Brimstone (19)

    Traits: wither ➞ None

A small nerf to Brimstone. It has been a strong choice for a long time now and should remain powerful in the wake of this small nerf.

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Psyche (21)

    Health: 4 ➞ 5

Small buff to another 2c Strength unit to offer some other options.

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Skeeter (85)

    Text: Death: Add Zomboid with Hex to the enemy deck. ➞ Death: Add Zomboid to the enemy deck.

Small nerf to Skeeter, making the Zomboid he infects the enemy deck with a little bit less of a dead draw, by removing Hex from it.

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Scrollkeeper (2083)

    Text: Summon: Give the right-most unit in your hand -1 cost. Mulligan units in your hand. ➞ Summon: Give the right and left-most cards in your hand -1 cost. Mulligan your hand.

    Traits: None ➞ stealth

    Power: 4 ➞ 3

Small rework to Scrollkeeper, -1pow +Stealth, and buffing and simplifying its effect a bit by having it discount the left and right most cards, and mulligan the entire hand.

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Fire Noble (2091)

    Power: 2 ➞ 3

Small +1pow buff to an AOE/defensive tool in Wisdom.

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Uppercut (1018)

    Text: Return target unit to hand. Attach Flames to it. ➞ Return target unit to hand.

Small nerf to a potent removal/tempo tool in Agility. Returning an enemy unit to hand can often be better than destroying it as it avoids death triggers, so tuning it back a little via dropping the flames clause, to make the effect a bit less punishing when your opponent replays the unit.

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Waking Dream ➞ Dreamgate (20030)

    Name: Waking Dream ➞ Dreamgate

We’ve decided to change the art for Waking Dream, after a conversation with a Canadian Indigenous Skyweaver player. Dreamcatchers are a spiritual and cultural symbol for Indigenous Peoples, and we want to approach art that reflects the diversity of our characters in a respectful and non-appropriative way.

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Beloved (3029)

    Text: Give a target +1 health for each character. ➞ Give a target +1 health for each character on the battlefield.

Small rewording based on feedback from Matthew and the community to make it a bit easier to read.

C - Now we come to a particularly exciting section of changes - with soft launch and the real economy in the future, which will prohibit prism shifting, we decided to make some changes to prism Identities to help make them a tad more cohesive via some prism shifts. Matthew presented proposals for a number of shifts and we workshopped the possible shifts to find those that would help reinforce Prism Identities while not upsetting the game’s balance.

M - As we move towards soft launch we couldn’t be more thrilled about new cards, and telling the stories behind each Prism and Hero. This week I suggested a few Prism Shifts, targeting the dark Ada deck, and adding more Zomboid flavor to Heart in exchange for some simple efficient units in Strength. A big part of my motivation here was centralizing token units, and having less Wall of Dead on Wall of Dead action. Centralizing tokens like Songbirds to Agility, Armored Guards to Strength, and Zomboids to Heart helps create more defined and united armies.

Maw Worm (1017)

    Prism: agy ➞ hrt

M - Maw Worm has always felt out of place to me, and when Coulter brought up the trade for Mighty Steed I was all the way on board. Healing in Agility is powerful, as life is a major resource for Agility, and Maw Worm is an incredibly efficient healing tool. Lifesteal is a more thematic and fair way of adding incremental healing to Agility. Maw Worm has the drawback of eating your recursion targets in Heart, but you can also use Maw Worm as a midrange tool to clean your grave for Ancients Rise, giving it a little more depth.

C - This is a change I’d personally been considering for a long time, but felt unsure of due to Agility lacking many healing tools and Heart often wanting to use its dead units for other effects, but Maw Worm’s effect is very Heart-centric. I do wonder if it may be too effective as a healing tool in Heart, so it's definitely one to watch, but it also fights for deck building space with cards like Grave Roil, and, as matthew mentioned, opens up new options for cards like Ancients Rise.

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Mighty Steed (3011)

    Text: Your hero has armor. ➞ Your hero has armor and banner.

    Prism: hrt ➞ agy

C - Heart’s trade for Maw Worm, offering a somewhat defensive tool in exchange for it, with a buff to boot, now steed gives your hero armor and banner while active, allowing it to serve as a ‘double’ banner source that can scale really well with cards like Mountain Lion.

M - Mighty Steed is a perfect fit in Agility, buffing your hero, and making Samya a formidable attacker.

Sabletooth (1047)

    Prism: agy ➞ str

M - Simple, robust, and efficient earth unit for Strength. It fit perfectly into the 3 Death effect card shuffle with Songrider and Grimlord.

C - Yup! A simple swap with Grimlord and Songrider, moving a simple card into Strength.

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Olympia (16)

    Prism: str ➞ hrt

M - One of Heart’s themes is flooding the board with small units and buffing them. Olympia also helps fortify the idea that Heart isn’t evil, it’s the balance of light and dark, the cycle of life and death.

C - A small shift here, trading with Griff Scout. Matthew’s notes about Heart and its themes are also on point!

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Griff Scout (3019)

    Prism: hrt ➞ str

M - Griff Scout never felt like a Heart card to me, so it felt like a really clean trade for Olympia. I can’t wait to see Strength with a few more Armored Guards. Stone Fist and more Swords help Griff shine.

C - A simple swap with Olympia - Scout always felt kind of odd in Heart to me.

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Stone Fist (3060)

    Prism: hrt ➞ str

M - This card fits great into Strength’s big unit theme, it’s also simple and efficient, but powerful.

C - Absolutely, a really solid prism shift here, I’m a tad concerned that it removes the only 1c earth spell from Heart but it's far more thematic in Strength.

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Songrider (3079)

    Prism: hrt ➞ agy

C - A bird migrates back to Agility - Rider originally moved from Agility to Heart during a swap with Gale awhile back, so it feels appropriate to see it return.

M - He’s coming home! Felt like the perfect swap for Sabletooth, giving Agility another Songbird, and Strength another Elderwood.

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Bone Mask (79)

    Prism: str ➞ hrt

M - Bone Mask was a major motivator for some of the changes this week. It kind of fit in Strength as grave disruption, but that wasn’t in a healthy place in the format so it needed to change. Strength doesn’t have a focus on grave manipulation, so the last patch’s Bone Mask could often feel extremely linear. Bone Mask in Heart fits perfectly as a mana sink that uses your graveyard as a resource to produce tokens or filters for recursion. It's a fun and thematic addition to Heart’s package, adding a bit more focus to grave manipulation.

C - Yeah, Bone Mask was a bit odd in Strength, though the general idea of Zomboids in Strength isn’t too out of place, as they are simple, aggressive ‘token’ units that fit its strategy well, and can help teach early lessons about death effects via cards like Grimstone, but it is definitely nice to have a few more Zomboid sources in Heart.

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Grimlord (62)

    Prism: str ➞ hrt

C - One thing Matthew and I have been discussing is the value of moving certain ‘token’ units to particular prisms - I feel that any token can appear in any prism, but also agree with his opinion that having certain tokens more ‘centralized’ in certain prisms can open up slightly more directed deckbuilding options, which is why we decided to try to centralize Zomboids into the heart prism a bit more by moving Bone Mask and Grimlord to Heart.

M - The goal of this change is to add more token diversity, by centralizing ‘token’ units we can have more defined armies representing each Prism. I totally agree with Coulter that every token has a place in each prism, but it’s also nice to have a greater focus on a few ‘token’ units for each prism, adding some thematic definition for players to build around. One of my major motivations for this was the dark Ada deck, seeing Ada fill her board with Zomboids with a spell that uses resources always available to Strength felt wrong. Part of the cost of Wall of Dead is dusting units, and if that resource is always available it makes it too consistent. In Heart you have competition for grave resources from other cards, making the cost a lot more fair.