Cube Junior (812)

    Keywords: stealth,banner ➞ lifesteal,banner

A Nerf that's been a while coming, trading stealth for lifesteal makes for nice consistency between her keywords and effect, and make her easier to answer. While losing stealth makes her far more fragile and vulnerable to hero attacks, her lifesteal will allow her to swing life totals a bit more if a hero attacks her, so I think she’ll still be a potent tool.

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Ifrit (235)

    Power: 5 ➞ 6

A small buff here. Ifrit is a fairly underused card, so I don’t mind trying a bit more attack to offset the risk of his hand discard effect.

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Orchid (403)

    Text: Draw a 1 cost card. Give units in your hand +1/+1. Give spells in your hand -1 cost. ➞ Give units in your hand +1/+1. Give spells in your hand -1 cost. Gain 1 mana next turn.

    Keywords: None ➞ banner

Tweak to a fairly overpowered tool in WIS, focusing more on setting up for future turns, rather than immediate value/tempo via a draw + buff to a 1c unit or spell. Reducing draw here also means Orchid has more of an opportunity cost. Trading the draw for the 1-2 punch of banner + mana next turn may not actually be a meaningful nerf to Orchid, so I'll be keeping an eye on it, and may remove ethier Banner or the mana-banking effect if it's still too good, but awhile back we had 3c Orchid with banner and no mana-banking and it was pretty underused, so I'm hoping this should hit a good median.

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Seek (623)

    Text: Draw your highest cost spell. Give your hero Mana Potion. ➞ Draw your highest cost spell. Give it -2 cost.

Buff and thematic mirroring with Fish, allows you to discount your spell more and also reduces the amount of spell triggers it generates via not making a vial, potentially serving as a slight nerf to Zam or Water-Inspire strategies, though this will probably be a fairly minor nerf.

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Dracomantium (634)

    Text: Death: Dust your top three dead metal cards to give your hero armor. ➞ Death: Dust your top ten dead cards to give your hero armor.

    Keywords: guard ➞ guard,lifesteal

    Power: 6 ➞ 5

    Health: 9 ➞ 10

    Spell: Lead ➞ None

A fairly big changeup here. With the tweak to Chains, active hero Armor has less reliable answers, so I’m removing Lead, to allow it to be answered more proactively via Dusting/Silencing. Also tweaked the statline, keywords, and effect to make up for the loss of Lead and make the frontend body more valuable, and reduced the need for a metal build around, as it now just dusts 10 dead cards, rather than 3 Metal ones, which makes it easier to activate, but also means it will fights with other grave-focused strategies like Grave Roil and Sky Phoenix a bit more. Ideally these changes should serve to make Dracomantium more flexible, via a less-specific activation condition, and more valuable on the frontend thanks to having Lifesteal and higher health, while also allowing for greater counterplay via Silence/Dusting.

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Brimstone (410)

    Text: Death: Give your hero Burn to a Crisp. ➞ Death: Add Burn to a Crisp to your hand.

A small tweak/buff here, but one I really like. Putting the spell into hand is more valuable than putting it onto your hero, especially since Fire cards like Mothermander often want you to have more Fire cards in hand. Being able to play brimstone on-curve and then get a new in-hand fire card on its death feels pretty valuable for fire decks that want to maintain fire cards in hand, and beyond that, being able to play it early without risking your vial should generally make it more appealing.

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Light Knight (622)

    Text: Inspire Light: Gain armor and banner. ➞ Inspire Light: Gain armor and Shield.

    Keywords: None ➞ banner

A buff/tweak here, the fact that its Inspire effect does nothing after the first trigger always felt a bit odd to me (though there’s definitely possible design space for that.) Being able to regenerate a shield off each light spell played should make for some fun play patterns via Shielding up and attacking with it, then shielding up again to protect it on the enemy turn.

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Mushka (667)

    Keywords: lifesteal ➞ None

Nerf here, removing Lifesteal to make the life gap generated by this going unchecked for a few turns less significant, while still allowing its stats to remain strong early. Should still be a good card for aggro and midrange decks, and STR still has a few ways to give it lifesteal, like Tatt, which also works nicely with Anima.

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Century Key (750)

    Keywords: banner ➞ None

A nerf people have been asking for for a bit, 2c was also suggested as an option, but I think removing banner from the initial spell should help keep it flexible and maintain the usefulness of it as a set up option, but reduce its power as a tempo option, similar to the tweak to Orchid.

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Deep Freeze ➞ Cryoblast (1019)

    Name: Deep Freeze ➞ Cryoblast

A tweak to a cardname - I've been interested in having a cycle of spells that match up with the 8 primary elemental dragons in the game for awhile now - Gusto's Retort, Kha's Wrath, etc. This one was always envisioned as Cryogen's, but the old name made the connection kind of unclear.