Key updates include a card re-design and the icons are finally on the cards. I’ve had feedback that some of the icons aren’t exactly what players imagined, but I’m keeping them the same for a while to see if its something we need to change, or just will take a while to get used to. Specifically the Boost, Production and Aftermath icons aren’t exactly fitting their role.
I am testing out the “Repeat” keyword instead of abilities that scale based on a number of cards or crystals, etc. Repeat would always mean “do this up to X times” so you don’t have to repeat it, just you may. This is probably the biggest reason not to, but it would clean up a lot of the cards. For cards that you need to do it a specific number of times, they would not use the repeat keyword to avoid confusion.
Before:
After:
I can always revert back if I’m not liking the results or play testers are finding it harder. Let me know what you think!
The decks below with * are playable on ScreenTop and are targetted at new players. The more advanced decks are still being balanced, but can be shared if you’d like to try them out.
New name I’m trying out is the Outer Rim Raiders. They had raiders in the title previously and it fits the aggressive theme of the deck. Caldor was a soldier from the war who started the faction, but it didn’t feel right to call out the name of a specific person in the faction name. The outer rim is where a lot of the crystal rich planets exist, so bringing that into the name made sense here.
Very little changes to the cards as this deck is performing quite well.
Adding the Mining Expedition to the deck gave it access to early crystals which make it much stronger, but also cause you to run out of cards if you don’t draw your other draw cards. In response to this it’s crystal gain was dropped from 3 to 2 as there were a lot of powerful plays on turn 2 with access to 3 additional crystals. The upgrade is still at 5 as you need multiple turns to get that online.
Similarly, Base of Operations now also only saves you 2 crystals as it was very strong to play a 2 power card for only 2 cystals on turn one. It’s now still a good play, but doesn’t give you as big of a head-start and makes the discard more of a choice.
The general feedback on the drone deck was that it lacked a finisher. The Drone Commander is a strong card, but wasn’t able to win the game outright and it requires a lot of pre-planning to get value out of it. I’m keeping the card because it suits the deck well, but added a new finisher in Annihilator Drone.
The Swarming mechanic is key to the drone deck, but its max values seem to add a complexity that maybe isn’t needed. This version is trialing a two-tiered system where you are either max 3, or max 5. I’ll keep an eye on this for the Hunter Drone as it’s the cheapest and can add a lot of boosts, but I also don’t often see many drones hitting their max, so I don’t forsee a huge impact. The hope is that this will also promote more combo-style gameplay, where you save drones to play a bigger combo later.
No big changes this patch, but there are a few things I’m keeping an eye on. The game plan for the starter deck seems to rely heavily on drawing into Field Lab and Ore Hauler early and then not having access to Warmachine feels like it stops you in your tracks.
There are a couple of new cards, but none are in the starting deck yet as they are still in testing. The key ones to look at if you want to play the starter deck with a few moderations are Repair Crew and Mining Technician, both of which have the Mercenary tag and help build up to your late-game cards. Juggernaut is a big card for the basic deck to give you a better range of basics from Trooper -> Boring Machine -> Juggernaut. Recoil is for the bounce deck, which is still not fully fleshed out, and Deployment Strategist is part of the both the shift package and the mercenary one.
The power per crystal on Temp Agency at 8c/1p made it really inefficient to play unless you have at least 3 Mercenaries already out. 6c/2p makes it more playable early and better balances the choice between playing Mercenaries and getting Long-term Contract online.
Warmachine often was a huge power swing, but then if you didn’t win the game, you were on the back foot again immediately next turn. The ability on the card didn’t make it worth returning to your hand and playing again for another 12 crytals, so you would never do that. The end of turn cost is supposed to make a choice for players and here it was just a punishment with no upside. I looked into increasing the power of the card it returns to 5, but that only added one additional target per faction and didn’t help at all.
Endracor are finally fitting in well with the other decks. We are seeing the discard mechanic be both strong, but not overpowered. Getting a Sabotage out before your opponent plays an Annihilator Drone or Warmachine is super cool, but if you are too late then it’s 7 power isn’t usually enough to win the game, leading to some longer battles.