MArcomage

We haven't even touched upon what happens when both players have a Hydra on hand. It has a lot of potential to shake things up.

DPsycho wrote:
Is it better than drawing Dragon squadron when you have 70 recruits? No. Is it better than drawing Dragon squadron when you have 40 recruits? Probably.

Sounds like a no-win situation to me. If you're spending less than 70 recruits on it, you're getting a lousy resource to damage ratio.

And yes, you could argue that the ancillary benefits of dragon eggs and the dragon keyword make up for it. You could also point out the drawback of wiping out most of your hand, giving you fewer choices for spending your bricks and gems, and possibly being forced to discard a card you wanted to save up to play. I guess we'll see once this card has been tested in the crucible of real gameplay.

On a fresh note: how about that Shifting mass? Anyone else think it looks kind of OP? I could see myself using it to force quick resource victories in long mode, for starters. "In game" means in both players' decks, right?

'In game' would be of the 16 cards in both hands, not the 90 cards in both decks. Probably 15 as I doubt it would count itself or the not-yet-drawn card to its slot.

It's hard to say how it will play out. I imagine that in many cases, the most expensive card will be an Uncommon or Rare with keyword dependencies. Of course, for the cases when it can be played to full effect by itself, it effectively punishes your opponent for drawing a Rare at random with little time to react to it.

In fact, I can remember only six powerful expensive cards with keyword dependencies: Mountain king, Undead host, Royal dragoons, Wicked ritual, Rainbow dragon and Forest dragon. Almost all rare dragons, Wishing lagoon set, Laputa, Castle beyond looking glass, Residence of Gods, Leviathan, All-elemental attack, Tornado, Citadel of Myr don't depend on keywords, so I guess that Shifting mass will be much more powerful than you think.

But most of the times, you dont want these cards to have twice in your hand (Like Residence of Gods), except you gain them from your opponents deck.

Has something gone wrong with the update?
I saw the 15 minutes intermission but it seems that nothing has changed

Yeah, I was unable to run some of the upgrade steps and it blew up.
But this gives us the opportunity to start posting public maintenance schedule notices.

Hm, the balance changes look really interesting. Seems like a huge unneeded nerf to Alliance though. So many Alliance cards had that keyword removed, and only a couple new ones were added. Also, a few cards were buffed that I don't think really needed it - but if you want to make my rush deck better, I won't complain. :D

I really like the concept behind the new Runic and Siege keywords. Very cool.

yeah, I'm a bit concerned about the many complains that there will be about alliance weakness (not as many as for common quick cards' death). But I like changes, I hope everybody will enjoy the update.

The "versus player" stats have been lost. I hard-refreshed everything.

Firefox 4.0

I'll be the first one.
Alliance is officially dead now. They lost their defense (Mountain sentry, Mountain king, Dwarven fortification, Dwarven fortress...), their attack potential (Mountain king, Dwarven elder, Dwarven guard), their production (Mithril miner, Dwarwen elder), but - what's most important - they lost Chaos dwarf, a card that kept Alliance deck somehow useful. Not to mention that Alliance is very hand-dependable keyword, and it's kinda hard to get full Alliance hand now.
Siege... I don't like it, mostly because of tower- decks that I still hate. Now these decks will be useful in long mode, so... I really don't like it.
Runic, the counterpart of Siege, is something that I like more. But what about keyword effect after Mountain king - will it work and raise your wall/tower after negating enemy attack?
Other changes...
Black market change is good for non-hidden games. I generally don't play it, but I like it.
Lake fairy was strong, now it's too weak. Good thing that other Nature resource/self-paying cards wasn't nerfed...
Thanks for Call of the wilds - now it's much more better.
Siege breakers are nice. In fact, I always thought that this card needs Soldier keyword.
Mountain king - it was one of the best rares, now... I don't know, but the old one was better.
Dwarven elder... I want to see him in Gateway deck against Gateway deck matchup - that should be fun.
Reunion of tribes is a late game card now, but in my Restoration deck it will be even more destructive than before.
Siege on Imperial army? Yes, it fits the flavour, but doesn't fit the card itself...
Well, new keywords = new ideas and new tactics, and it's nice, but I can't say that I like these changes. I guess next focus should be on new Alliance cards, Beast buff and Undead nerf, i.e. all that wasn't done in this update.

dimitris wrote:
The "versus player" stats have been lost. I hard-refreshed everything.

Firefox 4.0

It's my fault for not renaming the DB tables to up-to-date names, sorry about that. Have no fear - no data is lost, it's just not displayed correctly. I'll fix it ASAP.

Fixed in r1557.

NG_Beholder wrote:
Runic, the counterpart of Siege, is something that I like more. But what about keyword effect after Mountain king - will it work and raise your wall/tower after negating enemy attack?

Runic isn't really a counterpart to Siege. Note that while Runic triggers always when your Tower/Wall was damaged, the Siege requires that enemy raised his Tower/Wall and also that you hit his Tower and Wall. So siege is actually more restrictive.

Runic keyword doesn't overlap with card effect. For example if opponent lowered your Wall by 20 and you play mountain sentry, you will get 25 wall. The card effect and keyword are handled separately.

I really like the lore given to the keywords.
Looking at alliance description we should give alliance keyword also to some other treefolks like treant or dryad.

Maybe shadow wolf should not dicard rare cards.

I like the lore too. It was maybe the best addition on this update, along with Runic/Siege keywords, which, I think, make the game a little more strategic (and complicated maybe).

I believe that Roc and Griffin are rather more Elvish than Dwarfish. At least in popular culture, Dwarves are guys that live in underground caves and have nothing to do with flying things.

Also I believe that there should be some Runic+Siege cards.

Glad to hear you like the lore. The idea behind it is to make a "fantasy world feeling" behind the cards and the game. Actually I wanted to add lore to the cards as well, but there are so many of them @_@

dimitris wrote:
I believe that Roc and Griffin are rather more Elvish than Dwarfish. At least in popular culture, Dwarves are guys that live in underground caves and have nothing to do with flying things.

Dwarves also live on the surface and they use some tamed beasts as well. If you look at the changes, I divided the former Alliance cards into two exact halves ;-)

I'm also planning to have lore included in the update stories (as you may see in this one). The update story will be related to balance changes and new cards.

Next one will be: Undead rising (just kidding, don't know that yet ;-))

adding lore to every card would be quite cool.
There lore should appear when the mouse is over the card name (similar to keyword description; maybe optional).
anyway next update should be "Pride of the Alliance"

I believe the next update should bolster Brigands a little :)