Card Updates

So the first balance patch is out and it’s a doozy. The expected nerfs hit Devil Dinosaur, Moon Girl, and Nova. But we did get some buffs to some other cards as well. So let’s cover the changes, shall we?

Colossus: 2 cost for 3 power.

Old ongoing: can’t be destroyed or moved.

New ongoing: can’t be destroyed, moved, or have its power reduced.

A slight improvement of life for our Russian friend. It probably doesn’t move him up in playability but we will take slight improvements where we can get them.

Crossbones: 4 cost for 8 power

You can only play this at locations where you are winning.

Just a template update making his wording a bit more clear. He now says you can only play him at locations where you are winning. Easier to understand but doesn’t change his playability or lack thereof.

Crystal: 4 cost for 4 power

Old on reveal: Shuffle your hand into your deck and draw three cards when you play this card.

New on reveal: If you play this card in the middle location, shuffle your hand into your deck and draw three cards when you play this card.

More options are generally a good thing. Crystal being more flexible as to if you want to discard your hand and draw three cards is probably a good thing but time will tell. Overall I’d say it’s a lateral move, not a nerf nor a buff.

Devil Dinosaur: 4 cost for 0 power

Ongoing this card gets +2 power for each card in your hand.

We all knew this was coming. 3 cost for that ability was just too strong. Overall I think it makes hand size decks matter but he won’t be the auto-include that he previously was. Should make the meta more interesting and we won’t see Dino/Nova/Moon Girl dominate all three pools.

Dr. Strange: 3 cost for 3 power

On reveal: Move your highest Power cards to this location.

A slight buff to the move decks. The +1 power is always nice to see.

Kraven: 2 cost for 2 power

When a card moves here, this gets +2 Power.

Again another buff to the movement archetype. A buff to both his power and his activation. Probably not enough to move the movement deck up to competitive but time will tell.

Moon Girl: 4 cost for 4 power

Flat out she was far too good as 3 cost for 3 power that duplicated the cards in your hand. She led to some completely absurd and degenerate turns where you could play double combo pieces. This of course completely disregards how crazy she was/is with Collector and Devil Dino. Simply put this needed to happen as she was a requirement to play in the former best deck in the game.

Nova: 1 cost for 2 power

Old: When this is destroyed, give your cards +2 power

New: When this is destroyed, give your cards +1 power

This nerf is pretty self-explanatory as he was way too good before a +2 to everything when he died. He was part of the Dino Deck and as such he definitely needed to be slightly worse. This nerf puts him more in line with the other powerful cards without completely gutting him.

Okoye: 1 cost for 1 power

On Reveal: Give every card in your deck +1 Power

Okoye formerly was a 2 cost 1 power and added +2 Power to every card in your deck. It feels like a lateral move overall. While you can’t disregard the overall lesser Power additions, she does play nicely in the Kazar decks. She also gives your cards another turn of bonuses if played on the first turn. So while not a nerf, certainly not a buff.

White Queen: 4 cost for 6 Power

Old On Reveal: If your opponent has a 6 cost card, make a copy in your hand.

New On Reveal: Draw a copy of the highest cost card in your opponent’s hand.

A huge upgrade. So many times you’d play Emma and they’d just not have a 6 cost in their hand and you’d whiff. Now you’re guaranteed to hit something. Does this make her more part of the meta? I’d say it’s a solid step in the right direction and that this is a large buff to her overall.

General Updates

Improved the collecting experience for the free daily credits available in the Shop, plus a new reminder to claim your free daily credits

This is pretty self-explanatory and is mostly a notification update which is nice.

Improvements to the Player Name profanity filter.

Again pretty self-explanatory and is a good thing.

Added the ability to mute your opponent's emotes.

The fairly standard thing to be able to do. Legends of Runeterra, Hearthstone, etc have all had the ability to turn off your opponent from spamming emotes at you and annoying you with them. Also, some people aren’t a fan of emotes in general and if that’s you, you can simply just turn them off.

Improvements to the News Feeds, including a full-screen view for news posts.

I personally like that you can look at news posts in a full-screen mode as before it was tiny and difficult to read. A definite improvement over how it was previously.

Added a daily limit to the number of boosters earned from post-game rewards each day. Daily Booster Limit of 200 Boosters per day.

This has been a hot-button topic since it was initiated. Some people are fine with it, while others say that they finish their Boosters early in the day and then have no incentive to continue playing. The logic was to bring it more into line with how many credits you get a day so that it doesn’t feel disproportionate to the Boosters you can earn. I think if you are hardcore grinding then this is a detriment to you but most casual players won’t notice or care about it. According to the Dev’s information, this will only affect less than 10% of the player base. I think that 200 might be too few to be able to earn daily but that unlimited is also incorrect. In the future, we can expect them to expand the amount.

It’s now easier to complete the “Win a Location with only 1 card” Daily Missions.

Normal Mission objective has been reduced to 1.

Hard Mission objective has been reduced to 2.

A reduction of the amount of time that you have to do this in order to claim your credits on Daily Missions that was annoying to begin with feels good.

Missions with “Complete Missions” as a goal will now make progress when players actively claim Missions instead of when Missions are completed.

Clarity on where you are with completing Missions is good. They should strive to make the UI as clear and as friendly to new players as possible.

Season Pass

Starting with Season 2, Premium Season Pass purchases now unlock the first reward instantly.

This is an obvious and good change.

Increased XP Rewards granted for completing Seasonal Missions - this should make it easier to complete the Season Pass, even if you just do the Missions!

I’ve seen on social media and experienced personally how close it is to not achieving max rewards for the Atlantis Beach Club season. Making it easier to max that out and get all the rewards feels better and this is a very good change.

Increased total Credit rewards over the entire season from 2100 to 2400 credits.
Decreased total Boosters rewarded over the entire season from 200 to 185 Boosters

As the choke point in the game tends to be Credits and not Boosters this is a slight upgrade.

Season Pass Meter now displays the current Season Pass Level instead of the next Season Pass Level

This was a confusing thing, to begin with. I am glad that they changed this to make it more in line with making sense with reading it.

Location Updates

Locations with effects that say “At the end of” have been changed to “After” Gameplay functionality has not been changed.
Decreased the appearance rates of Negative Zone, Space Throne, and Knowhere.

Can we please add Ego and Worldship to this list? Reducing locations that don’t allow you to interact is something we can all agree is a good thing.

New Locations

Starlight Citadel: After turn 4, swap the position of each location.

Death’s Domain: When you play a card here, destroy it.

The Ice Box: Give a card in each player’s hand +1 cost.

Location Changes

Knowhere: On Reveal effects do not happen at this location.

Mirror Dimension: On turn 4, transform into one of the other locations.

In Conclusion

In the end, the game certainly needed a balance patch because the Devil Dino/Moon Girl/Carnage/Nova decks were simply the best deck in any level of the game. The only unfortunate part of this is that those cards were available fairly early on in pool 1. Lots of archetypes don’t see their pay-off cards until pool 3. I think that this will expose that and then the devs will try to bring that more into line so more archetypes are playable and competitive earlier.