Cards and Castles 2
Rebalance Preview - Overview
Early Game Rebalance: Our most significant shift lies in how we envision and design the early game as a whole - that is, cards costing between 1 and 4 gold. If you're a long time player, you may recall that at one point we nerfed a lot of draw and card generation in the game, as player's hands were running too hot throughout entire matches and leading to overdraw annoyances. Cheap draw is coming back, BUT this time we are shifting it toward the lower end of the gold curve. This means that cheaper cards can get progressively cheaper access to additional draw or card generation in our balancing methods. A 1-cost card can now be very efficient at obtaining an additional card, but a 4-cost card will have to pay a lot. This helps players fill up their hands in the early game, but leads to either starker card depletion or faster deck outs later on as their gold pool allows for dumping more of the hand at once. This also creates smoother matchups between various archetypes, which is particularly important for agro decks. We intend for agro decks to be slower overall with more intricate back and forth games, as players of slower deck types are now incentivized to run a solid early curve to cycle through their deck. Finally, RNG has generally been reduced for early game cards, as a devastating high roll into an extremely early win is not desireable.
More Small Combos: When looking at the game as a whole, we realized that while we generally hit the mark with big legendary payoffs and win conditions, many common and simple cards have repetitive and uninspired designs, and we are missing the small payoff combos that reward players for cleverness and planning in the early game. Many cheaper cards have been redesigned to either have implicit or explicit combos and payoffs.
Reduction of Castle Damage Spells: Fairly straightforward, but we've generally reduced the number of spells that can directly hit the opponent's Castle, most particularly for ninjas, who we don't want to see pigeon-holed into an agro role. We've very slightly increased direct healing and Castle defense as well. However, this is to compensate for the generally stronger early game, and our desire to not really see many games end before turn 8 or 9 at the earliest. Healing does not really scale into the late game, where combo lethality is generally improved, and we are seeing good paced games in playtesting due to the fast deck cycling and quick back-and-forth style.
Contraband Limitations: We've heard from many players that anticipating what a contraband opponent is going to do is frustrating, as the range of options on contraband cards is currently extremely wide. We are both reducing the prevalence of contraband overall, as well as having most contraband cards specify some sort of filter like cost or type to limit their options a little more.
Faction Identity - Vikings and Pirates: We feel that some factions have a stronger thematic and gameplay identity than others, and felt particularly that the vikings and pirates needed help here. Pirates have gained a new ability to permanently increase the player's max gold, allowing for a true ramp playstyle. Although this was only added to a few cards, it's a potent effect and will likely be expanded on a little in future card packs. Vikings have gained the SHATTER keyword, which formalizes the Halls of Frost ability to deal double damage against targets with frostbite. Penguin, Polar Bear, and other characters now have the Shatter keyword innately.
Gameplay Quality and Clarity: Tombstones are now immune to most AOE effects (except Cleave). This makes them much less matchup-dependent, and we feel having them be a generally reliable resource is better for players and the ultimate balancing of undead gameplay.
Armor has been removed from the game. This mechanic is not distinct enough from health to justify making the board state more complex. Don't worry though, there are plenty of cool new mechanics to replace it!
Dispel is no longer used on buildings, as the destruction of the building from dispel was inconsistent. Some cards that used to dispel buildings now explicitly destroy them instead.
Undead debuffing cards now destroy targets that are brought to 0 attack, keeping the board clean of (generally) useless units.
Redesign of Terrible Legendaries: Sorry Professor Headwood and Rat King, nobody plays you, maybe you should just do something else? Yes. Expect to see lame cards become cool again. Insert sunglasses.
New Deck Builder!
- End of turn effects now take place before the turn owner swaps.
- Cards that are generated by another card now show special text in the history and when played by an enemy.
- Fixed a bug where rituals do not count as spell damage.
Future Roadmap!
- DECK BUILDER REDESIGN: The current deck building UI is not nearly good enough. We are making a new one! Expect it to be completely different, much better suited to the task of deck building, and calibrated for both PC and mobile.
- CORE SET REVAMP: While the big card expansions are being worked on, we've realized we need to make a lot of improvements to the core set. Launching the game has been a big learning experience, and we've gradually realized that there are a lot of gameplay weaknesses that need to be addressed at all skill levels. This isn't the sort of thing we can address with new cards. Expect to see a dramatic rebalancing of agro as a concept, reworking of the early game curve and card draw, pruning of unnecessary complexity, and the addition of necessary complexity among many other updates. We are working closely with the community and players to address feedback and get the core set into tip-top shape before moving on to new stuff.
- BIG CARD EXPANSIONS: We plan to have at least one, and HOPEFULLY multiple big card expansions this year!
- LIMITED FORMAT: We know there is a lot of interest in a draft or event mode, and we will be rolling out SOMETHING as soon as it makes sense to do so.
Again, we are a small team but we are working very hard and with great agility to deliver the very best experience for our players. We hope you are looking forward to the coming updates as much as we are!
Deck Builder Tweaks
Music and UI Tweaks
- Resized several UI elements to reduce graininess of textures.
Core Expansion Set!
Turn your healing into damage with Andvor the Fallen, available for the Undead faction!
Build a city with Realm of the Builder, which duplicates all buildings!
Cycle through your deck for powerful, high risk plays with Dig for Treasure!
... and discover many more cool new mechanics! Many basic mechanics have also been added to help flesh out build options for various faction combinations. We're very excited to finally release these cards and really flesh out the game!
It'll be at least a few months before more cards become available, as we believe there's plenty for player's to explore with this content set and the base set. Please enjoy the new cards and look forward to more game announcements and updates in the future!
CORE EXPANSION
An exclusive collection of holiday Castles has also been added to the shop! This is a limited time offer, so pick them up soon!
In addition, major revisions have been made to gameplay and card balance. Please see the complete notes on our community Discord! Also note that most changed cards can be refunded for full shard value for a short period of time following the patch.
RANKING SYSTEM
Players no longer lose stars in Bronze, but the number of stars per tier is increased to 5. This should result in players moving through Bronze more quickly than before.
GAMEPLAY
Trap Limit increased to 5.
Traps now display as different colors to denote which faction they belong to.
Druid traps now cost 3.
Ninja traps now cost 3.
Pirate traps now cost 1.
Crusader traps now cost 1.
CARDS
Transcribe: Copied card now costs 3 (was 2).
Troll Toll: Bridge Troll stats reduced to 4/3. (was 6/3).
Storm Weapon: Now gives +2/+1 (was +2 attack).
Cosmic Equation: Now costs 4, but sets HP to 1 (was 1 gold and set HP to 2).
Smuggling Ring: Cost increased to 4, and Contraband count reduced to 3 (was 3 and 4).
Resourceful Privateer: No longer requires no treasure, but Contraband count reduced to 2 (was 3). Stats reduced to 3/3.
Snowy Owl: Stats reduced to 1/3 (was 2/3).
Dwarf Paladin: Stats changed to 1/5 (was 2/4).
Wizard: Changed to Warcry: Draw a spell. Stats changed to 3/1.
Salahar Spitefish: Stats changed to 1/3 (was 2/3).
Army of the Dead: Cost increased to 3 (was 2).
Wolf: Stats reduced to 1/2 (was 1/4).
Pack Hunting: Cost increased to 5 (was 4).
Velociraptor: Stats reduced to 2/2 (was 3/2).
Dinosaur Nest: Cost increased to 4 (was 3).
Sea Witch: Stats reduced to 2/2 (was 2/3).
Skeletal Squire: Cost increased to 4 (was 3). Stats changed to 1/3 (was 2/3).
Sacrificial Knife: Cost increased to 4 (was 3).
Imp: Changed to add a random Warlock spell to your hand.
Priest: Stats changed to 1/4 (was 2/3).
Corpse Explosion: Now only hits units. Cost reduced to 5 (was 6).
Dwarven Blacksmith: Now only copies one random Item, but cost reduced to 2 (was 3 and copied all Items). Stats reduced to 1/4 (was 2/4).
Developer’s Note: As we add more items to the game, blacksmith is continually creating new problem builds. It is very hard to create balanced cards when you have to plan around players having 8 copies of them in hand at once, and long term this isn’t the role we want Items to play (duplication and “hunting in packs” is a better fit for Beasts). We want to have a large variety of items with different abilities so they can be a fun random pool for the dwarves in future expansions, and this sort of mechanic is inhibiting our designs.
Yaarhym Titan: HP reduced to 8.
Resurrection: Cost limit of resurrected ally reduced to 3 (was 5). We believe this threshold shift will be easier to manage far into the future.
Minotaur: When it slays an enemy, it now gains Berserk instead of drawing a card.
Vaskrheim Warrior: Attack reduced to 3 (was 4).
Spellsurge Adept: Attack reduced to 1 (was 2).
Thief: Changed to give a 3-Cost Contraband instead of an Item.
Faithful Drake: Changed to give a random healing spell instead of an Item. Stats reduced to 2/3 (was 3/3).
Lifewell: Buff for drawn units increased to +2/+2 (was +2 health).
Cannoneer: Changed to cost 2 less if you are holding Contraband.
Owlbear: Bonus reduced to +2/+2 (was +3/+3). Stats increased to 4/5 (was 4/4).
Screams of the Fallen: Now deals 10 damage plus 1 per 2 friendly units that died. Cost reduced to 9.
Note: The scaling on this card has been pretty ridiculous in long running games, it is far too reliable for ending a game outright and doesn't require much in the way of build-around to work. We want players to have to work harder to generate big Scream damage.
The Kraken: Now costs 10, with 10/10 stats and Berserk, and deals 3 damage to pulled units.
Note: We want the Kraken to be a lot more hype. The increased cost and power should make this card truly worth of spending an extra turn to summon it.
Minor Patch
Minor Feature
Minor Technical Update
- Improved graphics performance in battles.