Thank all of you who responded to Rini’s survey from April 27th! We plan on live updating some balance changes based on your responses as well as data we’ve collected over the last couple weeks. The update is scheduled to go live May 4th. Before that, we want to delve a bit into the cards that were mentioned in the survey that we’re NOT planning on touching at this time.

Before I get into that, I want to briefly go over our methodology for collecting and analyzing data: the primary metric we collect is the win/loss record for every card in played decks. This is collated by the game mode and ladder tier (for ranked games). For the purposes of analysis, we primarily look at Mythril and above Ranked games, but we also examine stats for all ranks and game modes to sanity check. The number of times a card is included in a particular deck isn’t measured. Generated cards (AKA tokens) don’t count. Whether or not a card is played during the game is also not considered - this is an attempt to account for the fact that there are many cards that are primarily played situationally. In doing so, we assume that players in high-tier ranked games will intelligently curate their decks over time. 

Furthermore, we only consider data for which we have enough samples, and correlate winrate against the overall winrate for the color as well as other cards in that color. Finally, it’s worth noting that we don’t only consider winrate - we also consider the overall character of the card, whether or not it tends to bog down the game, how “unfun” it is to play against, etc.

Okay, so what about the cards that people brought up in the survey that we decided NOT to alter this round? Here they are:

* Ranked Ladder, Mythic+, Last 7 days

New Pandora's Box modes - April 2021

With the patch being deployed on April 13, we will be introducing four new modes to the Pandora's Box queue. These modes will rotate on Mondays at 10PM GMT.

Banzai Quickdraw (April 13-19)

Banzai Bob is itchin' for a fight. Grab your trusty six-shooter and find out who's got the faster draw.

This is a 1v1 event.

Players start with the Quickshot Power and the Journey of Souls Path.

The added card will always cost between 1 and 6 mana.

It will also be Ephemeral and Unburnable and will have its gems removed from its mana cost.

The turn timer is reduced to 60 seconds.

The Hydra in the Stables (April 19-26)

We can do this. If we work together we can tame the beast.

This is a 2 player co-op vs AI mode.The opponent AI will be equipped with 2 special Brands.

No spoilers here. Jump in and check it out when it goes live.

Play Anywhere (April 26-May 3)

Let's trade! You take this and give me that and voila!

This is a 2v2 PvP mode.

Players may play their cards to their own lanes or even to their teammates' lanes.

Honor Thy Mother (May 3-10)

The Rhino team would like to wish every mother out there a happy mother's day.

This is a 1v1 event.

Players start with the Mother's Grace Brand in play.

One of the issues we discovered with the first MCS Ranked Ladder Season was that people tended to hit Champions with a relatively high score and are subsequently incentivized to not play (definitely not the pattern we wanted to encourage).

We're going to be trying an alteration to the Champions ranking system to help address that for Season II. This change will go into effect with the next patch (which is anticipated to be coming in the next 1-2 weeks).

Before we get into the changes, it's worth mentioning that at the start of the new season, everyone's Kismet will revert to mean according to the formula NewKismet = OldKismet * 0.75 + MeanElo * 0.25 (where MeanElo = 1500). For the non-math inclined, this simply means that with each new season, everyone's Kismet will be "shoved" closer to 1500. Kismet, of course, is simply Mythgard's fancy word for Elo (a system for estimating a player's relative skill, for which details can be found in Wikipedia).

With the anticipated change, players on Champions ladder will be ranked according to Kismet + Ba. Ba will be assigned as follows:

• Only relevant for Champions (only Champions can gain or lose Ba)

• Initially 0 at the start of the season

• Ranges between -200 and 200

• However, a maximum of 100 will be used for ranking (so if a player's Kismet is 1900 and their Ba is 200, their ranking will be 2000)

• Increases by 10 for each win, up to a maximum of 50 per day (as delineated by mission reset time)

• Decreases by 10 for every day not played (also as delineated by mission reset time)

We'll see how this works for Season II and tweak as necessary as things progress. Happy Hunting!

The Winter War is upon us. Not sure where to start or what cards to test first? Check out some of these featured decks built by players from our Q-mode testing. These decks will be a good way to test some new cards from The Winter War and help you find new deck ideas.

We want to thank the following people for submitting decks:
Minmaxer

Petamax

Rune42

SnarkElemental
Tempest

Tune Star
Wholesome
Xaliver

Hephaestus Hammer

path: alliance command center

power: infuse

4 vulcan bladegorger

2 brinebound believer

2 wings of abaddon

3 gorgon elly

1 gigantomachia

1 grand finale

4 forge smith

3 trusty hireling

4 sister spitfire

3 judo garudo

1 rogue idolon

4 comb trader

2 take to the streets

3 risen from the deep

3 cyberminotar

Rebel Alliance

path: alliance command center

power: erode

4 eager recruit

4 storied martyr

1 spear of destiny

2 wry trickster

4 xerxian agitator

2 xerxian recruiter

3 shadhavar beast

3 xerxian insurrectionist

3 xerxian sympathizer

2 peri at the gates

1 scion of pride

2 seal of exile

1 kaveh, khyber warlord

4 racer in shadow

4 axe man

Waystone Fortress

path: rainbow's end

power: erode

2 singing stone

4 arctic pyre

2 might of giants

2 earthslide

2 freki sidecar

4 knoll of conquest

2 elemental fortification

1 kara mourningwives

3 giant's stairway

2 primeval son

4 pocket instance

4 racer in shadow

4 axe man

2 red cliffs

1 merciless koxinga

1 waystone garden

Armored Glory

path: rainbow's end

power: impel

3 glory seeker

2 singing stone

4 arctic pyre

2 earthslide

4 knoll of conquest

1 svinn, the gatekeeper

2 blackened jotun

3 giant's stairway

4 doper

4 hyperfit ultragym

1 yara from arawaka

3 magpyre enforcer

2 misanthropia

1 xiomara, earthshaper

4 bulwark

Foul Forging

path: alliance command center

power: bolster

4 eagle scout

3 foul harvest

4 ayotl vanguard

4 a34 jaguar

2 misanthropia

1 sapo, the devourer

3 ignition

3 stray panacea

4 vulcan bladegorger

2 dashing ringmaster

3 cyclopean giant

2 wings of abaddon

1 gigantomachia

1 seven ring ritual

3 trained jaguar

Zoanoids

path: alliance command center

power: infuse

4 doper

4 magpyre commando

3 thunderbird egg

4 grit instructor

2 hyperfit ultragym

3 yahui

3 ayotl vanguard

2 vicious cycle

1 yara from arawaka

4 instabeast

2 hysterical strength

4 ignition

2 brinebound believer

2 wings of abaddon

Volkov Dancing

path: alliance command center

power: infuse

3 dreni propagandist

2 house elf

4 mothmara

3 volkov induction

1 detained

2 raid the tombs

4 academy recruitment

4 inked brawler

4 mind freak

4 racer in shadow

4 juiced

3 shinobi of fire

2 arclighter

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

path: turn of seasons

power: mend

2 anhelli

1 wake the bones

2 born-again

4 raid the tombs

2 led astray

1 bald mountain

2 volkov heavy

1 traitorous murmur

4 dune cat

4 dust devil

2 dune courser

1 resupply caravan

2 shadhavar beast

4 sanctum guard

1 seal of exile

2 guardian plateau

3 mardykhor

1 armageddon angel

1 angelischism

Fragile Existence

path: rainbow's end

power: erode

3 brittleblast

4 field of poppies

4 arctic pyre

3 forked lightning

1 niflheim's claim

2 storm seer

2 shatterstone palace

1 magnus thorsson

2 primeval son

4 thieves bazaar

3 sandscape

2 wry trickster

3 serendipity ifreet

3 shadhavar beast

3 mardykhor

Reanimation Machine

path: disk of circadia

power: smite

4 strigoi pup

4 daring trapezists

2 ichor feast

1 guise of phobos

2 wings of abaddon

3 gorgon elly

1 grand finale

1 anhelli

3 dreni propagandist

2 born-again

2 detained

4 hopeless necromantic

2 led astray

3 volkov heavy

1 chort stag

2 vortex hovertank

2 ved'ma helicarrier

1 typhoon-class hydropolis

Rebellion Spellhouse

path: rebellion safehouse

power: smite

4 ignition

1 dashing ringmaster

3 ichor feast

3 threnody muse

3 vampire historian

1 gigantomachia

1 anhelli

3 media autocam

4 mothmara

3 overkill

2 war documentarian

4 academy recruitment

3 led astray

2 ved'ma steelshaper

1 terminal calculus

1 automagic artillery

1 traitorous murmur

Hook and Sinker

path: coliseum of strife

power: impel

3 thunderbird egg

4 grit instructor

1 yara from arawaka

4 shuar stalker

2 miasma catalyst

4 racer in shadow

3 steam bun

4 axe man

3 brother moonblade

1 rogue idolon

3 shinobi of smoke

2 shinobi of chains

2 take to the streets

3 pushy oni

1 kenta fire tigon

Ready for Rust

path: alliance command center

power: bolster

4 carny rioter

3 sunken acolyte

2 vulcan brand

4 daring trapezists

4 venal equinox

2 wings of abaddon

4 eager recruit

4 storied martyr

2 wry trickster

2 xerxian recruiter

4 ready for anything

2 si'lat elite

3 xerxian insurrectionist

Alliance Aggro Center

path: alliance command center

power: smite

4 doper

4 magpyre commando

3 thunderbird egg

4 grit instructor

3 hyperfit ultragym

1 striking viper

3 yahui

4 ayotl vanguard

1 yara from arawaka

4 instabeast

1 harpy-one

1 sapo, the devourer

1 hysterical strength

4 ignition

2 wings of abaddon

We recently talked about communicating more clearly with our players and it's time to show you we meant it. We had some discussion recently about balance changes targeting some Rings of Immortality outliers and to take another stab at Vampire Historian after our last change didn't quite land right.

We're looking at patching this week but won't be able to do so until later in the week. With the Kryptik Gaming Boneyard Shuffle tournament on Saturday (which you should go sign up for if you haven't yet), we don't want to make changes right before the event. We'll be pushing some balance changes live tomorrow morning at 10:00AM Pacific/5:00PM GMT to address balance concerns while still allowing time for tournament players to get adequate testing in.

Balance Changes

Vampire Historian

• 4[R]R → 3[R]R

• 2/3 → 1/3 

We missed the mark in making our first pass at Vampire Historian. Our goal was to lower the card's win rate just a bit, as it was performing very well. Doing so in a way that messed with everyone's mana curves was not our best idea. This change should allow Historian to still occupy the 3 slot while helping to mitigate its impact in games where it's not answered as promptly. We'll continue to monitor this card moving forward.

Media Autocam

• Starting Energy: 1🗲 → 2🗲

• Activation Cost: 3🗲 → 4🗲

Yellow-Green control has been a deck that has had success on ladder and in tournament play since the Rings of Immortality expansion release and we perhaps waited a bit longer than we should have to address this deck. Making this change to Autocam still allows for the initial draw to come after 2 spells while slowing down its value generation in longer games.

Anhelli

• ★[G]GG → ★+1[G]GG

Anhelli is a very interesting card. While we are not opposed to the idea of removal that is as versatile as Anhelli, this should come at more of a cost than "always remains tempo-neutral" so we're increasing the cost by 1 to add a bit more of a downside to the incredible utility this card provides. This should also slow down the Yellow-Green control midgame just a bit.

Weapon Check

• All minions have -3/-0 → All minions have -4/-0

As the first card to be adjusted via our live balance system, Weapon Check saw a nerf previously for the incredible frustration it caused to a large portion of our players. We said that we were watching the card closely and feel that the nerf was a bit of an overstep. While we think continuing to avoid the more binary "lock to 0" nature of the card's previous implementation is still the route to go, we feel that the current level of this card leaves a bit to be desired. This change should provide Weapon Check with a slight bump in usability while not reverting to the more disliked style of effect it had on release.

Jaza'eri Arquebus

• 4/3 → 4/2

Jaza'eri Arquebus provides a lot of stats for its cost. While we do like the design space of Jaza'eri leaving behind a Parsa Divinity Cannon, we want to make the first minion less difficult to deal with to leave you more answers to the second.

Call from the Grave

• Awaken: Deal 4 damage → Awaken: Deal 3 damage

Green-Purple Spirit decks have been on our radar due to a relatively high win rate combined with a relatively high play rate. While we don't think the deck is very far outside of where it should be in power level, we do feel the deck has a bit too much reach to close out games with a top decked Call. This should help reduce the direct damage that comes down in the late game of Green-Purple Spirit matchups.

Guise of Phobos

• Minions that Threaten this have -2/-0 → Minions that Threaten this have -1-0

Guise of Phobos has been over-performing in draft play. Constructed play has also seen Red-Yellow aggro decks using this card as a finisher with Volition. While we feel the latter use case is one we still want to monitor closely, we feel this change should primarily help draft players in actually removing the minion buffed by Guise of Phobos.

Bridgeway Troll

• ▽BBB: Give all your minions → BB: Adjacent minions get

• This change breaks the "Riding with Eolis" puzzle and we will have that fixed in the next patch.

Mono-Blue decks continue to show strongly in both ladder and tournament play. The constant through multiple iterations of these decks over the past few months has been Bridgeway Troll allowing players to ignore a large part of the combat system to find damage around otherwise good blocking by the opponent. This change should allow Troll's impact to be a bit less decisive and allows us to go back to having it usable on turn 4 by removing a gem from its activation cost.

Refunds are available for copies of Media Autocam, Anhelli, Call from the Grave, Guise of Phobos, and Bridgeway Troll crafted after October 1.

Card Text Updates

We're updating a few cards and paths we missed in our initial pass on text updates for the use of Sunrise/Sundown and the expanded use of the Threaten keyword. These changes don't represent any functional difference but should help unify their text formatting.

Sunrise/Sundown

The following cards have been updated to make use of the Sunrise and/or Sundown keywords:

• Wailing Yokai

• Born-Again

• Parsa Immortal

• Compulsory Curse

Threaten

The following card has been updated to make of the Threaten keyword:

• Hekate's Wheel

Path Updates

The following Paths have been updated to make use of the Sunrise and/or Sundown keywords:

• Coliseum of Strife

• Journey of Souls

• Turn of Seasons

• Disk of Circadia

• NOTE: Disk of Circadia has also had its Day and Night abilities renamed to Light and Shadow, respectively. This was done to avoid confusion around the use of Day and Night when they are so close in meaning to Sunrise and Sundown. Disk of Circadia's in-match icon will continue to use the "D" and "N" lettering until we patch later this week.

Patch 0.19.2.11 Reflection

We made some changes with our latest patch that didn't quite land as we intended. We feel a lot of this comes down to not communicating clearly with our players about our intent. That's on us, and we're not going to let it happen again. Promises to better ourselves can often feel empty without an actionable plan in place, so we want to talk about not only the problems we had but how we're addressing them moving forward. 

What went wrong:

Patch 0.19.2.11 was primarily a bug fix patch, but after seeing the meta settle, we wanted to include a few balance changes late into the patch cycle.  While we feel some balance changes in this patch landed well, we completely whiffed on others. The nerf to Vampire Historian was, quite frankly, not up to par. Additionally, we chose not to make changes to Yellow/Green because we wanted to take more time to consider how to approach that deck's current power level. Doing so left the deck in a spot that we feel was too oppressive for too long, and that was a mistake.

Changes made to "start of turn" and "end of turn” triggers needed to be communicated more clearly in the patch notes or even with a blog post beforehand in which we previewed the change, as we did with the combat damage-focused keywords a few months ago. We may revisit the Sunrise/Sundown change specifically in another dev blog in the future to share with you the thoughts and insight that led to this change specifically.

The bulk of communication about these changes came via messages in the general chat on Discord and, as such, lacked permanence. These things need to be communicated in ways that are more accessible to our community as a whole.

What we're doing about it:

Moving forward, the midseason update will continue to be the target for the bulk of large-scale balance changes. We'll allow more time in smaller patch cycles for focused change to more immediately apparent outliers. We will be revisiting both Vampire Historian and the Yellow/Green deck soon but feel that using the live change system at this time provides too much instability for the upcoming Mythgard Open.

For larger systemic changes like the Sunrise/Sundown change, we will be including some context in the patch notes, similar to how we approach balance changes.  Additionally, we may do preview blog posts or teasers when time allows.

As for communication between our community and us, we are adding a section to our internal meetings in which we discuss what upcoming changes we can better explain to the community. We'll use these points to better inform our communication in patch notes and help us know the right times to give more in-depth communication.

Conclusion

We got crunched for time and closed ourselves off to push as many features as we could get into this patch, and that came at the cost of clear communication with our players. In an ideal world, this does not happen, and we have time to both push changes we feel make our game better and also be as clear and open with you as possible. Unfortunately, we strayed too far to one end of that spectrum this time and are thankful that our players care enough about our game to check us on this and hold us to a higher standard.

Hey folks. We plan on patching to 0.18.4.x on Monday, July 27 PT (pending Apple approval).

One of the more major changes that is coming in this patch is a tweak to how certain combat keywords function:

WARNING - The following is a bit technical. If you're not that worried about the technicalities of the rules, then relying on the combat preview to predict what will happen in combat is a perfectly reasonable alternative.

Focused X - "Increases damage dealt by X while fighting a minion or attacking a player through the opposite lane." This keyword will now apply even if the minion's strength is less than or equal to zero. Note that it doesn't actually increase the minions strength for the purposes of abilities like Revolutionary Totem (minions with strength 4 or greater can't attack). If an attacking minion with Focused also has Overrun, the focus damage will continue to add to the damage dealt to the defending player from overrun. An example of this in action is a 0/1 minion with Focused 10 and Overrun attacking into a 0/1 defender. The defender will take 1 damage and die, and the defending player will take 9 damage from overrun.

Slayer X - "Deal X extra damage to minions in combat." This keyword now only applies to damage dealt to a minion and won't add to Overrun (though it can increase the amount of overrun damage done, as per the example below). Unchanged from the previous version, Slayer doesn't apply if the minion has zero or less strength. An example of the new functionality of Slayer in action is a 3/1 minion with Slayer 10 and Overrun attacking into a 0/1 defender. The defender will take 1 damage (from the Slayer) and die, and the defending player will take 3 damage (from the minion's strength) from overrun. Note that prior to 0.18.4, the defending player would have taken 12 damage from overrun. With the new patch, the extra 9 "slayer" damage doesn't carry over to the damage the attacker deals with overrun. However, also note that because the slayer damage is used "before" the minion's strength, the total overrun damage is increased -- just not as much as it would have been prior to this patch.

Fragile X - "Increases any damage a minion takes by X." Much like Slayer, this keyword no longer contributes directly to Overrun damage. For example, if a 3/1 attacker with Overrun attacks a 0/1 defender with Fragile 10, the defending player will now take 2 damage from overrun. In this case, 1 "point" of damage from the attacker's strength applies to the defender, who takes an additional 2 "points" of damage (enough to kill it) due to Fragile. The remaining 2 "points" of the attacker's strength then carry through to overrun. Note that prior to this patch, the defending player would have taken 12 points of damage from overrun.

editor's note - upon writing this, I realized that there's probably a bug with Fragile in 0.18.4 in that the aforementioned 1 "point" of damage from the attacker's strength is probably not happening, which means in the example above, 3 points of overrun may actually occur.

PS - these changes are occurring in order to enable us to play with larger values of Slayer / Fragile without breaking game balance.

Origins:

Valkyrie Enforcer was one of the earliest spells we created.

No, that isn’t a typo. It was originally a simple combination of traditional CCG design and the Norden flavor profile called Biker Bounce. A bounce spell that you cast on a minion; what could possibly go wrong?

Story:

This was early days, and straightforward enough that there isn’t much internal lore or worldbuilding directly backing it, save for a pretty vague paragraph of request direction;

“A male character in the process of being violently evicted from a bar or club by the Valkyries. Portrayal of the tough lady evicter might take a backseat to the evictee in this piece depending on what direction you want to take it. Plenty of artistic licence on whether the ejection has him busting through a door, a window, or even a freaking wall.”

It would turn out to be a pretty lucky thing that this verbal sketch wouldn’t wind up being much of a foundation for what would follow. It’s pretty easy to tell that what we had in mind visually was something like a less violent Overkill, (though it’s worth noting that card and it’s artwork didn’t exist when Biker Bounce was in development) which would certainly have complicated what would come to pass...

The original flavor text is still on there, and it might be among the first pieces of non-mechanical writing to get implemented. Zero evidence of drafts or variants, an apparent Xeneth one-shot;

• When she says "bounce", you leave; That's all there is to it.

Initial Design:

This is really the main motivation for us to take a closer look. Biker Bounce was originally implemented as;

1[B] Common, Kinetic Spell

Return a minion to its owner's hand.

Which is silly of course, the cost went up to 2[B]B almost immediately, but…

While Mythgard was always intended to feel pretty different from other CCGs, there used to be more hope that certain balance points and design ideas would be more universal, or at least portable. Maybe some concepts survive the trip over from Magic or Hearthstone intact; this spell is overperforming in our system, okay, increase the cost again.

Turns out, some mechanical differences are just paradigm shifting.

Problems tend to compound on each other. Right up front, the concept is mechanically in the wrong color; Dreni doesn’t even exist as a faction at this point. Seductive as alliterative bikers having bouncers are, clever as bouncers literally bouncing minions may be, the positionality of the game changes everything. In a non-positional combat system, the tempo bump is often of equal or lesser value than the card it costs. In Mythgard this can crack a defense wide open on top of that base utility.

It’s a good thing that the card art itself would suggest some solutions!

Art:

This commission landed in veteran Justina Son’s hands, and the sketches were already chock full of girl power instead of focusing on the spell’s effect upon a victim;

The third sample was likely chosen just to keep the resulting action somewhere in-frame…

Not a ton to add to this rad sequence of in-progress paintings, it’s just always a pleasure to see the individual stages of refinement.

The warmer colors give way to blues as art direction hones in on getting it to match the faction color space...

So as the piece cleans up you can see that to some degree, it’s kind of got the character and style of a minion card and not a spell, even though spells are probably the most abstract and open-ended card type to make art for.

Wrapping Up:

Attaching the spell’s effect to a minion that in turn has positionality of its own to contend with really helps the design feel more Mythgard in addition being more in line with the (already overstuffed) Norden playbook.

It’s possible that the idea would have occurred less readily if not for the art, (at the very least changing it would have been trickier) so it’s a neat example of how all the creative parts of the card making process can affect each other in ways that aren’t necessarily linear.

With the latest balance patch settling in we thought it was time for another featured deck contest!  Starting right now, we are holding a contest, open to the entire community, to see who can create the most interesting decks to become featured in Mythgard.  Have a fantastic Valk deck?  A spooky reanimator Valk deck?  Or even a Ninja Valk deck?!  It’s time to show the community your brilliant brews!

As with any contest, there are some rules and guidelines:

•    No more than 3 mythics, no more than 6 rares (6 total not 6 pairs)

•    You may substitute one mythic FOR two rares but the reverse is not allowed. IE. 0M 12R, 1M 10R, or 2M 8R

•    Be imaginative! We will be choosing winners based not just on the perceived power of a deck, but also variety, playability, fun factor, and how interesting the deck is. We want to showcase a wide variety of decks with different rarities and power levels to help spread deck ideas to all Mythgard players, while still leaving potential room for tweaking and tuning.

•    Users can submit up to 3 decks to the contest, so choose your submissions carefully!

•    We’re looking for a substantial number of decks - please don’t be shy about submitting your ideas!

•    Decks should be geared towards 1v1 (though they’ll be usable in 2v2 as well).

•    Please name your decks, and keep it appropriate!

•    A single person can have more than one of their submissions selected.

Should one of your decks be selected for featuring, you’ll receive:

•    Your username and deck featured in-game (both in the deck menu and during the match intro screen… think, “Xeneth playing Turbo’s Token Trickery”)

•    Mythgard immortality (at least until we decide to do a new run of featured decks)

The contest starts now! The contest end date is Monday 6/22 at noon PT, and we will announce winners after it wraps up. Let us know if you have any questions, and we look forward to seeing your inventions!

Submit your deck here!