Breaker Crab (366)

    Text: Death: Gain 2 mana. ➞ Death: Gain 1 mana.

    Health: 3 ➞ 4

Was literally the lowest WR card in all of STR. Lacking a spell or meaningful statline in the Prism that is all about statlines felt off, so It gained +1hp and -1 mana removed from its effect, so the Death trigger is a less explosive early, but it provides far better stats, making it more likely that you can trade it in on your turn to actually reap the reward. Should be a good earlygame brawler alongside stuff like Boulder.

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One Punches ➞ Strikestorm (720)

    Name: One Punches ➞ Strikestorm

    Text: Exhaust your hero to have it do damage equal to its power to enemies. ➞ Your hero does damage equal to its power to enemy units.

A change made in service of eliminating the somewhat confusing mechanic of “Exhaust as cost” and cleaning up our card vocabulary via removing the term “Exhaust” from cards (only this and strike down used it). Overall, I think this should be a buff, as it allows you to use the card, then attack into a damaged unit with your hero, making it more flexible overall.

(Note: ‘Exhaust’ is still a game mechanic, it just isn’t explicitly mentioned on cards, since “Sleep” can fill the same role when it comes to most effects.)

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Strike Down (779)

    Text: Exhaust your hero to do 3 damage to a target. ➞ Do 2 damage to target unit. If you have a unit, do 3 damage instead.

Similar to Strikestorm, the “Exhaust your hero” clause here was interesting, but hard for new players to understand without playing the card several times. So it has dropped the clause and the ability to go face, but gets boosted damage if you have a unit in play. This should be a fairly low bar to cross, and helps to highlight and reward the core unit-driven gameplay of STR.

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Xythe (75)

    Text: Your hero has lifesteal and wither. ➞ Your hero has wither.

    Keywords: lifesteal,wither ➞ banner,wither

A cool change to classic card. Xythe was kind of languishing in terms of usage, and with Cube Jr. kind of cramping his old space, I’ve decided to separate the two fully and make them parallels, trading Xythe’s lifesteal for banner, since its hard to capitalize on hero Lifesteal + Wither at the same time. I imagine this should be a sizable boost for him, especially in the midgame where the extra Wither damage from banner will be valuable.

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Deep Cut (787)

    Keywords: banner,lifesteal,wither ➞ banner,wither

A minor nerf here to keep it consistent with Xythe, dropping lifesteal, which should be a minor loss overall, But I do think this card is already somewhat weak, so it could be shifted around the curve in the near future, maybe -1c and -banner, while buffing the damage on hail arrows and moving it up, or some similar adjustment.

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Mind Control (476)

    Cost: 3 ➞ 4

    Text: Steal target sleeping 2 cost or less enemy unit. Give it Dazed. ➞ Steal target 2 cost or less enemy unit. Give it guard and Barrier.

Moved up the curve + simplified, now can steal any 2c or less unit, rather than one which is sleeping. It also gives barrier and guard, allowing it to serve as a better defensive pivot. (Note that a unit switching sides will cause it to fall asleep)

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Sidekick (821)

    Text: Death: Give your hero Shield. ➞ Death: Give your hero Shield if it has no attached spell.

    Keywords: guard,banner ➞ banner

    Health: 2 ➞ 3

A small buff/revision here, now will no longer delete your attachments, so again, safer to play alongside vial, etc + trading guard for an extra HP point to help it tussle better earlygame.

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Chain Golem (1028)

    Text: Death: Give your hero Chain Toss. ➞ Death: Give all enemies Chains.

    Power: 4 ➞ 5

A buff here, retains the fragile statline, but pushed to be a bit crazier in terms of raw attack power, and made the death trigger a bit more potent, allowing you to break through an enemy board and suppress all its keywords. I believe we had a 4/1 or 5/1 armor in the past that saw little play so this should be interesting.

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Mountain Lion (1030)

    Cost: 7 ➞ 8

    Power: 6 ➞ 7

    Health: 6 ➞ 7

A nerf to banner otk here, it was amazingly impressive to see at the tournament on Sunday, and slowing it by one turn via raising lion’s cost (though not without strengthening his stats) shouldn't break its back imo, since it was managing turn 8-9 wins, so turn 9-10 should still be manageable. I also think that Guru is likely the real issue, so I could see reverting this and nerfing them in the future, but changing Guru would likely be tricker, so this is a less complex change to slow the deck a little bit for the time being.

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Mechabun (1038)

    Text: Summon: Draw an armor unit. ➞ Summon: Draw a unit with armor.

    Keywords: None ➞ armor

    Health: 3 ➞ 2

A simple change to an underperformer, helps with the theme of the card drawing an armor unit and gives it more value via shrugging off a bit of damage, shouldn’t be a huge deal. It still folds to 3dmg but squares up better vs smaller enemies thanks to Armor.

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Phoenix Plume (1199)

    Cost: 2 ➞ 3

The expected nerf, has proved to be a very ubiquitous tool, so like the nerf to jar, I don’t expect this to kill it, but it should allow Plume to carry a bit more opportunity cost.

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Molten Heart (1045)

    Cost: 4 ➞ 2

    Text: Give target unit +2/+2. Trigger its death effects. (If any) ➞ Give target ally unit +1 power. Trigger its death effects. (If any)

A fairly extreme change here, moving into the slot Plume had, but I think the card should be fairly balanced, as you will go “-1” since you need a living Death unit to play it on, whereas Plume would go net neutral via bringing back a dead one. It does seem like it could be very powerful when played immediately on units like Fun Guy and Flame Phoenix, so we’ll have to see. Overall I expect it to be valuable for aggressive HRT lists and less popular in more control oriented ones.

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Chain Toss (1129)

    Text: Give target unit Chains. Dust your top dead metal card to target a hero. ➞ Give target unit Chains.

A simplification here. Since Chains is no longer a full answer to hero armor, the value of chaining a hero is less, and the card was fairly complex for little benefit. It also only existed on Chain Golem and Jackrabbit, and Chain Golem was buffed to compensate for the nerf here, and can chain the enemy hero on Death. In the future we’ll add a few more answers to hero armor to help make it less reliable as well.

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Subjugate (1196)

    Text: Set each unit to 1 power. ➞ Set enemy units to 1 power.

This should generally be a buff, though using it to allow your own elderwoods or other 0 power units to attack was something that occasionally happened, so it does lose that capability. Thematically, INT effects are generally supposed to be safer/one sided, whereas WIS effects will be more “equal treatment” and affect your units as well.

This was the only card in the tutorial that didn’t exist in the main game, and is also a fairly iconic card in its own right. Now she’s back with a twist, allowing her to smack your opponent directly, rather than with effect damage, allowing her sunrise damage to scale with her power, which should help compensate for her somewhat poor statline, as well as allowing counterplay via Wither, Roots, and attack-draining effects.

    Tide Hunter (1002)

I don’t expect too many tears for this one, though I do like the idea, and I think she could synergize well with a future mechanic, so I’ll be benching her for now, but the art is sick, so I’m sure she’ll return in one form or another.