Cards and Castles 2 cover
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Genre: Strategy, Indie, Card & Board Game

Cards and Castles 2

Technical Improvements
Due to changes in our network data protocol, this patch will be a required update for all players.

Major Gameplay Update
Hello everyone! We’ve just deployed a major gameplay patch that addresses a lot of feedback and gameplay improvements at once. Keep in mind, all changed cards can be disenchanted for full crafting value for a period of time after the patch.


PATCH NOTES
Two new Sea Monsters have been added to the game!
A new tombstone card, Corpse Explosion, has been added to the game!
Berserk and Madness units now slightly increase the turn timer.
Madness no longer secretly disables special abilities.
Brynjolf card text has been reworded, but his effect remains the same.
Archdruid Leanna: Redesigned. Now costs 8. Your units cost 1 less. Draw a card each time you play a unit.
Ramrus: Simplified to a 2/1 Charge unit.
Doomship: Now has charge. Stats updated to 5/6.
Dread Pirate Robins: Changed to Damage Dealt: Take a copy of an Epic or Legendary card from your opponent.
Triceratops: No longer has Knockback.
Harpy: Changed to a 1/3 with evade instead of a 2/2 with shroud.
Mordanoth: Now has Overwhelm instead of Shroud.
Beastmaster: Redesigned. Now a 1/2 that summons two random beasts that cost 2 or less.
Angel of Mercy: Now has Evade. Attack reduced to 2.
Southport Slayer: HP reduced to 3.
Raise Dead: Now only summons two Zombies, but they get Charge.
Reanimate: Redesigned. Destroy up to 4 Tombstones. Summon two Necromancer units with cost equal to the number of tombs destroyed.
Shadow Drake: Redesigned. Has Evade and Last Will: Give a random ally +1 Attack and Evade.
Call of the Wild: Cost reduced to 2.
Lifewell: Slight redesign. Draw two cards, and any units drawn gain +2 Health.
Mooncaster: Redesigned. Can Replace a friendly unit. If it does, it will have the same stats.
Spectral Rider: Redesigned. Charge. Damage Dealt: Summon a Necromancer unit with cost equal to this unit’s Attack.
Deadeye: Redesigned. Warcry: Deal 1 damage to an enemy unit.
Torgen: Now reduces the costs of Beasts by 1 instead of giving them +1 Attack.
Camouflage: Now gives Evade instead of Shroud.
Living Vines: Changed to summon a new Living Vines instead of resurrect.
Berserker: Now has Overwhelm, and gains +1 Attack when ANY unit is damaged. Stats reduced to 2/4.
Mugging: Now can only hit units.
Minotaur: Now has Charge. Stats reduced to 7/5.
Nunchuk Nuns: Cost reduced to 3, stats changed to 1/3.
Frost Drake: Cost reduced to 2, stats changed to 2/3.
Wyvern Rider: Redesigned. Now 2/5 with Charge, and when it attacks it summons a Frost Drake with Charge.
Fire Drake: Cost reduced to 2, stats changed to 3/2.
Banshee: Redesigned. Warcry: Your opponent’s spells cost (2) more next turn.
Cannoneer: Now costs 4, and deals 2 damage to the enemy castle.
Fencer: Redesigned. Costs 2. Guardian. Has +2 Attack during your opponent’s turn.
Professor Headwood: Stats changed to 4/6.
Trebuchet: Health increased to 4.
Knight of Flowers: Stats changed to 3/5.
Mystic Panda: Redesigned. Guardian. Warcry: Summon a random 2-Cost unit for each Trap in play.
Velociraptor: Redesigned. Now 3/2 with Warcry: Give a random unit in your hand +1 Attack.
Killer Rabbit: Now has Evade, and only has Berserk when there is an enemy unit on the battlefield.
The Kraken: HP reduced to 8.


Developer Notes
Sea Monsters were added so that the Sea Witch has more variety in her pool.
Corpse Explosion was added so that players have another thing to do with tombs, since we removed one other tomb mechanic.
Archdruid Leanna: While we love the squirrels because they are cute and funny, we keep finding that the gameplay of squirrel-heavy concepts ends up being obnoxious, and Leanna’s design final squirrel design was both overly complex and still annoying to play against anyway. We’ve redesigned her with an entirely new idea based around resource generation that should fit better with the factions concepts.
Shroud and Knockback were both removed as keywords (Brynjolf now has custom text) for this current card pool. We found that the game had slightly too many keywords for players to memorize, and these two were not adding all that much to the game, compared to creating more custom and unique mechanics for the cards.
Dread Pirate Robins: We mostly want to avoid situations where the player can use this card and not find any valid targets to take from their opponent, which was happening a lot with the previous design. He can now pull from the opponent’s hand as a backup as well as pick from more rarities.
We’ve juiced up the ability to play multiple units at once a little bit, as that tends to lead to more player choice and more interesting games. We’ve also increased Evade and Charge prevalence a little bit to increase the amount of player choices in combat starting out.
Mystic Panda: This card was redesigned mostly due to Kabuki Mask, which would explicitly destroy the bonus of Mystic Panda’s effect.
We’ve nudged the overall unit stat pool to be slightly more health heavy, so that there are ample counters to AOE effects.
Tombstones no longer show a unit inside them, they just show as tombs. This was done to improve clarity around the tomb mechanic.
Many cards were changed to improve clarity, improve usefulness, improve theme and design, or just address common pain points and player issues we’ve observed.

Interface and Tutorial Updates
Tutorial mission #1 has been completely redone.
Replays have moved to the Player Profile menu.
Players can now access Practice bots quickly from the Battle popup.
Summoning peasants, and using some other abilities, now requires less clicks.

Tutorial and Bug Fix Patch
PATCH NOTES
Landshark: Bonus attack reduced to 2.
Southport Slayer: No longer has Backstab. This keyword combined with her unique ability was confusing players and doesn’t meaningfully contribute to the design.
Some spell cards have been adjusted to only hit units, to provide more differentiation between versatile damage cards and more efficient tempo removal cards.
Incinerate: Now only hits units. Cost reduced to 3.
Mercenary Execution: Now only hits units.
Baptism of Fire: Now only hits units. Cost reduced to 2.
Man the Cannons: Now deals 3 damage to enemy units.
Cosmic Equation: Cost reduced to 1.
Fixed a bug with lethal effects and traps.
Fixed a bug with cascading aura applications causing too much HP loss.
Fixed a bug that allowed players to skip the tutorial. Tutorial completion is required to unlock the quest system and thus the vast majority of free rewards.
Quick Match lobbies no longer have the [Quick Match] tag.
Random card pull effects in battle have a greatly reduced chance to roll a legendary card.

Minor Gameplay Update
The following small adjustments have been made as part of an overall effort to improve the new player experience:
A new card has been added to the game! Spirit Blast is a 3 gold ninja spell that deals 2 damage and draws a card.
Hawk: Attack increased to 3.
Salahar Soldier: Stats flipped to 2/3.
Bearhog: Stats changed to 2/3.
Spear of Odin: Cost reduced to 2, and buff changed to +1/+2.
Dwarf Paladin now allows the player to choose 1 of 3 knights instead of drawing one from your deck.
Fist of the Five Gods, Storm Weapon: Now simply give chain lightning at the END of the turn, rather than depleting actions.
Winds of the North: Cost reduced to 2.
Berserker: Stats changed to 3/6.

NOTABLE GAMEPLAY BUG FIXES
Fixed a bug in the interaction between Eternal Life and effects that reward a killing blow.
Fixed a bug where spell cards added to your hand through some means would not immediately receive the Courthouse debuff.
The bonus from multiple Halls of Frost buildings now stack multiplicatively

Post-Launch Gameplay Patch
Hello everyone! We’re doing an early post-launch gameplay patch to address some concerns we have about the new player experience. For the most part, we’ve been extremely pleased with the positive response from the community and players after the game’s launch. However, we noticed that new players are depleting their hand of cards more quickly than we’d like during gameplay, and upon investigation we realized we had made a critical error; the core set of cards does not have nearly as much hand replenishment, via card draw and added cards, as we had intended. We feel this mistake has a subtle but important negative effect on the play experience, and we wanted to address it as quickly as possible. Experienced playtesters are good about building the right amount of draw into their decks, but many other players are not and we want to make this easier. The majority of this patch is focused on tweaking many existing core set cards to replenish your hand.


Since we are already having to do a patch to address this, we wanted to additionally tackle some issues that have been on our radar at the same time. Most critically, we feel that Crusaders have a little too much in the way of control cards that delete or invalidate the other player’s game plan. We are pulling back on this slightly, attempting to achieve a delicate balance between good answers and counterplay, and the ability for players to successfully set up and execute powerful effects and combos.

PATCH NOTES
Daily quests that require the player to win a match have had their requirement dramatically reduced.
Second player can now mulligan an additional card. Our stats show a win preference for the first player right now, and we want to make second player’s position more powerful.
Attacking buildings now have the SNIPER keyword, for clarity and consistency.


Manticore: Now has Last Will: Draw a card. Stats changed to 3/4. No longer a Beast.
Trap Door Ninja: Trap drawn no longer has its cost reduced. Stats changed to 2/4.
Snowy Owl: Now draws a card if there is a unit costing 1 or less on the battlefield. Is now a Beast.
Triceratops: Now allows you to add 1 of 3 dwarves to your hand. Stats changed to 2/6.
Frost Blast: Now draws a card. Cost increased to 3.
Harpy: Now draws a unit, but gives it -1/-1. Stats changed to 2/2.
Wraiths: Now draws a card. Cost increased to 3.
Fist of the Five Gods: Now costs 1, gives 1 unit Chain Lightning, depletes its actions, and draws a card.
Gorilla Fighter: Now draws the unit instead of summoning it. Stats changed to 3/3.
Mugging: Now adds Contraband of any cost.
Dwarven Mithril: Cost reduced to 2.
Frost Lich: Now has Last Will: Add a Frost spell to your hand. Stats changed to 4/2.
Wolf: Changed to Warcry: Draw a Beast. Stats changed to 1/4.
Dwarf Paladin: Now draws a Knight instead of giving +1 armor. Stats changed to 2/4.
Flame Prince: New design. Warcry: If you are holding a Fire spell, add a random Fire spell to your hand. Stats changed to 5/4.
Minotaur: New design. Draw a card when this slays an enemy. Stats changed to 8/7.
School of Magic: Now has Warcry: Add a random spell to your hand. Cost increased to 3.
Halls of Frost: Now has Warcry: Add a random Frost spell to your hand. Cost increased to 2.
Cryonic: Now costs 2 and draws a card, but stats reduced to 2/2.
Imp: Now allows you to pick from two 2-cost spells.
Draconic Temple: Now has Warcry: Add a random Drake to your hand. Cost increased to 2.


Battle Cry: Cost reduced to 2.
End of Days is no longer a Fire spell.
Frog Prince: HP reduced to 4.
Forest Revolt: Treants now also have EVADE.
Lucien: Dispel is now a LAST WILL effect.
Righteous Paladin: Stats changed to 2/5.
The Verdict: Cost increased to 2.
Sea Witch: Cost increased to 3. Stats changed to 2/3.
Centaur: Stats changed to 2/5.
Ragnar: Cost increased to 8, stats increased to 5/9.
Yaarhym Lightning: Cost reduced to 3, damage reduced to 2.

New Player Update 5/24
So hey, we realized that even though players start Cards and Castles 2 with a lot of cards and access to legendaries, they don’t have as many card packs as we’d like. Opening card packs is fun and we’d like players to be able to start the game off by opening a nice amount of them at once. So we’ve updated the tutorial rewards to give all new players 20 card packs over the 3 introductory missions. Since we don’t want players who’ve already started to feel left out, we’ve ALSO quietly awarded 20 card packs to everyone already playing! Note you may need to restart your client for the card packs to appear. Enjoy!

Minor Fixes 5/21
Fixed a bug that could cause a soft lock when creating a lobby at the exact same time a quick match is entered.
The smiley face chat button will now be displayed in all battles, even if the user is not in a lobby.
Friends List: Clicking a friend now opens a context menu with various functions like creating a private lobby or sending a message.
Deck Editor: Decks can no longer have more than 60 cards total, even while being edited (this has nothing to do with the 30 card requirement for a deck to be playable).
Deck Editor: Fixed a bug causing cards to incorrectly display as available when a combination of shiny and unshiny of the same card is used in the deck.

Jan 2nd Hotfixes
- Smithy: Ability changed to Arrival
- Shaman: Ability now also gives 20% armor, and heal increased to 7.
- Fixed some bugs with error feedback when playing cards.

Dec 14th Hotfix
- Viking campaign missions 2 and 3 have received gameplay adjustments and been made slightly easier.
- Misc bug fixes.
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