Following on from the last patch, the changes here are focused on giving you fun and interesting abilities to use, without them feeling to harsh or disruptive for the other players.
While it’s all still placeholder art, cleaning up the readability of the cards is still a goal I have. I’ve updated the base cards to be cleaner, and also provided some deck specific basic decks to push the theme of each deck further.
Balance changes here focused on still allowing the corrpution and assassination style of abilities, while not having such a large swing in game state when they come online. I have reduced the amount of corruption transfer to have less of the -5 → +10 (swing of 10 stats in a lane) while still allowing you to keep corruption around to transfer to your opponent. I’ve also adjusted the costs and stats on the corruption cards as initially corruption was seen as a huge disadvantage, but in it’s new state it’s often not a disadvantage at all when used well.
Stealth also wasn’t playing out as smoothly as I liked in the previous version with the whole paying tech and costs changing too much and making it generally confusing to play with. The new iteration is more straight to the point in just paying the same if you stealth or not, then allowing you to empower the card ability with stealth, at the cost of it coming online a turn later. This also makes playing in the Research lane really strong, but the stats on all stealth cards are low enough that it shouldn’t matter.
As mentioned above, having a Corruption is no longer an issue, as playing it on Attack round 1 has no effect. This still leaves you open to some aggression, but allowing 2 stats on the field early was incredibly strong. Adjusted to still allow a 0TR card, and made stats in line with Red Deck as far as being a 1-1-1 for 3. This still lets you put 2 stats out on turn 1, but means you need to pay all your money and 2 cards to do so.
Simliar to above, stat line to match other cards. Added damage to balance the corrupt against agressive decks.
In general lane restrictions on corruption tokens have been removed. This gives more choice to the player without a huge change in power level.
Free money is always good, completely free cards are probably too good.
Removal of a card is incredibly strong. Even removing a 2 power is enough to make this way above rate, even at 10C. I still like the ability to have some removal in the game, hopefully the high cost and low stats will give a bit more room for opponents to catch up after losing a key 2 power in a lane.
Balanced around Master Plan also providing corruption transfer.
The old ability let you Corrupt 2 and then move 3, which made it an engine unto itself and had little downside. Now you will need to at least play other sources of corruption, potentially on previous turns to enable it. Added the ability to manipulate your own tokens as a way to allow you to switch focus without needing to inflict it on your opponent.
Updated all stealth cards to come out at TR3 to avoid having huge swings early in the game. Also reduced the stats in general on stealth cards as they were very high rate.
Steal is removed from the game as it’s just too disruptive to opponents turns. If there were ways to prevent it, or adjust your strategy easily, I could see it working, but it’s just too easy to brick an opponents whole turn, even at steal 2. Gaining money is good. This may be replaced with something more creative later, but giving options for gaining money without needing to play in the mining lane is nice to have.
See note on Assassinate. Power reduced significantly to have this as more a pure removal, instead of removal with a power swing as well.
Increased costs and reduced the number of corruption transfer. This shouldn’t effect games where corruption transfer was happening all along as you would generally only have about 3 on your lanes. It also reduces the variance as at max it’s +11 power in a lane, instead of +15 (-5 → +5 from transfer, then +5 from the card).
A few updates to make the mining victory less of a forced playstyle and more of an optional direction depending on gameplay. In general reduce the amount of “gain crystals” and added some more variety and card draw to compensate.
This is the first attempt at a “where you play it matters” card. Based on feedback I may add this to other cards as well.
Playing a 6 Tech card at the end of the game to win isn’t uncommon, but it leads to a single track, tech to 6, win on money style of play. Having a card that cost 10 but gives you 20 is overly complex for not much difference than just giving you a free card. By moving this lower down the curve it’s now playable at any time, while still costing enough tech to not make it an immediate always play option. The low stats mean it’s good for late game combos, or for boosting you at the start, while not being too oppressive if played on curve.
It’s more of a meme that anything else. I just thought it would be funny if a boring machine was boring. It also leads in to the more flexible, less, gain money, play style.
With this deck, the aggressive play style works well, but giving it the option to try something else is on the docket for next patch for sure.
6 attack was just too big of a swing, it also made the card almost unplayable in any other lane due to how much worse it was. Slight reduction in cost to bring in line with Blue and Purple deck for power curve.
The new direction of this deck is a second synergy around Swarming. All drone cards now Boost the power in your lane when you play multiples of them. This paired with card draw will hopefully allow for a fun balance around focusing drones in a single lane for max output, while still trying to play towards a longer term win condition.
Automated Drones. 4C, 2TR. 2-2-2. When Played: Swarming 1. (Add a +1 counter to this lane for each other Drone card in play). End of Turn: Draw 2 cards.
Repair Drones. 4C, 2TR. 2-2-2. When Played: Swarming 1. (Add a +1 counter to this lane for each other Drone card in play). When Played: Gain 2 Hitpoints
Attack Drones. 4C, 2TR. 2-2-2. When Played: Swarming 1. (Add a +1 counter to this lane for each other Drone card in play). End of Turn: You may deal 2 damage to target player.
Drone Commander. 6C, 3TR, 3-5-3. When Played: Swarming 2. (Add a +2 token to this lane for each other Drone card in play).