Originally published at: February Event Calendar – Gems of War
Guild Wars – Divine attack restriction: Jan 29th – Feb 1st Holiday Event – Prance for Prosperity: 2nd – 15th Holiday Pet ‘Equustis’ Charger’ final copy will be available only via the Special Daily Goals during this week New Mythic – Pridelands: 6th Pridelands Expanded Faction – Primal Rift: 6th – 8th Valentine’s Day Advent:…
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Blackhawk is linked to The Black Heart, The Warrens is from Pan’s Vale. And the associated class is Corsair, Bard is also from Pan’s Vale. I’m wondering which way this will resolve. Blackhawk has been in dire need of another F2P weapon for years now, I hope the one from Tower of Doom hasn’t been repurposed for Pan’s Vale.
EDIT: Probably just something generated by AI, with a lot of halucinations. Otherwise we would be getting a rerun of the Wilhemina’s Rose campaign, a PvP season renamed to “Season of Trouble” and new mythic called “6th Pridelands”.
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Doesnt look AI due to names.
Campaing name not updated
Current PVP season is a season of trouble, no mistake there.
Wrong underworld names → something been switched last second or copypaste didnt work out.
Sus part is spire meant to be released @ march, and now mid - end feb. Did they hire a second developer?
This happens every month. People beg for the calendar, and it gets slapped together rather hastily by somebody replete with numerous mistakes. It’s clearly not a very high priority for the developer side, either to get it right or to release it before players start nagging them about it.
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Dude waiting till the last day, before getting the calendar. Its not about begging.
They know whats happining more than a day, before a new month.
If there rushing the cslendar on the last day, maybe they need to open laptops at home on weekends, and use time more efficiently.
Sigh. Missing Taran’s more than ever right now…
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Blue guild wars restriction? Ridiculous (or great). This means Takshaka teams again.
I certainly prefer a kingdom or troop type restriction.
And this is the problem.
So many wanted easier fights. As the teams for certain kingdoms cant compete.
But for instance this guild wars. If you have 2 or 3 takshakas. Its 5~0. Every day.
Not exactly fun. Knowing youf gonna win being braindead.
But how this guiod wars is designed. Its either to easy. Or wild plains, khaziel dumb.
If theyd make 1 change to defences. All unique troops. No multiples. Of troop or troop type. Plus have a class lock.
And then the attack coukd be kingdom based.
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Can you quote anyone explicitly asking for easier fights? Not ‘more fair’, ‘less RNG based’ - exactly easier, as you phrased it.
I haven’t seen such requests, so if you have specific examples or sources you’re referring to, please share them.
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A lot just want the shiny tokens from the individual rewards track. Because this is the only realistic chance to ever obtain them as F2P player. And it requires not losing more than 2 battles over the whole GW event or the chance is gone forever, because there aren’t any repeats.
Weird, huh? A competitive event that incentivizes players by every means possible to mess it up for their guild. Beating up the gate ensures you get the shiny token and that the guild doesn’t claim a daily victory. So easy to fix, by making the individual reward track based on participation, not winning. And so adamantly ignored, it’s almost like our feedback goes right into the dumpster.
So, yes, this is about wanting easier fights. As a band-aid for game rules straight from design hell.
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I’m not asking for easier PvP. I want it to be challenging, on the level of pure faction level 500, where you can lose due to bad RNG over a long sequence of turns (10+), and that’s fine.
What we have now isn’t that. PvP often ends in 1–2 turns, because one early swing gives your opponent effectively infinite mana. Once that happens, the match is over before any real decisions matter.
This comes from the same core issue: mana loops enabled by troops like Takshaka, Pharaoh Khafru, Archdruid Blackwood + Essense of Evil. These effects stack into situations where the first turn decides the game outright.
I’m okay with being punished for mistakes or unlucky cascades over time. I’m not okay with PvP where a single early proc removes counterplay entirely.
PvP balance should reward planning and adaptation, not who gets the first uncontested mana chain.
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I definitely wouldn’t do 800k worth of pf500 pvp or even 160k vp. That would be a complete nightmare and I’m 100% sure many of us would simply stop playing gow entirely if every battle was so difficult that it took 10+ minutes each.
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Anyone who uses wand of stars. Isnt planning tho.
Its flipping a coin.
The gem placement is random.
Planning never uses random stuff.
Imagine building a skyscrapper. And randomly missing out beams 
.
If anyine uses wand. Its hoping, its guessing,its assuming. Its definately not planning. Its guesstimation.
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Wand of Stars has such a high extra turn rate, and the added effect of protecting you with bless from Elementalist, that the risk is worth the reward. From my experience, there’s about a 10-20% that you miss, and then the enemy gets full mana, and you can get destroyed by Takshaka, Chrysantherax, etc.
As already mentioned, you can try to carefully plan without using WoS, but the effects that troops have when “their turn begins” can completely ruin that strategy unless you can stun them immediately.
When we don’t have kingdom restrictions for GWs, it’s best to take our Wand in hand, with guns blazing. It’s one of the only reliable ways to face the ridiculous power creep and keep it in check.
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No one is saying pure faction runs are impossible. That’s a strawman.
The point is simple: randomness exists, but it is not binary. Board movement isn’t “predictable vs coin flip”. There are probabilities, constraints, and player decisions that shift outcomes over many turns. If everything were a coin flip, pure faction runs would have ~50% success regardless of play. They clearly don’t. Skill matters because planning in Gems of War is about:
- evaluating risk,
- choosing when to introduce randomness,
- reducing bad outcomes,
- and having recovery options when RNG goes wrong.
Wanting fewer high-variance effects isn’t “wanting easier coin flips”. It’s wanting lower variance, so decisions matter more than extreme swings. Calling any interaction with RNG “no planning” is just an oversimplification that doesn’t describe how the game actually works.
When I make a first move without a 4-match, I don’t “guess”. I do a set of fast predictions and move the gems that give the highest expected value: mana denial, board safety. I’m not picking a random triple.
Back to old GW, when I’m facing two converters, I actively look for ways to deny them entry into a loop: breaking color alignment, removing setup gems, forcing suboptimal casts. That is direct player influence on the game state.
This is exactly what planning looks like in Gems of War.
Now compare that to passive gem generation or explosions that trigger without a decision point:
• Passive mana generation that fills spells regardless of board state. You don’t read the board anymore.
• Automatic gem creation/destroy that realigns the board every turn without a cast. The board stops being something you manage.
• Passive explosions that remove denial, refill mana, and grant extra turns without risk assessment.
• Chain reactions caused by traits, not choices, that swing the game before either player acts.
• Win or loss determined by whether a passive cascade happened, not by move quality.
In all these cases, the player doesn’t introduce randomness - it is there BY DESIGN of this 3-in-a-row. There is no timing decision, no risk tradeoff, no counterplay window.
That’s the key difference.
Planning in a random system means choosing when and how to interact with RNG.
Auto-generation and passive explosions remove that choice entirely. They don’t add difficulty - they flatten decision space.
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High. But not guaranteed.
So planning based on luck based high rng.
Still a coin flip.
People go to casinos. And plan to come home after winning. But hardly ever do.
Theres real planning like. Builders plans , then theres luck based rng plans. Which in essence are plans based on coin flips.
I personally hate the introduction of cards like Khafru, Takshaka, Zarg, Archdruid - pick any of them. They completely destroyed what little, fragile enjoyment the game still had. Even Leprechaun, which once felt absurdly overpowered, now just gathers dust because the baseline power creep made it irrelevant.
Wand of Stars was another step in the same direction. And for the record, even the first Dragonite dragon set wasn’t a problem - those cards didn’t seize control of the board. Then Stellarix arrived and erased even the idea of balance.
For the last two years I’ve been bored. The only remaining “challenge” is deliberately building bad teams and trying to beat meta teams. That’s not depth - that’s like shooting yourself in the knees to rediscover motivation for marathon running. It’s artificial and wrong.
It’s not even two years - it’s three. And when I say “boring”, I mean I’m not actually playing the game anymore. It just runs in the background for guild obligations, not because I want to engage with it. Autobattle all day long, with no meaningful player input.
That alone says everything about the current design direction. When optimal play is to not play, something fundamental is broken.
I don’t want easier matches. I want interesting ones. I want matches where my decisions matter. Losing because RNG handed the opponent 100+ mana before they even act, is not engaging gameplay. It removes agency, planning, and consequence. That’s not difficulty - it’s noise.
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Couldn’t agree with you more. That’s why I dislike the current state of the game, and Guild Wars (my once favorite game mode) has been completely ruined. Trying to rebuild the foundations at this point would be too much work because we would have to call in a demolition team to destroy everything and build it from the ground up. People don’t even have to think anymore–full mana, ridiculous damage…Someone only has to play this game for 5 minutes with all the troops and weapons and they would know how to “play.”
And from time to time, I go back down into Lyrasza’s Lair. Don’t ask why I enjoy the misery. When I beat that for the first time, I thought I learned something but couldn’t explain it, so I know where you’re coming from. The game is only challenging now with kingdom restrictions in Guild Wars, but that discussion is for another time and place…
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BLUUUGGGHH my updated blog didn’t save, sorry everyone the past couple have been wrong and not updated.
Been lost in a lot of other tasks at the moment and missed updating some of these things 
I’ll get it updated asap. Sorry again.
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