Today's patch brings with it a bunch of balance changes, aimed at tuning down aggressive Human and Gremlin decks which have risen to dominate the metagame. We're also reworking some underplayed cards into new designs to help give deckbuilders options against go-wide strategies, something the current card pool has sorely lacked.
It's no secret that since the Human and Gremlin faction updates, both of these factions have been extremely strong. Ideally, we'd like the faction updates to be expanding the factions horizontally, rather than vertically making the faction stronger, but the reality is that this is not where the faction updates have landed, especially the Human update, where Bestow Destiny in particular dominated the meta since its release. Next week, on October 6th, we are releasing the Untamed faction update, (along with our new Ranked system and Emotes), but after the Untamed release we are reconsidering our approach to Faction updates, as the current approach of each faction slowly getting new toys has led to balancing issues, and frustration for fans of later factions.
We appreciate the community's understanding as we try to balance the development of new features, new cards, bugfixes and ongoing balancing. We have a small team (actually, everything just listed all falls on Ian), but we're doing our best to make the best TCG for our fans that we can.
Without further ado, here are the balance updates:
Balance Changes
Bestow Destiny no longer grants Overwhelm.
Bestow Destiny has been reverted to give +3/+3 and drops the relic when leaving play, not just on death.
The Overwhelm on Bestow Destiny has been simply too game-warping. Bestow Destiny is meant to give Humans a tool to opt into more late-game resilience, at the cost of efficiency. We're removing the Overwhelm from the card, and reverting the previous changes that make it easier to permanently remove the card's effect on the game. Transform effects still wipe the buff, as does killing the target before the ability resolves. In our internal playtesting, we've found that this makes the card play out much more as it was originally envisioned.
Heroic Rescue has been reverted to costing 6 resources and blocking any number of attackers.
In hindsight, the previous changes to Heroic Rescue were a mistake, and we've swallowed our pride and reverted the change. Heroic Rescue, when the Savior can block any number of attackers, acts as a great answer decks can include to hedge against aggro, while the changed version rarely accomplished that goal.
Favored Knight now costs 2 devotion.
Favored Knight has shown its power, and if it remains at 1 devotion it'll forever limit our ability to create buffing cards in other factions. The card is especially powerful when given Overwhelm (or any other form of evasion), and while Bestow Destiny is no longer the same match made in heaven for the card, inevitably other cards that buff power and grant evasion are going to break Favored Knight all over again if we don't change something.
Send the Little Ones! now costs 5 resources, up from 4.
Send the Little Ones looks innocent enough on the surface, but has risen to be the most played card in the entire game. We're giving it a bump up in cost to better reflect its actual power.
Salad Squire now moves to the front of the attack zone before ability resolution.
Salad Squire is intended to be a powerful, yet extremely predictable card that's easy to remove. Instead, some backend code changes ended up making Salad Squire dodge all battlefield removal. This change could be categorized as a bugfix, but we're listing it as a balance change (along with having a refund window as a result) due to how much this changes the power of the card.
Juiced Up now costs 4 resources, up from 3.
Like many Gremlin cards, Juiced Up at 3 cost represented the card being a little overtuned, so we're making it cost a bit more.
Splatter now costs 6 resources, up from 4.
To be honest, we're not happy with how Splatter plays. It's ability to be an untelegraphed one-sided board wipe doesn't lead to healthy gameplay. What we do like how it leads to interesting combinations and creative deckbuilding, since it triggers effects like Lifelink and Scout. For now, we're increasing the cost of Splatter yet again, but if the card continues to be a problem at even 6 resources, we will be quick to change the card's design entirely.
Armistice has a new effect: "Reduce the power of all characters in play by 1."
Armistice now costs 1 devotion, down from 2.
One of the factors that has lead to go-wide aggressive decks being so strong of late is the lack of good answers in the surrounding card pool. Armistice was one of the least played cards in the entire game, so we've decided to rework it into something that deckbuilders can include against go-wide strategies.
Awkwardly, we did see a deck pop up from the Bag o' Tricks tournament that managed to use Armistice an an innovative way, which is a shame to take away from the deck, but ultimately we think this new design will better serve the metagame.
Lost in the Woods now costs 4 resources, up from 3.
In a patch designed to tune down aggressive decks, it may seem odd to nerf Lost in the Woods. However, Lost in the Woods has been getting away with being too strong for a while now, due to the meta around it.
Punishing Grenn now costs 6 resources, up from 5.
Punishing Grenn now has Vigilant.
Punishing Grenn now gains Lifelink 2 along with +2/+2 when it triggers.
Punishing Grenn is exactly the sort of card that's meant to fight against pure aggressive decks in the metagame, but it saw no play. We're giving it Vigilant baseline now, and Lifelink 2 when it triggers, to make it more appealing. We've increased the cost to compensate a bit, the card plays more interesting if there's at least a few turns for the opponent to play something to defense, but we still think the card will be much more useful against the strategies it's meant to be good against now.
Boundless Cruelty now has a new effect: "Overcharge X: Deal 2 damage to up to X different characters on the battlefield." and now costs 3 resources.
Boundless Cruelty has struggled to find an identity, and the Coven faction as a whole has lacked answers to go-wide strategies as well, so we're reworking Boundless Cruelty to fill that gap.
Headless Horseman now costs 5 resources, down from 6.
At 6, Headless Horseman was just a little too inefficient to see play, so we're bumping his cost down a bit.
Yerra the Mad now has 3 health, up from 2.
Ritual decks have ended up being quite weak, and Yerra is so easily killable by effects like Eager to Fight and Lightning Blast that the archetype has suffered as a whole. We think this is a fun deck archetype that will still have plenty of counterplay even if Yerra requires more effort to kill, so we're buffing her out of Lightning Blast range.
Other Changes
Moved the times that Matched Court queues are open by 4 hours.
This new time window better aligns with the peak players and will hopefully allow more players around the world to queue for Court.
When hovering over a played card with multiple targets, you can now see all of its targets.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where Kale the Conqueror would move opposing Gremlins.