Hello,
I’ve been trying for a while today to get a funny Black Beast deck to work and I realized that… It’s balance change actually feels like a nerf.
I think it now is playable (well, in fun deck, not when try harding), not because of how the Black Beast itself evolved, but because of how troop summoners have evolved.
Back on Black Beast’s recent change : it now creates 6 skulls.
That sounds like a buff, I say that’s an unintended nerf. How so?
Creating gems/skulls always is a double edged blade unless you have a free turn directly from the spell (i.e. Skeleton / Goblin Shaman). The more you create, the less chances there are to be punished. Another thing to take into account is how many existing gems/skulls are present on the board before you use your spell.
Now, on the paper, a board has 1/7 of each gems / skulls. Except that in practice, skulls are systematically taken by the AI. So, skulls are likely to be the least present.
Personnaly, I consider that creating less than 8 gems is usually a bigger risk than it is a chance. So, 6 skulls is even more dangerous, not to mention that skulls are immediate threats, unlike mana.
Now, that’s a lot of theory, what about practice? Well, trying to come up with my Black Beast deck, I’ve tried it for myself. My Black Beast is legendary and lvl 19. Over 50 battles, it died around 15 games, 10 times right after eating its first unit, 5 times before he could eat its first unit.
As for the other time it survived, most of the time, it didn’t make a single match (and I would only fire its spell because Green Seer allowed me to entangle the ennemy unit), rarely it made one 3 match, and only once did he make a 4 match.
So, firing Black Beast spell feels a bit like punishing yourself, you get rid of one of your own units and the result is… Risking your Black Beast too…
In my opinion, Black Beast should either have :
Devour an ally + extra turn (makes sense as a Zaejin unit)
Devour an ally + cleanse itself (makes sense too)
Devour an ally + gets barrier (not too strange but doesn’t fit much thematically)
So, my Black Beast dies, and since I’m playing it with summoner troops, when my first line Black Beast dies, what do I have as first line when I summon troops? Pointless summonned troop with the strength of a potato.
No, seriously, the summoned troops
- usually are low quality troops
- are untraited
- can’t have a level higher than 15 (and now, there are HUGE stat bonus in the last 5 levels)
- don’t benefit of lvl 10 Kingdoms
- DO benefit of group bonuses (woah!)
As a result, I’ve compared my lvl 1 spider swarm to my summoned spider swarm lvl 15. The level 1 is better.
Now, I hear you, a summoned troop shouldn’t best a normal troop, but currently, summoning a troop is just crippling yourself : you summon on the first opened slot, so, most likely in front line. You just sealed your skull damage. As long as the ennemy uses targeted / area spell, he is actually better off facing your useless summoned troop than its summoner…
I think summoned troop should at least benefit of half the bonuses brought by Kingdoms…
Well, I know this was a long post for not so oftenly played troops, but maybe with a little bit of love for them, we could have an even more interesting and diversified meta.
Thanks for reading / sharing your opinion 