So with the new season also came a new patch, and some detailed reworks - including another total redo of an extremely unpopular card (I guess I'll bite my tongue now after trashing it). Let's see how that shakes up gameplay.
Some general updates, as a starter
GENERAL UPDATES
New Feature: Infinite Rank Revamp Infinite Rank Leaderboard: When reaching Infinite, rank will be replaced by your leaderboard standing.
Snap Points: Your standing is determined by your Snap Points (SP) - the more cubes you win, the more SP you get!
Conquest Mode Improvements:
Improved UI/UX experience after completing a Conquest run to remove extra screens
Mute now saved across multiple battles in the same match
New improved visuals for Infinite Avatar border!
And for the meat of the game, the general card rebalancing and remaking:
Blade
[Old] 1/3 - On Reveal: Discard a card from your hand.
[New] 1/3 - On Reveal: Discard the rightmost card from your hand.
Developer Note: A solid card in early discard strategies, Blade has dropped off in both popularity and win percentage. As we examined weaker cards that could use a little love, we'd also been thinking about ways we could give a little push to some discard synergy cards, like Hela, Ghost Rider, Swarm, and of course Apocalypse. Because Blade is a card players acquire early on, a change accomplishing both of these goals needed to be clean and simple, and we think this fits the bill. It might not be enough to breathe new life into the daywalker, but we like to find opportunities for small changes with the potential to make some interesting waves.
Soul Stone
[Old] 1/1 - On Reveal: Draw a card. Ongoing: Enemy cards here have -1 Power.
[New] 1/1 - Ongoing: Enemy cards here have -1 Power.
Developer Note: It took players a few months to fully grasp the might of Thanos, but since then he's been a metagame mainstay with multiple stints at the top of the heap. We love Thanos, but his combination of flexibility and powerful synergy enablers has proven to be a bit dangerous over time. We decided we wanted to shave a piece of strength out of the kit, and decided to hit two birds with one stone by simplifying the only card in the kit with two abilities. We understand this is a bit ironic, considering the recent changes to Mystique and Rogue to copy the Soul Stone's draw effect, but oh well. While a meaningful loss of Power, we don't expect Thanos to fall out of favor once the dust settles.
Spider-Ham
[Old] 2/2 - On Reveal: Transform the highest-Cost card in your opponent's hand into a Pig, keeping its Power and Cost.
[New] 2/2 - On Reveal: Transform the leftmost card in your opponent's hand into a Pig, keeping its Power and Cost.
Developer Note: As we mentioned in the OTA that adjusted Spider-Ham from 1/1 to 2/2, we weren't happy with how damaging his effect was to a few of our cooler 6-Cost cards, especially Apocalypse. However, we liked that Spider-Ham hit a solid sweet spot of disruption without fully denying you the card, and even had some risk due to Destroyer and Infinaut. This change aims to retain those positive elements without applying it exclusively to higher-Cost cards, and also makes the effect a lot easier to play around if you suspect Peter Porker might be paying you a visit. The trigger will still hit 6-Cost cards slightly more often, since they'll tend to migrate leftward in your hand as you wait to play them, but Apocalypse will safely hide on the right if you can keep discarding him.
Snowguard
[Old] 1/2 - While in your hand, this transforms each turn into a Hawk or a Bear.
[Old] Hawk: 1/2 - On Reveal: Ignore all location abilities next turn.
[Old] Bear: 1/2 - On Reveal: Trigger the effect of this location.
[New] 1/2 - On Reveal: Add the Hawk and Bear auroras to your hand.
[New] Hawk: 2/3 - On Reveal: Ignore all location abilities until the end of next turn (or the game).
[New] Bear: 2/3 - On Reveal: Trigger the effect of this location.
Developer Note: It feels like every patch includes at least one wacky, unexpected card change these days, so here's one for today! Snowguard has turned out to be a largely unsatisfying card for players, posting poor stats on both popularity and actual wins. Our goals for Snowguard were to create a novel tool for Hot and Featured locations that might also see some play in Conquest decks looking to surprise the enemy, but we fell short. In revising the design, we aimed to:
Make her stronger. Granting both the Hawk and the Bear is more total Power on-curve, and decreases the variance around whether either is useful.
Give her deckbuilding identity. A few decks (and more to come) already care about adding material from outside your starting deck to your hand.
Reduce confusion. Results weren't matching intuition around the Hawk, so we extended the window to start after it resolves. We also added text clarifying the effect won't last through the end of the game, even if you Hawk on the final turn.
If possible, let her variants stay in play. Leaning into summoning instead of transforming cleanly solved this.
Absorbing Man
[Old] 4/5 - On Reveal: If the last card you played has an On Reveal, copy its text. (if it’s in play)
[Change] 4/5 -> 4/4
Developer Note: What is this, an OTA patch? After last week's balance updates were locked, but before they went live, we saw a huge surge in the strength and popularity of decks based on the Forge + Brood + Absorbing Man curve. We knew our changes weakened other top decks, and that the new kid was already becoming a Big Deal in ranked and Conquest. We're often happy to let things breathe for a minute when a new deck appears, but this case was unique because it risked an especially dull metagame to let it ride until our next OTA. We decided to make a change now, and we'll evaluate it again with the data gathered from the most recent weekend post-OTA.
And Spider-ham takes yet another hit. While I can see their logic in the fact that high cost cards would eventually move to the left, disabling adversaries like Apocalypse or Hela was the entire point of the card. I imagine it won't be long until he gets another rework, as this will drastically reduce his potential.
The Absorbing Man nerf was more than expected. More than a few of my matches from the last week involved him and Brood being combo'd, as well as the usage of Forge making the trio fairly devastating.
Blade might have a chance of making it into my Discard deck now, it had been a while since I thought of using the man.
And as for Snowguard, well, that's a curious rework. My immediate thought is how its another addition to the Bounce/Collector meta, which was the target of a few reworks not long ago. But mostly it'll be a breath of fresh air for a card that no doubt was in the precipice of popularity ever since its release.
With that, we have our new playground for the next couple of weeks. Thoughts?
