Simple change would be that battlesuits buffs your purple soldiers, keeping the power in purple and not blue’s. Personally though, I see it more as a problem with Peace tech 2 (notably garrision), and the fact that blue can often not have other good alternatives (their Peace/Law Tech 3’s being meh, Law tech 2 being quite bad, and Truth having very polarising matchups). Bringing garrision down to a once per turn draw, and buffing up blues other options would also achieve a similar result.
2 Likes
Is the problem really battle suits or is it garrison? I feel like without garrison the soldiers theme would not be that overwhelming.
Garrison is it’s own problem, but blue doesn’t really have the options it needs if its scaled back atm.
The short term solution is to stop the battle suits interaction to reduce the power, as to adjust the rest of blue’s kit to fill in the holes is a much larger endevour.
I don’t think after garrison is toned down that battlesuits into Cadet/Brave etc will be a problem, and suits can be returned to what it is.
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Battle Suits is just a solid card, and when it’s giving all your units +1 attack… that’s kind of a big deal for 2 gold and thinning your deck.
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Back to purple vs blue, is the reason blue wins because of the starter or is it really because of how powerful peace is? or that purple doesn’t have good answers to truth?
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You can find a few thoughts about the blue vs purple match-up here, from my opponent and me after a 9-1 series: [MMM1] Game 10: P1 Purple (HolyTispon) vs P2 Blue (Dreamfire) - #17 by Dreamfire
Truth was my go-to tech 2 plan, and IIRC @bansa also went for Truth at least as often as Peace in the series against Frozen. So it’s definitely not just because of Peace. I’d say it’s mostly about purple having trouble applying pressure early, which lets Blue get into its groove - which is very difficult in its matchups against Black, Red and White.
3 Likes
So what I have so far is, starting with the latest list from Bomber:
| Nerfs | |
|---|---|
| Vandy | Remove resist 1 at midband |
| Garth | Reduce midband stats to 2/3 |
| MoLaC | If you have no units in play, remove all runes from this |
| Lich’s Bargain | Base dame increased from 4 to 6 |
| Pirate Gunship | Remove obliterate 2, increase cost to 7 |
| Deteriorate | Increase cost to 1 |
| Dark Pact | Increase cost to 1 |
| Drill Sergeant | Change text to whenever you play a unit from yoru hand, put a +1/+1 counter on it |
| Flagstone Garrison | Cost increased from 3 to 4 |
| Bird’s Nest | Trash birds when birds nest leaves play |
| Buffs | |
|---|---|
| Porkhand Magistrate | Remove gold cost from ability |
| Regular-sized Rhinoceros | Gets Arrives: destroy an upgrade or ongiong spell |
| Torq | Increase stats to 2/4, 3/5, 4/6 |
| Jaina | Reduce maxband to level 6 |
| Low Priority Changes | |
|---|---|
| Masked Raccoon | Increase stats to 4/4 |
| Debilitator Alpha | Ability reads all attacking units get -1 atk |
| Arresting Constable | Cost reduced from 4 to 3 |
| Rickety Mine | Add haste |
| Crashbarrow | Reduce attack to 5 |
The only changes on that list I’m personally not a fan of are Troq, Rhino, and Rickety Mine.
Troq is a flavor objection; Rook’s whole gimmick is that he is meant to be “the hero with the most HP”, in every game he appears in that has a concept of HP, which is why he was the only one given 6 HP in the printed game. I agree that Troq needs a buff, but I’d prefer it be something that doesn’t encroach on the flavor of another hero. As I recall, there had been a proposal in the past to buff his midband ability by letting it apply to other buildings, not just the opponent’s base, and I’m personally more a fan of something along those lines.
Regular-sized Rhinoceros is another flavor objection, in this case because it breaks the connection between the two Rhino cards where they’re both large bodies with no abilities, and Oversized Rhinoceros is just a larger version of Regular-sized Rhinoceros. There’s also the factor of referencing Upgrade cards in a set that doesn’t contain any, which if this was intended to be a balance change applied to everyone would be bad since it could lead to confusion for new players, but that’s probably less of an issue here since it’s only intended for experienced players. In any case, if a buff is needed for Rhino I’d personally prefer it be a simple stat buff instead, though I don’t feel as strongly about this one as I did about Troq.
As for Rickety Mine, I’ve never really gone for Mine strats myself so I don’t have an especially informed opinion on it, but my concern with giving it haste is that you get an instant increase in gold with the only real risk being losing out on the potential to gain even more gold (as opposed to the printed version which has the risk of wasting gold if you can’t defend it, like almost every other building) and a little bit of base damage (which usually doesn’t matter), and the only cost being -1 card from your hand in a spec that has Desperation. Again, it’s possible I’m overrating how good it would end up being, but that’s my concern about its potential.
Everything else seems reasonable to me, so I don’t have much to say about those ones, and I should note again that my first two objections are purely from a flavor perspective—I think they’d probably be fine in terms of balance, I just would prefer balancing those cards a different way. Sorry for all the text, haha!
1 Like
Those changes to peace make it borderline useless. You’re already struggling for gold when pulling the combo, making a garrison cost 4 is just awful.
Don’t give mine haste. We saw how busted that is.
I agree with the points about Troq and Rhino, flavour is still important here.
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I don’t know whether Dark Pact is costing 1 gold is enough, to be honest. Given Demonology is supposed to be about power with tradeoffs, I was thinking of some sort of card penalty on it.
One of the main reasons Blue does so well against purple is Aven. Purple has only one targeting option in the starter, which a) costs the same as aven (plus summoning a hero, which purple is often not wanting to do early game) and b) requires the blue player to misplay (as it only targets patrolling units)
Purple is all about eeking out small advantages in the early game with Mox, Nullcraft, Battlesuits etc, and aven just dumpsters all over that plan.
Tech 1 helps with aven (stewardess is still a good card), but you either have to double tech it, or basically just lose if you don’t draw it turn 3. And then you still don’t have an answer to Hounds early on.
Tech 2 evens things up (Tric and Xenostalker are all great targeting options later on, with Now! as a backup) but by this point it can often be too late (and be careful of community service if actually going for a Present plan).
Persoanlly I would love Forgetton Fighter to either cost 1, or remove one of its many restrictions (being able to hit non patrolling units would help a lot here). Given its such an abysmal card (its barely a tempo play and such painful card disadvantage), Or allow Seer/Tinkerer to be able to target with their effect and add time runes to any unit (slight buff to Tric, but you don’t keep tinkerer when going into Tech 2 Present, and the tech plan is pretty tight to fit in seers, so I doubt this would affect any matchup bar Blue/Purple mirror which seems fine)
4 Likes
I also agree with Hobusu’s thoughts. And having seen games with buffed mines, they were very quickly overpowered and broken. Mine is slightly undertuned, but no where near where it needs such a drastic buff (nor is it even the weakest card in reds line up, or blood neading any more power).
Dark pact dealing damage (2?) to Vandy is the change I would like to see added to the card, seems to keep the flavour well while having interesting interactions for both players.
3 Likes
For the cards that do base damage I do think increasing the base damage isn’t the solution, but increasing gold cost. I think if it dealt damage to vandy it would be a dead card a lot of the time and it would be nearly unplayable unless you’re already really ahead.
The tinkerer change sounds smart to me, very niche impact without really changing anything else drastically.
I’m definitely not married to the rickety mine or crashbarrow changes, though I think with the nerfs to a lot of other good finishing options crashbarrow would come out to be one of the better ones left untouched. I don’t think giving mine haste would make it that powerful, it’s already not very good until you flip heads twice, so it’s like a 75% chance of being a very unimpressive waste of tech, gold and a card.
Flip heads twice and its insane, thats 7 gold gained for 1 card and 2 base damage. Flip heads once and its really good. I would happily pay 1 card and 2 base damage for 4 gold. Its just the case where you fail your first flip therefore pay 1 card and 2 base damage for 1 gold. And people forget the expected value of the gold mine is only slightly below the 1 head flip senario.
I do agree increasing the base damage wouldn’t work for dark pact against any colour except red (unless you made it silly like 7 damage), as the resources gained allow you to control the board too effectively for your opponent to be able to do the rest. It mostly just serves as a “How many uses before working dark pact” option.
While increasing the gold cost would also work, I feel like it moves away from the spirit of the card more (and I think the vandy damage leads to interesting decisions), but if it ends up with a better balanced card, then go for it.
Crash barrow is good, but not a problem imo. [Necro]/Blood/Truth is good but not game breaking in my eyes, and is already getting 2 nerfs and reducing the power of Crashbarrows is going to have a big impact in the Green vs Red matchup.
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Some card penalties I was vaguely thinking of for Dark Pact, where X is 1 or 2:
- At the start of your next turn, discard X cards.
- At the start of the next upkeep for an opponent, they look at your hand and choose X cards for you to discard. (A little awkward, but trying to keep things asynchronous.)
I really like that idea of revealing your hand, discard probably is too rough. Maybe a mix might be a good compromise: gold cost 1 and reveal your hand until your next upkeep
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Just brainstorming here, but another potential nerf for Dark Pact could be to make it so Vandy’s midband doesn’t target it.
I think DP needs to be nerfed when it’s teched in as well. This might be an additional nerf to be considered, though.
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I imagine that would require some pretty cumbersome wording. I think it makes more sense to exclude Metamorphosis, by adding “non-ultimate” to the current wording.
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This is kind of impossible without revealing tech choices, which is sort of something we don’t really want.