consistently applying damage to squads she attacks, fixing the issue where units are knocked outside of her damage range, but she continues to attack them anyway. Imperials: 1. Add passive, "Protected Rush:" While under the effect of an Ice Shield, the unit gains significantly increased movement speed. A. Only works while Defensive Stance is active B. Movement speed while shielded = 4.8 m/s Improve Frost Sorceress and Ice Shield Tower synergy with Imperials. Scorched Earth (p): 1. Tainted Deconstruction (p): A. Damage debuff: 50% ➜ 75% B. Remove “The erection of buildings that are presently under construction will be interrupted and it will not be possible to repair anything.” from functionally and description. The increase of Scorched Earth(p)'s debuff allows it to become a semi-suppression of buildings in a large area (20m) and to protect your fragile Fire units in PvE. We removed the construction-suppression effect to reduce double-scorched usage in PvP, which also gives each affinity a role in either PvE or PvP. Snapjaws: 1. Remove Splash Damage: 5 damage, up to 9 in total ➜ 7 damage Snapjaws have an abysmal splash radius of only 3m. This is so small it effectively does not exist and only serves to reduce the unit's damage against squad units. We are removing the splash and changing the unit's damage to single-target. This increases the unit's single-target damage from 138 to 193 dp20, a +40% increase in total effective damage. This will change the damage of Satanael's Snapjaws from 414 dp20 to 579 dp20. Tunnel: 1. Power cost: 40p ➜ 35p 2. Life points: 880 ➜ 600 Encourage Tunnel play by slightly lowering cost. HP reduction to prevent issues with an overly health efficient Tunnel. Witchclaws: 1. Power cost: 65 ➜ 70 2. Damage: 630 ➜ 680 3. Add passive, "Corpse Gathering:" Harvests energy from nearby corpses equal to their former maximum life points to enable more powerful explosions. A maximum of 3000 life points can be stored at once. 4. Infiltration Rework: A. Damage (both affinities): 330, up to 1650 in total damage + up to 600 damage per target, up to 5 targets in total based on the number of corpses gathered B. Enable splash overflow fix for ability. C. Both affinities now damage units and buildings. D. Explosion radius: 20m ➜ 15m E. Fire affinity: Additionally, when 3000 corpses have been gathered, Witchclaws deal 50% more damage after teleporting. F. Shadow affinity ➜ Frost Affinity: Additionally, when 3000 corpses have been gathered, Witchclaws take 50% less damage after teleporting. [ Tier 2 ] Breeding Grounds: 1. Power cost: 70p ➜ 90p Breeding Grounds is one of the stronger cards in the game and has some of the best scaling of any T2 card or building. At only 1 Nature orb and available as easy as T2, it grants a permanent -25% discount to all own and allied units. While the card is something of a third rail due to its popularity, now that we have significantly buffed nearly all parts of Nature, we believe it is time to give the card a minor nerf. When considering what to do with the card, we considered several options, such as making the discount scale upwards or downwards with tier (i.e. 15% discount if player is T2, 20% if T3, etc.) or just nerfing the -25% discount outright. In the end, we settled on a slap-on-the-wrist nerf, at least initially. The increased bound power will delay players initially in T2, but only cost them 2 extra permanent power if they destroy the building. At the same time, the increased bound power cost should encourage players to actually destroy Breeding Grounds made obsolete by map progression, and it will provide a much needed nerf in the PvP game mode as well. Burrow Ritual: 1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral (T2) ➜ 1 Nature (T1) Reducing the card's tier should allow more synergy with Tunnel, allowing for more strategies to emerge and helping to better justify Burrow Ritual's inclusion in a deck. Defenders: 1. Crossbow Attack damage: 9 per shot (540 dp20) → 10 per shot (600 dp20) 2. Life points: 810 → 750 Stat realignment to make Defenders more viable offensively and a more attractive option. Life points are worth less than damage when considering stat efficiency, particularly amongst ranged units in PvE. Earthkeeper: 1. Fixed a bug which allowed Earthkeeper to make connected units immune to all damage while also not affecting Earthkeeper. Lost Priest: 1. Exhaustion: A. Cast range: 30➜ 40m B. Total targets: 5 ➜ 10 C. Debuff Timer: 20 sec ➜ 30s D. Jump speed increase E. Debuff strength: 30% ➜ 40% Improvements to Lost Priest's support capacity will help its viability in PvE, particularly in combination with other units such as Lost Shade and Lost Dancer. Matter Mastery (g): 1. Gifted Takeover (g): maximum of 2 orbs and 100 power costs ➜ maximum of 3 orbs and 140 power costs See Global Balance Changes above for more details. We are also considering more substantial changes to the tainted affinity in a future update. Revenant's Blessing: 1. Charges: 8 ➜ 12 2. Radius: 20m ➜ 25m 3. Gifted Immortal healing: 15 ➜ 30 life points per second 4. Infused Immortal damage: 25% ➜ 30% more damage 5. Bugfix: Allow overlapping Revenant's Blessings to reapply the effect without requiring the unit to exit and re-enter the area. We are working towards improving the current use case of Revenant's Doom through direct buffs to it and through improving its support tools. With this change, Lost Shades are usable without needing Viridya and the spell scales better into the higher tiers for those you want to use revenants. More support to the faction and to revenants in particular will come in the next patch when we finish the rest of the upcoming Lost Souls rework. Root Nexus: 1. Orb cost: 1 Nature, 1 Neutral (T2) ➜ 1 Nature (T1) 2. Life points: 850 ➜ 650 Moving Root Nexus to T1 gives Treespirit a much-needed support card. Life points reduced to prevent too health efficient blocking options in T1. Spikeroot: 1. Waves per root attack: 2.5 spike waves ➜ 2 spike waves 2. Damage per wave: 100, up to 150 in total ➜ 125, up to 190 in total (+25% increase) Overall damage remains identical. Spikeroot now always deals the same damage at each point in its attack, instead of having high and low points. Sunken Temple: 1. Added Mode-change, "Hibernate:" Pest Creepers enter a state of dormancy and are no longer summoned. 2. Pest Creepers now aggro against enemies in an area around the Temple. The new mode change will allow the player to temporarily turn off Pest Creepers. This will be especially helpful when using a large number of Sunken Temples, which quickly fill up the unit population limit, and you want to summon new non-Creeper units. The other change will make it so that Pest Creepers no longer stand around waiting for enemies to either attack them or move within a short distance. They will now actively aggro on enemies that come within a moderate radius around the Temple which spawned them. Overall, these changes should make the card function much more fluidly. Unholy Power: 1. Stored Strength (ammo): 2000 ➜ 3000 2. Ammo is refreshed whenever Unholy Power is recast on a unit already affected by another instance of Unholy Power. 3. Bugfix: Unholy Power no longer decays all remaining ammo when a previous instance of the spell expires. Unholy Power is a highly inconsistent spell, and a lot of that regards bugs in its original implementation. By fixing the decay issue, new applications of Unholy Power existing concurrently with previous applications should no longer be removed by older instances expiring. Additionally, new applications, in addition to continuing to stack additively, now refresh the card's ammo pool back to full. On top of these important changes to the card's functioning, we also increased its total strength pool by 50% from 2000 to 3000 which should help it to scale better into T3. With all these changes, Unholy Power should become a significantly stronger and more consistent buff spell. Viridya (normal and promo versions): 1. Viridya’s Blessing is now able to restore lost squad members Wallbreaker: 1. Orb cost: 1 Fire, 1 Neutral (T2) ➜ 1 Fire (T1) Opens up several early use cases for the card on Titans, Dwarven Riddle, and Sunbridge. [ Tier 3 ] Abyssal Warder: 1. New Active ability for large and medium-sized golems, "Reassemble:" Bond with two other Abyssal Warders of the same size in a 20m radius to reform into an Abyssal Warder of a larger size. 2. Frost affinity effect, Ice Shield duration: 15s ➜ 30 seconds There is a large disparity between the usefulness of the two Abyssal Warder affinities in terms of effects. The fire affinity (r) provides a permanent buff, while the blessed affinity (b) only grants an Ice Shield for 15 seconds. In an attempt to partially remedy this issue, we have doubled the length of the smaller Warders' Ice Shields to 30 seconds. Additionally, we have finally been able to add a new effect to the small and medium sized Warders which will allow them to rebuild themselves into a larger Warder. Reassemble requires 3 Warders to work, meaning that it is not inherently efficient, though it provides another strong synergy with Promise of Life and builds on the buffs to Abyssal Warder last patch. Blood Healing: 1. Charges 12 ➜ 16 Thornbark: 1. Melee damage: 1400 dp20 ➜ 1550 dp20 Mutating Frenzy: 1. Sacrifice cooldown: 15 sec ➜ 5 sec Santa Claus: 1. Blue Gift, Red Gift, Christmas Peace cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 40 seconds Satanael: 1. Fealty (both affinities): A. Cannot be activated if the player is at or above 125 population. B. Summoned Snapjaws damage: 200% ➜ 120% Removing all instances of infinite spawning in the game due to the attendant performance issues they cause. Buffing Snapjaws individually as compensation. Overall, the damage of each summoned Snapjaws squad is increased slightly. Shrine of Martyrs: 1. Void return per frozen unit: 12% ➜ 18% of current void pool 2. Bugfix: Void return effect is no longer triggered multiple times per entity. Regular users of Shrine of Martyrs know that the void return effect is often inconsistent. The same group of enemies could provide wildly different void return rates when frozen due to the fact that the effect would switch between applying once or multiple times per enemy. We fixed this inconsistency, but it left the shrine, which is likely already the weakest of the four standard options, even weaker. As such, we have given it a large +50% buff to its void return percentage in compensation for removing the existing bug. This change will allow players to develop an intuitive understanding of how much void is actually returned per frozen enemies. The percentage we chose is a bit of a guess and is subject to change based on the feedback we receive from player testing. Shrine of War: 1. Orb cost: 1 Fire, 2 Neutral (T3) ➜ 2 Fire, 1 Neutral (T3) When we first began nerfing cards, many people asked us when we were planning on touching Shrine of War. We previously delayed any changes to the card due to its importance to the rPvE game mode at all levels and because other factions, such as Frost and Nature, lacked sufficient methods of void return, an aspect we think is integral to the balance of all factions. Now that all factions have a viable method of void return, we have decided to give Shrine of War a nerf. We were between the two ideas of nerfing its void return percentage or increasing its orb restrictions. While Shrine of War has by far the most efficient void return when accounting for multiple players out of all the available options, we decided that we did not think its efficiency was outside the line of acceptability, but that the Shrine was too splashable compared to the other options. As such, we choose to leave Shrine of War as the best void return shrine in the game, but to require the player to invest into 2 Fire orbs to access it. [ Tier 4 ] Altar of Chaos: 1. Change Nether Bomb cast range to work like spells instead of like units & buildings. Still limited to own ground presence only. This seemingly small change substantially increases the positioning capacities of the Nether Bomb and allows own units to be much farther away when placing bombs. Battleship: 1. Barrage damage per shot: 550, up to 3300 in total ➜ 800, up to 2400 in total Battleship's ability has a long range of 50m and can be used to snipe out enemies far into the enemy's backline while remaining safe itself. The ability has a very large amount of splash damage, able to fully damage up to 6 enemies in its target radius. At the same time, the target radius is only 12m making it very unlikely there are 6 enemies to damage. Additionally, despite its long animation and unleashing 5 shots, the single-target damage is not even able to destroy a large spawn building. We are reducing the total splash damage in favor of higher single-target damage, increasing the damage dealt to one target from 2750 to 4000 in total. Cluster Explosion (p): 1. Tainted Burst radii per successive explosion: 25m / 20m / 15m / 10m / 5m ➜ 25m / 20m / 15m / 12m / 10m Increased the radius of the explosion for the 3rd and 4th waves of Cluster Explosion (p). These radii were so small, they often failed to hit any enemies. By increasing them, we hope to give a slight buff to this affinity in ideal situations with a lot of closely clustered enemies. Earthen Gift: Earthen Gift Redesign 1. Charges: 4 ➜ 8 2. Infused Earth (r) ➜ Blessed Earth (b): A. Damage buff: 30% ➜ 50% 3. Tainted Earth (p) ➜ Gifted Earth (g): A. Affects Elemental units, not structures B. Remove "Every hostile building in the current game will deal 50% less damage." C. Damage buff: +50% more damage D. Healing per second: 10% ➜ 5% Earthen Gift is one of the worst cards in the entire game. Before Reforging, its normal price was 3 BFP despite being a Rare spell. As Stonekin's Pure T4 spell, it ought to be one of the reasons why a player goes 2 Nature and 2 Frost orbs, but right now it is a waste of a card slot. The card's existing identity is as a combined buff and healing card, but it is restricted to only work on structures. Even on structures it is not useful. Instead of completely rejecting the card's initial design, we are attempting to improve on it for the one affinity by increasing the damage buff where it may prove useful upon the release of defensive rPvE. For the other affinity, we are swapping its effect from structures to elemental units, which includes all Stonekin units, and modifying its heal and damage buff accordingly. The idea is to potentially allow the spell to replace Regrowth while also giving Stonekin access to a minor damage buff for itself and any other friendly elemental units. Between this and the Grinder buff, Stonekin's T4 should feel significantly stronger. Evil Eye: 1. Damage now ticks every 0.5 seconds instead of every 1 second. Rage still takes the same amount of time to activate. 2. Initial damage delay for Evil Eye's Searing Sight has been removed. Damage will now starts as soon as Evil Eye targets an enemy. Grinder: 1. Harmony: Added a yellow bar akin to Mountaineer showing when the healing effect will next occur. 2. Provoke (both affinities): Single target ➜ All enemies in a 15m radius A. Infused Provoke Buff: 50% more damage ➜ 75% more damage Quality of life change to Grinder's harmony ability. Added some increased strength and flexibility to Grinder's taunt by allowing it to affect multiple targets in a small area. This will also allow Grinder (r) to taunt the empty air versus bosses, allowing it to still generate the personal damage buff, which has been increased to +75%, regards of whether or not any enemy units are actually taunted. Stonekin struggles against strong single target enemies such as bosses and this is one step in an attempt to remedy that without damaging the faction's existing identity. Lost Evocation: 1. Charges: 4 ➜ 8 2. Cast time reduction: 2 seconds ➜ 0.8 seconds 3. Infused Revenant damage buff: 50% ➜ 100% The charge increase allows Lost Souls to get access to its primary support spell without having to use two deck slots on Rifle Cultists + Offering. The cast time reduction prevents the use of both Evocations simultaneously, while the buff to the fire affinity (r)'s damage buff makes it a more compelling option for a faction whose main damage dealing occurs through units. Shadow Worm: 1. Increase turn rate of disintegration turrets: 200 ➜ 260 Tempest: 1. Whirlwind splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m Twilight Pestilence: 1. Damage: 44 ➜ 64 life points per second 2. Healing (both affinities): Both affinities now heal friendly Twilight units by equivalent damage as they deal to enemies. 3. Change Gifted Affinity (g) ➜ Infused Affinity (r) A. Add +30% damage buff for friendly Twilight units Improvements in nearly all aspects of Twilight's marquee spell. Previously, the blessed affinity (b) was the only one worth using due to the damage reduction it provides. We decided to roll the healing effect of the gifted affinity (g) into the base spell and create an alternative damage buff variant instead. The goal with this change is to allow Twilight Pestilence to be a more flexible spell, one able to provide a supportive effect while also clearing minor enemies and recovering chip damage to player units that might otherwise prompt the player to cast an additional healing spell. Void Maw: 1. Void Shear ability cost: 75p ➜ 60p [ Tower 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 towers up 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. Tower Targeting Fixes: 1. Changed the damage delay of the auto-attacks for a large range of towers to the standard delay of 0.1 sec. These towers should now have an easier time hitting moving targets, including swift units. A. Affects the following towers, including both affinities when applicable: Artillery, Hammerfall, Defense Tower, Lifestealer, Northern Keep, Primal Defender, Twilight Bombard, Tower of Flames Blaster Cannon: 1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m 2. Tainted Magma: 15m ➜ 20m Defense Tower: 1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m Howling Shrine: 1. Essence Bolts firing arc: 90 degrees ➜ 135 degrees 2. New passive, “Restoration:” Regenerate 30 life points every second. To truly fulfill its role as a fortress and to provide a meaningful choice between itself and Razorleaf, Howling Shrine must be a self-sufficient defender able to justify the massive amount of space it occupies. The restoration effect will allow the tower to persist even absent player attention or when facing continuous attack waves that prevent repair. The increase to the firing arc of its main weapon is a much needed change. Prior to this, Howling Shrine could only target most enemies with one turret at a time and XL units with two turrets only if the tower was positioned perfectly with respect to the XL unit's path. The tower should now be able to target units of all sizes with two turrets in most cases. Lifestealer: 1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m 2. Still alive regeneration: 5 life points per second ➜ 8 life points per second 3. Sacrifice cooldown: 15 seconds ➜ 3 seconds Lost Disruptor: 1. Damage: 300, up to 330 in total ➜ 300, up to 450 in total (3000 dp20) 2. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 10m 3. Disruption cost: 50p ➜ 20p Increase Lost Disruptor's effectiveness against multiple enemies. Also, Lost Disruptor's ability is one of the better counters to Shrine of Memory in 2v2 PvP. By decreasing the cost, we better enable players to make use of the card simply for its ability effect. Northern Keep: 1. Splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m Primal Defender: 1. Earthstrike splash radius: 5m ➜ 8m 2. Cloudstrike: A. Damage (add splash): 225 ➜ 250, up to 375 in total (2030 dp20) B. Splash radius: 0m ➜ 8m Buff to Primal Defender's anti-air capacity. This leaves it as a middle ground between a non-raged and a fully raged Blaster Cannon, and should hopefully allow the tower to better aid Nature T1 in dealing with anti-air threats, particularly those which can counter small and medium units. Rocket Tower 1. Orb cost: 2 Fire ➜ 1 Fire, 1 Neutral 2. Power cost: 80p ➜ 70p 3. Life points: 2000 ➜ 1480 4. Rocket Barrage: A. Total rockets: 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 ➜ 4 on all upgrade levels B. Attack speed: Every 5 seconds ➜ every 4 seconds C. Damage per rocket: 85 ➜ 90 (900 dp20) Fire T2 currently lacks a splash tower, while Pure Fire T2 has 2 towers. We think Pyromaniac sufficiently fills the slot of T2 tower for Pure Fire, so we are transitioning Rocket Tower into a splash card. As part of this change, we will be cutting down on its large pool of life points while otherwise increasing the consistency of Rocket Tower, both in terms of knockback and damage dealing. Even with the cost decrease, this change will make Rocket Tower mildly less stat efficient against large groups in exchange for a lower start up cost and the ability to consistently knockback multiple enemies due to the fixed targeting and increased rate of fire. These changes should allow Rocket Tower to fulfill its role as a knockback-centric tower while its high damage allies provide the necessary fire power. Skydefender: 1. Damage: 128 up to 192 in total ➜ 153 up to 230 (2300 dp20) 2. Life points: 1400 ➜ 1600 3. Range: 40m ➜ 50m 4. Splash Radius: 5m ➜ 8m Substantial buff to Skydefender to give it more teeth against the T3 and T4 air threats it is designed to counter. The range increase will make it able to fight back against Raven Battleships, which are one of the most common flying enemies in the campaign. Time Vortex (p): 1. Tainted Void Shock (p), attack speed increase void levels: Above 150, 300, 600, 1200 void ➜ Above 100, 200, 400, 800 void Improve the efficiency of the tainted affinity (p) by decreasing the amount of void which is required to trigger each attack speed increase. Volcano: 1. Power cost: 150p ➜ 200p 2. Damage: 581, up to 872 (3990 dp20) ➜ 766, up to 1149 (5270 dp20) 3. Life points: 4390 ➜ 5690 4. Infused Eruption (r) Rage: A. Rage scaling: 100% 1st stage, 200% 2nd stage ➜ 75% 1st stage, 150% 2nd stage B. Rage reset timer: 7 sec ➜ 10 seconds 5. Lava Sea: A. Radius: 25m ➜ 30m B. Bugfix - Lava Sea now works as described C. Added a new visual effect The goal is to make Volcano more "dense" by increasing its power cost and then adjusting its stats accordingly. Making each Volcano more powerful helps to mitigate the tower's large size and also makes it a better target for building buff effects such as those provided by Frost's Skyelves. Total damage when enraged is slightly increased despite the Rage nerf (12,000 dp20 ➜ 13175 dp20). Overall, Volcano loses a very small amount of total stat efficiency, but gains in total strength by having an ability that actually works. The old Lava Sea provided zero value to the tower because it did not work. The new Lava Sea, which functions as described on the card, turns this Fire fortress into a terrifying strongpoint capable of wiping out hordes of enemy units. PvP Balance Changes [ Tier 1 ] Life Weaving: 1. No longer affects buildings. Life Weaving changes are made to weaken its scaling potential into higher tiers considering most shadow splashes tend to be fairly strong at later game stages anyway. Buffed single unit attacks with straight well focus are very easy to execute and fairly annoying to play against when any damage on the target also increases the damage against your Power Well. Sunstriders: 1. Suppression Fire ability cost: 25p ➜ 10p In PvP, Suppression Fire's most relevant applications arise on higher tech levels, where a 50 energy investment for a fragile T1 unit is already enough of a restriction. As a result, there is room to buff the ability power cost for those niche cases. [ Tier 2 ] Bandit Launcher: 1. Power cost: 60p ➜ 50p 2. Firebug ability cost: 40/35/30/25p ➜ 40p on all upgrade levels The addition of a weaker building with reduced construction time led to some rather unique T2 strategies, but the high bound power requirements restrict its relevance. This change should open up some more room for creative usage of Bandit Launcher and the Fire Bug ability. Bandit Minefield: 1. Mine spawn speed reduced by 0.25 seconds per mine. Bandit Minefield has been a fairly controversial topic. The spell was very powerful and played an important role in every game mode. Based on play rates and general feedback, our PvP faction overhaul succeeded in making Bandits more viable and fun to play, but there was a lot of frustration when playing against the faction due to an overly dominant Minefield. After recent tweaks, play rates have dropped by about 20% and Bandits seems to be in a very healthy position based on global faction popularity and high ELO presence ever since. However, the experience of playing against Minefield continued to be perceived as frustrating by many of our players. The intended goal of this set of changes is to keep the faction at a similar level of strength, but distribute its power more evenly across Bandit T2 cards and strategies. Mine spawn speed will be reduced to enable counter play without removing its zoning power and damage potential upon being ignored. The design direction of allowing placement under units is absolutely intended, crucial for the faction viability, and differentiates the card from basic trap card design. Due to a lack of crowd control and building protection, Bandits needs a tool to defend vs melee unit well focus consistently. A major issue in PvP is that outside of its intended design direction (melee unit zoning and S unit denial), Minefield generates too much trading value as its damage is almost guaranteed. The spell tends to trade up against anything except for swift unit micro. This should be addressed. In return, we will buff Commandos, Sniper, and Bandit Launcher in compensation. As Warriors Death came up to the discussion for compensations: The card design is not healthy for PvP due to a lack of counterplay, as such we will just leave the card as is since its mechanic is also powerful in end game PvE content. Bandit Sniper: 1. Damage: 75 dmg per hit (750 dp20) ➜ 78 dmg per hit (780 dp20) Slight damage increase to compensate for Bandit Minefield nerfs. Commandos: 1. Power cost: 75p ➜ 65p 2. Concentrate ability cost: 10p ➜ 20p After some testing, we think it is safe to make Commandos a little stronger, as long as the upfront cost of mode-switching remains the same. This should be beneficial for the card in all game modes. Gravity Surge: 1. Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 15 seconds Allow Gravity Surge to be more functional as a niche counter for air unit heavy strategies. Lyrish Knight: 1. Damage: 400 dp20 ➜ 800 dp20 2. Life points: 980 ➜ 900 3. Surge of Strength: A. No longer increases damage by 100% B. Now increases damage dealt to frozen targets by 50% While we had the intentions to give Lyrish Knight a more meaningful role in the game, finding a healthy buff for the card just by tweaking the stats has not proven easy. The extraordinarily high health ratio makes the unit very powerful when combined with health scaling mechanics like Nasty Surprise. Furthermore, the card is easily spammable and can take over games. As a result, we will allow the card to interact more with Frost's spell arsenal rather than just adding value through raw stats. Mauler: 1. Power cost: 75p ➜ 70p After Mountaineer fell out of the meta, Mauler lost its main purpose in PvP. A slight cost reduction should help him shine more in niche situations. Mountain Rowdy: 1. Tainted Ice Block damage (p): 25 dmg/sec ➜ 20 dmg/sec 2. Blessed Ice Block (b): A. Damage reduction: 25% ➜ 30% B. Now affects friendly air units. With the previous changes, Mountain Rowdy (p) played a strong role in pure Frost due to its high damage potential, which made it a little too effortless to shut down T2 aggression. While Frost should be strong at deflecting attacks around own structures, we want to give players a fair chance to punish the faction when a player acquires a strong tempo lead. Mountain Rowdy (b), on the other hand, has been rather underwhelming, so we will buff the damage reduction percentage a bit. Shadow Mage: 1. Sacrifice range: 30m ➜ 40m 2. Foul Play: A. Damage percentage: 300% ➜ 400% B. Duration until explosion: 20 seconds ➜ 12 seconds C. Cast range: 30m ➜ 40m D. Now deals half damage to buildings Despite her great stat efficiency, Shadow Mage's abilities have been rather underwhelming in relation to what the card is supposed to do with them. By adding a burst limit against structures, we open up a lot of room for Foul Play buffs in order to make this ability more rewarding in unit combat. Spirit Hunter (p): 1. Tainted Bow Attack poison damage: 20 dmg per second ➜ 25 dmg per second The current damage loss compared to the green affinity does not get compensated by the additional piercing damage. This change should grant Spirit Hunters purple some better niche uses. Stone Shards (b): 1. Blessed Fury ➜ Shatter Ice A. No longer deals increased damage to demons and undead B. Now deals full damage to frozen targets Stone Shards (b) are currently unused across all game modes. The affinity effect being effectively useless plays a big role here. This change is supposed to enable alternative strategies in Stonekin (Shards (b) + Spirit Hunters (p) + Coldsnap) without overbuffing the already powerful T2. Stone Tempest: 1. Stone Rest healing: 20 life points per second ➜ 40 life points per second This change is supposed to give the self-heal ability a more meaningful role given that the self-cc almost always outweighs the benefits of using this mechanic. As many of the factions received more tools to counter the unit (i.e. Burning Spears release), we think it is safe to enable more ways to use the card without directly strengthening patterns that have been perceived as oppressive in the past. Twilight Curse: 1. Cooldown: 15 seconds ➜ 2 seconds Allow Twilight Curse to scale into high energy T2s without increasing card efficiency. Warlock (r): 1. Infused Witchcraft damage buff: 15% ➜ 25% We agree that the previous buff reduction was unnecessary when we reduced unit power cost. This has now been reverted. [ Tier 3 ] Drones: 1. Life points: 1760 ➜ 1840 The recent changes for Drones did not help the card as much as we had hoped. Stat efficiency will be increased a bit further. Nox Carrier: 1. New passive, "Push the Cart:" Increase movement speed to 6.4 m/s when at least 3 friendly units are within a 25m radius Based on some previous suggestions by the community in the balancing discord, we will add a conditional movement speed increase to Nox Carrier in order to make sure it actually reaches its destination. Sandstorm: 1. Charges: 8 ➜ 12 Shield Building: 1. Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 30 seconds Shield building has been very powerful for a long time, and a card nerf has been requested by the community rather frequently. We agree. 100% uptime on a shield, strong enough to outlast XL unit focus, is too much value even if you invest a full deck slot for a purely defensive spell. Timeshifter Spirit 1. Healing per jump: 275 / 220 / 165 / 110 / 55 life points ➜ 300 / 240 / 180 / 120 / 60 Tremor: 1. Ground Slam: A. Ability cost: 30p ➜ 40p B. Cooldown: 15 seconds ➜ 20 seconds 2. Tremor's walk speed (2.4 m/s) is now half of its normal speed (4.8m/s), instead of being identical. Tremor is one of the most popular and most powerful siege units in T3. We will be making some minor changes to the ability in order to bring it more in line with other T3 options. Unstable Demon 1. Demonic Rage: A. Bonus movement speed: 25% ➜ 60% B. Cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 15 seconds After the initial round of changes, Unstable Demon is not being used as much as we had hoped. As the card is very difficult to use, we will strengthen it to reward good unit management a little bit more.

We want to create a deckbuilder mode where you progress through increasingly hard challenges while using a limited pool of card which slowly increased sei-randomly over time. We just have not had the development capacity to implement it yet.

Hello Skyladies and Skylords, Welcome to the eighth official PvE event! Quick Overview: Map - Insane God Difficulty - Advanced Date - 10:30 CET 17.02.2023 until 23:59 CET 26.02.2023 Prizes - Boosters Winner reveal - Via the forum Rules and Goals: Transform an Urzach's Seeker into an Urzach's Guardian atleast 2 times Defend the Living Towers (4) and Temples (2), dont let any get destroyed Destroy all the Twilight Infestations (11) and Twilight Manifestations (6) Between both players you can use a maximum of 20 deck slots, if player 1 uses 12 deck slots then player 2 can only use 8 deck slots (if solo you are restricted to 10 deck slots) Win the scenario as fast as possible How can I participate? Everyone with an ingame account can participate in the event, there is no need to sign up separately. You just have to send in your best replay, including the player names and the time, to nukie on discord (nukie#9354) or the forum (@nukie). Replay name format - "nukie_Metagross_Time_00h20m30s_.pmv" You can send in your replays until 23:59 CET 26.02.2023. You can find your replays here: Documents=>Battleforge=>replays What's the Prize Pool? The prizes are per person, only your highest place will be rewarded: 1st Place: 8 Twilight Boosters 2nd Place: 6 Twilight Boosters 3rd Place: 5 Twilight Boosters 4th-5th Place: 3 Twilight Boosters 6th-10th Place: 2 Twilight Boosters All players in place 11th or below will be entered into a random draw, there will be 10x Twilight Boosters up for grabs! When will the winners be announced? The winners will be announced via a Twitch stream co hosted by Ultralord and Volin! The stream will include the fastest 3 runs, quiz questions (with prizes!) and some interesting data from the event. Location: https://www.twitch.tv/ultralord_t1421 Date: 03.03.2023 19:00 cet Future events If you are interested in helping with these kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself, don't be afraid and simply reach out! Send @nukie, @Metagross31, or @Minashigo Hiko a PM on the forum, or direct message via Discord (nukie#9354, Metagross31#1103, Minashigo Hiko#1126). We are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring towards your prize pool! We hope you have a lot of fun with this event and are looking forward to seeing all your replays! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Here I am with another behomoth of a post The idea of a 25 card deck has come up now and again, and with recent interest in heavily reworking nature/frost t1 I think it's time to put together a full case of pros and cons, as well as gameplay analysis. I am personally in favor of increasing card slots, although I could certainly be convinced otherwise. Also, I'm not suggesting that we add 5 extra cards immediately; in the balancing discord there is some talk of a complete rework of multiple core cards in nature/frost t1--such a rework would take at least a year to get right, and if we are ready to tackle such a long-term problem, I'd like us to know if 25 cards is a possibility. For example there is talk of buffing the card tunnel. If you spend a deck slot for it, you need to get value from the card in every game. So the card is a bit underwhelming atm. But if you had room for it to be useful in the right situation, perhaps a buff isn't needed. Another example in regards to the swift problem that frost has, we might add a "shrine of swift" and "spell of swift," the spell only works if the shrine is built up so you would be sacrificing 2 deck slots in t1 to get 10-15 seconds of swift. Spending 2 deck slots in a 25 card deck is much different than spending them in a 20 card deck, so I think we should decide if a 25 card deck is something to consider when looking at super-long term balancing discussions. Pros of a 25 Card Deck It allows more balancing tools. In some cases, certain factions don't have good allround counters (stormsinger, wildfire, shadow mage, etc). To address this situation, we are usually either 1) buffing a card to be more multi-purpose, or 2). buffing a new card to fill the gap. Option 2 is often unsatisfactory because it requires a new deck slot which may not be affordable. With more deck slots, we can fine tune balancing without resorting to giving all buffs to the same essential cards. It allows more deckbuilding freedom. Most decks have, say, 2 cards that aren't required to avoid autolosses. Without the slots to try some crazy combo, you usually just spend those spots on extra t3 options, or a tech card which helps against a specific faction (like global warming). It allows more anti-meta plays, and counters to anti-meta plays. Suppose you play a church camp shadow. That's not a common playstyle (although in our small community we know which players are likely to play it) and it can be extremely effective if your opponent is not aware that you have a giant t3 and tiny t2. With more deck slots, you could play this anti-meta deck more safely because you'd have slots that aren't being sacrificed in the hope that your opponent thinks you have it. (I often skip firesworn because people assume it's in my deck and don't rush with sundy). Additionally, your opponent would have more tools to counter anti-meta plays. Earthshaker, inferno, and backlash are not used in fire decks, but with 5 extra slots, it may be worth taking one to stop church camping. It allows more consistent plays. If you are pure shadow going against pure fire, you would probably like to play undead army. However, that card is mostly useless against the rest of the decks, so most shadow players wouldn't waste the slot on a card that is strong in 1/10 games. However, with 5 more slots, this card might suddenly be very appealing: you have all the cards you need to avoid autolosses, and you could play a card that is extremely strong against one of the most powerful factions. On the other hand, fire players would know that undead army is a likely option, so they will play more proactively to avoid it, rather than being surprised when they see it. The same is true for scorched earth--scorched earth is not super common, so players will often gamble whether their opponent has it. If they guess wrong, the game is instantly over. With more cards, scorched earth will be normal to have, so taking an orb in range of scorched earth would be considered a stupid play, rather than a calculated risk. It allows more interesting t3 fights. Most factions can have about 3 units in t3: an offensive nuke, a swift unit, and probably another nuke that's used as defense. Some factions have more slots available for t3 which gives them an advantage, but the gameplay is still largely straightforward. A richer t3 experience, where both sides have 5+ cards (and defense is not so strong) would be exciting imo. And players could have the possibility for richer t3 fights without sacrificing their t2 or t1. Cons of a 25 Card Deck Possibly more intimidating to new players. Imo, 20 cards or 25 cards doesn't really make a difference here UI issues? I don't think there are any UI issues, although hotkeys would be a concern. Again, not an issue imo, but I'm curious if anyone else cares that much about hotkeys PvE will change. Zyna has mostly confirmed that 25 card decks would be a global change, not something he can change just for one game mode. I am not that qualified to speak about PvE, although I understand that speedrun strats rarely require even 20 cards (and imo it wouldn't be bad if this allowed better speedrun strats). For casual pve, I think more cards is strictly more fun, except for the new player. But I think there are much bigger issues facing new players. PvP balancing. Obviously I hope this is not a con, since the idea is that we'd start balancing plans for the long-term future were 25 cards is normal. However, adding 5 extra cards in the current pvp environment would affect things quite a bit. It would probably require at least some reworks to every deck. For example, stormsinger would be a good target for a nerf, since her role can be covered by 2 cards if deck slots allowed. PvP Changes If the devs suddenly changed the deck size tomorrow, how would PvP differ? Pure fire: this is pretty much a nerf. There are not enough pure fire cards worth using, so this deck gets less value than all others. Possible additions: global warming, red nomad, girl power, rageclaws, wrecker, spitfire, vulcan, virtuoso, magma hurler, earthshaker, inferno. None of these are especially interesting. I'd probably take global warming, magma hurler, wrecker, virtuoso, and rageclaws. These would help with pure frost, the worst matchup for pure fire. Wrecker would also be good against frost (and nature). Otherwise I'm not sure that the extra cards adds much, unless the meta shifted and I needed counter for a new meta card in a different deck (like mine, if undead warriors became meta?) Bandits: more cards would mean that bandits can use some of their overpowered combos (embalmers + phoenix +rallybanner, or super buffs) without sacrificing core defense. The deck would still need help, but it would be better able to use some of its extremely powerful combos. Fire Nature: this deck would get a full t1, mauler to counter stonekin, and maybe an extra t3 card or two, although it would still have the weakest t3. These changes would largely be QoL. Fire Frost: this deck would finally get to use some of the interesting combos like wintertide+ rageclaws, warden's sigil +termite, or tower of flames+architect's call. None of these cards are played in a regular fire frost deck because of slot issues. Additionally, there might be some fire frost players who start frost t1 to take advantage of a super large t1 where 1/3 of the cards translate into t2 (ice barrier, homesoil, wintertide, frost sorceress, lightblade, possibly even frost mage). Pure Shadow: this deck would get to use shadow phoenix, maybe embalmers for nice combos. It could have a 5-card t3 while also having room for knight of chaos and possibly undead army. Although church decks would be empowered, if they became more common then other factions would be able to afford 1 slot for t4 earthshaker or something, to close games. Shadow Nature: this deck is in a pretty nice place with 20 cards, but lifeweaving, burrower/ghostspear, and some t3 cards would make play a bit more consistent. Enlighten earthshaker might become a possibility! Shadow Frost: this deck has tons of good cards to choose from, but these cards would mostly be tech choices. Lyrish would be an obvious addition, maybe an extra t1 card and homesoil+rallybanner. I'd expect to see stormsinger nerfs coming, (stormsinger is not only a great card, but it saves deck slots) which would force this faction to spend slots on maybe templar or gravity surge. I'm not sure if 6 or 7 t3 slots would be much better than the standard 5 card t3. Pure Frost: glyph of frost would be standard, and possibly wintertide. that would be good for making frost a bit better in t1, and it would also feel like less cheese when you are surprised by one of these cards. In general pure frost doesn't currently benefit from extra slots as much as other decks though, in my opinion. Stonekin: more t1 for consistency, but this faction would become the strongest in the game, hands down. Currently there is a style of playing stonekin where you don't use t3 at all, just rely on superior t2 units to overwhelm your opponent when he goes t3. Stonekin has superior t2, so it's not like another faction can simply add a tech card to even the t2 matchup (mauler would help though). This incredible t2 combined with a solid t3 (stonekin also has a very strong t3, but usually not enough slots for it), would be oppressive in the current balance patch. Pure Nature: I'm not sure if deck slots helps this faction that much atm. It would allow root decks though, which would be a nice change option. It would also allow tunnel plays, and maybe timeshifter spirit. I made this post here so it can have a lot of thoughts in one place, since this will probably be a conversation that takes a long time. I'm curious what other people think, and if there are any pros/cons that I missed. TL;DR Let's talk about changing the number of deck slots from 20->25

Why does X suck... I guess it can be called a series now. To read "Why does Wheel of Gift suck", please click here: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/9219-why-does-wheel-of-gifts-suck/ Juice Tank is a Tier 2 building (device). It costs 50 power and passive ability that does the following: "Within a 25m radius the remaining capacity of own and friendly Power Wells takes 40 / 45 / 50 / 55% longer to deplete. Production per time increment remains the same." To explain in simple terms, if you build a Juice Tank near a Power Well, it will take longer for that Power Well to run out, resulting on more total power gained from that Power Well. Maps that take a long time to clear, or where your Power Wells have low capacity, Juice Tank is a card to consider. The only reason you want to put this card in your deck is if you run the risk of running out of power. Running out of power on a map is extremely rare. There are only a handful of maps where this is realistically possible, Nightmare's End comes to mind. Because Juice Tank takes a while to get usage out of it, it is not recommended to use in maps where there is a strict time limit. Prime example of this is Random PvE maps. In none of the difficulties will the Power Wells run out before the timer does. This makes Juice Tanks completely useless in Random PvE. To make matter worse, if you build a Juice Tank on all your Power Well clusters, you bind 200 power. This is the equivalent of (almost) a Tier 4 unit. Considering all of the aforementioned, I earnestly ask everyone to review their Random PvE decks and remove the Juice Tanks. Thank you 🙂 -------------------- Juice Tank can be played in Lost Spirit decks to fuel their ability, destorying the Juice Tank in the process.

Has anyone mentioned the idea of creating deck slots that can only be filled with buildings. so not to remove any of the current slots but lets say i.e: Add 2 deck slots for building only cards in a players deck - Units cannot be placed in the slots. Counter argument would be balance or allowing decks that run support buildings to essentially have +2 slots for free and that you already have slots that you can just put buildings in but hey its just a thought. Maybe have 2 deck slots for ----> ( towers exclusively ) and make towers their own archetype of card to support these additional slots. Every deck gets to pick 2 towers of their choice to use then.