This is a big update, so I’ll try keep it concise. The main change is around how Permanent cards exist in the game. These no longer start in your deck, and instead are on the battlefield from round 1. They now have conditions that must be met in order for you to use their abilities, and the upgraded abilities have a harder condition. This change was because Permanent cards not only saw little play, but when they were played at the beginning of the game they game way more value than if drawn towards the end. This change should allow the cards to be better balanced, but also help to give more options for players at the start, as well as when they have left over Production or Crystals.
The decks below with * are playable on ScreenTop and are targeted at new players. The more advanced decks are still being balanced, but can be shared if you’d like to try them out.
ORR are a great beginner faction with a lot of power. Part of the balance challenge around this faction has been how rewarding it is to just put a few cards in mining/production, then just play powerful attack cards one after another. This is great for the person playing them, but against others it can feel like you win by playing any cards you get. While they are a supposed to fill the role of a simpler faction, that doesn’t mean they should not have strategy and player choice, which is sometimes missing. This patch hopes to introduce more choice around which cards to play, and re-focus on making smart decisions with limited resources.
There should also now be more of a balancing act between Aerial cards staying in lane vs. discarding them. You should look at abilities for Air Strike / Drop Troopers as a strategic decision more than a required ability. Keeping Aerial cards in lane can help power Rocket Barrage and Bombing Run, but Troopers can power the new Rallying Call card, or activate Mining Expedition.
The core of the faction is playing well, but a few things weren’t sitting right both thematically and in the interest of the player playing the faction. Conflux allowing you to add boosts was very strong, but went against the idea of playing cards into a specific lane as you could just pick a lane each turn. Removing that, and the ability for Drones to boost themselves when alone in a lane has brought back the idea that you need to build up a “swarm” to really do damage. The concern is that they will now lack the punch that made them competitive, but I will be looking to address that in the next patch.
Secondly, the idea of being able to go into the later turns by shielding early damage proved strong, but also boring. Knowing you need to leave production open for +5 shield just gets boring and doesn’t add much in terms of strategy or fun. Shields now cost boost tokens to activate which I’m hoping will make for more of a choice, but also balance it out to no longer allow shielding every turn. It should feel like a poor choice if you shielded and didn’t block the full damage.
Finally, I’m slowly reducing the cost of some of the Drone cards to make it easier to play more of them and “swarm”. This is starting with Drone Commander, because I really want to allow for the multiple Basic Trooper into Drone Command play, and the cost is so high it’s preventing that right now. I can imagine it getting an even lower production cost, but want to test it out with just a crystal reduction first.
While skipping any big changes in the last two patches, this time MMC is getting some attention. There are some core cards that work well (Ore Hauler/Field Lab -> Warmachine/Seismic), but the Mercenaries aren’t really hitting the goal of strategic gameplay. They went against the idea of the game by turning it into a math equation as to if you are saving enough money yet to justify returning and replaying them every turn. This was also heavily tied to whether or not you had the Long-term Contact in play, which just made the game very dull.
The reworked ability now allows for a much cheaper play cost, which includes a production cost reduction as well. This is to help balance the feeling of losing too much momentum by ever returning cards to your hand. In addition, the abilities on the Mercenaries have either been upgraded or added. Hired Mercs and Temp Agency previously had no real ability, outside of ways to make them cheaper stats, so they’ve now been replaced with cards that can effect the game state in more interesting ways. Some abilities also require you to pay extra crystals, leaning into the mining heavy theme of the faction. I will be keeping an eye on if this means you run out of crystals too quickly, and possibly increase the mining values on a few cards to compensate.
Similar to MMC, Endracor received some big changes. First and foremost, the Corruption mechanic is completely changed. Instead of adding Corruption tokens to your opponents lanes, you now build up your Corruption level on yourself. Instead of lowering power from your lanes, it now grants you and your cards access to better abilities, the more Corrupt you are.
This change was made to achieve two goals. Firstly to reduce the amount of math and tokens needed when running the Attack phase. Especially when you play a 4 player game with boosts, shields and corruption tokens, the game got confusing and less fun to resolve. It also reduces the number of components the game needs, because if you were corrupting 3 on 4 players that was a total of 12 tokens. The last part of this is that minus 3 on all other players (for Attack) could easily be represented by 3 boosts on your own attack lane, and corruption was commonly used on Attack to gain damage and push for a win.
Secondly, it was to help the goal of quicker games and more fun moments, rather than a slow drawn out loss due to constant degrading of your opponents power. It can be very strategic to disable a core unit in Mining or Production to slow down your opponent for a turn (this is still in the game), but given that it was a core mechanic for the faction, having it happen every turn was a bit much. Ideally you have a big disruption you can do a few times a game, rather than just slowly applying corruption each turn.
So, what does it do now? There are currently 3 power levels in corruption, one every 3 tokens you gain. At the first level (3 corruption) you unlock extra card draw. At level 2 (6 corruption), you gain a big crystal boost. Finally, at level 3 (9 corruption) you gain the ability to disable a powerful card for your opponent. Having a tiered system gives you something to work towards as the game progresses, and unlocks a strong comeback mechanic if you are able to survive while bumping it up.
Complimenting this, we have improved the Recall ability too. Previously it was very punishing to remove a card from lane, and you needed to pay to do so as well. So unless it was a cheap card, you would end up losing power in a lane, and production, just to trigger an ability again. To address this, you now gain boosts equal to your cards power + 2 in the lane you recall from. This still has the long-term drawback of reducing your power, but gives you a temporary gain to offset it. Coupling this up with your Infiltration cards increasing your Corruption level, you end up with a fun combo of playing cards multiple times, while building towards your goal.
Due to so many changes, I’m just listing all the cards in their new state, instead of pointing out the differences.