The ranked metagame has featured a fairly diverse mix of strategies this month, though Time decks have been a little over-represented, particularly Praxis.
This month's changes feature some nerfs to a few Time cards, to help nudge it back in line with the other factions. It also features a few buffs to some sweet cards on the fringes, from most of the other factions.
Nerfs:
- Disciplinary Weights (created by Teacher of Humility) - Now increases cost of additional cards by 2, instead of 3.
- Praxis Displacer - Now 5TT 3/3, instead of 4TT 3/2.
- Humbug Swarm - Now 6TT, instead of 5TT.
- Safe Return - Now 2TJ, instead of 1TJ.
Teacher of Humility - Since its debut, Teacher of Humility has been one of the most dominant cards of Fall of Argenport. While the card is fighting the good fight, punishing control and combo decks, we wanted to tone down the intensity, just a little. This change to Disciplinary Weights keeps the core design intact, while helping bring Time back in line with the other factions.
Praxis Displacer, Humbug Swarm - We wanted to take a little bit of efficiency out of some of the more successful Praxis tokens cards without disrupting the strategy's core. The advent of Temple Standard has given these decks an awful lot of low opportunity cost bounce, and slowing down the Displacer should help reduce repetitive gamestates where the same unit is bounced over and over. Humbug Swarm does make more interesting use of tokens than most, but we want to provide give a little more incentive to play with higher investment 5+ cost threats that have more impactful textboxes.
Safe Return - While the changes to Accelerated Evolution and Levitate had an impact in helping keep Alessi in check, recent evolutions in Combrei spells-matter decks have proven themselves very strong, even without Primal. Safe Return is not the strongest card in the deck, but it did lead to a lot of repetitive gamestates, repeatedly triggering the same Summons and regaining Killer. We like what this style of Combrei deck leads to, but we would like to see a little more diversity among these kinds of decks, similar to how the changes to the aforementioned Primal cards have led to a greater diversity of Berserk strategies.
Buffs:
- Xenan Lifespeaker - Now gets +3/+3 from its Ultimate, instead of +3/+1.
- Zuberi, Outlands Warlord - Now 4/5, instead of 3/5.
- Acquisitive Crow - Now 2/2, instead of 2/1.
Xenan Lifespeaker, Zuberi, Outlands Warlord - Inspire has proven itself an extremely fun and popular mechanic, with Time and Primal having the most success, thus far. We wanted to get Shadow and Fire a little bit more in on the action, as there's a lot of customization and replayability that goes along with this mechanic.
Acquisitive Crow - This is a really fun card that plays out fairly differently than most Berserk units, with more incentive to attack turn after turn, rather than a single big turn. We found the biggest thing holding it back was the extreme vulnerability; and while we don't want to remove all of that vulnerability, a second point of health changes the mix of cards you have to worry about when taking such a risk.