OTA Balance Updates
Its been awhile since we have had balance updates and the meta definitely could use a few! Before we get into the changes, let’s go over the upcoming OTA and Patch schedule!
- May 29: OTA (The Metagame Refresh!)
- June 3: Patch
- June 5: OTA
- [Old] 2/2 - Gains +2 Power from merging. End of Turn: Merge one of your created cards into this
- [Change] 2/2 -> 2/1
- [Old] 0/1 - Ongoing: This can't be destroyed. Give your Cap +2 Power when this moves to Cap's location.
- [Change] 0/1 -> 0/0
- [Old] 1/1 - On Reveal: Give Thanos -1 Cost. Draw a card.
- [New] 1/1 - On Reveal: Give Thanos -1 Cost.
Developer Notes
We're taking aim at the current metagame tyrant with a smattering of small changes that should weaken some of today's strongest cards, fostering additional competition in the midrange archetypes especially.
An obvious candidate was Strange Supreme, who has proven to be a force alongside the Stones in Thanos. That's definitely a role we knew the card would play, but Supreme's strength has exceeded our expectations enough to merit a nerf. It may not seem that this Power update will have a big impact, but It's easy to remember the blowout games where Supreme got huge enough to force a retreat.There are plenty of close games that tend to be worth a lot more cubes!
Our first swing at Sam Wilson was light, in part because we didn't want to make a huge shift. While very popular, Sam was a solid card in a lot of decks rather than being the best card in a very strong one, which is generally what we'd like to see. Since then, Sam's stock has continued to rise and fuel the metagame's strongest decks, so we're shifting our approach to better compensate for the consistency Sam affords by moving base Power to Sam. This weakens the Shield's impact on the early game, and specifically makes it worse fodder for Strange Supreme. Alongside these changes, we're taking more direct aim at Thanos by removing a draw from the Time Stone. A major strength of Thanos has become the deck's capacity to justify playing more "tech cards" with lower Power than other decks can sustain, because the Stones turn into Power without using slots via Strange Supreme while Thanos himself has become a very efficient play.
We love to see that–we want Thanos in play! Time Stone has been the strongest Stone atenabling Thanos while adding access to all the tech cards, so this change should have a large impact.
- [Old] 2/2 - On Reveal: Afflict all other cards with -1 Power.
- [Change] 2/2 -> 3/3
Developer Notes
While Thanos has earned the majority of players' ire, the other candidate for "best deck" has quietly been an afflict-based deck leaning hard on Hazmat, by far the worst matchup for Thanos.
Beyond supporting a very strong deck, Hazmat also constrains our design space by being arguably the best enabler for synergy designs–a similar challenge we've encountered with Luke Cage. We'd like to create more room for those cards to exist at a more diverse range of strength, so we're going to explore weakening Hazmat in this role and monitor how that impacts the performance of other designs. This will also make the one-two punch of Luke Cage and Hazmat more difficult to deploy.
- [Old] 2/2 - On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all Ongoing cards in your hand and deck.
- [New] 1/3 - On Reveal: Remove the abilities from all Ongoing cards in your deck.
Developer Notes
Backed by the relatively recent buff to 2/2, the Sauron deck has quietly positioned itself as one of the best decks in the metagame for a while. We've been fine to let it fly a little under the radar, but the changes above are aiming to create a lot of shifts at the top. We don't want to leave this heir apparent in the pole position, given all of its tough matchups are receiving nerfs and the deck itself is pushing out other midrange strategies that don't often deploy 20 power by turn 4.
To that end, we're narrowing Sauron's effect to create more pressure on the drawbacks of cards like Ebony Maw and Starbrand, pushing players to navigate the downsides more often.
- [Old] 3/4 - End of Turn: Runs from your hand to a random location. (if possible)
- [Change] 3/4 -> 3/3
Developer Notes
It's taken a while, but Makkari has begun carving out some significant space in decks, whether that's as a bonus 3-Cost in Silver Surfer or extra Power in decks that rarely fill locations or play their entire hand. However, she's also become one of the highest-performing cards in those decks, with a winrate on par with Silver Surfer himself! That's a bit too extreme for a card that's as random and "free" as Makkari, so we're taking away a little Power here.
[Old] 4/6 - On Reveal: Each card in your hand gives one of your cards in play +1 Power.
- [New] 4/6 - On Reveal: Each card in your hand gives one of your other cards in play +1 Power.
Developer Notes
This is just a text update to clarify that Kahhori ignores herself for her buff effect.
- [Old] 4/5 - On Reveal: Flood this location. Next turn is the last turn cards can be played here.
- [Change] 4/5 -> 3/2
- [Old] This is the last turn cards can be played here.
- Functional Change: Flooding no longer "combos" with Legion
- Cards can't be played here.
- (No change)
Developer Notes
We previously changed Storm to 4/5 primarily to weaken her synergy with Legion, as a War Machine + Legion deck was proving popular and frustrating. That gave us the opportunity to explore different potential executions on the way Storm worked, but along the way we also
decided to evaluate how Legion should work with similarly timed locations, as Flooding itself was inconsistent. We built it that way in part because so many playtesters expected Legion to flood the board in a single turn.
In the end, rather than change the explicit functionality of Storm, we decided that copies of locations would not inherit the turn timing status of the original. This will weaken the interaction with Legion by delaying the copies of Flooding for another turn, meaning we can safely move Storm back to 3-Cost.
- [Old] 2/1 - On Reveal: Give 2 cards in your hand +2 Power. You can't play them next turn.
- [New] 2/3 - On Reveal: Give 2 characters in your hand +2 Power. You can't play them next turn.
Developer Notes
Toxie Doxie was aimed to be a novel addition to cards that benefit from "handbuff" effects, like Sebastian Shaw and Mister Sinister. However, the card released a touch on the weak side, and hasn't been able to earn its slot in those decks. We're taking the soft and simple approach here with a buff to Toxie's own Power, along with a text correction to make it clear that Toxie ignores skills.
- [Old] 3/5 - The first time another card moves here each turn, move it to another location.
- [New] 3/5 - The first time another one of your cards moves here each turn, move it to another location.
Developer Notes
This is a fairly minor change, but we've seen a surprising number of pleas to limit Hercules to your own cards. We're happy to try it out and see what happens, especially with more automated movers like Xorn, Batroc, and Topaz in the game now.
- [Old] 5/7 - On Reveal: Your cards with Power below 0 switch sides. Destroy those that can’t.
- [Change] 5/7 -> 5/8
Developer Notes
The story is almost completely opposite for Annihilus, who immediately joined the metagame in a big way before sliding into obscurity. With players filling locations a bit more often and additional disruption like Strange Supreme weakening "Clog" strategies, Annihilus has room to receive some more strength.
- [Old] 3/3 - On Reveal: +1 Max Energy. Ongoing: You can only play 1 card a turn.
- [Change] 3/3 -> 3/4
Developer Notes
The Power will continue to increase until morale improves! Electro is a card that tells a great story and has a lot of interesting potential synergy options, such as War Machine and Blink. We don't want to disrupt the card's base function, as it's a pretty satisfying card–we just want it to win a bit more. To that end, we're once more increasing its Power.
- [Old] 2/0 - Ongoing: Your highest-Power cards have +2 Power.
- [New] 3/0 - Ongoing: Your highest-Power cards have +3 Power.
Developer Notes
Cerebro saw a small surge when we shifted from 3/0 to 2/0, but has since then had a rough go of things. Some of that is the "splash damage" it takes from cards that are targeting Ongoing, but there's also a stronger metagame and more cards that threaten to impact Cerebro. So we're going to try something a little stronger for one of our favorite deckbuilding challenges.
- Ongoing effects are disabled here.
Developer Notes
We disabled Isle of Silence (oh, the irony) due to a VFX bug occurring with a few cards, especially Iron Patriot. We've addressed that issue and are simply adding this location back to the pool.
Datamines
Welcome to the Mine of Data, where we mine for information. I am the Senior Mining Officer, BEWD, and I am here to share what we have recently extracted.
Dormammu and Clea will be swapping in the release schedule. Dormammu is now set to release in June and Clea will be July.
All of the spotlight variants have rarity and release dates now along with some new variants including these!
We all love locations (maybe) so here is a small leak on some upcoming locations:
- Seventh Cosmos
- Zenn-La
Sad news, Mercury and Hellion fans. Both cards' release dates have been removed as of now, but I’m sure they are just hanging out with Firestar, right?
One final datamine, it appears the Reactor cards we datamined last patch are related to the High Voltage game mode, so this implies we should be seeing a reworked mode with some sort of integration with these PvE cards, interested to see what this means!
If you could be so kind to leave a 5 star Yelp review I would be so gracious! Thank you for visiting the Mine of Data!
All datamined information is subject to change and not final.
Global Bounty
The rewards from the global bounty should be waiting in players inboxes!
Wrapping It Up and Putting on a Bow
Let us know down below what change you are most excited for! We will also have our wonderful writer ScoSco review all of the changes in an article coming very soon! Here is a sneak peek:
Have a BEWDiful Day!