Crystal Factions - Patch Notes 1.6.4

TODO: Summary

Core Mechanics

I’ve changed the rules to allow alternating card deployments for players. This means that you play a card and then pass to your opponent to play a card before playing additional cards. The plan here is to make the play feel more dynamic and let your counter plays more frequently. It also avoids the large swings in gameplay when a player going first leaves the attack lane wide open, only to have their opponent play a big power unit with no ability to respond.

In testing I’ve found that disabling a players card generally only works when you are playing second, or are to the left of them in 3-4 player games. This causes your opponent to have “safe” turns where they can play a card with an aftermath effect knowing that it can’t be disabled. While this is still the case in the new system, it means that you need to consider the order in which you play the cards, as well as meaning you can’t play multiple safe cards in a turn. I’m hoping this will also lead to some more strategic play around when cards are kept in hand, but we shall see.

Rule Changes

Deploy Phase:

• Starting with the player with Priority, each player takes it in turns to deploy a single card
• Faction Abilities can be used before or after deploying your card, but do not count as a deployment
• Multiple Faction Abilities can be triggered on the same deployment turn
• Once you pass your Deploy without playing a card you end your deployment phase
• Deploying a Trooper counts as deploying a card

Aftermath:

• Starting with the player with Priority, each player activates the abilities on a single card played during this Deploy phase
• Faction Abilities can be used before activating Aftermath an ability on a card
• Multiple Faction Abilities can be triggered on the same Aftermath turn
• Once you pass your Aftermath without triggering a card ability you end your turn

Example

Deploy:

1. Player 1 has Priority. They deploy Scrap Heap to their Mining lane
2. Player 2 goes next. They deploy Covert Ops to their Mining lane. Its ability disables Scrap Heap, negating its ability during Aftermath
3. Player 1 uses their faction ability, Mining Expedition to discard a card and gain crystals
4. Player 1 then deploys Air Strike to the attack lane
5. Player 2 deploys Divert Resources into the attack lane and uses its deploy ability to gain 2 corruption
6. Player 1 passes without deploying, ending their deploy phase
7. Player 2 uses Corrupt Policies to spend 2 corruption and gain crystals, then passes their turn without deploying, also ending their deploy phase
8. End of Deploy Phase

• Battle and Operations resolve as before

Aftermath:

1. Player 1 uses Rocket Barrage to deal damage to player 2
2. Player 1 activates the ability on Air Strike to discard it and destroy Divert Resources, sending it to the discard
3. Player 2 no can longer use the aftermath ability on Divert Resources and ends their phase
4. Player 1 cannot use the aftermath ability on Scrap Heap and ends their phase as well

Art and Visual Design

• Left aligned the card text
• Added indentation on “choose:” abilities

Faction Changes

Outer Rime Raiders (Red)

No changes. This patch focused on the Deploy/Aftermath changes and testing them. There are changes coming in 1.6.5 though!

Cybernetic Collective (Blue)

No changes. This patch focused on the Deploy/Aftermath changes and testing them. There are changes coming in 1.6.5 though!

MMC (Green)

This patch I have removed the Enlist mechanic. It will likely return to the faction at some point in the future, but for the initial launch it was just overloading the Mercenary mechanic. Now that the abilities have a crystal cost, and you gain from Long-Term Contract, the need for a unique mechanic for the faction is fulfilled.

One of the pieces of feedback from some of the playtests was that the Repair keyword dragging the game on for multiple turns. By removing the repeatability from Enlist, the hope is that this still has some player choice around playing it early for Long-term gains, or saving it to repair at a critical point.

Given the increased crystal gain on Long-term Contract, and its cumulative nature. Ability costs on a lot of cards have increased. This includes 2x increase on Seismic and a small bump on Warmachine as well. Players with a lot of Mercs should see no difference, but it will make early deploys on these big cards have more of a cost.

Changes

• Removed Enlist from ALL Mercenary cards
• Repair Crew. Deploy Aftermath: You may pay 3 -> 1 to repair 2 hitpoints.
• Third-party Research, 6c/2p -> 5c/2p, 3/2/3 -> 2/2/3. Deploy: Search 3. Aftermath: You may pay 2 crystals to draw 2 cards.
• High Tech Operations, 6c/2p -> 5c/3p.
• Warmachine. Aftermath: You may pay 3 -> 5. If you do, for each opponent, return a card in their Attack lane with 5 power or less to their hand.
• Seismic Manipulation. Aftermath: For each card in your Mining lane, you may pay 1 -> 2 crystals to deal 1 damage to all opponents.

Endracor Federation (Purple)

Corrupt Policies is trying out a new spending system, instead of the tiered activation. The main goal was to help smooth out the difference between getting your Corruption generation early and activating your stronger powers, and getting it late and never using them. Now when you gain the Corruption early enough, you can activate the Disable or Crystal gain, but then you’ll need to build it back up later.

The ultimate power on the card also got upgraded to disable any card. This makes it much stronger, but also means you can only use it a few times during the game. The concern here would be that without it, the faction is likely still a bit weak, but I’m looking at ways to buff the non-corruption gaining cards to compensate for that. The current playstyle is around getting to 5 to disable a big card like Seismic or Warmachine, to buy time to play direct damage cards. Will need to see a few EF vs ORR matchups to see if the search / crystal gain is used more there.

The core of the deck should still focus around the choice of Infiltration vs Corruption, but with the recent changes to Covert Ops and Shadow Agent working for both, it might be worth looking at balancing them.

Stealth Strike and Orbital Bombardment changed to account for the Corruption being spent with lower requirements and their abilities.

Changes

• Redeploy. You may return an Infiltration card to your hand and replay it in any a different lane for 0 CTL. (Still spending the production cost)
• Divert Resources, 3/2/3 -> 3/2/2. Gain 1 -> 2 corruption.
• Shock Troopers. Disable up to three cards with power 1 or less.
• Stealth Strike. Aftermath: Deal 2 damage to each opponent. If you have at least 5 -> 3 corruption, deal 3 damage instead.
• Orbital Bombardment. Aftermath: Deal 3 damage to your opponent. If you have at least 8 -> 5 corruption, deal 5 damage instead.