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Balance

I’ve overtuned the slivers in the previous updates.

My balance methodology is to balance new cards to converge to 300 rating in a random deck on the dev server. (For reference, a completely random deck is defined to converge to 300 rating.)

However, slivers have more synergy potential than the average card, and thus should at the very least be in a random deck with all creatures. (Of course, Skeleton Army has synergy potential, but I’m setting the baseline for bot balancing, and being in the same deck as Rank 3 Meditate isn’t it.)

I’ve done some testing with the deck: [“Predatory Sliver”, “Blur Sliver”, “Leeching Sliver”] with a random core. This is what I’d call “baseline average synergy”, as usually the best sliver decks don’t go full slivers, but instead use a sliver to buff a specific non-sliver aether that really benefits for it. As stands, this deck converges to 500 rating. The target for this deck is 300, which means a lot of slivers are getting nerfs.

To ensure the nerfs hit all slivers equally, the slivers have been tested again alone, this time with a target of 270. (Which puts the above deck at 300)

Predatory (2): 2/13 -> 2/11

Blur (3): 3/13 -> 3/10

Leeching (4): 4/16 -> 4/15

Gemhide (5): 5/17 -> 4/16

Bonescythe (6) 5/20 -> (7) 5/20

Reborn (7) 6/21 -> (6) 5/15

Sweeping (8) 3/19 -> 4/17

Hivelord (9) 8/8 -> 7/7

But what if the core is not random? Due to an unforeseen interaction, this deck with the new core Alchemize led to a basically unbeatable deck ( > 10000 rating). I discovered this interaction a few hours after releasing the patch, and decided to keep silent about it to see if anyone would be able to find this broken combo.

Alchemize now cannot be used twice in a row. (Using it gives two charges, it loses 1 charge per turn, and its inactive while it has charges.) This means that while previously you could play aethers every turn, now doing so is one less aether per turn, and leads to basic mana building up. Combined with the sliver nerfs, the former broken deck is now converging to 360, which is acceptable for handcrafted decks.

It’s been brought to by attention there’s a combo involving Murozond, Unbounded, Natural Fury, Rank 2, and a bunch of aether runes. Playtesting says this is not necessarily OP, because if your murazond dies before you can natural fury it you pretty much lose on the spot. That said, a deck that is pretty much guaranteed to end the game in one way or another by turn 4 is unacceptable. A similar combo with bounce is also possible, and unacceptable.

As such, Murazond, Unbounded has been reworked:

(7)

R: Multiply my base power by e307.

You can’t target me or my blocker with spells.

18/11

Dev Comment: 18 * e307 should be familiar to anyone who has worked with floating point.

Dragon’s Lair: Now has “I cannot have indestructible.” Guess why this change was made. Nevermind, turns out that wasn’t the only way to break dragon’s lair! Removing it from the game for now.

Machine Turret: (8) 1/16 -> (9) 2/19. Loses double combat and the ability preventing it from being buffed by F7.

Wall of Protection: Removed from the game. the ability for neutral to be able to prevent setups from killing a creature punishes good calculation skills and is a color pie break. This card might get added back in a later patch as a Restorer card, which is what it was originally. If so, it’ll have a small rework (likely on play heal your creatures as well).

Rune of Siphoning: Removed from the game. This is because it’s being replaced by the new cards.

The Vampire Lord

I’ve had a soft spot for the game play of vampire lord of old spectromancer, and you’ve seen me attempt various iterations of it in aethermancer. A class, then a core, then the core was removed, and then a rune. With the new cost modification mechanic introduced in the previous patch, I finally think I can recreate it. The rune is removed, and it’s back to being a core. Take a look:

Vampire Lord [41]

R: Steal 1 life from your creatures.

When you play an aether card of printed cost 1-8/9/10/11/12, lose 6/12/13/14/15 life.

Your aether creatures of printed cost 1-8/9+ cost 1/2 less.

Note how this effectively soft-bans using aether spells, but perhaps triangle rejuvenate rank 8 is good enough at compensating for the weakness of this core that it’s worth playing through the penalty.

To accompany the vampire lord, I’ve added 5 of its class cards from swfmancer. The explanations of the three cards not added:

Blood Boil: Did not fit with the vampire lord then, does not fit with it now.

Justicar: Three reasons, any one of which would not be a deal-breaker, but on the aggregate make it not worth adding:

• W6 interaction.

• The point of Chastiser is to play it opposite a big creature like an elemental, so you can use spells to kill it. Creatures tend to be fragile enough in aethermancer it’s easily to kill it without Justicar’s help.

• This card has much more synergy with spells than creatures, and a real vampire lord would probably not want to run it.

Vampire Elder: Too heavy a positioning punish. Acceptable to play around when your opponent is known to have 4 of 8 cards. Not really acceptable with freeform deckbuilding.

The remaining 5 cards are fairly faithful ports of the swfmancer versions. I’ve grabbed the swfmancer versions from the archives so you can compare:

Ghoul (2 + 4 life) _loc3_ = “Each time an opponent's creature dies, modify Ghoul with +2 attack.”; 1/14	Ghoul (3) Opponent’s creature dies: Modify me with +2 power. 0/12
Devoted Servant (3 + 6 life) _loc3_ = “At the beginning of its owner's turn, modify Devoted Servant's with +1 attack. When Devoted Servant dies it increases its owner's Blood power by an amount equal to its attack.”; 1/12	Devoted Servant (4) R: Modify me with +1 power. When I die: Gain aether equal to my power. 1/20
Vampire Mystic (4 + 8 life) _loc3_ = “During your turn, Vampire Mystic has +2 attack for each time your opponent received damage this turn. [Answered at parity by Air 10.]”; 3/34	Vampire Mystic (5) R: Reset my power. Opponent takes damage: Modify me with +2 power. 3/31
Chastiser (6 + 12 life) _loc3_ = “Haste. Each time its owner receives damage on opponent's turn, modify Chastiser with +2 attack. [Answered up by Air 10, or keeping it at 3 attack, or life pressure.]”; 3/33	Chastiser (Illusionist 7) You take damage, except by your own (W2): Modify me with +2 power. Haste. 3/29
Magister of Blood (8 + 16 life) _loc3_ = “Haste. When Magister of Blood is summoned it deals 16 damage to each of the opponent's blocked creatures.”; 6/24	Magister of Blood (Evoker 11) ! 14 damage to opponent and their blocked creatures. 6/20

Commentary:

Part of why the vampire lord cards were so fun is how well designed they are. Ghoul is extremely efficient, but can’t be played on the first turn. It’s attack can get incredible, but it’s easy enough to kill if it gets out of hand. It was very satisfying to pay 2 aether for a creature who’s first attack was 7. With new ai tools that I didn’t have when I was making swfmancer, it turns out it was in fact too efficient, so its numbers went down.

With Chastiser, the haste gives it an interesting decision to kill an enemy’s low health creature, or let it hit you to gain more attack. The haste also gives some counterplay against A10, which is otherwise an incredible uptrade: kill the creature and accept a 2-for-1.

Magister of Blood was 16 damage to preserve the symmetry with the life payment. Because 16 damage was too much face damage, it was given haste instead. 16 damage would not do this time, as a discount of 3 mana would be a nightmare to balance, and 16 life for a discount of 2 mana would feel terrible. As such, it’s been redesigned closer to its original form, with the 14 damage mirroring the 14 life payment to cast it early with the Vampire Lord core.

When playtesting the new Vampire content, they’re as fun as I remember them. I hope you enjoy them too.

Here’s a bonus card:

Sphinx of the Second Sun (Chronomancer 8)

After your combat phase: Take a start of turn phase.

6/20

How did the Alch balance disaster happen? (my explanation on Discord)

so the design of alch is its like 2 runes of aether right, it lets you play aether 2 ahead of time

so that normally costs 14

but unlike 2 real runes of aether, once you use it, you get another 2 runes of aether, at the cost of 1 of each basic

and this is supposed to be a bad trade

firstly, after you play an aether card, you just emptied your aether, so more aether is less valuable than the basics your trading

secondly, a use of aether is to try to fill in the gaps of your basic houses, and by lowering your basics that use is ruined

you can play around it with meditate or something, and ive noted that meditate 3 vs meditate 5 is basically a wash with alch

but in general, i expect it to be worse than 2 runes of aether, so a bit of a discount

and in fact the bots agreed with me, the cost of -12 was given to me with bot testing, with random decks

what i didnt factor in is that there are some aether cards with very strong combo potential (eg the slivers, but theres other aether combos)

and those are balanced around aether having a bit of a cooldown, where after you play one it empties your pool

so when you alch and spend your 2 aether, the trading of basics for more aether, which was supposed to be a downside is in fact quite broken

end of patch notes

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