Daily Card Discussion

[ImaginaryNumb3r]

Well... it does pretty much what it says on the tin.

Instant structure build up with a drawback or "simply" a fast build up. I haven't used it myself but the use for this card is pretty much self evident: Spamming towers.

Now, Frost only has one towers in T4, but I guess Worldbreaker Guns certainly is not a bad one. I could potentially see this being very funny with allies who build Vulcanos or Hatecasters (very underestimated card).

All in all, it's a nice gimmick card and has 3 frost orbs for a reason.
 

[Treim]

TL;DR This strategy is a lot of fun already with Worldbreaker Guns, Might be hard to impossible to pull off alone, but should be possible with 2 people if roles and tasks are split up properly while having good coordination between decent players. Definetly nothing anyone can pull off successfully. Should be most fun when 4 players using a strategy build around Kobold Inc.

 

That one was quite decent with Worldbreaker Guns + Skyelf Sage. Was pretty fun to play even though the strategy heavily struggles with some very high Hp bosses( especially that Juggernaut Twilight Thingy was impossible to kill due to its damage reduction to ranged attacks, and you generally didnt have an XL Counter in that deck.  Probably Jorne works out quite good in that deck).

I tried to search some other strategies that you could come up with when playing alone but did not really found a whole lot as you would either go at least 2 frost orbs( you can probably swap one of the frost orbs to another faction with amii-monument) and still be somewhat efficient. Or you play it with 2 Nature orbs and go with Enlightment. Either way it is rather suboptimal as you will lack damage anyways as pretty much any decent t4 tower has very strict orb requirements.

If you pull it off however i would see the biggest chance doing it with a Stonekin deck. You get access to Earthern Gift which synergizes really well with that strategy and other structure defensive spells, you get Architects Call which further reduces the damage of enemy units against buildings. You got some good cc and Matter Mastery which should help quite a bit. And most importantly you get some massive towers with Deepgorge, Worldbreaker Gun and Stronghold. What might help as well is Frontier Keep which goes around the damage reduction for frozen units.

There are still majjor problems with that strategy though:

1. You will run out of charges rather quickly
2. You might get a massive slot problem as your t4 is so massive
3. You will probably run into massive power problems esepcially early t4 phases
4. This strategy is super power hungry. You will absolutely need to have someone building SoW. You will definetly not have the power to build SoW by yourself
5. Tower placing can be rather difficult due to collision radius on units

I am pretty sure most of this can be solved rather easily by playing with a friend. One could build go with 2 Frost and 2 Nature orbs and build Kobold Inc with help of orbswitching + Frontier Keep and SoW with Enlightment. Thats a massive amount of power he has to spent, so he will most likely not run of charges that fast if he is using the towers i mentioned above as he also has to use the spells of Earthen Gift and the likes which are Stonekin only.

That other guy is running straight on damage but with Offering and Cultist Masters until the SoW is ready to go. He would probably also use Resource Boosters to maximize his power. You also get access to Infect, Soulshatter and Frenetic Assault which are always pretty good to have. As towers you might wanna use Church of Negation and Necroblaster. Church should really well synergize wtih Earthen Gift of your friend. Other than that it is rather optional. He can rather run 2 fire or 2 frost orbs next to it. Frost offers Stronghold, Worldbreaker Gun and Architects Call and Frostshard. Probably Ice Tornado and Maelstrom. Fire on the other hand offers you raw damage spells and way fewer towers which this deck is about right? You only would get Artillery which is pretty aight, but i feel like Cluster Explosion, Earthshaker and Inferno might take most of the base out before your towers could even do anything.

So that way i would probably prefer a deck with Shadow Frost as it is closer to the original idea due to it being focussed around protecting towers and enabling them to do damage and not just destroying everything and leave towers to do the rest of the work.

Obviously this is highly theoratically as i can only remember one guy who used a similar strategy in 2 player rPVE( i can not remind how the deck was build exactly or what his mate played). This is definetly a somewhat slow deck as you need to gather quite some power before you can start attacking and there might be some more issues. Also i am pretty sure i didn't mentioned all cards that might be usefull for this strategy. Green Peace for example ( if it does not work on towers, not 100% sure) might be a nice card to have. I think this one will be the most fun if all 4 players using a strategy build around Kobold Inc.. That way you can split up the Support Buildings much better between those 4 guys. However coordination might get a little tricky as you have to keep in mind quite a few things, so Voice Chat might be nice to have.

 

I'd appreciate when you would tell me if there are mistakes or things i overlooked. For any questions feel free to ask. Again this is mostly therotically and not approved in any kind of gameplay i know, so i might me mistaken in quite some things.

 

[Loptous]

So this card, very situational in some respects.

I remember a lot of people wanting this card and for a good reason. Another guaranteed orb/5 orbs in PVE.

Someone could possibly make a deck that could work around multiple faction cards, especially: Bandit, Twilight, Lost Souls, etc.

How that could be pulled off, I have no idea because I never used this card. 

[Chimaka( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

Maybe this card is spicifically best card in rPvE 9-10th hard, still can be replaced by "Enlightenment". IMHO this is more like a principled choice between Enlightenment and Monument of Amii.

Also can be used in several PvE maps, but due to it is specific can't be used so often even if it is 'imbalanced' and you can have 4th ord right after 3rd.

[YaBro0]

I remember being lucky enough to own more than one

It was the most expensive non-promo card in the game after its release.

The funny thing about it is that even though it has the advantage that you don't need to find or clear the T4 Monument on the map it also is cheaper than building an actual T4 Monument, because a T4 Monument  binds 300 energy and the amii-Monument only 250 energy. The effect of the Amii-Monument might cost something, remember that the energy of cardeffects goes 100% into your void energy. From this point the card is a bit broken but it was that expensive that no one really cared

In PvP it's pretty much useless but on every PvE Map with use for T4 this card makes even me (and I am a horrible PvE player) a decent PvE player. 

Especially in rPvE this card saved my day more than a hundred times.

[ImaginaryNumb3r]

A card that should have never been released...

It's the ultimate cheese card that allows to break the design of the game and brings more advantages than actual disadvantages compared to a normal T4 orb (that is of course, unless somebody managed to build one before you could but that is another design flaw on its own).

Some might argue that this card, while bad, is "necessary" for occasions like "difficult rpve 10 maps". However, that only shows that particular scenarios are simply broken and I would much more like to see those issues being fixed. Of coursed, sometimes maps are just obliged to be difficult and there should not be a way to cheat your way around this. Because honestly, it's nothing more than that.

So yeah, while it could potentially be used legitimately, most the time it is just used to skip T3 for whatever reason. Laaame, why would you not have such a card when you are doing speed runs?

In a perfect world, nobody would want or need this card and I just don't like it.

Another questionable design decisions... sometimes (or actually, regularly) I wonder what Phenomic was thinking when they were designing cards.
 

[Loptous]

14 minutes ago, Mental Omega said:

A card that should have never been released...

It's the ultimate cheese card that allows to break the design of the game and brings more advantages than actual disadvantages compared to a normal T4 orb (that is of course, unless somebody managed to build one before you could but that is another design flaw on its own).

Some might argue that this card, while bad, is "necessary" for occasions like "difficult rpve 10 maps". However, that only shows that particular scenarios are simply broken and I would much more like to see those issues being fixed. Of coursed, sometimes maps are just obliged to be difficult and there should not be a way to cheat your way around this. Because honestly, it's nothing more than that.

So yeah, while it could potentially be used legitimately, most the time it is just used to skip T3 for whatever reason. Laaame, why would you not have such a card when you are doing speed runs?

In a perfect world, nobody would want or need this card and I just don't like it.

Another questionable design decisions... sometimes (or actually, regularly) I wonder what Phenomic was thinking when they were designing cards.
 

I was wondering the same when they made Oracle mask and such

[Kaliber84]

I agree with @Mental Omega on the most part.

The card itself is a poor design choice that let's you negate any kind of challenge after your designated T3 which is basically a T4 with this card. The power spike of going from T2->T4 is just way too massive IMO and it absolutely breaks the difficulty of most expert PvE and rPvE maps. I'm crying inside when I'm playing a carefully crafted campaign map on expert and some dipsh*t brings his Amii Monument and stomps right through whatever lies ahead.
I'm just happy that it's not viable in PvP or it'd be OP in every game mode.

There were several suggestions back in the day and even now how to deal with this card. The suggestions I remember (probably some of them my own):

• Increased power cost
• Increased build time
• Less HP
• Increased cooldown (for switching orbs)
• Deactivating the option to switch orbs
• Global debuffs for allied units as long as it's active

While all of those might help a bit it doesn't change the massive power spike but will either only weaken it or make the card unusable altogether. IMO when they made this card it was a balancing disaster waiting to happen, so I guess they just left it as is. Right now it is way overpowered in PvE and the only singular pay-2-win card so to say. I'd prefer it would be removed or completely reworked and not just nerfed.

Or make it into a promo so that nobody can afford them anymore.

[ImaginaryNumb3r]

32 minutes ago, Loptous said:

I was wondering the same when they made Oracle mask and such

I am confident they wanted to release Amii, as people have been waiting for almost 2 years and many Amii cards have already been given out pre-release.

However, they couldn't just make a release of cards that were already in the game and decided to give 2 more cards: Frenetic Assault and Oracle. Considering that there was pretty much nobody else left on Phenomic and those who did work on BF worked on it in their free time, it is easy to fathom why there were so meany questionable cards released so late. I think that explains some of it, at least.

Edit: What I want to add is that I think near the end of the game there were only programmers left who maintained what's been left of the game. While we all love TBO for what he did, he simply had no vision or true understanding of the game (and I don't think anybody else had either). He supported the game because he grew attached to it and liked working on its technical issues.

21 minutes ago, Kaliber84 said:

I agree with @Mental Omega on the most part.

The card itself is a poor design choice that let's you negate any kind of challenge after your designated T3 which is basically a T4 with this card. The power spike of going from T2->T4 is just way too massive IMO and it absolutely breaks the difficulty of most expert PvE and rPvE maps. I'm crying inside when I'm playing a carefully crafted campaign map on expert and some dipsh*t brings his Amii Monument and stomps right through whatever lies ahead.
I'm just happy that it's not viable in PvP or it'd be OP in every game mode.

There were several suggestions back in the day and even now how to deal with this card. The suggestions I remember (probably some of them my own):

• Increased power cost
• Increased build time
• Less HP
• Increased cooldown (for switching orbs)
• Deactivating the option to switch orbs
• Global debuffs for allied units as long as it's active

While all of those might help a bit it doesn't change the massive power spike but will either only weaken it or make the card unusable altogether. IMO when they made this card it was a balancing disaster waiting to happen, so I guess they just left it as is. Right now it is way overpowered in PvE and the only singular pay-2-win card so to say. I'd prefer it would be removed or completely reworked and not just nerfed.

Or make it into a promo so that nobody can afford them anymore.

I think too that, besides Curse Well, I certainly wouldn't miss this card if it isn't included in BFR.

 

Edited February 1, 2016 by Mental Omega

[Treim]

This card is the most overpowered/gamebreaking card in the whole game imho.

Besides using a slot there is literally no downside to this card.

It offers you so much without taking ANY risks. By skipping the t3 completely you completely negating the risks of attacking and getting whiped and those bases. On top of that you even get rewarded avoiding the risk by spending less power to actually build it instead of a regular t4. On top of that again you are even faster using this card. Again except it using a deck slot it doesnt have any downsides to use this card. This card is the reason why shit ton of actual speedrun strategies in PVE and rPVE even work they do. Just to mention some: PtD, Convoy, Soultree, any rPVE lvl 10  some lvl 9, Dwarven Riddle. This card alone changed the playstyle and deck compositions for any speedrun. If you want to play speedrun successfully you HAD to use it. While other cards are super good on some maps, amii-monument was a must on pretty much all of them, except some very few exceptions that had a time cap like Titans or Siege of Hope.

I am almost sick of even talking about this card as it is such an unhealthy card for a game to have. Changing the way a huge part of 'competetive play'  is played and enabling getting around key parts of a game by simply using a simple card is just not how it should be.

I remember a thread was made about this card(can not find it though) and we searched for a solution without getting to something that could really work except making it a supert niche card for fun t5 strategies by making it a t4 card ( i know i suggested that one at least). There were some ideas which as far as i remember were:

• Increase power cost
• Increase build time
• Less HP
• No orb switch/ increased cooldown
• limit the orb time( so f.e. get t4 for 1 minute with3 min cooldown)
• Increase Orb Requirements

So those ideas obviously have their problems which are:

• Increase power cost --> Most expensive current card is 350 power i think so maybe something of 400 would be ok without breaking out of the rule way to hard, Thats not nearly enough though. Counting energy that is lost by using spells and spawning units for clearing t4, which is required on most maps, regularly you will pretty much get at least to 340-350 power. So basically you are paying 50 power for not taking any risks and being faster overall. So that wouldnt change anything
• Increase build time --> Clearing t4 should take at least 2-3 minutes generally, increasing the build time to that time wouldnt be comparable to any other building in the game, so i wouldnt consider that as an option as anything under that time wont change anything
• Less HP --> probably the most useless idea as you can build it whereever you want anyways so even if you make it 1 HP you can simply put it in a safe place where it is never been attacked
• No orb switch/ increased cooldown --> Most people didnt even used this feature and honestly it is not the feature that makes this card op anyways. You can remove it and most people wouldn't even notice. It would decrease the opness on certain maps and decks but won't change the overall op'ness nearly enough
• limit the orb time( so f.e. get t4 for 1 minute with 3 min cooldown) --> Basically an alternative to Enlightment that allows you to use more higher tier cards than Enlightment but bind a lot of power for a temporarely t4. This would at least make it way harder to use. Obviously it would be somewhat hard to say how long t4 should be available by what Cooldown. If you make it to weak it is pretty much useless for anyone, make it to strong and it is still op. I am pretty sure this would take an immense amount of balancing to find a good way.
• Increase Orb Requirements --> My personal favorite ( maybe coz i suggested it ). It would make Amii Monument a very niche card for players that are toying around with those fun t5 strategies. Obviously most people wont use it and only very few advanced/ expert players would use it to try out some fun decks. This would definetly ban it out of speedruns and would at least make it usefull for some players. Also this way you wouldn't need a whole lot of balancing like with the option above.

I am pretty sure i left out on 1-2 ideas of the old thread, but maybe @Ladadoos can find it? This card has such an unhealthy effect for the game that i am pretty sure that it is even straight up impossible or close to impossible to put it in a spot where it is a viable card without being overpowered by purely changing its stats. This card needs a complete rework ( maybe the 5th idea is closest to that) to make it balanced

[Kaliber84]

4 hours ago, Treim said:

--> Most expensive current card is 350 power...

Cyrian?

After a bit of consideration I think increasing the power cost for both the building and the orb ability is the way to go for now (if we don't do a complete rework). In turn for skipping T3/getting T4 the user should have considerably less power in his power pool at the time he gets the orb from AM. That disadvantage should naturally lessen over time with the overall increase of power levels but it would be a considerable downside (especially for Speedruns).

I like Treim's numbers. 400 power for the building is binding quite a bit more power and one needs to gather it first too which creates a disadvantage while waiting.
IMO building an orb should require another 50 power (which goes back into the void). That way if someone builds Amii Monument they get considerably decreased power levels in turn for T4. The power levels could be balanced a bit (like 380 building & 70 orb or 420 building & 30 orb, etc...) depending on the performance then.
It will probably then become necessary to play it with SoW or SoM, but it's enough if one player on the team got those, so I'm okay with that.

[Treim]

24 minutes ago, Kaliber84 said:

Cyrian?

After a bit of consideration I think increasing the power cost for both the building and the orb ability is the way to go for now (if we don't do a complete rework). In turn for skipping T3/getting T4 the user should have considerably less power in his power pool at the time he gets the orb from AM. That disadvantage should naturally lessen over time with the overall increase of power levels but it would be a considerable downside (especially for Speedruns).

I like Treim's numbers. 400 power for the building is binding quite a bit more power and one needs to gather it first too which creates a disadvantage while waiting.
IMO building an orb should require another 50 power (which goes back into the void). That way if someone builds Amii Monument they get considerably decreased power levels in turn for T4. The power levels could be balanced a bit (like 380 building & 70 orb or 420 building & 30 orb, etc...) depending on the performance then.
It will probably then become necessary to play it with SoW or SoM, but it's enough if one player on the team got those, so I'm okay with that.

Yeah totally forgot about that guy...

TL;DR increasing power costs will have some influence in some rPVE scenarios, for the hard ones in 1 and 4 Player scenarios it will not matter at all though. PVE speedruns will be untouched by this change, times will get slowed down by about 30 seconds but thats about it.

So i will go a little bit more detailed into rPVE speedruns here, as i am not as proficient with regular PVE and its much more comparable than some of the maps. Also this will only be about lvl 10 as there are quite some differences on how lvl 9 is played.

I will compare the use of Amii Monument when being in its current state and with a power requirement of 400 energy. The activation energy is pretty irrelevant here.

First of all in that examples, Amii Monument is irrelevant for 2 player lvl 10. Thats because t3 and t4 is within the same base. Except for Power Advantage you do not need to use it. Except some cheesy strategies which i will exclude here. So Amii Monument is not an overpowered card at those maps even today.

1 Player Maps are either Bandits or Stonekin Enemies. Difference is Stonekins T3 and T4 is massively harder( Bandits= 3 Shadow Phoenixes, Stonekin= 10 Shadow Phoenixes necassery). Bandits are the way easier faction thatfor increasing the power requirement for Amii Monument will have impact on them. If you play it prefectly( and thats not to hard generally) you can whipe out the t3 both camps next to your t2, the base next to t4 and the t4 with only 3 Shadow Phoenixes. For sake i will just add in 1 additional Shadow Phoenix for safety reasons. So for that t4 you will effectively use few embalmer cooldowns maybe like 3 or 4 whcih is 20 energy and 1 additional shadow pheonix which is 10 energy, For clearing annd building the orb you need 330 energy. Also that should went relatively fast, so you will probably clear t4 close before you hit 300 power for t4 as you can do it while building up t3 and the void manipulation etc.

The problem about that change starts when you face stonekin maps. You need 10 Shadow Phoenixes to clear t3 and that only works if you play it perfectly and get a little lucky about focus. So i recommend always using 11. Most Stonekin t2 camps have Anti Air already. That means you will not get throught those bases safely. Also you will most likely loose 1-3 Shadow Phoenix at any bigger camp which you will have to face 3 at least. That is some massive power you would need to put into that. Simply not an option. Generally you run Batariel in those maps so you can avoid that somewhat by playing shadow nature nature and enlighting Batariel at t3. Problem about that is: your Shrine of War will be up insanely late and that card is 100% necassery for the strategy. Might work out without Amii Monument but it will be siginificantly slower. Especially as you also got an orb switch in that strategy involved. another 86 power disadvantage compared to Amii Monument. On those maps it will definetly be worth to have Amii Monument in your deck. It offers you such a great advantage as you are allowed to run so much more adaptive orb orders.

T4 maps have basically similar problems, Bandits and Twilight are easy and t4 can be cleared with the same Shadow Phoenixes pretty easily, for Stonekin it is possible but rather hard and you need to absolutely nail it, Lost Souls straight up impossible in 95% of the maps repeatatively. Easy solotuin for that: One Player at each side takes both t3 orbs. Problem with that comes after that. You need a whole bunch of support buildings for Lost Souls and the players with the power generally do not have the slots for those buildings. As the outer positions are almost only supportive anyways and do not even clear their t2 themselves they have next to no power for t4 units. They generally do the job of building SoW, Incredible Mo, Flame Crystal, Healing Gardens and the likes and adding some spells to the table while the other 2 guys are clearing the map with units. At least 2 of those are 100% necassery, the other one i highly recommend, that is 2 slots you dont have( counting out Amii Monument already). The decks are already super close calculated. Also that power will lack later on. Adding in a decomposer is not an option due to slot problems so what are you supposed to do. You will still take Amii Monument, so you got someone building up the necassery building and dont care about 100 power.

Stonekin Bandits and Twilight arent that bad as you can find solutions to that. For Stonekin you would need to sacrifice one player a bit by delaying his Batariel Enlightment a bit as he has to build SoW before going t4. So Amii Monument power increase might not be the worst thing to do.

Basically some scenarios will be solved by increasing the power but not all. Especially Lost Souls is coming way more often in 4 Player Motm than other factions( I'd say about 45% of the time).

A small note on PVE. A lot of strategies for speedruns in PVE are based around having access to Amii Monument and are multiple minutes faster than any strategy without. Increasing the power costs will not matter at all in most cases( i am not aware of all the strategies anymore and never knew all strategies for all the maps anyways). Unless timing is like inredibly close it wont matter. You wait 30 seconds longer to get t4 and still remain a massive advantage over other strategies. It will slow down times a bit but thats about it. There will be next to no impact for PVE by increasing the power costs.

Sorry for the massive text wall. I realized i couldve explained it much short for the rPVE section, but kinda had to sort my thoughts on it which the text helped me with

Respect if you made it through the whole post without having a nap

 

[Loptous]

Being my lazy self, I didn't feel like picking a card with an affinity, so here we are today!

So right now I am trying to think what is the advantage of taking this over Lost Horror, because to be frank, this card as far as orb costs go is horrible.

Although... The Void Shear is something to definitely to be aware of. Having a 200 base power cost, and while the upgrades lower it down to 150, that instantly kills ANYTHING!?

Now I am not sure if this is an AOE explosion or what not, but if it is, you can have a fun time with this card.

[Kaliber84]

It's the most cost-efficient XL counter for a shadow deck with no fire splash (except for Jorne) I guess but that's about it. One fire orb is enough to exchange it for Boom Brothers who do a much better job at countering XL units as their base damage is around 50% higher (and ~25% more HP). Bloodhorn is also a better option I'd say. Void Maw is probably the way to go if you want a XL unit killed instantly in turn for higher power costs but that's the only reason I can think of. Without a fire splash one might also want to take them as a cheap XL counter. Main problem for rPvE is that the ability doesn't work on bosses but they might still be viable. I'm sure Treim will address that.

I think they should get more focussed strength because as they are now I think the ability is better for XL countering than their normal XL attack on higher difficulty maps. But even though the area damage and knockback of small and medium units makes them good vs those they lack the dmg compared to other S and M counters at T4 to be played efficiently vs those. Even Unstable Demon at T3 gets slightly more dmg (not area dmg though) and is a M counter too. Fathom Lord does a better job at countering XL units at T3 too. I think the best way to deal with this card is to change the attack type to Splash and increase the dmg by ~25%. The card will be good to deal with the small fry then and the ability will still make it useful vs XL units. I don't know if the orb costs need to be changed.

[Treim]

23 minutes ago, Loptous said:

Although... The Void Shear is something to definitely to be aware of. Having a 200 base power cost, and while the upgrades lower it down to 150, that instantly kills ANYTHING!?

Now I am not sure if this is an AOE explosion or what not, but if it is, you can have a fun time with this card.

The ability simply kills a single unit. There is no AOE involved whatsoever.  Basically the Void Maw and the enemy unit simply die.

Problem is that this is a t4 card. In t4 you got so many good units that you wont have problems with any kind of Attack generally. At least when it is a single unit attacking. Also the cards ability does not work on Bosses( that would be totally broken anyways), so there is not really any room for this card. It is much like any non XL t4 unit( except Rifle Cultists maybe). It is simply not worth it. The only viable thing really is its ability and that is way to situational as most of the time you got equal or better options for the situations the ability can be used effectively, but those other cards have greater potential in other scenarios and situations. I am not exactly sure how to fix it.

I could maybe see this card maybe having value as a t3 card(with requirement for 2 shadow orbs)? Shadow splashes with 2 shadow orbs at t3 doesn't exactly have the greatest cards against XL creatures where the ability and XL counter might come in handy. Not like they would struggle really hard either due to very good spells and the void manipulation but i honestly do not know what else to do with the card? I mean the ability is somewhat interesting but i dont know what to do with it.

 

[ImaginaryNumb3r]

 

I once bought Void Maw because I thought they could potentially replace Rifle Cultists in T4.

I love the artwork and imagined fielding them so I can let them shoot their frigging lasers from their eyes and laugh maniacally while they eradicate those puny XL creatures from afar .
Sorry, I was drifting away.

Sadly, they didn't deliver. Their damage is insignificant and their range is rather short. Also, they don't look as nearly as cool when they shoot... they chew some kind of dark bubble gum and spit it at the enemy? Very disappointing.

The ability is good, but Void Maw needs to get into range first and can get killed very fast. Also, if I recall correctly the ability costs another 150+ power which makes it less appealing to begin with (yes I know, Void returns fast with SoW, but you might be missing those 150+ power in crucial moments).

All in all, it's rather "meh" and either way I think you area really better off with Rifle Cultists for the most part. If you want a good XL counter, get Death Ray which is a really amazing card. Heck, even Necrofury would be better. It might be cumbersome to use, but it's an underestimated card for the most and helped me in my early days a great deal (Bone Shard + Unholy Hero is REALLY scary).

I think this card would be fun if it had its range increased and rate of fire brought down to 3 seconds, making it 2500. It would be a squishy, but strong a XL artillery unit which does not sacrifice mobility, making it quite unique. And with the basestats being raised, you could even make use of ability once in a while. Note that 2500 attack would give it a similar attack/power ratio to Death Ray.

A strong tank in the front (like Overlord, or Grimvein) and Void Maws behind, I can totally see that work.

Even more, you could still use it to to sacrifice them, 100 power is not so much of a big deal.
Edit: I think making it one shadow orb wouldn't hurt this unit either. It can be hard to get good anti-XL for some colours and I think it would be good to provide Void Maw as a valid choice just in case.
 

Edited February 2, 2016 by Mental Omega

[Chimerae]

I used these guys on Ocean to oneshot the pirate ships. It's somewhere on youtube for those interested.

 

[Chimaka( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

As Treim had already said that at t4 you get more good cards and possibilities. I bought it (or got it randomly, don't remember) only in the reason of MAYBE it would kill bosses, but it doesn't.

I'm not a true fun of Shadow, but I of course played a pure shadow decks and I would say that I'm not even going to fill the card slot in my deck by this. Maybe in t3 it could fit a lot better, but like a t3 unit only in PvP due to its ability to KICKASSOFSOMEONE'SJUGG, because there are still a lot of better cards instead of Void Maw. Remind even Wrathgazer (I liked it a lot), Satanael (XL 3100-U0,  372dmg/3sec vs 300/4...220 cost, summons Buffed Snapjaws), EVEN Mutating Frenzy (ok he is melee, but XL 1630/L 1900 vs XL 1900/L 1640 all on U0). Not ok card, no place to be used.

[Kaliber84]

5 hours ago, Mental Omega said:

I think this card would be fun if it had its range increased and rate of fire brought down to 3 seconds, making it 2500. It would be a squishy, but strong a XL artillery unit which does not sacrifice mobility, making it quite unique. And with the basestats being raised, you could even make use of ability once in a while. Note that 2500 attack would give it a similar attack/power ratio to Death Ray.

A strong tank in the front (like Overlord, or Grimvein) and Void Maws behind, I can totally see that work.

Even more, you could still use it to to sacrifice them, 100 power is not so much of a big deal.
Edit: I think making it one shadow orb wouldn't hurt this unit either. It can be hard to get good anti-XL for some colours and I think it would be good to provide Void Maw as a valid choice just in case.

Increasing the range would make it synergize really well with support spells (Home Soil for example) as single target buffs (e.g. Unholy Hero) aren't worth using on a 100 power card. I can definitely see them being used then for those who don't like to spam LSS. What I definitely wouldn't advise is to do all the suggestions together (increased range, 2500dmg, changing orbs to ). Two of the three changes would be enough to make the card playable but all of them would make it OP for the current power cost. Of course the power cost could be adjusted then (to 130?) but I like the idea of this card still being a relatively small combatant on it's own compared to XL units who get those massive stats. It should be a damage support IMO.

[Bkingn]

Can we talk about avatar of frost pls?:$

[Loptous]

We are getting very "deep" into this discussion so I thought we should add a "solid" topic.

So this card was a staple for stonekin users on PVE, I don't know so much about PVP but that's what I know. The stonekin critter adds to this cards likability and makes it far more appealing.

The DPS is great, it knocks back small, medium, and large units which is a very nice plus and the card is pretty tanky as well.

Also if I remember correctly, this card was available in Twilight and Lost Souls card packs way before Amii Packs were even released. 

[Ladadoos]

I'm not sure what it has but I thought this card wasn't good at all. Maybe it's just because of the fact that it's health is kinda low, requires 2 frost orbs and doesn't work all that great in certain situations because of its attack type.

[Treim]

I never actually liked that card, i feel like Stonekin has better options with Stone Warrior and Coldsnap/Frostshard/Rageflame/Timeless One. The stats itself aren't good for 250 power and the ability is worse than Stone Warrior in most situations. Especially as it can not get comboed as well with freeze spells/abilities. The healing of the critters is nice but honestly you are playing a nature splash so healing is not a problem at all. So thats more like a bonus. You even have a shit ton of cc to make it even easier keeping your units alive. The only thing Nature/ Frost is truely lacking is damage and Deep Fang is not exactly the best choice for that. The AOE is nice but i would prefer pure Burst damage like Frostshard + Stone Warrior any time over that.

As their critters is somewhat a cool idea i would change the card around those. Maybe make it that the critters can used in different ways. Probably 3 options:

1. Offer the Critter to spawn an area of healing where all friendly units gets healed for an instant amount x
2. Offer the Critter to freeze x enemies in an area.
3. Offer the Critter to create an poisoned area where enemies take x damage over time/ or just a flat amount

I would remove the Gifted/Infused Union for that. Probably make them deal more damage units that are effected by option 2 and 3. That would force you to play around the Critters to maximize your damage and i would really enjoy a card like that. I think Power costs should be somewhat fine if you do it like that

[ImaginaryNumb3r]

Well, here comes the obligatory Stonekin XL creature. I think it is "okay", being XL does have its advantages and while the stats are sub-par they aren't terrible either. The 15% less damage makes a noticeable impact and elevetes its health to almost 2800.

Also, the 2 critters deal 500 dmg each, so that leaves you with 4000 ATK and 2800 HP and that actually makes it better than other Stonekin cards like Stone Warrior from a raw stat perspective (even if you consider the price).

However, its main ability to sacrifice the critters to restore health doesn't really bring much to the battlefield and honestly, it doesn't suit Stonekin that much. That sounds more like a Shadow ability to me since it is a one way ticket.

Moreover, Stonekin doesn't need a big tanky unit, what they lack is damage and in that regard Deepfang certainly doesn't deliver and most certainly, it doesn't beat Tremor or Fathom Lord in that area too. Also, it just doesn't have the utility of let's say a Stone Warrior or even a Rageflame.

 

So, while not bad it is still underwhelming. If it could attack air and had higher ATK... maybe? I am not a Stonekin expert. As for the union ability, I have never used it, so idk.

Imo, just let it be a big and boring stat monster for people who want to do their pve and can't be bothered to use abilities (you know, the majority of people). I'd vote for higher attack and one way to respawn the critters somehow.

[Loptous]

Well to me it's good for a player that doesn't have RageFlame, because that card was very expensive and let alone hard to get