July’s balance patch is here and it is a pretty big one. A bunch of boosts, a handful of readjustments, and some that may surprise you. If you read one balance patch release note article this week, this is the one.
Of note for everyone, we are taking an incremental approach to some of these buffs and nerfs. In a lot of cases we want to make these cards slightly stronger or weaker, but not to the point where we are forcing the powerlevel to decide where the cards belong. That is still for the players to decide. We will have some more time after this balance patch to make more revisions as needed, and we decided it would probably be better to slightly increment these cards and see how they play out. If it works out, great. If we undershoot the goal we have the option to readjust them again in another patch till we get it just right.
BUFFS
Dare Devil - Health from 1 to 2
The purpose of this card was to support some of the other tempt fate matters cards in the release, but we undershot the mark. We said to ourselves that if a 4/4 tempt fate guy for 4 mana can be a reasonably constructed staple, then certainly a 1 mana one that does the same thing would be that much more powerful. Turns out that 1 toughness is just a deal breaker with the number of pings and global 1 damage AOEs available to players, so we are giving it 2 health to survive a little longer and see if it can perform its role.
Reader of Bones - Changed the ability to give +2/+2
As a pay off for tempt fate, we felt that a normal statline with strong ability tied to a very specific activation would prove to be pretty solid, but it turns out that by the time you can start chaining your tempt fate creatures the bonus is just not enough. Players generally needed 2-3 activations to make this not just get hammered off the board and to be worth the investment. At +2/+2 the payoff is much greater and far more worth the risk of including a tempt fate package in your deck.
Absolution Seeking Monk - Tempt fate is now a static and not part of the order resolution
We are changing this for 2 reasons. First off, there are ways to increase the tempt fate to an odd number, which will cause a decision to be made on your opponent’s turn. GU has a play and pause game structure, where only the active player needs to make decisions on their turn, and this breaks that standard so we had to do away with it.
Having tempt fate as a static means it will now trigger tempt fate matters cards, which is a small boost, and allow you to tempt fate much earlier, which is a more substantial one. We feel like it opens up some ground for this guy that was not there before, and there was room for it to grow even with it’s somewhat unheard of stats.
Aria, Unwitting Hero - Changed to a 3/5
Aria was meant to be Light’s Heliora, a fellowship based legend with a suite of complimentary abilities that play into each other. She can fit in a lot of shells including favor, Irina, and a run of the mill zoo list. We had playtested her at 3 mana and frankly there was no reasonable set of stats we could give her at that mana cost for her not to be abused with Irina past the point of fairness (she was absurdly good at 3), which is why we eventually made her 4 mana. We felt that power level was good, but at 4 mana it was just not nearly as snowbally as turn 1 Irina, Turn 2 Lowborn knight, turn 3 Irina and piping into a 1 drop and then activating a free hero power.
Her ability set is what makes her and are pretty tied to each other, so we decided instead to give her a bigger spear to make her more of a threat than a support piece.
Malicious Mangrove - Changed health to 5.
Nature has a ton of options at the 4 mana slot, and this just was not compelling enough to make the cut for most. We don’t expect that this is suddenly going to have run of the meta, but we think a small boost will help it stick out from other options in Sealed and Limited formats.
Biomass Reconditioner - Ability now triggers at 8 cards in the void, down from 10
Biomass Reconditioner is meant to be a role player card. Everborn did not have meaningful ways to interact with the void, and access to void interaction is critical for decks that need it and has traditionally been cheap and neutral. We didn’t want to make it quite as free as Gleamweaver, and we didn’t want it to contradict some of the deck removal cards that define everborn. Everborn has cards that care about how many cards are in the void, which is why it transforms and does not remove. In that regard we see this card as a design win.
The issue was more so that the ability simply did not come online when it was needed in a lot of cases, defeating the purpose of the card. By the time your opponent has reached the 10 card threshold, it is very likely they could have already utilized what they needed in the discard via some form of reanimation. We want the card to be live at 4 mana, and if you are playing Moles and Xylarias it usually will be, but 10 is just a bit out of reach in some cases.
Cognitive Dissonance - The ability is now targeted to 2 creatures
Cognitive was always meant to be a mass removal spell for fellowship builds. You would have a board filled with mish mosh of tribes and your opponent could be fully tribal, making this a 5 mana, one sided board wipe. That is insanely powerful in the right situations. The issue is that people did not want to play it when it shuffled your own cards, as the variance around including it was simply too high.
We changed it to now only target 2 creatures and shuffle them if they share a tribe. It is still multi-targeted removal spell for 5 mana, which is very strong, but we removed a lot of the variance. It’s no longer a full blowout against fully tribal lists, but the user has agency as to what targets need to be removed without risking their own (unless that is a tactical decision they want to make. While the top level power of the card has been lowered, the floor is much higher and the user has more agency over it, so we think it helps remove the variance that made players not want to use it.
Homelore Scalemate - Strength up from 5 to 6
Homie is a trained Draka Knight, in full armor, weapons ready. 5 power just seemed like we were underselling his strength. As a fellowship roleplayer, we don’t expect you to suddenly drop this into your heal Light deck and run away with the game, the card has it’s place, but just being a bigger threat felt pretty good for a Zoo style list.
Undercover Insurgent - Strength up from 3 to 4
When this card was used, it was mostly used for it’s free card from the void ability combined with a self mill ability. That alone is pretty good, but we want to incentivise players to actually cast this. 4 strength means it is better at removing some of the threats it’s ability is there for, like hidden 4 health werewolves. It’s not a huge change, but at least enough of a threatening one that we think it will help it make it’s way into a larger cross section of Deception builds that want it for it’s combat disruption.
The Formless Leech - Increased stats to 5/6
Designer note on this one. Until very late in playtest this thing's ally ability triggered a mill effect instead of a draining one. So the playtesters would generally hold it until mid-to-late game and then have a big turn where they decked out their opponent and put enough lifegain back on the board to stabilize themselves for the win.
It was not inherently overpowered, by the point of the game where you could do this it felt like a reasonable way to win, but the testers just absolutely hated it. It felt like a cheap come from behind victory, and unlike Mole infiltrator and the like, it didn’t come online early enough to empower cards that cared about how many cards were in the discard. So very late in the testing cycle we scrapped that and changed it to health drains, which is also a very death flavored ability. In many ways it felt like an Everborn Deathwish Thanetar, which is also 4/4 so we felt that was the right place to be.
It didn’t create any issues in the little testing time we had left and it did not feel toxic anymore so we left it as is. Turns out not feeling toxic can also mean that a card is vastly underpowered. A big legendary mass of horror should at least feel more threatening than a 4/4, and play results have proven that out as the card just does not have the winrate that a legendary you have to work for should. So we are upping it to a 5/6, similar to Death’s favorite rhino. We think that level of power boost, plus some of the future cards we have planned for the Everborn who will trigger it’s ally ability, put it in a good spot.
Unique Tactician - Changed stats from a 3/3 for 3 to a 2 mana 3/2
I am somewhat surprised that this card never caught on, because it is an absolute house against some strategies that make a lot of the same things. Zombies, Vespids, Sporos, and Schoolteachers get substantially hosed by this ability, but it seemed to be too niche to see play against the field.
We contemplated just making it a 3/4, which is a very average statline for a 3 drop in GU, but the presence of hidden on a neutral card with those numbers was over the line for us. Instead we dropped some health but lowered it’s cost to 2, meaning it can come online earlier or fit into a key defensive turn more easily. It’s a bit of a sideways change more so than a straight boost or nerf, but overall we think the lower mana cost more than makes up for the 1 health and makes it a more applicable include.
Domain Defender - Change to a 6/6 with Frontline
Remember this card. No you probably don’t even though you likely have one languishing in your collection. This card has never seen real play, and it’s stat line alone should tell you why. It is simply not strong enough. It was always meant to get a power boost since maybe a month after it was released, but it just kept falling out of visibility to the point where we never got around to it.
With a 6/6 body and frontline, the card still serves a specialized use, but it’s not embarrassing to include it in your deck when you don’t have a target.
Bauble Trader - Increased Strength to 3
This merchant was having a tough time selling his goods. When we made him, we felt like a 3/4 was probably too much for 3 mana coupled with 2 relevant and complimentary abilities. But it turns out giving you a free card is not all that it cracked up to be when your stats cannot compete with the meta.
As one of the Imporium cards with the worst adoption and win rates, we felt that the stats just did not lie so we are giving him a small buff. Even if he just winds up being a value engine for decks that discard the bauble later, we think that is better than simply not being played.
Nerfs
Inked-stained Fingers - Changed to have 2 durability and spend the durability whenever it activates
Another designer note on fingers, this card was actively bad through most of playtesting. It’s original version was exactly the same as it is now, except the 6 gem threshold for mana loss was not there. You locked a mana crystal every turn. You would almost never play this earlier than turn 4, and even then it drastically limited what you could do. Testers were trying to find a deck where you would ever play this, and they could not locate one.
So we changed it to only cause you mana loss at 6, thinking that would be enough of a downside that players would really have to weigh using this over some of the other relics that Death has, turns out that was not enough and the winrate of this card shows that.
So how do we change it while preserving the overall idea of the card? We played with a lot of ideas, increasing its mana to 3, lowering the drain to 1. None felt very compelling. The issue with the card tended to be its infinite nature. While this card can make very aggressive strategies very fast indeed, it did not make them so fast that it would end the game before this got 4 or so activations. We had to put a countdown on it.
The change here is that while we are upping it’s durability to 2, it is using them for payment. The card will at most get 2 activations, which means across 3 turns (the one you cast it and then the 2 subsequent ones) You will get +1 card and drain 4. This felt comparable to some of the dread cards, with a little less variance but a much lower ceiling. It is still vulnerable to relic removal, and even a 1 point removal creature means you will only get a single drain and your card back, again similar to dread.
This change may very well prove to be too little or substantially too much, and should that be the case it is the number one card on our watch list to revisit and make a more fundamental adjustment, but we would like to see how it plays out and how the players adjust to it.
Pallas, Wise Beyond Years - Remove Protected, Roar, and lowered to a 3/5. Only reduces vow to 1 mana now
Pallas asks you a single question when it is played. Can you remove this before your next turn when the magic player goes nuts? That was a design choice, we wanted the chosen champion of Magic, one of the strongest wizards in the game, to be a big threat. We thought 6 mana was a reasonable enough turn where midrange/control players can start asking the question of “Can you deal with this?”
We went too far. Protected made it too hard to remove with fair options like creatures and weapons. The roar gives you too much flexibility and padding on the turn you play it. And the 5 power meant that crashing into it would cost you the board in most cases. Again we fundamentally are ok with a 6 mana legend being a must answer threat, and this one generally needs to bring some friends with them to achieve that, but it was asking to much of the opponent to not have to suffer the wrath of Pallas. We took it down in a few ways, I think most fundamentally it does not give you value the turn you play it, making it much more of a weapon of opportunity than a thing you are always going to slam if you have the mana.
We still expect Pallas to be very good and mostly in the same way they were before, but a little more in line with what answers players can pack.
Purifying Flames - Reduced the heals by 1
This card as it turns out has a very high inclusion and win rate. That is kinda to be expected with any solid removal cards, but this one is a bit past the point we are comfortable with. If it was just 3 mana for 5 damage to a creature, it would probably still be pretty usable, but that is a boring basic card that should be in core, not worthy of a torrent of flame from Magic’s champion.
We are taking the heal down to 1. We have found that the heals at 2 helped to keep Magic in the game and undo the damage the targeted creature has done most of the time. We want to keep the healing because of it’s synergy with Pallas and the theme of the card. We know this is a somewhat minor change, and we are also keeping an eye on this card for a possible second change, likely a lowering of it’s damage, but again want to see how this change plays out in the community first.
Draka Miner - Reduced Health by 1
Draka Miner is a really innocuous card. 2 mana 2/3 is not the type of card you associate with being too good, especially when you look at all the options war has available to it in the 2 mana creature slot. But the numbers in this case tell quite the story and Draka miners inclusion and win rates are simply too high. It was also target number 1 on too many format banned lists and we don’t like seeing that in a core card.
He simply fits too easily in too many decks, and the weapon is all but guaranteed to be useful. Gifting the weapon is what he does, so we could not take that away, but 2/2 for 2 means he will likely trade, often unfavorably, instead of cascading value for the war player. We think making him far less sticky is enough for now to bring his winrate down to acceptable levels and not be as much of an auto include.
Updated wording for clarity
The Key - Clarified the wording so it is clear that it is when your god attacks with the relic, not just when you attack with something.
We Find Hope In Each Other - Clarified the wording so it is apparent what you can delve, so players do not think it is any card that can appear in the sanctum but rather what is there.
Have fun out there in the Conquest arena everyone, and we hope you enjoy these changes. And while I know for certain a select few of you were going to do this no matter what the changes were, let us know what you think in balance chat.