Vindictive Vixen - Patch #57
This week, we’re including a massive amount of bug fixes (we CRUSHED them) and improvements to gameplay. Plus, cool new art, new community activities, and changes to the meta! Who’s ready to pounce on this action!? 🦊
New Art 🎨
- 6 new characters join the fray! Who do you like the most? Say it out loud and call everyone you know!
New Features ⭐
- Effects that give an attachment or draw a spell onto a unit will no longer attempt that action if the unit has Lead. This will prevent effects from drawing and then dusting cards from your deck or Prism as they try to attach themselves to Lead units
Improvements 🦾
- We now show -0 indicators on units that will receive a damage event, but not lose any health
- Units with multiple triggers now get an icon for each of their triggers plus their attachments triggers, instead of the old maximum: 1 per unit and 1 per enchantment. This should be immediately visible on Shroud, which provides 2 icons: the ongoing effect, and the sunrise effect
Bugfixes 🐛
- Fixed a bug in loading screens that caused players with very different load times to have difficulty getting in-game against each other
- Units with "Play:" effects will now summon before resolving their text
- If a unit's effect is queued and the unit is silenced before its effect resolves, the queued effect will be cancelled
- Cards that conjure from enemy prisms will reveal any card they conjure
- Cards that reveal the result of a draw by copying it, e.g. Think Twice, will now reveal the original card in hand
- Vapors and cards that draw attachments onto units will now function correctly and only draw a single card
- Multiple Gravekin on the field will now share a single effect, instead of duplicating death effects additional times
- Barrier & Shield now reduce damage to 0 instead of negating the damage event. This change will introduce some clarity by showing a `0 damage` popup on your hero instead of silently cancelling the damage
- Hoplite will now only return to hand if it's on the field
- Fixed a bug where Chains would visually remove keywords too late, resulting in e.g. showing the armor pop animation when you Snap Trap an armor unit. This is visual-only; the behavior of Chains hasn't changed
- Fixed some bugs where the wrong attached spell or enchantment could appear on cards
- Fixed some edge-cases where dying through fatigue damage could crash the game & prevent a victory or loss (e.g. ending your turn with a Pandora on the field, nothing in your hand, and nothing in the deck)
- Fixed a bug where effects that damage "a random unit/character" would pop all Shield/Barrier enchantments on the targeted player's side of the field
Big Bugfix 🐞
- Cards that affect cards in secret (your hand, your deck) will no longer give up information about those secret cards. This information has been entirely removed from the game engine to ensure competitive integrity! e.g. On the Hunt will no longer play the dusting sound for your opponent if it replaced an attachment in your hand
Have some fun with deck creation, and submit your favorite decks for our Community Manager Ashavari to play during her stream! All you have to do is create a deck and input the deck string into the channel: #beta-decks-sharing-is-caring! Make sure you indicate that it's a Stream Submission by typing "SS:" before the deck string!
Have fun with these and tune in every Tuesday at 12:00 pm EST to watch your favorite decks in action!
This week's patch brings some cool new art, has 15 card changes, three minor tweaks, and one Prism swap to help clean things up, reinforce prism identity, and address some decks that were overperforming lately or have been oppressive, to allow for a bit more diversity in the meta and encourage people to try some new options.
Flurry (1118)
Cost: 3 ➞ 4
Keywords: None ➞ banner
The classic nerf of nerfs arrives for Flurry and its brother, Salvage. Flurry was the most used AGY card in the game, bar none, and as a rule, generating many small units/spells can have big payoffs, so both Flurry and Salvage received +1c and Banner to make Flurry a less effective earlygame Salvage slightly more expensive to use in combos with Zam. I think they should both remain good without being as backbreaking - getting +2 hero atk via banner + songbird is also rather relevant. I could even see cutting off Banner in the long run, but I think this should be good for now.
Salvage (1187)
Cost: 3 ➞ 4
Keywords: None ➞ banner
As mentioned in Flurry, was just too efficient for its cost, so I’m giving it the old +1c + banner treatment to power Salvage down without totally invalidating it.
Lau Sensei (1158)
Cost: 2 ➞ 3
Keywords: None ➞ guard
Health: 2 ➞ 3
Feels bad to change this twice in a row, but the low cost allowed it to curve into supersonic really early, and made it extremely flexible overall, so trying +1c and +1hp + guard, to pull another powerful AGY aggro card a bit further up the curve. Could be an overnerf but I think it’ll remain useful. As a rule, elemental spell-seekers are extremely strong.
Twist & Turn (716)
Cost: 4 ➞ 5
Text: Dust target unit to draw and summon a unit of its element for its player.
Give it Dazed. ➞ Dust target unit to draw and summon a unit of its element for its player. Give it Dazed.
I like Twist & Turn, but it definitely leads to some power spikes earlygame, so I've given it +5c, which means it can no longer be played on turn 2 with just your mana potion or flask, which should help delay some of the ludicrously early power spikes, while still leaving it as a decent option and allowing some earlygame power plays.
Luna (1109)
Cost: 4 ➞ 3
Text: Sunset: If an enemy is sleeping, gain +1/+1 ➞ Play: Dust target hero's top dead card to copy its element.
Power: 4 ➞ 2
Trying a tweak here. The old design didn’t see a huge amount of play, and I’ve been interested in the idea of tweaking her to be a “Twist-Focused” creature for a little while. Her new ability lets her change her element, which means you can tactically try to evolve her into a unit of a particular element, or just use her as removal, or to morph another unit. Feels unique and fun, and offers a bit more grave-dusting, since I’d scaled those options back a bit lately.
Doctor Vile (796)
Spell: Vile Vial ➞ None
Nerf to the power of a card that'd been causing some pain. I like Vile’s ability to trade life for draws, and the way it can be used to punish greedy decks. However, the fact that it came with a way to instantly pop itself mid-lategame made it a tad too flexible and easy to activate, so I removed its inherent Vial so it can no longer detonate itself. This should allow for more interplay by giving your opponent more of a chance to answer it, unless you immediately destroy it with another card. So it's still a good curve play, and will still punish greedy decks, but can be disrupted a bit more easily.
Card Sling (847)
Cost: 2 ➞ 3
The cycling power and tempo this offered at 2c was a bit absurd, so I moved it to 3c to reinforce the fact that AGY is not intended to have the most efficient draw. Being able to effectively turn one card into 2dmg and then draw two new cards for just 2 mana was very high value. Paying 3 mana for that same effect is still a pretty decent rate. Though it does feel like it’s liable to fight with Treasure Chest as a draw option, and I could see raising it to 3dmg or adding a keyword if Sling is left too weak or undesirable by this change.
Cobalt (939)
Cost: 1 ➞ 2
Health: 2 ➞ 3
1c spell-seeking units are inherently kind of overpowered as they allow a lot of consistency earlygame via offering both offensive bodies and removal options, so I’d like to keep the number of them pretty low. Kook Book is an amazing and pretty unique card, and letting decks run more than one 1c spellseeker is likely a bit much. With +1hp at 2c, this should still have decent usage with teleport and other tools, but should be a bit less appealing stats-to-cost wise.
Floodwater (559)
Cost: 9 ➞ 8
Text: Return your dead water units to deck. Draw nine water cards. ➞ Return your dead water units to deck. Draw eight water cards.
Dropping 1c and one draw off this to make it easier to cast and not overflow your hand as much. Both reductions should be net positives, and serve to make the card more appealing while not being too dangerous.
Forcefield (1108)
Text: Give target ally Shield. Give other allies Barrier. ➞ Give target ally Shield. Give each ally next to it Barrier.
A tweak here, should be a nerf overall, but also one that won't really be noticed in many cases. Similar to cards like Toil & Trouble, it now cares about the units flanking the primary target, giving the barriers to them, meaning that it can no longer barrier everything at once, but this means it also doesn’t have to overwrite all ally attachments, and also means that which character is targeted matters more, offering more strategic opportunities and considerations.
Spite & Malice (442)
Power: 1 ➞ 2
Spell: Barrier ➞ None
Dropping barrier and buffing its power by +1 for +2 total power and health between its bodies, letting it serve as a better stat block vs enemy units, while reducing its resistance vs spells.
Supermind (1036)
Health: 3 ➞ 4
Got bashed by the Teleport tweak unintentionally, so I’m giving him +1hp to make up for the loss of the dazed on teleport + the cost raise. He also features in Teleport’s new art!
Cryogen (328)
Power: 5 ➞ 6
Health: 7 ➞ 6
Was a particularly nasty Twist target, so moving a bit of health to attack to make her a bit more fragile and easier to answer. If she continues to be an issue, may consider tweaking her to Glory again or try another safeguard to make her less potent when turboed out.
Headcase (832)
Cost: 4 ➞ 2
Keywords: None ➞ guard
Health: 5 ➞ 3
Had abysmal usage and winrate stats, but he’s quite an interesting design, so I'm keeping the core of the card intact, and moving it down the curve to fill one of the 2c slots that was opened by moving Card Sling and Lau Sensei up.
Unophobia (843)
Cost: 10 ➞ 11
Reverting back to 11c. back when Unophobia was first buffed, we were coming out of the control summer, and lategame strategies were largely ruled by grindy Conjure wars, but since then, more proactive decks have come into their own, and Unophobia has carved out a very dominant place for itself, so it seems ok to slow Unophobia’s roll down by a single turn again, to give its foes a little bit more breathing room.
Iron Mask (984)
Text: Has -10 cost if your deck is empty. Give your hero Lead, armor, and banner. ➞ Is 0 cost if your deck is empty. Give your hero Lead, armor, and banner.
Super minor buff/wording tweak here, now "Is 0 cost" rather than having -10c if your deck is empty, will allow it to always cost 0 even if its cost was raised by Stink Eye, etc.
Blaze of Glory (1193)
Text: Give ally units +1 power, lifesteal, and Quest. ➞ Give ally units Quest, +1 power, and lifesteal.
Minor tweak so that it applies its enchant first, as all effects that place positive enchants should.
Entwail ➞ Etherwail (557)
Name: Entwail ➞ Etherwail
No mechanical change here, but it does get a name buff. "Ent" is a copyrighted term, so in honor of the mother of our earth element, Ethera, Entwail and Ent Mask have been tweaked now tweaked to "Etherwail" and "Ether Mask."
Nimbus (95)
Prism: hrt ➞ int
Shifted from HRT to INT, Nimbus always felt a bit odd in HRT since hrt focuses more on units than on spells, while INT does the opposite, so I traded a pair of 2c units between them to help reinforce their core and thematic Identities. Also showcases the first of our new race, the ‘Wu-Kin,’ a wise, Primate-like species who serve as guardians of ancient secrets of Sky!
Teenage Witch (696)
Prism: int ➞ hrt
Feels more natural in HRT, as it's a prism that loves to have stuff die - fits in nicely alongside other Death-Reward cards in HRT like Vishiva, Swamp Walker, and Soul Guide. Could be spooky in HRT, since it can generate extra mana, but It hasn’t seen much play this far so I’m interested to see what she can do in HRT.
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