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It's definitely possible to add NPCs to the empty slots. What other maps would you need this feature for though? And for Guns of Lyr, could you not just start in Position 1 instead of Position 3? Would that not fix the issue in this case?

Does anyone have experience with Revenents Blessing, Lost Evocation and Ethereal Storm? I tried to play Crussade on Advanced with a pure LS deck. Luckily those Lost Shades die simultaniously. Keeping the revenants alives requires both afinities (that are lots of deck slots) and in the end the charges ran out. Also, I did need shadows' void pool manipulation to have all the required energy (enabling the revenant ability and cast lots of spells). I wasn't that much pleased with the power level of LS (PvE-wise). I'd suggest adding more charges to all the LS spells and some automatic void return. What about enabling the revenants' ability as default when spawning those LS units? Or would that be to overpowered (especially in PvP)? Anyhow, does anyone else played more games with pure LS and can enlighten me with some tactics?

In theory you have my support on this one although I do not agree with your priorities. Imo almost none of the T2 & T3 Twilight units are worth a deck slot even when their concepts are good in theory. But fixing Twilight Transformation (I'll just call it TT for short) is a must before any rebalancing of the current units can take place. We are talking about an ability that is supposed to define a whole faction and major changes to it can easily make or break the game. The whole thing becomes a lost cause if we first determine what buffs Deathglider needs only to change its ability completely and unwittingly make it OP/UP. I feel that changing TT takes priority over individual balance changes but it should be possible to work on both at the same time. I don't think the proposed changes to the current TT are enough to make it a good ability while it might be a quick-and-dirty buff that'd help it out a bit. Honestly speaking I'm not sure if it is worth the time and effort implementing such a change if we can also just straight up aim for the big change from the start. Having units fulfil multiple roles is both an advantage and disadvantage gameplay-wise. While those units become more flexible and attractive to play, it makes other cards obsolete. If a card only replaces the roles of a single existing card then the deck variety stays basically the same as one can choose whether to play card A or B. But if the roles are similar it usually comes down which one performs better and thus the other one is deemed obsolete. If the card takes on more roles then it easily becomes a staple card in any deck as it frees up so many deck slots and it can become OP or too complex to balance. So the only worthwile option I see is to have a card perform multiple roles that overlap with different existing cards, so as to not replace other cards completely. This is harder to conceptualize and implement but it should be worth the effort. I like that idea a lot. One point why the transformation passives annoy me is that there is seldom a point to even benefit from them and especially some of the T4 Twilight units have active abilities that are difficult to use effectively due to their range. Now if I can use TT to transform my Twilight Creeper into a Skycatcher/Abomination/Nightshade Plant with full HP and trigger its ability upon transformation, that would be simply incredible. It might be a bit difficult to tweak for some units but I see huge potential here, especially with the discussed reworks of other Twilight cards. "t3-heavy" with a whopping two T3 cards? Seems weird but I see how that can actually be the case with an evolution-style TT. Maybe we can rework Twilight Warfare while we're at it to have a useful T3 spell to compliment such a deck.

Yeah, fire shadow is a whole different story without such an obvious solution. It has multiple problems, not just one Still we talked a lot about some solutions in the discord... For almost free. The compromise is that you have to use inferior cards. Sundy is almost certainly better than vileblood. Ghostspears are better than Twilight minions. Gladiatrix would be better than the proposd t2 twilight hag. And scythe fiend/hurricane will be better than deathglider even if deathglider is buffed. A t3 S squad doesn't exist, but t3 twilight minions would be worse than bandit lancer. T3 vileblood would be worse than virtuoso. T3 twilight hag would be worse than (magma hurler? An already terrible card). T3 deathglider would actually be pretty good in the way I imagine it, since there would be no other reason to play the card. As I've said many times before, I expect that most top FN players would still prefer the current, more optimal cards, but at least there would be a use for twilight units and it would allow an alternate playstyle and a way to have counterplay vs lost souls in tournament games or something. By the way, here is my suggestion as a starting place to look at stat changes, in case people have not seen it on the discord: Case in point: All fire nature player STILL spend a slot on disenchant. Even considering that the gladi disenchant is cheaper than the card version. Nobody wants FN t2 to be stronger It's already strong, that's why we use so many deck slots. It would be like suggesting that stonekin get a buff in t2. I think it's great that stonekin has many optional cards so you can play t2-heavy or t3-heavy. FN only has the option to play t2-heavy, and I think twilight transformation is the perfect way to allow weaker t2 and receive a stronger t3. If players want to play that way. Yeah that idea is gone. We are only looking at the 1-to-1 transformation which can only be used once (well I guess we could make an exception for something, maybe slaver can transform twice and somehow become an OP t4 XL unit )

I feel you. In pvp Fire/Shadow had the exact same problem with decks slots and it always felt like you were playing with only haf a deck. You miss out on powerful cards of pure faction and end up with a compromise, that forces you to patch your holes with additional cards. If I understand you correctly you want a mechanic that essentially gives you T3 monster cards for free. Given the slot pressure, that's not unreasonable. However, I don't think this is a "be-all end-all" change. With this ability, we first must have valid Twilight units to begin with. Realistically, the only T2 Twilight cards you play in pvp are Brute + Vileblood, of which both are mediocre. Vileblood could morph into Mutating Maniac and Twilight Brute into... Twilight Creeper? The target card for evolved Twilight units seems rather arbitrary to me. But admittedly, this is better than nothing. The proposed alternative is that units "level up", as you reach a new tier. But here I see the the big problem with player expectation and game readability. A "T3 Vileblood" must be visually distinct from a "T2 Vileblood", this is a must (I am speaking from experience). Otherwise you can confuse your opponents with mixing T2 and T3 Vilebloods and expect them to make a bad choice, this is just toxic. You are also introducing a whole range of new de-factor cards that need to be balance and tested, which isn't trivial. Now, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't explore this but in terms of deck building, I can't help but feel like using duct tape, rather than having a diverse deck. And again, this make the assumption that all of the Twilight Cards are worth using. To me, it is clear that the first step must be to make the Twilight Cards viable. I have reservations against "Twilight Evolution", but I'm not fully opposed to it. However, I think with this proposal we get ahead of ourselves. The first step must be to fix the Twilight Cards, there is no way around this. And I don't think the current "Twilight Transformation" is completely unsavable either. You are right about its issues, can't we fix those issues for the mean time? Just give transformed units full health and not make them use a charge. That alone could make it a good ability to have. On another note: You mention "players using Deathglider instead of hurricane" -> Why don't we just buff Death Glider instead? Death Glider has essentially the stats of Mana Wing and might be the worst unit in the game. A flying S-counter with S-knockback could be a powerful tool in F/N. I don't care how strong a "T3 Evolved Deathglider" would be, I want it to be good in T2. Back on the topic of deck slots: I think the deck-slot problem would be mitigated a great deal with more Twilight cards were like Gladiatrix. She's anti-L, she's anti-air and provides a slot-free Disenchant. If the Twilight Cards were multi-purpose oriented we would effectively mitigate the problem with free deck slots. In the Discord the idea has been raised to make Twilight Hag a T2 unit, I think she would be a perfect candidate. Now, with good Twilight units making up for the shortcumings of F/N you might not even need to change Twilight Transformation and we could play around transformation abilities. Imagine Twilight Minions costing 50e: Suddenly, you have a cheap way of increasing the damage output of your Twilight Units. I know it costs a deckslot, but I think this is a fascinating facet of the faction that shouldn't be discarded. In general, I think more abilities should trigger if Twilight Units transformed. E.g. if Nightshade plant triggered its effect on transformation, it would be an interesting unit for mass-CC. But again, I am not completely opposed to Twilight Evolution, I think this can only be a "second step" in making Fire/Nature better. And the Evolution should be very well thought out and designed. For example, a unit should only be able to use Twilight Evolution once. Otherwise a Twilight T2 card is effectively 3 cards (T2, T3 and T4 version), which is unfair towards other decks. But first things first :-) #MakeTwilightGreatAgain Edit: One thing I'm not keen on is forgoing orb restrictions. We should be making Twilight better instead of giving it more access to cards like Frenetic Assault. With Enlightenment and Amii Monument, there are already ways to ignore certain restrictions and I think adding more ways is hurting the game more than it helps.

Pretty much everyone agrees that twilight transformation is a lame ability. If you don't know what that is, all "twilight" (cards which require nature and fire) have an ability theme which is to transform into another twilight card in your deck. Sometimes the transformation comes with an ability (the best one is twilight minions' ability which makes nearby twilight units do 30% more damage for 20 sec). The ability is lackluster because Transforming takes 85% of the cost of the regular unit (in most cases) +at least 60 power for the cheapest twilight unit, which is usually more expensive than just summoning the unit you want in the first place, and way more expensive than just using a breeding grounds Transforming does not heal the unit Transforming still takes charges Transforming does not allow you to exceed the unit limit The only upside of transforming is that your unit becomes unbound. Unlike similar abilities like shadow phoenix and mind control, twilight transformation continues to bind unit power. There are 3 uses where I have seen the twilight transformation effect in games: In PvP, if you want to launch a sneak attack with vileblood you could start with twilight minions and transform them, to spend 171 power for a 130 cost unit with a 20 sec damage buff. In my opinion this is not nearly worth 41 power. In PvP, if you use twilight curse on a vileblood it triggers the vileblood's transformation effect. This ability WILL spawn a full HP unit, but it cost 100 power for a unit that is actually worse than vileblood + lava ability. IMO this is still underwhelming and also requires TWO extra slots in an already slot-intensive deck In PvE, you can make a massive unbound army. I tried this once or twice and generally found it ineffective (thats because it's actually still bound). PvE speedrunners also say that it's not worth it (especially because twilight t4 units are not very good and there is no flexibility for other orbs). I suggest that twilight transformation become something like a "twilight evolution." Instead of a unit transforming into any unit in the deck, I suggest that the unit be able to transform into a specific unit with one tier higher, once that number of orbs is obtained. For example, perhaps vileblood could transform into mutating maniac once you get t3. Perhaps mutating maniac could transform into twilight abomination once you get t4. Alternatively, each unit could transform into a "better" version of itself. For example, the pvp vileblood could transform into the pve vileblood, with better stats and a powerful effect upon death. (I would totally play deathglider if it could transform into the pve deathglider ) My proposed solution has several benefits: It reduces the number of deck slots required. In PvP, fire nature requires many slots in t2. Many fire nature decks run a single t3 card (giant slayer). I could see players using deathglider instead of hurricane if the deathglider could turn into a t3 unit at that stage of the game (so when I'm t3, I spawn deathglider for 60p and transform it for say 100p). This is weaker than just spawning a t3 unit because it takes more micro, it's slower, it cost more, and twilight t3 cards are simply weaker than other t3 cards. However, with deck slots saved, it might be worth it (also the power is unbound, which is a big advantage). It allows more pve deck flexibility. Do you want to play a twilight abomination, but also use frenetic assault? If there is a t3 card which transforms into twilight abomination, then you could play that unit and transform it. Since the "evolve" effect only considers the number of orbs, not the color, you could use this workaround to create an army of twilight abominations with nat-fire-shad-shad orbs. (If this is too strong for pve, we could make it check both the number and color of orbs). It saves charges. Pure twilight decks don't have access to offering, so this is another way to bypass charges. Use a t3 card with 8 or 12 charges and transform it to get 8 or 12 t4 units. Of course it requires more total power spent this way. I'm not sure how t4 creatures could evolve, but they could also just keep the regular twilight transformation effect. Not like anyone would use the new or old effect on t4 units, even if the effect was somehow good. EDIT: Just to clarify for those not following the discussion in the balance discord, the current proposal is for units to transform/evolve into a better version of themselves. So when you are t3, you could transform your vileblood into a t3 vileblood similar to the pve enemy. Zyna has a working demo of this effect. For t4 units, the transformation will be based on power instead of having another orb. The bound power will be the same as the original unit, hp will be the same fraction (1/2 hp t2 vileblood turns into 1/2 hp t3 vileblood), and the transformation cost will be cheap or possibly free. We have the ability to balance a new version of every twilight card, so I'm working on this proposal over the next few days. EDIT 2: Deckbuilding options Since some people don't know what is in a typical FN deck, here is a standard one: The t3 is a bit larger than typical for FN (smaller than pure fire), so you could replace mortar or sunderer for t3 cards, but you will need to make some t1 concessions to do that. I currently play with sunderer-->vileblood because I think the L units is strong against the meta options right now (although vileblood is probably the weakest L unit in all of T2). Another option is sunderer-->virtuoso, which gives higher odds of winning t3. Assuming that all the changes go as I want, I would experiment with the following deck which is designed for heavy t3 fights like 2v2: So sundy-->vileblood sacrifices t1 options (esp against shadow) to have some better t2 matchups against some factions (pure shadow, lost souls, Pure fire) and a t3 unit which is like virtuoso. Gladi-->twilight hag (assuming it becomes t2) because hag will be able to 1-shot + erupt skyfire drake, which is the main reason gladi is needed. Gladi would be a better L counter and swift unit (as I am thinking about this though, FN still struggles a bit against L units so I wonder if hag would need the exact same stats as gladi, but without swift and disenchant) Scythe fiends-->deathglider means you'll struggle against defenders and spirit hunters. If deathglider got a t2 buff this might be viable. In 2v2 though, my partner's darkelves can take care of enemy s uniits as long as I provide knockback via hurricane or deathglider. In 1v1 i might keep scythe fiends and use deathglider instead of hurricane if I really wanted to include this card. Ghostspear-->twilight minion is the most obvious substitution. Ghostspear is better because it has slightly better stats, has reach to kill rooted melee units, and can switch to S counter. All of these bonuses are nice, but rarely dealbreakers. In this deck I'm also assuming that twilight hag get some kind of cc buff in t3, so perhaps I could try dropping mortar-->thunderstorm to really round out a t3-heavy deck. Analysis: this deck will suffer against S units and L units (depending on twilight hag t2 stats) in t2 but this can be overcome by a shadow partner's Aura of corruption and darkeleves. In return I get 3 below-average t3 cards, 2 above average t3 cards (deathglider and giant slayer), and thunderstorm (currently available but makes no sense because if t3 lasts longer than 2 minutes FN is out of charges and dead). The "below average" t3 units would help round out unit counters (twilight hag is AA and L counter, minions can defend silverwind or enemy giant slayers) while also added more overall charges to FN. Lack of charges is one reason that FN loses t3 to other decks. Even if all 6 "t3" cards were at the average power level of a t3 card, this t3 would still not be too strong. Consider that lost souls typically plays a 5 card t3 where all cards are significantly above the average power curve, and if players really want to emphasize t3 it's possible to use 7-8 t3 cards in shadow frost, pure shadow (I've even seen 10 card t3 in 2v2 pure shadow), and aragorn-style stonekin. Having these cards as a t3 option would not make fire nature too strong, but it would provide a "win more" feature which FN completely lacks. I expect this deck would become a strong meta option in 2v2 because t3 is more important there, but in 1v1 most high-level games are ended in t1 or t2 (unless you're fighting a defensive deck that just wants to save slots and go t3). In 1v1 I could see twilight minions being played most of the time, with vileblood and twilight hag also played some of the time depending on the player and meta. Scythe fiends are also important in many matchups, so deathglider is a hard sell unless it could replace hurricane by changing its its attack pattern (like frost mage) to more reliably knock back s units. (although don't forget that frost mages have better stats than deathglider and stonekin players still usually play both frost mage and hurricane).

Yes, it would at least destroy PvP balance to a certain extent. I get goosebumps imagining a stonekin deck with 24 slots. (At the moment stonekin players have to distribute weak spots among T1, T2 and T3 wich makes the deck relatively balanced). You could also play a lost souls deck with ~ 9 T3 cards, not fun. @Flrbb : Maybe something wich comes close it possible with the map editor. I have no clue what's possible and what not, but some mapdesigners like Kaldra did crazy things with the existing mechanics of the game.

I found this in the depth of www and repost it here. Hope there is no similar thread existing allready. Some things might be outdated if so tell me then I ll change it. If you know more undocumented details post them in this thread. Kind regards Battleforge undocumented details * Frozen units only take 50% damage. * Corpses last on the ground for just-about 17 seconds. * Embalmer's Shrine, which makes corpses give more life points, does not help your enemies' corpse gathering, but it helps your allies. * Homesoiled units have their bonus for a little (about 2-3m) less than the max root link distance. BUFF STACKING * Damage buffs not stack only biggest buff is applied. * Damage reduction does stack until 90% is reached.The damage can further be increased by cards that say "the unit only takes x % damage" instead of the unit gets x % damage less. But not clear how this 2 different kinds of DISENCHANT (GREEN): It's Debuff-blocking allows you to use a unit's abilities under a Mark of the Keeper and also prevents Mind Control. ORBS: I also saw this conversation on bfcards: Kaldra: you know when you abort and not build orb you gain 75 power back? means you just waste 25 power... CARD RECHARGE RATE If you have no charges left on a card, its recharge time is equal to half of its cost in power or its stated recharge time, whichever is longer. Upgrades that reduce power cost can reduce recharge time in this way. Breeding grounds reduces not just the base cost, but the real cost of a unit. i.e. A drake is normally 100, with 90 going to void on death, with BG it is 70 with 63 going to void on death. ATTACK TYPE VS ENEMY SIZE I was amazed the first time I heard about paying attention to a unit's attack mode (Special, Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large) in regards to the opponents unit, as if they match said attacking unit will be dealing 150% damage (total. Meaning 100% + 50%). DAMAGE I wouldn't say it's not well known, but the damage number on a card is the amount it will do in 20 seconds of constant attacking. REGENERATION Regeneration stacking thread: link1 and link2 In short, wheel of Juvenesce stacks with any 1 (one) other form of regen Except Viridya. Any other regen combo actually cancels all regen. Nature affinity root nexus is notorious for this. * Strength, Resilience and juves does not Stack. WALLS Did you know you can shoot at buildings and XL units over walls? But not anything else? You can shoot at buildings and XL's through walls only if they were targeted before the gate was closed. Otherwise they will just shoot at the gate. BREEDING GROUNDS hmmm i believe breeding grounds work for allies but not sure if juice tank does Breeding Grounds does work for allies, but Juice Tank and Resource Booster do not. STAMPEDE * ground units can not pass over unused monument/well slots. obvious? yes! but why are these mos and juggernauts always ramming into my well/monument clusters, instead of stampeding alongside of them? if you want to destroy wells/monuments standing in a line, stampede parallel but very close to this line and destroy all of them (or at least get your stampede max dmg out) instead of running into it from the side, thus destroying only 1-2 wells. * XL units stampede S and M units, knocking them back and dealing 10 damage for each squad member. L units stampede S units, knocking them back and dealing 10 damage to each squad member. ** UPDATE 2009.11.06. ** MIND CONTROL PVE enemies are classed differently on each PVE map when it comes to mind control abilities. Some maps you can swap stonekin warriors, some you can't, some maps you can swap vilebloods/destroyers/horrors and some you can't. 2 good examples of this: Soultree all destroyers and horrors (at the beginning) can be swapped, but they cannot be swapped on Nightmare Shard (one of the first fights is against a horror). On Convoy all the stonekin warriors (the one's with charges) can be swapped, but on Soultree (on the path where you protect Viridya) they cannot. So in other words, just cause a mob can't be swapped on one map, you may want to test it on another, on many maps anything up to L is fair game for a swap, including rageflames/stonekin warriors/vilebloods/destroyers/horrors/aggressors/windhunters/alpha birds and I'm not sure on some of the bandit lieutenants, but I doubt any of them can be. This probably is also true for many creatures when it comes to parasite swarm, and amazon beast control. ** UPDATE 2009.11.09. ** RAGE *Like the fact that 'rage' makes an attacking unit build up attack power while attacking until it has 4x base damage. This resets after not attacking for 5 seconds. * It's 5 seconds for most cards, the only one I know of that is longer is the Fire Dragon at 10 seconds. ** UPDATE 2009.11.11. ** LEGENDARY UNITS * There can be 2 legendary units on the field, if they dont have the same upgrade level GRAVITY SURGE * Flying units under the effect of Gravity Surge (Tainted version) are not damaged by Aura of Corruption. MIND CONTROL * If a Parasite Swarm mind controls a Shadow Phoenix after it has started to crash dive, the dive will not be interrupted and it will damage the units of the Shadow Phoenix's previous owner. ORBS * you get "only" 75 power back when you destroy your orb while beeing build. Therfor you loose 25 power. (new orb costs 100 afterwards) ** UPDATE 2009.11.13. ** 1.Buffing: Damage amplification: I've done some extensive testing and found that Unholy Power stacks up to 2 times for +100% damage, this double stack can also be stacked with any of the following buffs. Homesoil Motivate Soul Splicer Unholy hero Of all of these buffs none stack with one another besides with Unholy Power and that the highest achievable amplification of damage is 300% Via Unholy hero+ Unholy Powerx2. Snapjaw (fire) will also increase this damage on whichever target is the focus of the fully buffed unit. Damage Reduction: Stacks such as life weaving, defenders stance, and crystal fiend (frost) Frozen units take 50% normal damage 2. Unit size: When choosing what unit to counter another with it is important to pay attention to the unit's attack, and the unit's size. By choosing the correct counter for a given unit you can save time and power. It works as such. A units size determines the best effective attack against it. If your unit's attack size matches the enemies unit size then your unit will do on average 50% more damage. The same is true in reverse. Cards like lyrish knight, who is a medium sized unit with a high small attack are an excellent counter to small units since the majority of small units also posses a small attack which means that they will not receive the +50% damage vs your lyrish knight, but you will receive the +50% vs their small units. I have also done some testing on unit size to determine that the +50% is average, not the rule. XL units have a variety of attack animations, and while some prove more effective (up to +64%) other animations are less effective (44%) , so based on the luck of the draw,and how your unit wants to animate you could potentially be doing +64% damage to a unit with a size disadvantage vs your attack depending on the animation (Axe chop, two handed blow, horn sweep, stomp, etc. Most xl units have 5-6 attack animations depending on the size of their foe. Stampede: XL units can stampede small and medium units: Knocking back and doing 10 dmg to each squad member. L units can stampede small units: Knocking back and doing 10 dmg to each squad member. 3. Legendary Cards - Promo cards Legendary cards like Ravenheart can be played with their promotional version to bypass the legendary unit limit. Promo cards of existing units are considered different from the non-promo version for the purpose of buffing such as motivate. 4. Void and Power 90% of a units actual power cost is returned in void power from suicidal units. This is effected from breeding grounds thus instead of refunding 90 power from a 100 power skyfire drake it will return 90% of the actual ammount of power it took to summon in the unit. Eg. U3 breeding grounds = 30% Thus making skyfire U3 cost 70 power instead of 100, the void gained on a suicide of that unit is then 63 (90% of 70). Power enhancing structures such as Juice tank and Resource booster will both effect your own power wells (and stack effects), but they will not effect allied/enemy wells. Breeding grounds: The effected power savings (15%-30%) will work for allies summoning in the effective area, saving them a portion of the summoning cost. Orbs: Each orb costs 100 power + a one time power fee for each tier after the first. 100+50 = T2 100+150= T3 100+ 200 = T4 If the wrong orb is accidentally built, destroying the orb before its completion will result in 75 power of the 100 being refunded. 5. Corpses/Corpse Gathering When using something like embalmer's shrine's special ability it will effect all friendly units corpse gathering abilities as well. Corpses last approximately 17 seconds before they vanish, so time those Undead armies, and harvesters appropriately. 6. Walls: Important things to remember are that XL units and Buildings can be targeted through a wall while S, M, L units can only be temporarily targeted by other S,M,L units if they were visible through a hole in the wall or, if the gate was down. Only XL units and buildings can attack S, M, L units over a wall unless the unit attempting to fire is placed on the wall defensively. All small units can be placed on walls, this includes melee units. While they cannot attack, they do provide something else for enemy units to focus on, thus reducing damage on the walls overall. Snapjaw, being a small unit but with a squad of 4 can compact more units onto a group of wall segments than the other 6 member squads. A two segment wall can house 3 units of snapjaws while only being able to support 2 units of 6 member squads such as master archers. 7. Rage: Rage abilitiy will allow a unit to do up to 4 times (400%) its normal damage when fully enraged. To maintain this most rage units must attack every 5 seconds, while Fire dragon must only attack every 10 seconds. ** UPDATE 2009.12.02. ** LOOTER - it only works versus buildings that your opponent built, not including wells and orbs. - you get a certain percentage (i think it's 40% at U0) of the buildings powercost as extra power into your usable power pool if you completely destroy the building just with units that have the looter ability. - you don't get that power in one big bunch when the building is destroyed, but rather every time you damage the building, you get a small part of it. - so if a building has 1000 health points, and you make 100 damage to it with your looters, you will get 4% of the buildings power cost. - the opponent will still get 90% void, so the power is not "stolen" but additionally granted. - normally you won't have many opportunities to use this ability, but if your opponent loves to spam buildings, you can make a lot of extra power with this. ** UPDATE 2009.12.07. ** UPGRADE COSTS ............. U1 ...... U2 ..... U3 Common ...... 50 ..... 250 .... 500 Uncommon ... 150 ..... 500 ... 1000 Rare ....... 400 .... 1000 ... 3000 Ultra rare . 800 .... 2000 ... 6000 ** UPDATE 2009.12.09. ** The Root Network A lot of people really don't understand how the root network works, and don't get to use it at it's full potential. It is actually fairly simple to use and if done properly can make for one of the best defenses in the game in most situations. How does it work --- The following cards have the Root ability... Living Tower SpikeRoot Thornbark Razorleaf Howling Shrine (tainted and gifted) Spore Launcher And two support buildings Root Nexus (gifted and blessed) The buildings are automatically rooted but the units have the ability to become rooted (immobile) and gain special attacks, and can be un-rooted and moved to a new area. You will know they are connected when a faint green colored line connects between the units, as long as they are linked to one unit in a network they will be connected to the whole network. You must be outside the linking range and have seperate units not connected the to first network in any way to have a second seperate network. Every rooted unit/structure that becomes part of a root network supports the other units in it by boosting attack power and or speed. However the most important part of this function to know is that if a unit or structure is attacking, it -does not- add its power to the network i.e. only unit/structures that are idle will add their power and boost ONE of the linked attacking units -unless- the root network is maxed out (for a level 3 upgrade that is 11 linked units) then any additional units will add power to a second attacker. Only one unit per network can receive a power boost (unless network is maxed out for that unit with additional supporters for secondary unit), this is determined by the attacker closest to the network. Example: Two Spikeroots one in front of the other, connected to 7 living Towers. The spikeroot in front will have the attack boost, until enemy units move into range of the second spikeroot, as soon as he starts attacking the first spikeroot will lose and bonus and now the New attacker closest to the network will receive a power boost. If the enemy units move beyond the spikeroots and engage the living towers, then all power boosts will be lost. This is part of what makes root nexus so potent and useful in a root network. Root Nexus does not contribute OR subtract from the root network, it does however connect units, allowing you to have a large group of stationary towers, and keep using their power by moving your unit(s) and creating cheap root nexus buildings as you go. They also have useful abilities which they give to any unit connected directly to them. Gifted Root Nexus - Any unit connected directly to this structure will regenerate 2% of their life points every second Blessed Root Nexus - Any unit connected directly to this structure will take 25% less damage If you build one of each of the support structures at the edge of the root network (every 25m-ish) so that each root nexus takes less damage and regenerates health, then surround them with living towers in the center, and place your attacking units at the outside edges making sure everything has one of each nexus connected to it. You will have an entire defensive force (units and structures) all of which are self regenerating and take less damage from attacks, meaning no repairing, and in some cases, no healing required. This strategy is for example perfect for defending the gold wagon on Bad Harvest, using razorleaf for attack. You don't even need to bother destroying the cannons because your defenses will regenerate themselves and take less damage from them. At this present time it seems that Howling shrine doesn't work as the description states ( 4 turrets each deal 325 damage written on the card) yet no matter how many supporters it only fires one turret. However each one has a special ability, gifted paralyzes an attacker tainted roots them. on a maxed network they activate this special nearly every second if you place the rooter out front it will hold and attack enemies and with the paralyzer behind any that get through the roots will then be paralyzed and attacked, they can be powerful or just used as another structure supporter. At this time though the damage they deal however is minimal (seems to be glitched). Mark of the keeper works well with root network as well, providing some defense and preventing special attacks like disintegration or paralysis that can shut down heavy damage linked attackers. Combined with breeding grounds you can create a mass of unit supporters and create an entirely mobile root network, which turns it into a more effective offensive weapon. This is where Thornbark really shines, it gives you extra network supporters to work with and provides mobile anti air support since Spikeroot attacks ground units only. A razorleaf out front with an equal mix of spikeroots and thornbarks can make a powerful offensive force, anti air, heavy attack and support ground fire all in one if things start to look bad you can pull your razorleaf back to a defending network while your other units create a wall for it's escape. MELEE ATTACK There is a cap on the number of melee creatures that can attack an opposing creature. Actual numbers depend on size of the attackers and size of the defenders. First i would like to define 3 different melee attack classes: * Normal (most M and S size creatures, with M counting twice as much as S) * Reach (some M and S size creatures, with counting M twice as much as S) * Huge (all L and XL size creatures, with XL counting twice as much as L) The following creatures are in the Reach class: * Spearmen * Ghostspears * Mauler * Drones * Phalanx * Imperials * Lyrish Knight * Silverwind Lancers * Ice Guardian * Wrecker * Enforcer * Scythe Fiends * Giant Slayer * Executor * Shadow Insect Note that both Nomad and Dreadcharger are not in this class even though they use lances! And now the caps on the numbers of melee attackers for creatures of different sizes: * a single S creature can be attacked by at most 4 Normal, 6 Reach and 2 Huge attackers * a single M creature can be attacked by at most 6 Normal, 10 Reach and 2 Huge attackers * a single L creature can be attacked by at most 8 Normal, 12 Reach and 4 Huge attackers * a single XL creature can be attacked by at most 12 Normal, 14 Reach and 6 Huge attackers Similar mechanics apply to melee attacks against buildings, but the number of attackers seem depend on the footprint size of the buildings. OTHER * Disintegrated targets doesn't revive with second chance or promise of life. * Reducing damage effects like life weaving or freezed also reduce damage from self damage like instability or blood healing. However, self-damage from disintegrating (shadow worm) can't be reduced. * Soulshatter's secondary effect doesn't trigger from death of air units. * Bandit walker doesn't count as XL unit (units with XL attack doesn't do more damage vs them). Construct does. * Buffs like unholy power/hero/motivate increase damage from shadow mage's foul play, but only if buffs are here when bomb explodes, not when bomb planted. * Damage to allies from wrathgazer's pain link calculated before his resilience or any other reductions. * Overlord can store corpses up to X points (max hp - current hp = X), then he use them to regenerate even if there are no more corpses around. * Armored tower's active ability works on buildings under construction. * Defenders, Commandos and Darkelves get thier range decreased when activating ability. * Pve Units and buildings of Lost Souls cant be controlled by f.e. mattermastery or mindcontrolled and so on. DISINTEGRATION upgrade lvl / disintegration rate(hp/sec) / hp loss(per sec per unit) disintegration rate of 100 means it can disintegrate unit with 1000 hp in 10 seconds. Church of negation U0 / 80 / 60 U1 / 85 / 60 U2 / 90 / 50 U3 / 100 / 50 Wrathgazer U0 / 135 / - U3 / 150 / - Shadow worm U0 / 110 / 70 U1 / 115 / 60 U2 / 125 / 50 U3 / 150 / 45

All of the code for quest system is done server side, this has nothing to do with the actual game code. The only thing done in the client is to actually display these quests, which is what you see in the quest interface. That is inherently different to the actual code of the game, such as in the client, which contains stuff like game mechanics, AI behavior. This code is obfuscated and encrypted in a way that we still until now only have limited knowledge of its contents. Not to say that it isn’t possible, but things like 6vs6 pvp or 12P may be very close to that. BattleForge was not designed to be a MMO so connecting 6 sessions into one game was already a feat in itself back in the day, developing more slots for players, especially with our limited resources, is no easy task. However, maybe there exists a way to develop 6P PvE based on the existing 3v3 PvP infrastructure.

Thanks for the compliments and great response to the suggestions with valid points made. (Restrictions are important in game design to make each creative or ambitious idea work effectively well...) 1: "The Auction" for example would have the "Incredible Mo" card, sell from 250bfp-450bfp as the restriction price range allowed, so that players never see it reach 800bfp or ridiculous unnecessary prices that waste time, since almost nobody buys them that high without already having asked for the normal price. When players see the ridiculous price, it tends to cause others to do the same to make it seem a legit price for the card. This restriction by design, would effectively remove the absurd card prices, allowing all players to get what they deserve for the card sold. This prevents the wasted time players experience currently, sometimes having to wait 2-5 days (or longer) to see card prices drop back to normal prices for certain cards. This restriction can actually be done within just 3 days to apply it to the game, and perhaps to launch the update with it effectively, given it's basic coding format required to do this. In fact a tutorial on Youtube or Google could teach a freelancer to code this type of format into a game in a few hours, so this type of update would just demand a care to do it, rather than too many resources. Each card would have its restriction applied so that the auction is not abused, and all players can be satisfied with reasonable results. Whenever a game designer creates an idea, they must support it, and balance it well so that it doesn't harm the experience for players, especially newcomers. EA and the previous developers of Battleforge failed to fix the auction, and the game was forced into failure due to the lack of fixes, balancing, additional content, and effective expansions done properly. This quick single week Auction House Fix can make a major difference for all players looking to improve their deck without feeling a miserable experience waiting far too long to get a single decent card that's over priced. This is certainly the most reasonable update option that the developers could apply to the game very soon if they wanted to make it work. - 1 compromising option to test progressively, with the option to remove it if it's abused, would be to allow players to sell cards normally in auction, with the restriction update for each card applied (as in effect), such as Avatar of Frost allowed to sell for 1600bfp-2000bfp, but never 3000bfp-4000bfp (prices based on the normal community rate, and not the overpriced rates). This fix can make Promo cards more possible for players to purchase, without being so absurd that they just give up and quit the game, such as Promo Juggernaut selling for 5000bfp-8000bfp, instead of 20,000bfp-48,000bfp. - With a compromising addition of absurd prices being allowed still, by creating the option for players to post "Donation Cards," where the card is not sold as a normal auction house card, but makes it obvious that the card is overpriced so players with enough bfp to spare, can choose whether to buy the clearly expensive card, just to donate to these players in need of bfp, or perhaps deserving of it, or just as a generous surprise for the community member, yet also nobody has to buy it either. This "Donation Cards" section added to the Auction House UI as a selling option for players, can also allow sellers to under sell a card, where they sell cards for very cheap, just to surprise card collectors with great deals as they improve their decks with satisfied results from supporting each other in the community with generous deals to come by. This would also sort the "Normal Prices" in the auction restrictions main section, from the "Donation Cards Prices" section (within the auction) of the too expensive cards for fun, and too cheap of cards, just because a player can sell it that way to for a buyers enjoyment in the game. 2: True "more Promo cards" would require much more than basic coding, whereas the Auction House's simple, yet effective solution, and a big part of deck progression given how the game rewards cards. It would still be cool to at least see a Giant Wyrm promo card since the dragon is so commonly used in most decks in the game, to a point of deserving to be a promo card, as the promo may also end up the most used promo card in the game, which would be great for the Skylord content creators/ developers. 3: I find "Card Reserves" being another basic programming option for the game, but the UI format design would require a new additional layout section for players to interact with, which would take some time to create along with the basic coding to go with it, which I would say 1-2 weeks can be enough to finish "Card Reserves" with just 2-4 people designing it for the game. The Card reserves as said before, would either go into a reserves list upon selecting from a "full roster" of cards in the game, thus slotting them into reserve list slots, or the option to slot for reserve into a deck that's already made, so that players know what deck that card they get is going to be for, without forgetting. I've done Blueprint coding for Unreal Engine 4, used Photoshop Cs6, and Zbrush 4.0r7, including Blender with FBX transfer files of trees with animations imported into Unreal Engine 4. I've created UI for for unit Class type selections, and providing Hover-Descriptions for how each Class type functions best from its core purpose, done on my own within 2 weeks. 4: Yes "6 v 6 as teams, and a 12 player no teams," but this of course would require a lot of play testing, trial and error, time, and resources to make it truly work well effectively without issues. Also to make it standout as an enjoyable experience on its own. The player Map Creator doesn't have to be done at all, but I would advise another basic coding options to allow players to choose more custom options to setup a pvp match or pve, which leads into the next suggestion as to what the main option can be. 5: "Additional card slots" would be another basic programming feature, that can be done within 1 week, but is a matter of the new developers interest and agreement to these new suggestions to quite an extent. As these additional slots don't have to be forced on players, and can be a new additional option, that's apart of the already setup custom options prior to hosting matches for players. The option of course can be a "1-5 /or 1-10" additional slots at first to see how players respond to the additional experience, and then to determine if it's enough or not. Of course this addition as said before, would make for interesting diverse decks, and allow players to fit just the right amount of cards they've always wanted in a single deck combo, so they can add just enough cards to build the deck they've wanted to make without feeling there's not enough. This option made as optional, also makes is an addition that does more good than harm, since it's not forced on players either, which can make it a win, win addition to the game. Everyone can be happy with it, but of course it comes down to focusing on getting it done, since this is another basic programming feature. 6: More "Card Background Styles" and card "Balancing," are not as necessary as the core additions suggested here, but are posted here anyways because they can support the game designers with additional content ideas they can consider as they further work on the game, or choose to leave it as is in its current already playable state, but getting too repetitive with nothing added in what seems like a long time. No signs of development over the past month I've been on, so nobody knows what to expect here, future wise for Battleforge. (The core additions here that can be done within a month's time are the "Auction Restrictions, Card Reserves, and Additional Card Slot Custom options when hosting missions pve or pvp...as these are reasonable suggestions that can be done with 1-5 developers. I'm not sure if the developers currently on the project are freelancers, or college graduates, but a college graduate at game design or lead development, would certainly be able to pull these off within a month or sooner by themselves. Hopefully new additions make it into Battleforge, but we can accept it if it's left as it is as well...)

- Auction House restrictions = players can't abuse selling prices and prevents players from quitting the game since scammers in the auction can make the auction seem useless at times, which this restriction can prevent this issue altogether, so players can make use of it without slowing their progress too much with getting new cards they're after, basically restricting a card like "Mine or Mo" from going over 450bfp, or below 250bfp, this way nobody is ripped off, not even new players, possibly even adding a feature that indicates the cards general average true value/ worth. - More promo cards for other cards = card variants that allow a more personalized collection, so players can find the version of a card they may have always wanted to see, or they can enjoy cards they may not have liked previously on terms of cosmetic features, until the card cosmetic variant comes around that fits their preferred style for a card, such as multiple Promo Mo variants utilizing different shaders, materials, and visual effect enhancements to make it cooler, including the lack of Promos for popular cards such as Giant Wyrm, Shaman, Soulhunter, Bloodhorn, and Iron Clad, etc. which could give players more reason to support the games expense through funds (as at the very least I think a Giant Wyrm deserves a promo card with golden or chrome armor apparel). - 6 vs 6 PvP, or 12 player "no teams battle mode" = Custom mode variety has potential here, including a map creator feature that can be made easy to use for all players to create their own maps and modes for unique battle outcomes among different competing players, without running out of ideas too fast...however the mechanics would require restrictions and preset options for players to choose from, also a feature not even League of Legends has which they could benefit from. - New UI feature addition "reserve cards" for collection = players can reserve cards they're after simply by making a list so they don't forget their card goals they're after, and can always have in game access to the list of cards that they're after, without wondering what they're missing...also allowing players to enlist new cards for reserve that they weren't aware of initially, until they discovered the option (thus they can save the card into their list or reserve it into a deck as a ghosted card until unlocked), which the choices may be provided from the entire roster of cards so players are aware of all the cards available without guessing, thus assuring players aren't missing out on their options, or forgetting what they're after. - Custom card backgrounds for each element type = more personalized variety which is good for the players interest, and expanding potential diversity, such as golden trim with glowing gems surrounded by sparkles of its element type around the boarder, or a Hearthstone frame like the "dragon framed legendary" cards they have, including Magic The Gathering Arena's "Panoramic 2D Gif movement" cards, etc. - Add more functional cards = Balancing the best cards available now, by creating counters to each card, so others can be just as effective, including nerfing, buffing, or altering cards already available, so certain cards that aren't used often can see more usage, including being more enjoyable to use in a mixed element deck providing more deck creativity, such as altering the element orbs required to use certain cards, so they can be seen in more decks of diverse creativity. - Custom Mode Feature "Add more card slots" = more deck diversity and doesn't have to be too many, plus if it's a custom mode feature, it only adds to the experience and satisfaction of trying new deck options with a few more slot options to preset. (I don't use the Forums often, but this had to be an exception in hopes the game makes additional improvements soon, as the lack of variety is yet again affecting Battleforge's potential...)

We have always had a "failsafe" design that the team agrees with, if for some reason, we would need to shut the project down entirely due to EA shutting us down, or other reasons, we will make the game code open source. So some sort of possibility will be out there for you to continue playing this game in some form. For now, we are managing with the current donation numbers, and the current server capacity, however should server population drastically increase, and the donation value should stay the same, we will then need to properly evaluate what we should do. No one really knows what the future might hold :) EA at the end of battleforge could still maintain the server, the main reason they shut it down because it was tying their resources that could be used in other places for a higher profit margin.

What about people that do not have 100 cards, and play less than one game per day, because for them is hard to win standard map under 2 hours? I do not know about you but there is a lot of players that would not have big problem if the deck would have only 10 slots, or even less, because they do not even use these cards, so to me it seems kile forcing people to play 90 cards they do not have, and do not want to play. And again how should someone keep remembering what cards they already played to not waste 2-3 hours with same deck as last week.

I am personally not against increasing deck slots, although a careful analysis would need to be done. It may also not be possible. But about t4, imo there is no place for t4 in pvp. If you really have extra slots everyone will just take earthshaker, but t4 cards are so crazy OP that you can't even consider having proper counters and healthy gameplay. Even in t3, 90% of t3 cards are just basenuking or countering a base nuke. Games won't reach t4 (even if there are slots) unless wells and orbs get an additional hp buff, but then that will mean games won't end in t1/t2..... (btw, random thought but I wonder if it might be cool to have maps with different hp levels for different wells/orbs? That might be a cool way to spice maps up, and might also prevent certain rushing from happening, for example if the wells on wazhai cliffs had like 2500 or even 3000 hp, the person who wins the center fight may not auto win....)f But anyway, even if wells had a ton of health so t4 was the norm, nothing in t4 is balanced for healthy gameplay. There is a community map called something like "maze of survivors" which is kinda cool because you have to t4 fight your opponent, but after playing this map a couple times it is clear that t4 fighting is pretty silly and frequently reaches stalemates....

My opinion is just raise the deck slots for pvp to 30/or atleast 25/ with some condition like 5 cards in the deck minimum must contain T4 and buildings cards. Yes we need make T4 viable in PVP,cause i feel the game one-armed giant without the full card collection capability and the 20 card just restricted the gameplay too much,after a while when the battleforge unique attraction is gone u realised that the game become pretty repetitive,cause if u dont want that t1-t2 heavy playstyle u havent got enough option per tier to make decision between some various strategys or creatures just calling down what is momently available without any thinking,following the pre planned path. So some point of view the game with the current card slots is already slightly decided at the deck creating process what not favor the long time enjoyment as the ingame strategy changing and the freedom of choosing are limited aswell. Poor english i know,but i hope was understable.

It's not a necro if it's off-topic, right? I ended up finishing the lyrics to "ELO to us All" This is what you think makes a good deck? I’m sorry: you’re a fool. Put all these cards back o’er there Into the card pool. What is this? You can’t play Dreadnought and Giant Wyrm along with Death Ray Don’t you know that orbs don’t work that way? Don’t feed ELO to us all. Let’s remove Grim Bahir, Grimvine, Overlord, and Fire Sphere. Take my guidance, you don’t want fourth tier. Don’t feed ELO to us all. Let’s start with a noble faction And build a deck with flair. You’ll need a strong tier one: With these seven slots take care! You want cards with low cost: Thugs, scavenger, sunstriders. Add mortar tower and a sunderer. No free ELO for us all. There’s only two more cards you lack To finish your tier one: The Infused Firesworn And handy eruption. In tier two You’ll prevail Just remember you must Bring females Gladiatrix for a ranged assail You’ll take ELO from us all. [no singing] Lavafield, for knockback Healing comes from ra-a-vage. Scythe fiends grant S damage Now look at your advantage! Skyfire, enforcer These will shelter sieging fire dancers Now you have an offensive answer Just don’t lame over a waaall. Deadlier than a wildfire Spawn undazed with rallying banner Juggernaut, kill those wells Disenchant to break these cc spells. Virtuoso bids that base farewell Giant slayers end the braaaawl. Stop taking ELO from us (5x) aaaaaallllll To tune of this song:

Oh boy....haven't been to the forums in a while and didn't see this.... Maybe not the best solution, but certainly reasonable. Wait, I thought you wanted to nerf this card?? You realized that 100% seige is stupid strong? Even with the regular attack at 500 dp20s, that's actually 1000 dp20s for 60 energy? That just makes a toxic card worse. Treespirit is in a weird place because it's really strong, but not actually necessary in a nature deck because the other t1 cards can fill all the necessary roles. In the other hand, pure nature would love a cheap M/M counter. Moving treespirit to pure nature t2 and increasing the stats slightly may be the perfect fix: my main concern is that it will make the root networks too strong. We'll have to see how the numbers look, but I think t2 treespirit solves many problems (for instance, pure nature has no way to kill a windhunter). This might be in the right direction, but I'm not sure if that's enough. I'd personally rather see some sort of short spawn cooldown in addition to a power increase. Also, timeless one + northstar is kinda busted. TBH I don't want enlightenment to be a common 2v2 card. t4 is not balanced for pvp and I wouldn't want t4 to be a pvp balancing consideration. I'm fine with making it pure nature and slightly decreasing the cost for pve considerations, but 150 is too low. I sometimes take earthshaker in 2v2 because I play fire-nature and my t3 is terrible so if we reach super high power levels I know I have a secret t4 win condition. I take 4th orb instead of elightenment because I can't afford the slots and I want to spam earthshaker at several locations. Even then shield building saves the monument and I would generally say that a lost souls t3 with grigori, shield building, curse well, etc is stronger than t4 earthshaker at all power levels. In general, enlightenment is too weak to use even in 2v2. Your goal is to kill wells/orbs as fast as possible, and with enlightenment cost, you can't spam earthshaker. If you play another card, there is no clear benefit. A single bloodhorn is not worth going to the 4th orb because you have t3 stampede options, and tbh playing nat-nat-frost and using mo + shield building is probably better than enlighten + [anything except earthshaker] even with your enlighten "buffs." Nerfing earthshaker would probably kill enlighten in pvp (if it isn't already dead) at top levels while having annoying t4 base trades at a level just below that. Additionally, earthshaker damage is needed to kill rpve spawn camps. I would be okay to the earthshaker changes if the cooldown was lowered to something like 5 seconds. This would allow the card to have continued use in pvp if using t4 (which has huge downsides) while also preventing enlighten abuse if enlighten is buffed. I think the decision to go t4 for earthshaker is interesting (and tbh probably not optimal), which means I have 2 reasons not to change it. Or at least to promote earthshaker being used with actual 4th orb, while enlighten is used for t4 units. I don't disagree with making t4 units a "more viable" 2v2 strategy, especially if people want to have fun with t4 units, but pure nature is already a strong 2v2 deck and I would not want enlighten to be the strongest available option. 390 for bloodhorn is probably too good (considering that it also has a self-disenchant without need for a fire orb). I'm okay with it being a viable "fun" option but if t4 becomes the 2v2 meta, I think we need to reconsider something.

I like amii getting nerf, but I wish you did more. Look how superior amii is on nightmare's end for example. You're player 1 and just finished taking over the bottom base to secure t3 which you now have to defend along with your t1. After that fight, your t2 army is in pretty bad shape. You have two options to get t4: 1: Make a t3 army and take over the top base. Build your t4 monument and defend it. T3 army cost 500-800 power with spells (90% refunded) and 2-3 deck slots. Monument is 300 power. Defence is 300-500 binded power. Totaling about 800 lost power, 2 deck slots and a whole lot of time. 2: Put down amii monument. Totaling 325 binded power, 1 deck slot and 30 seconds. Now I know there are many way to do this map better. You could take your teammate's t2 and go straight to t4, you could defend your monument and the power shrine with one defence, etc. The example above is what an average joe would do. I don't think amii should cost 800 power. Maybe it should do something else entirely. An idea I saw on discord was to make amii t4 and cheaper, so it could be used as a 5th orb and orb swapping, opening many new possibilities.

As promised new update for the August motm's. Only did 1 Player this month. If it's requested i can upload the run for 1 Player level 9 as well. Possible time with used strategy: ~17:00 (actual time: 17:38) Short explanation on why i used fire start this time: The camp below t1 will attack you once you trigger the wave at t2 and the respawns of that camp will continously come to your t1. That would be manageable if t2 could be take safely. You have to trap the income from t3 camp betweenn t1 and t2 though and the camp at t2 is very far back which makes a fast clear pretty hard for any faction which results in you needing a pretty big army + a sizeable defense. I did experiment with all factions and shadow was straight up unplayable here. You have no way to efficiently defend that big an attack at t1 and taking t2 is pretty difficult due to high damage mana wings + a bad spawn location. Nature was going okayish but i did not find a good spot for the mark of the keeper to keep alive due to the amount of high hp or high damage melee units that would constantly kill the motk. Also nature has the 2nd slowest clear of t2 on this map. Frost i had an issue with binding too much power and efficiently clearing t2 as there are a bunch of units that are not effected by Frost Mage cc which results in prolonged fights which frost struggles in. Also defense is a bit tricky, but was the 2nd best. Fire i was actually able to pull off a reasonable defense of t1 with blaster mines and nomads after killing most of the stuff at t2. I was not able to find a reliable and fast way to do this consistantly. It was based a bit more on improvisation and a bit of luck in regards to how units ran into mines due to there being huge masses that tend to run slightly diifferent every time. if a unit died to early i would have to restart and it was still relatively slow. Conclusion was that the camp below t1 had to die first which results in constant incomes from 2 sides which is annoying you at t1 and the one from t2 will hinder you setting the attack up. So it became obvious that you will have to trap the incomes which fire and frost have the easiest time with as i do not play shaman. In the end i decided on fire due to it having a faster clear and the fact that the t3 camp you can clear with just t1 cards and oink which was an somewhat necasssary on this anyways as you need 2 cc's to avoid knockback from gunners in the camps later on. Frost would need Embalmers + Phoenixes and wasting another 2 slots + potentially even coldsnap as if I cant handle the drakes - did not test that though. In regards to the path I took. I was first experimenting with portal nexus and getting back to my t3 after the camp below the bandit lord in order to kill the huge income you get that way. Ultimately that was too slow though as it results in additional ground to run through with Batariel (from t3 to the camp below t3 + from the bottom most left camp back to the twin riders (or whatever the boss is called)). The rest should be pretty straightforward --> avoiid gunner knockback and cc from dragons, stay alive while low on power due to Sow and you were good to go. Hope this short summary of my thought process, especially for t1 helps more people completing these type of maps faster next time around. For further questions use this thread or the discord link in the first post.

Edit: great, half my post is now in the spoiler area and I can't get it out. Some mod can move the text behind the videos out of the spoiler area pls? I can't edit it. The more I think of the balancing discussions the more I think the problem is rooted relatively deep. I want to split this post in 2 areas, part one is to introduce to a seasoned RTS game from Blizzard, which the older players should still know and is widely considered to be one of the best RTS of all times: Warcraft 3. (of course there is Starcraft, but I'm not that invested in the meta and didn't play it that much. Warcraft was one of my favorite games for years). Part 2 is to compare it to Battleforge and see what's different and how that influences the perspective on balance. Part 1 One thing warcraft is very known for is how the game has a huge skill gap (means you can play ith with 30 APM but if you want to unlock all unit's performance you'll need at least 120 APM or more. Top players used to maintain up to 300 Actions per Minute during fights). Another thing Warcraft is known for is its strategic depth. You have multiple different types of early strategies, even in high level play and a lot more transitions for lategame. 1) Human has multiple different hero choices along with different eco strategies - Archmage along with fast militia level 2/3 creep; Archmage fast expansion; Paladin/Mountain King aggressive start 2) Undead can use Dreadlord/Death Knight/Lich along with either fast Ghouls or fast Crypt Fiend strategies and play around that (1 is a melee unit centered aggression strat, the other is ranged unit/focus fire strat that relies on creeping leveling heroes up first) 3) Orc can use Blademaster harassment strategies along with fast tech, early Grunt aggression, a Headhunter start (on larger maps) and a creeping, mass AoE strategy with Far Seer hero 4) Night elves can play mass huntresses, fast huntresses along with Keeper or Demon Hunter heroes, or Archers into Fasttech, or a neutral hero start on top of that you have a few cheese strategies that can work or not, and offer high risk-high reward. Since you probably have no idea what this means, here are some short clips: In short: for each faction there are multiple different types of strategies in 1v1, and even more in 2v2+. These strategies can be adjusted "on the fly" during the match. You see something odd from your enemy, you can react to it by using a neutral hero, switching your tech to some other unit, or you can try to outsmart/outmicro your opponent and stick with your strategy. Overall this is satisfying, because you feel that you "earned your win" by doing better strategical/tactical decisions instead of loosing to "some OP wombo combo". This brings me to part 2, Battleforge. In battleforge you plan your strategy beforehand - by creating your deck, and you will not be able to switch it during a match. This means you're forced to play your strategy, no matter who your enemy is. You decide how many t1 t2 t3 t4 units and spells you use, which colors at which point and so on. While this sounds intriguing on paper, it suffers from one large issue: There are only a couple of really viable cards for each deck slot and color. And if you don't use these units you'll most likely end up being stomped. So while in theory you have at least half a dozen options, only 1 option can be used. That is because you need your deck to be able to counter as many possible unit combos as possible. And usually this is only possible by using the most slot efficient cards. If one card has multiple effects, for example counter M units, swift and siege, this is most of a time a more efficient slot pick for your deck than picking a seperate M counter unit and a siege unit, because you need 2 deck slots for this. Only under very specific circumstances this is worth it. This has one advantage: it establishes stability in matchups, because you know what your opponent most likely will play - but it's REALLY unhealthy for the game's long term motivation, because all you can do is repeat and repeat the strategy over and over again. This can be considered "balance", because these meta strategies are equally powerful, and so each player has the ability to compete with others. But the disadvantages are way more severe: 1) it's repetitive, and becomes boring (unless you're good at it, because winning is fun) 2) the repetition rewards players who are grinders. The more often you play the same you get better at it. This also increases the gap between veterans and newer players, with newer player not being able to catch up at all 3) Because there is a lack of alternative strategies you don't feel rewarded for being creative with the units at your disposal, because you get stomped - this is the worst thing, because it teaches players "I don't have alternatives and I NEED to play this." and if I do not enjoy this particular strategy I will leave the game ultimatively. And this is the worst thing that can happen. The upgrade system requiring players to grind upgrades and stacks further emphasizes this issue. 4) Because the meta cards are mandatory, they're usually overpriced and require grinding. In the worst case a player can think "I have to grind for cards I personally dislike to play matches that I get stomped in. Why should I invest my time into this? This sucks" And another major issue is following: In Warcraft you have cheese strategies (cheese means it's a strong strat but can be easily countered if you know how, for example by scouting the enemy). But those strategies are usually rushes and either end the game quickly for the cheese player, or the attacked player counters it and gains a large advantage to win. In Battleforge, there is almost 0 cheese going on in t1, and even in t2 there is not that much cheese possible (except for stonekin, which is a whole cheese faction by itself). But t3 suddenly becomes a cheese fest. There are quite a few lame cards with 0 counterplay or are not fun to play against, and this leads to major frustration. Loosing to earlygame cheese strategies is frustrating aswell, but this only lasts a couple of minutes and afterwards you can do a fresh start with a new opponent. If a players has a 20 minute long, close game and then looses to some t3 cheese he will feel cheated from the game because he was very invested. Also t3 usually becomes a spam fest on who destroys power wells more efficiently. And cheese has the most potential to do that. Of course someone can argue that players have options to counter game moves, especially if you have invested years in playing and know all possible micro tricks and have played against certain factions/cards dozens of times. But this doesn't help newer players at all. All they see is that they get "stomped by lame shit" and quit eventually. This is why there NEED to be more viable cards in PVP. Currently I feel bad for executing the routine meta strategies against newer players because I know they will be frustrated for loosing just because I have executed the strategy more often than they did. This is the same reason why I don't enjoy playing against top players because they do the same with me. There should be at least 3-4 possible strategies for each deck color in t1 - swift/non swift starts - melee/ranged centered strats - multiple core spells that can be exchanged for different outcomes and depending on your game plan - options for high risk/high reward strategies for all factions - nerfs to cookie cutter strategies/units that outshine all others. I even think it should be considered to make certain splashable cards pure to remove them from mixed color decks While this sounds a lot, it doesn't really take that much effort. Increasing some cards power per HP/dmg ratio to make them viable while nerfing some others to bring them in line will establish a much larger variety already. Of course there are cards that will never be competitive, simply because their use is so niche, but they can be ignored, as long as halfway useful designed cards can be included in pvp decks. Whenever I played long games in Battleforge in the past there were quite a few games where I felt the win for the enemy side was unjustified because of card XY being used. Also when I played said XY card I didn't really feel rewarded for winning, because I knew it was lame. That's why I kept switching colors throughout the time I played the game. Some other of my mates also left the game because of that. One was Apoll, a first hour pure frost player, and the other UchihaSasuke, who played pure Nature. He switched to PVE after the mixed color factions were released and eventually quit the game. Maybe some of the beta-2011 era players remember these names. tl;dr : The amount of viable t1 cards needs to be increased for the sake of variety in pvp deck creation.

Mountaineer seriously needs a rework to fix his bug and balance his stats. Not sure what u really mean by twilight and lost souls units... I would really disagree with juggernaut being unbalanced, he's strong, yes, but u need 3 fire orbs for him, he'd better have a good attack, otherwise it's not worth it because u miss out on things like building protects and crowd control. Church of negation is also fine in my opinion, needs 2 shadow orbs and support from kobold trick and nether warp, has a lot of good ways to counterplay and if you're talking about "huge" maps it's only on 3v3s, where it's more pve than pvp and needs totally different decks. Curse well I never liked, I would honestly remove it because it ruins 2v2 games in my opinion and is just boring to play with and against. Fire nature is nowhere near weak, especially in t2, its t3 is usually very small because it needs the slots to have its power, and still not weak if played right in t3. Frost vs nature, rarely ever seen this matchup, but I bet it's pretty balanced. Frost t1 is definately bad is some maps, but doesn't mean u autolose, there is nothing much that can be done about that atm, removing maps, buffing frost t1 units or giving frost a swift unit neither seem like good options. Instant t2 pure shadow vs nature t1... this is what is called matchups, some cards are stronger than others, different colors have their advantages and disadvantages... as simple as that and doesn't necessarily mean it's unbalanced, need to learn how to play around it and understand what the color u play against can do versus u, and what u can do versus it.

No, I hear about extra hard difficulty the first time. Would it be possible to add it in the UI of the game, so that those who want a challenge can try them? To the frustation thing: yes and no. It might make someone rage more and maybe swear but I think its still less frustrating because its easier to get over it and just forget a loose. I have seen such modes in Elder Scrolls Legends and Hearthstone. I dont have any numbers but I think they are still well visited. To random decks: they shouldnt be completely random, not like frostmage and mine in the same deck, that wouldnt work. But for example master archers instead of frost mage or even both instead of frost glyphe. There should be a system behind the random decks. First step would be to choose the orbs, that could be done completely randomly. Next only all cards are filtered by those, that can be played with the orb constellataion. After that you should get at least 1 unit by tier. The units should be one that can be played alone in a tier (like windweavers, magma hurler, shadow phoenix). Units like frost sorceress would make it necessary that you get another unit. Maybe a unit ranking should be involved. Then you should get some spells, not necessarly 1 per tier, but here should be also a ranking involved. If you have creeping paralysis, curse of oink should be very unlikely to be put in the deck, too. And so on. And a few slots, maybe 4-6 are completely randomly chosen among the playable cards.

Well there are other roles to fulfill then clearing level 9 and 10 camps. For example speed doesn't play a role when there's a defensive position to hold, wich is a part of a lot of campaign maps. Constructs in their current state fit that role perfectly. It can't all be balanced to be viable in rPVE, most of T3 for example will never be - cause T3 isn't as important in rPVEs as T1 or T4 for wich most of the slots are used usually. And like others said, constructs can also keep up in rPVE with the help of netherwarp or deepcoil worm tunneling.

How to play Nature T1 - a PvP Guide by RadicalX - -General talk- Okay I'm almost finished with the entire T1 section. I'll say the the same stuff as I did before, with this guide I want to provide information for newer players (Stuff like: Which cards do I use against which color), but also for the ones who are already dedicated veterans (going for in depth analysis here). Again I want to remark that every statement I make here refers to 1v1-PvP since 2v2 works in a different way (especially for nature because in 2v2 you can cover up most of its weaknesses while benefitting even more from the strengths nature offers). Let's just start with a short summary of what nature is good or bad at: + Nature T1 has a good scaling in extended T1 fights (it outscales Shadow & Fire units by a wide margin and can get really opressive due to free sustain) + Many people, even some of the top players, have no clue how to play against nature T1, because they never play against strong nature players. Since nature has a very different playstyle compared to other factions this can be a massive advantage for you. + Nature T1 spells scale well into mid/late T2, which opens up for very strong mid game options + Nature T1 is simply fun to play and practicing the micromanagement is really rewarding - Nature units don't scale into T2 at all with the exception of Dryad (playing T1 vs T2 with nature is also quite hard and requires alot of experience) - The deck is hard to play as it requires very crisp decisionmaking (can be good for you if you invest alot of time into practicing) - Nature has no clean answer against Phasetower (resulting in a matchup that is really hard to deal with and you need Primal Defender in your deck to survive). But Phasetower is disgustingly strong in any matchup. Nature has some weak points that can be exposed. The units are expensive, which makes you vulnerable for cross map action and aggressive T2's. You usually just want to avoid playing Nature as Shadow and Fire usually bring up much more stability to your decks. People who mastered their respective T1 could actually abuse nature T1 heavily. That said most high ranked players are very inexperienced when it comes to playing against nature. Even the “average Prime” from the old days would hide himself behind Phasetowers & instant T2's to get throught this early matchup regardless of strategic advantages. Deck building Let's start to take a look the cards, that are available in Nature T1. I'll simply set up groups like in my other guides to give you an overview of what cards I'd consider as strong or ... well not so strong. S - Tier Dryad (blue): Super essential card with an insane ability and passive. Definitely must have in the traditional nature deck. Does synergise well with pretty much everything your T1 offers and as an ranged M unit with splash damage almost perfect. Her damage often gets underestimated as her card description is wrong (should be 660 attack and not 550 since the splash damage is not part of the calculation). The additional crowd control can be used to very high value in micro trades. Ensnaring Roots: Super essential spell, one of the main reasons why you want to play a nature splash - it is useful in every stage of the game against almost every type of melee unit. Synergises really well with the wide arsenal of ranged units, that nature can bring on the table. Hurricane: Very powerful mid game spell, helps alot against S units in T1 fights and allows you to survive against stronger S units like Darkelf assassins in T2. Surge of Light: Grants you extra safety against AoE damage and makes your opponent think twice, if he wants to nasty that Dreadcharger into your full hp units. In addition to that this spell is almost always useful throughout the game, especially on open fights. It empowers very simple attacks (Playing Deep One + perma heal can put your opponent onto a massive amount of pressure in the later stages of the game). A – Tier Shaman: Also very important in a good nature T1 deck. The sustain it offers leads to great importance of micro, which gets rewarded heavily (saving these 1 hp units is so damn satisfying). It's super important for nature mirrors and overall useful in many ocasions. Clearly a must have for extended trading. Windweavers: The double shot ability makes them super useful in big fights and against squad targets. Windweaverspam beats out Nox spam, which is quite important, when playing against Shadow. Just struggles against knockbacks (Firesworn, Hurricane, Frostmage) so spamming it against anything else than shadow is rarely useful. Swiftclaw: Technically the best swift unit, if you're interested in playing an aggressive T1. If you want to avoid fights or save deckslots for stonekin, a different swift may be the better option. Its high dps is very useful against Frost players (Swiftclawspam can punish greedy early well choices) and also good as a front liner in early (!) nature mirror fights. Useless against shadow though, but still worth a deck slot most of the time as the high dps also brings up potential threatening to early T2s by your opponent. Spearmen: Very Important in alot of matchups. Their high hp pool makes them easy to micro, which leads to a very high heal efficency. Very good in dazed fights against Shadow and they also make the difference in early nature matchups. Underrated card, which is sort of similar in its function as skeleton warriors are in Shadow T1. In their M-Counter form they also get a little bit of extended range, which allows you to safely attack rooted melee units without taking damage by yourself. Primal Defender: Helps you alot to slow down phasetower-players on dangerous maps like Whazai and can slow down the game in general. Provides alot of safety and is a very good addition in your deck. I recommend playing it and at a certain point it is even a must have card. It also allows you to stall out at certain choke points against aggressive Frostmagespam in order to survive the early stage of the game. Treespirit: Destroys every type of healthy gameplay (has arguably the highest cost efficency out of your T1 units), but sadly doesn't help you against the real threats nature has to face (Mortar, Phasetower, Frostmage) as you can soak up damage rotations. Treespirits always just hit the closest target, which is an exploitable weekness, so while I see alot of people try that “only Treespirit T1”, it doesn't work out well. The card is insanely good, if you are weak at T1 looking to slow down the game to survive for later gamestages, but is very slow when it comes to transitioning into offense. B - Tier Amazon Blue: Very good, if you look for a fast T2, because its an L counter and its ability is deadly against Nightcrawlers (You can swap and activate them immediatly afterwards). Therefore it simply scales better than Swiftclaw, but is inferior in T1 fights. The beast damage reduction can be useful against some creatures (Swiftclaw, Treespirit, Sunderer). Mark of the Keeper: Defensive Building, which can be very strong in certain spots on the map and deadly against some decks, that rely to much on mid range units & spells. But usually you fall to far behind to protect every single base since 70 power is quite a huge price. Aura radius is too small to block Phasetower from attacking so it doesn't work as a replacement for Primal Defender. Evenom (red): Very good to support your army in T1 vs T2 fights. Helps alot to bring down skyfire drakes as it is a soft counter to ravage. Can be used to play out and punish instant T2s of fire splashes (don't do this against pure Fire though!). C – Tier Dryad (green): Synergises well with an endless amount of cards, which is very nice to have, but rarely useful enough to justify the 60 power investement. Can be nice to cheese your opponent with some sort of Darkelfassassins burst combos or and also denies small debuffs and anti magic areas. Werebeasts: They cost 75 power which is slightly less than the other swift units ... if you want to go instant T2 to safe 5 power this is your choice! Also a potential choice to swift start against Shadow T1 even though their combat ability is still lackluster. Mumbo Jumbo (both affinities): Cheese card that has to be used on an isolated unit, otherwise it has pretty much no effect. This card belongs to rPvE bossfights. Manawing: Troll card, which is fun to play and microing the teleport ability is super fun. But its hp pool is just too small to make serious use of it outside of the PvE area. All T1 factions do have good anti air units in their basic composition, which makes the air unit stat malus pretty bad for you. That said you can still use it to bring down annoying cliff mortar attemps (I'm looking at you DasToggy). Stranglehold: The card has huge damage and provides huge safety, but the cost is too high. Also doesn't hit buildings, which is very bad vs Phasetower/Mortar. D – Tier Amazon Green: The blue version has a damage reduction, which makes it just straight up better than this version, that does almost nothing. Evenom (purple): dps is too low to justify its power cost. Fountain of Rebirth: PvE card, does litereally nothing for you due to its initial cooldown. This is my T1 I use most of the time when playing nature T1: Swiftclaw Dryad (blue) Shaman Windweavers Spearmen Ensnaring Roots Hurricane Surge of Light Primal Defender Even though 9 slots look like a huge investment you need to keep in mind, that nature has alot of key spells (Root, Hurricane, Surge of Light) that scale very well into later stages and will be strong through the entire game. If you look for higher slot efficency you may consider cutting Spearmen. Matchup Discussion 1 Nature vs Shadow 1.1 General matchup discussion 1.2 How to deal with Nox Spam 1.3 how to deal with Dreadchargers 1.4 How to deal with Phasetowerspam 1.5 How to punish beast Shadow T1 players 1.6 What to do against instant T2 1.7 How to rush greedy power wells 1.8 Map advice 2 Nature vs Frost 2.1 General Matchup discussion 2.2 How to deal with Frostmagespam 2.3 How to punish early wells 2.4 How to deal with Ice-Guardians & Master Archers 2.5 How to deal with early T2 2.6 Map advice 3 Nature vs Fire 3.1 General Matchup discussion 3.2 Dryad spam dicussion 3.3 How to play the classic matchup 3.4 How to survive the early game against Wrecker 3.5 What to do against Mortar 3.6 How to deal with early T2 3.7 Map Advice 4 Nature Mirror 4.1 Swift unit starter 4.2 Swift vs ranged starter 4.3 Treespirits 4.4 Playing against early T2 1 Nature vs Shadow I want to start with the matchup against Shadow, because I think it's pretty easy to understand the dynamic from the nature perspective for a basic level. I want to describe how to beat the average Shadow T1 player: There are multiple scenarios you will encounter, when playing against Nature T1. I will go through all of them. First of all I will show you how the average Shadow T1 player plays & how to demolish him with ease. Then I'll go further to discuss what to do against dangerous unit compositions and strategies and how to survive against the overpowered Phasetower. 1.1 General matchup discussion Nature has a general strength, when fighting against S Units due to Windweavers double damage bonus & Hurricane. This makes Forsaken less effective, espcially in a spam they are absolutely weak against Hurricane. On the other hand nox troopers make your Swiftclaw/Amazon entirely useless as you want to get off max value out of ensnaring roots. Starting with your swift unit may result into an autolose, which leads me to one of the golden rules, when playing nature T1: Always let your enemy spawn his first unit before you. This gives you the information about his T1 therefore you can react properly. The matchup against Shadow is probably the easist one to learn at the beginning, which is my main reason why I'm starting right here. 1.2 How to deal with Nox Spam This is quite an easy task. All you have to do is spamming Windweavers and pull back that unit in a fight, which gets focussed. Most of the time your Windweavers will survive, because Nox Trooper need extra hits to kill squad units. Therefore you can save multiple units and heal them with surge of light. Even with motivate there is no way you're gonna lose that fight if you micro properly. Tip: You can select damaged units on the small screen at the right side. This allows you to pick your targets faster and more precisely. 1.3 How to deal with mass Dreadchargers Some people may try to circle around you with Dreadchargers, which is a little bit harder to defend. Spearmen do a good job though to protect you. Against a massive amount of Dreadchargers it's quite useful playing a second squad of Spearmen. The important part in this scenario is to avoid open areas in the early stage, because you may get crushed from multiple angles. Just hover around choke points and punish overagressive pushes by using ensnaring roots (best case scenario is to catch 2 units, who are close to each other so multishot of windweavers increases your damageoutput during the cc time). 1.4 How to deal with mixed unit combinations Probably the most effective way to play Shadow T1 is a combination of 1 Forsaken squad (to finish of S squads, because Nox struggle with this) and an equal amount of spammed Dreadchargers/Nox Troopers. You need to be careful with your micro and a good amount of Windweavers are necessary to eliminate threads quickly. Always try to kite back up until you have a big army and some additional power to support with your spells effectively. It should be easier to stay safe as Nox & Forsaken aren't that fast. Just be careful and don't fall back too far, otherwise a straight wellfocus into T2/Phasetower defence may put you far behind. 1.4 How to deal with Phasetowerspam This card ist probably your worst enemy when playing nature T1. It destroys windweavers with its absurd splash damage and has an insanely high cost efficency ... pretty much a cc immune long range high dps tank. You will face Phasetowers in 2 possible occasions (Defensive and offensive situations). If you are trying to rush against a phasetower player (because he picked up a greedy power well or something like that), keep in mind that you're still going to lose an engagement. Try to set up your mobility advantage to and walk up to the main base to bait out a Phasetower, then walk back to the extra well. This way you can soak 60 additional power out of your opponent's power pool. Keep in mind it simply doesn't work on large maps like Haladur. Phasetower will always favour the Shadow player unless he makes major mistakes. Maps like Whazai are even worse, because a straight phasetowerspam in the middle can reach your powerwells just after 2 ports. You need to set up a primal defender defence before your enemy gets to port in. Otherwise the game is just lost. 1.5 How to deal with a Shadow T1 Master This will be really tough. Your goal is early survival. The Shadow player has some ways to create massive advantages within the first minutes to build up big advantages. I'll show one of these powerful early attacks, that will end up with a clean 80+ power advantage for the shadow player most of the time. I'll give Yrmia as an example (Your opponent starts with a Dreadcharger. You have to respond with Spearmen or Windweavers . The game is over if you make one single missstep. You opponent will just start picking up a power well ... 1) Now you can decide if you want to rush him. If you decide to rush him he plays a defensive Phasetower, that can port to the main base if you try to switch (even though it takes more damage there, fighting at the enemies main base will be hard, because the Monument will also constantly attack you with its splash damage and finish off squads before you can heal them). 2) You take the well by yourself. This lowers the early voidlevel and leaves you open for a split attack which favours Shadow. An immediate double attack at your well and your main base will follow soon with 2-3 units per base. Shadow units are more effective without additional support while the expensive nature units need to synergise with each other and their support spells. In addition to that crowd control is nearly useless (1Dreadcharger, 1 Nox, 1Forsakensquad), because you won't be able to cc multiple units, you don't have enough crowd control in your base to make the cost investement worth it & you lack the units to kills cc'd units. If you try to overwhelm your opponent at one spot, he can just spam units at the other spot and get your powerwell over there (especially when he motivates the unit from the weaker side). You lose at least 1 powerwell. 3) Instant T2. If your opponent mimics your movements early and stays on the same side as you do, there is no way you can reach an orb fast enough with your slow first unit. If you decide to start swiftclaw, your opponent will read your plan in about a second and won't pick up the power well, so he can rush your T2 immediatly if it's needed. You can't go for a dazed fight anymore, because Nox Troopers demolish Swiftclaw/Amazon and winning a fight while being 80 power down this early into the game is just not compensable just by good micro. Shadow T1 is very powerful at the start of the game and you definitely need to respect that. But don't worry to much, you won't meet such a strong shadow T1 player on a regular base. Most of the time people do make mistakes, so you can pick off some units with your cc or simple do favourable damage trades that keep you alive until you start to scale up. You will still face turrets and instant T2's alot, but you can survive that by using primal defender or picking up instant T2 by yourself. In the best case scenario you may be able to rush your opponent. 1.6 Rushing an opponent who plays instant T2: 1.6.1 Pure Shadow Pure Shadow: Very hard to deal with. Rushing is only a good decision if you're close to your opponent's orb already and even then it may be close. You need spearmen as tanks and M counters to deal with Shadow Mages, who will destroy your units faster than you may think. If you are not in position there is no way to rush that, you need to be in position with your spearmen, when the T2 is finished already. 1.6.2 Bandits Bandits: Actually easy to rush if you are close. That is a big 'IF' since you can't start swift vs Shadow and this gives Bandits more space. Just split against crowd control, play 1-2 dryads and sleep incoming drakes. Bandits has no crowd control, so you can even rush over a decent distance. If your opponent is to far away, picking up a power well with primal defender (that thing demolishes drakes) is also fine. Just make sure to defend proactively & keep an eye on nightcrawlers aimed for split attacks. you need to catch units before they get close to your power wells (rallying banner attacks are annoying). I recommend practicing this, if you are a pure nature player, because Bandits has the upper hand in this matchup due to cards like windhunter and powerful rallying banner attacks. 1.6.3 Shadow Nature Shadow Nature: Don't overstay your welcome T1 against Shadow Nature. This deck is probably the deadliest out of all against T1 units. Cheapest high dps units + cheapst crowd control. A common strategy with this deck is to sacrifice entire T1 armies just to get a powerwell and then defend counterattacks with Oink + Phoenix (+Nightcrawler-Nasty). Don't fall for this bait 1.6.4 Shadow Frost Shadow Frost: Hard to rush, easy to defend against. You can just pick up a powerwell and defend early attacks with good micro. Just don't push to aggressively, as Shadow Frost does really well at defending power wells and orbs (but that should be well known). From a defensive spot you won't be surprised by any Lyrish Nasties or some stuff like that. 1.7 How to rush against greedy power wells This is a pretty common scenario when facing unexperienced shadow players. Most of them will put up very aggressive extra powerwells without the needed ressources to defend them. If you want to punish that, you still need to keep an eye onto two things. First of all you need to be in range to punish a potential defensive tower. Secondly you still need at leasty 3-4 combat units and some power to make good use of your support spells. Even with a 100 power lead an early engagement may be very bad for you, because Shadow units work much better on a very low power level. So taking like 20-30 seconds to build up your army in the first place might be a wise choice if you don't have enough units in the mix, but as I said you need to be at least somewhat close to 1.8 Maps (Tips and spots to watch out for) Lajesh: With the walls it's a great map for you as it blocks any early action and you control the only attack areas with your crowd control. Allows you to scale up to critical points, that allow you to take control over the game. Elyon: Phasetower or instant T2 by your opponent may lose you mapcontrol right from the start on, you need to fight from an uncomfortable position. At least the wall protects your main base, so you won't be pressured early, which is good for you to scale up safely, especially when playing pure nature. Haladur: Your main base is far away from the center of this map. This means you are open to get split attacked. Defending that on equal power level can be very tough, escpially due to the strength of motivate. Centered fights will be in your favour unless Phasetower is played. Yrmia: As seen above, this map gives you alot of trouble due to multiple spots to get flanked from, if your opponent mastered his T1. Phasetowers from the center position are very dangerous. Small entries can be covered by ensnaring roots though, which may a possible opening for you. Whazai: If you see your opponent starting with Phasetower you need a primal defender at your entrance to the center of the map, otherwise you will be destroyed by phasetowerspam. They just need 2 ports to attack your powerwells. Even T2 isn't enough to stop this. If phasetower isn't played you should be fine though, Windweavers are more valuable than spearmen in this scenario, because they can attack the powerwells at the main base over that cliff. Uro: Troublesome map. Gives you some issues due to the high distance between wells since you have to start with a slow starting unit, but it's not as bad as the Frost vs Shadow T1 matchup on this map since you've got a chance to win the dazed fights. Fast T2 is valuable for you on this map unless you win early trades. Simai: The is somewhat fine to play, but you may lose entire map control upon playing an extended T1 agianst Phasetower. So early T2 is somewhat necessary if you see your opponent prepare anything at the center of the map. Apart from that you've got 2 power wells next to you main base, that are somewhat safe to take, which is pretty useful. Generated maps (small): Similar problems as on Elyon. You may lose mapcontrol, rushing against instant T2 or phasetower is hard, but not always impossible. You make your decision based on your distance to your opponent if you want to rush or play the game slowly with less mapcontrol Generated maps (big): Games most likely shift to the T2 stage before anything dangerous may happen. You should be careful about sacrificial well focus strategies by your opponent as you can't counterattack over such a wide distance. 2 Nature vs Frost 2.1 General Matchup discussion Frost is an uncomfortable opponent for you, because Frostmagespam is negating your scaling power, therefore you can't sit back and scale up safely like in other matchups. You either need to be more proactive to get early advantages or try to use defensive buildings to stall out up until later stages of the game. That's easier said than done. The Frost player can fall back and also use its Ice-Guardians, but with strong micro plays you can force good early fights and create very nice advantages for yourself. 2.2 How to deal with Frostmagespam There are 2 options for yourself to deal with a Frostmagespam. You can either go for a Swiftclawspam, that is beating Frostmagespam very early into the game. You can try to force an early fight, if the Frost player oversteps. But you aren't guaranteed to get the fight you want if your opponent stays at his main base up until he scales up. If you play stonekin an aggressive T2 position may be an option due to the high amount of M knockback in, but as a pure nature player I don't recommend doing such things. The Frostmages S-knockback is negating the option of using spirit hunters & ghost spears to full effect. On bigger maps you can take an early well to force a response to create an easier target compared to the main base (keep in mind an orb also does formidable damage). It also lowers the void level which delays the big Frostmage burst breakpoint. A less aggressive strategy would be mass Dryads/Shamans against the magespam and hope, that your opponents splits up his mages a little bit too far. Then you can use ensnaring roots to pick up mages, that are placed too far from the main group to get your advantages. If your opponent picks up to many mages, because he doesn't allow you to outtrade him early, you need to rely on a more defensive strategy. Turrets work quite well in this case, because once the mage army gets to big the turrets will buy you some essential time. Frost units are too slow to run around your bases, therefore you are safe for a while with the option to prepare your next move. If you get to kill some Frostmages early on, you may be able to win this in the late T1, because Frost Mage charges are limited, while you have access to two combat units with the Shaman & Dryad. The mage player is still favoured in this matchup, but the homesoil nerf at the last patch in 2013 was apparently beneficial for the balancing in this matchup (I guess that was the only good thing about that nerf). 2.3 How to punish early wells On maps with big well distances like Haladur I recommend going for an aggressive early game. Swiftclawspam is an option here. You can switch targets once your opponent spent alot of power into Ice Guardians. They are too slow to follow your units when there is a great distance between power wells. You simply run away from the Ice Guardians while destroying the undefended power wells. If your opponent wants to go for a Frostmagespam, you can simply pick up an early powerwell to open up a spot to attack if the Frost player responds by taking a well on its own in the center. On a low void level the Frostmagespam is vulnerable to heavy aggression. Tip: Keep an eye onto the Glyph of Frost. Always try to anticipate it and try to bring up less predictable movement patterns on the board. Even though that seems a little random sometimes, it may be harder for your opponent to predict your movements correctly. 2.4 How to deal with Ice-Guardians & Master Archers This is probably an easy task for you. If Frostmage isn't involved you win the scaling game since you ranged advantage over Ice-Guardians and the Hurricane against a potential Master archerspam are simply way to effective. Just keep in mind that you need a good amount of units on the board to make your crowdcontrol worth its use as Frost units are very tanky. In the early game you need to be on point with your micromanagement in order to keep your units alive (Shaman heals, Dryad cc, kiting) before cc starts winning these trades for you in the late game. Frostbite is very dangerous here, you might lose units, that are out of position! Keep in mind to stay in an aggressive stance when commiting to an attack. Your opponnent might tech up and suddenly your poor Shamans are infront of a War Eagle, which is a situation you probably do want to avoid. 2.5 Playing against instant T2s I mostly would recommend picking up T2 by yourself in that case because you should have strong T2 options, when playing pure Nature here. Frost Fire, Frost Shadow & Pure Frost are very good T2 matchups for you and instant T2 give you an optimal position to gain leads over Energy parasites. Stonekin is pretty difficult to rush with nature T1 as Stonetempest is super effective against your M heavy unit composition. You need to be very close to be able to rush this effectively (getting a tempo lead by dealing damage to the orb during its construction time). 2.6 Map advice Lajesh: Again the walls are very valuable to block Frostmages as they can't shoot through them. If you get into a leading position here, you may consider trying to get mapcontrol as this blocks T3 for the late game. You always have the option of playing safe if anything goes wrong. Elyon: I usually recommend looking for an early T2 in the corner on this map. Your mainbase is safe, but you can't contest the center in an extended trade against Frostmages. If you're playing pure nature your opponent will be forced to go T2 by himself as he can't defend Energy Parasites with T1 and doesn't reach your T2 orb in time. Haladur: The big distance betweeen the main base and the center are always and advantage against Frost. Taking an early power well is your best bet here. Lowers the void and can't be rushed effectively as long as you've got a defensive building as back up. You've got at least a minute to prepare yourself before the Frost player gets into a meaningful range to do something useful. Yrmia: Very small map and very dangerous against Frost. It's really hard to safely aquire any position on the map here. The wall segment gives a 75 power boost for both players, which favours the Frostmage spam as your opponent will reach his critical mass earlier into the game. Wazhai: Keep in mind that melee units are less effective here due to the cliff. Going aggressive with Dryad + Shaman can work out pretty well, as most people will be nervous and overcommit into an early engagement, that nature wins due to the Shaman sustain. Against experienced Frost players a Primal Defender behind that cliff can block early center aggression. Uro: If you play Stonekin, you can go instant T2 against aggressive magespam. You most likely identify your opponent's itention as he either needs to take the long path in oder to get wells or the short path in order to fight. I think playing against this as a pure nature player is dangerous, because Magespam can rush early T2's and it's hard to defend any position apart from your main base. Simai: You can take that early well to create a big tempo lead in your advantage. Low void level, big map with walls to intercept Frost players for a good amount of time. Should be fine to play this matchup here. Generated maps (small): You most likely lose map control on these maps, which is a little unfavourable for you. But sometimes you can go for a swiftclawspam due to the big distance between center and main base. Generated maps (big): Early advantage for you as Swift units are very valuable here. You can try very aggressive Swifclawspam into T2 as there is no option to counterattack in time for non-swift units. The distance between both players is huge. Keep in mind that Frost T1 players usually play super strong late game decks so getting an advantage pre T3 can be very important for you. 3 Nature vs Fire 3.1 General Matchup discussion The matchup against Fire is very interesting and there are alot of ways this could play out. There are some easy & effective strategies, but also some advanced ones, that are way harder to execute, but more useful in the end. Fire T1 is often played differently dependend on the deck you are facing because there is a big variety in deckslots that are invested in T1 within the Fire deck. Pure Fire can throw 8-9 cards into its T1, while Fire Nature will simply use 4-6 cards, because it requires way more slots in T2. Some cards like Wrecker & Mortar turn around matches heavily and you need to know and respect their specific power once they are used. Before going into specific T1 fight discussion I need to warn you here. Fire players tend to skip T1 against nature quite often and nature units are very weak against T2. So keep in mind to avoid binding power into to many units while being in a passive stance. This frequently leads to frustrating losses and you want to avoid that. 3.2 Dryad Spam Discussion I would say this was a very famous way to play the matchup from the nature perspective. Alot of players would simply spam dryads to scale up to a point where they simply outscale the opponent. I agree with the fact, that Dryad is a very powerful card with good stat cost efficency and especially against Fire T1 the damage reduction is huge because of eruption. A double Eruption doesn't kill units anymore and its damage gets reduced to 225 per target (from 300). Anyways you need to be careful when to use this strategy. You lose alot of mobility and versitility, which makes you weaker against early T2 and Mortar tower. These are strategies you will face quite often and this is why I don't consider spamming Dryads in this matchup unless your opponent tries to go for a Fireswornspam. Dryad has a superior stat cost efficency and Firesworns can't use their ranged advantage or S knockback against such an army. 3.3 How to play the classic matchup The classic unit composition you will face is built around 1-2 scavengers combined with Sunstriderspam and maybe 1 Firesworn. Your opponent will try to fight on an open field or at least attack from multiple spots at once, so you can't use your cc onto all units. On most maps I recommend a Swiftclaw start to match the speed of Scavenger, because especially on mid centered maps Fire can pick up a well + mortar or instant T2 which is very unpleasent to play against. In rare occasions you may consider starting with a Dryad. In order to win this fight you need at least 2 Dryads, because you need the damage reduction against the Eruption on all of your units. Before you manage to do that try to avoid every possible fight. Tip: Spawn order is an important here. Your Dryads need to get spawned early on, because they need to be undazed to switch their mode for damage output. Shamans on the other hand are incredibly good dazed as they already heal for full value. This is very important to know to win extended trades. 3.4 How to play agianst Wrecker Wrecker has insane M damage. I think it's the best basic cost stat efficency out of all T1 units if you simply look at its damage output. This is something you need to respect in this situation. Most of the time only pure Fire players will carry Wrecker in their decks, because they do have the slot left to use them. But sometimes Fire Frost also goes for the Wrecker, because it has a weak T2 against pure Nature. They most important part in this case is your use of crowd control. Because Wrecker has the ability to allow undazed summons so your CC can end up being used against you. If you use ensnaring roots onto a wrecker, he can use the ability and spawn undazed melee creatures out of the root range while his sunstriders will be placed inside the root area, because they are immune to knockbacks over there, which is a safe spot against Hurricane. In addition to that Wrecker empowers split attacks by alot. Bringing up an undazed Sunderer or multiple Wreckers right front of your powerwell is a huge threat and you always have to respect that. 3.5 How to deal with early T2s 3.5.1 Pure Fire Don't rush this. It doesn't work unless you get a big gifted lead. Enforcer and Wildfire are a powerful defense against T1. Pure Fire will completely roll over you, you have to respond with T2 by yourself and avoid having more bound power in your T1 units. The pure Fire matchup is very unforgiving to play, so be on guard! 3.5.2 Fire Nature Fire Nature is a threat for you, but not as bad as pure Fire. As long as you are close to your opponent's orb, you can attempt to rush it down. If you won a trade beforehand it should be even better. Your biggest task is keeping all units splitted against cc, while keeping the dryad buff applied to all units. Make sure to sleep any T2 unit immediatly. Skyfire Drake is especially Dangerous. Envenom can work as a soft counter to Ravage here, as it is unlikely to kill a skyfire Drake without it. Always try to be ready for a lavafield. The Fire Nature options are powerful, but there is only limited power and time available for him and that can be your advantage. Keep in mind that a missed rush onto a fire nature T2 always means game over. So be careful. 3.5.3 Fire Frost Probably the easist deck to rush as Coldsnap is useless against nature. The 50% damage reduction is very good for your shamans. Still don't underestimate the power of Skyfire Drake and a potential Lavafield. You need tempo to force protects or cc to keep down the powerlevel in order to prevent a lethal strike. Think twice if you really want to run into the risk of rushing against Fire Frost when having a favourable T2 matchup anyways. 3.5.4 Bandits Nobody plays Bandits and we talked about that earlier in the guide. 3.6 What to do against Mortar This card is probably the most dangerous one for you in this matchup. Completely blocks any form of aggression. Once you lose map control and a mortar is up, the position is fone forever. In addition to that Mortar eliminates the ability to basetrade effectively as his damage/cost efficency is even above T2 level. Try to avoid mortar in every way. Cliff mortar attacks also can be difficult to defend once you fall behind, that's why I always recommend playing the game on a low risk level when playing nature in its current state. That said you can't get into a super passive stance as aggressive Mortars may force you into a fight. 3.7 Map advice Haladur: Bad map for you. Split attacks from the side paths are very dangerous. Defending a Sunderer in your main base isn't just dangerous and expensive, it also leaves alot of bound power in your main base making any center position very exploitable. Elyon: You can take fights if your opponent agrees on going for a T1 Battle. Center position to fight over, you should win extended trades, but lose early circle engagements. Be careful about instant T2 though. Lajesh: you can stall, but you won't be able to attack effectively either. Don't lose control over the postion close to your main base. That can end up pretty ugly when playing against pure Fire. Yrmia: You either have to be aggressive to pressure against potential instant T2 (with extended void power extremely dangerous!) or try to set up T2 at the other side of the map. T1 trades should be manageable, because you should be able to reach your critical amount of units pretty early. Uro: Big map, so keep an eye onto split attacks. Apart from that you should be fine by contesting the center position. Whoever gets it in the end will be at a massive advantage as it is a great setup for both players (split attacks for your opponent and EP management for yourself). Wazhai: Cliffmortars everywhere … super tricky to play against it. I would even consider playing manawing in a tournament to prevent this … When Mortar isn't used you should be able to play very aggressively as the wells at the cliff are very vulnerable, even when your opponent picks up early T2. Simai: Slow starter. As long as you don't lose map control entirely you should be fine for the early stage of the game. Be careful about welling up too much as this leaves you open for split attacks. Generated (small): Center rush + Mortar is disgusting to play against. Fire is clearly favoured on these type of maps due to this and you should try to bait out an early fight even though it may be difficult to win. Center control is key on alot of small generated maps. Generated (big): Just make sure you don't bind too much power in T1 units as this makes T2 pickups much more juicy for your opponent. Should be difficult to apply serious pressure here. 4 Nature Mirror I still feel like Nature mirrors are one of the most fun matchups in the entire game. Especially since Treespirit got nerfed and doesn't destroy the faction entirely anymore there is alot of room to show of crazy skills in this matchup. There are 3 ways to play out the game and I will explain the basic concepts right here. 4.1 Swift unit start Probably the most common way to play this. Swiftclaw or Amazon start into spearmen into dryad into shaman spam. This is the most effective unit composition in the early stage. You will try to use your dryad to keep as many units cc'd as possible while Shamans will switch between attack and healing rotations. Keep in mind, that it's your priority to keep your units alive. Important note: Don't use any spells in the early game! Your Shamans are more than enough to keep your units alive in the early game. Spells are wasted power, because once you use them your opponent can just play another Shaman while keeping his other units alive during the cc duration. At some point it may be useful to add a second Dryad to increase the damage output and protect your other Dryad from burst rotations. Shaman & Dryad micro is key in this matchup. Switching between damage and support modes while maintaining correct unit focus is incredibly hard and really allows you to show off your skill with the deck. Keep in mind that Swiftclaw will me more dangerous than Amazon, because Amazon damage reduction doesn't work against other units even though she can take on the Swiftclaw in a simple 1v1. Her damageoutput isn't sufficient in extended trades. Using the ability onto the Swiftclaw is a NoGo by the way! Dryads could just cc the swifclaw resulting in 65 power being almost wasted. In addition to that the unit ends up getting unbound, which is a huge advantage for the 4.2 Swift unit vs ranged start The second way to play this matchup is the Dryad start. You can't fight your opponent in the early game, because your dps is way to low and Swiftclaw + Spearmen are a huge thread to your units, but once you have 10+ units you can try to burst them down with crowd control. The melee units are somewhat useless, because they don't reach your units anymore while there is no way to heal them against the burst rotations in the late T1 anymore . But as I said if you get into a fight to early you will lose, because the Melee units do way more damage and Shamans will be able to sustain through your damage output, especially with a Dryad in the mix. In addition to that the lack of swifclaw reduces your pressure onto early T2s. EP spam vs Nature T1 can be a huge turning point. 4.3 Treespirits This is the third and probably the easiest version to play out the matchup is Treespirit spam. Beats out the dryad spam due to the high dps, but struggles alot against Spearmen, because they can soak up the damage early and get healed by Shamans later on. I feel like playing them is less effective after the damage nerf, because the sustained dps version beats them now unless you get enough Treespirits to Burst down Spearmen with one rotation (and you need many of them). Keep in mind, that you need to use your Dryad wisely here. Using the sleep animation just after a Treespirit used his attack is useless, because it has up to 10s cooldown between his attack rotations. Treespirit spam is even worse against early T2s though, that has to be considered here. Tip: Amazon takes 50% less damage against Green Treespirits and soaks up burst rotations aswell. 4.4 Rushing an opponent who picks up instant T2 4.4.1 vs pure Nature This isn't a big deal, because pure Nature doesn't have any high dps units do deal with your natural Sustain. Also you do have good cc tools to deal with Ghost Spears and Spirit Hunters. With many ranged units it should be easy to kite Deep One and apart from that there isn't too much pure Nature can offer in T2. If a pure Nature players goes instant T2 at least somewhat close to you I recommend to attack immediatly. Adding up 1-2 S units into the mix may be valuable as they deal well with the S units pure Nature can bring into the fight. Defensive T1 vs T2 is not recommended as Energie Parasites are impossible to defend with Nature T1. 4.4.2 vs Stonekin Way more difficult but still possible if you are close to build up a tempo lead by damaging the orb (preferably with a swiftclaw). Razorshard/Stonetempest can be quite annoying, so you need to make sure, that your unit split is perfect, but in the end there is no “burst combo” that can take you out, so there is nothing you need to be afraid of as long as you play your game perfecly. Spearmen can be really useful to support your unit composition in this matchup. 4.4.3 vs Nature Shadow Nature Shadow has huge potential against your T1 and is pretty big in the early T2 stage. Pretty dangerous to play agianst, but pretty unpopular deck. 4.4.4 vs Nature Fire Rarely played with nature starteres, but somewhat troublesome. At least Natures Swift units are more expensive than scavenger, so your opponent won't be able to use his power as effective as in the Fire T1 version and may be more open to an immediate rush. So that's it for now. I may be able to add some replays for some matchups later on. Thanks for reading this wall of text and I really hope to see some new nature starters in the future! Feedback's always welcome! Best regards RadicalX

some other good frost/nature solo rPVE cards: - frost bite (good against bosses) - crystal fiend, preferably green - thunderstorm - equilibrium - wheels of gift (expensive and more of a luxury than really needed, especially because grinders already heal themselfs up anyway) - giant wyrm (cheap to buy and upgrade, a flying T4 makes it easy to take out spawcamps, grinders for example often get stuck in traffic) - revenge or stone shell or ward of the north (all three do the same job) - ice tornado - grimvine (a cheaper alternative than grinder charges) - construct (only as temporary support for strong bosses like twilight infestor, you only need one for constant knockback) Like Flrbb said, T3 is a little too big unitwise, your T2, too i think, otherwise it looks solid. You could get free slots for useful spells by replacing all the units except one T3 and maybe one T2 unit - archer and mage spam with home soil already clears a lot of bases.