Going off of the version used in my playtest as Green against bolyarich, my main observation so far is that the starter cards aren’t scary enough. I can look at the starter cards as Green, from experience so far, and think “I’m not scared about any of these”. With the largest body that can attack being 2/2, and no spells that benefit units on the board, Brown has a less scary early game than Blue. I think it could do with some tuning up, and that should take precedence over adjusting Tech I onwards.
Flavour-wise, I don’t think giving haste to the Zerklings so early does what it’s intended to do. From my (very limited) experience of StarCraft I, the scary thing about fast Zurglings early on is one of two things:
- Easy surrounding of more vulnerable opposing units;
- Easy run-around to attack workers.
Given how the patrol zone and workers are handled in Codex, I don’t think granting Zerklings haste properly conveys either of these reasons that the early speed boost is scary. Maybe something like Rook’s midband would be more on-point.
Archon, you’ve mentioned you might have some ideas for handling the early game against Calamandra, maybe this might change things?