Finally, the answer to the question, “How does a troop resemble an update release?”
I’ll show myself out.
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Another spoiler update!
- Due to a bug, this change didn’t come up in the change log, but it was relatively recent. For all 6 Guild Guardians, their final trait previously read:
Give 6 to all skills to all Allies.
This boost applied to one of 6 troop types, and applied at the start of battle. However, the dev team recognized that this is absolute garbage and gave the ability a significant buff:
Give 4 to all Skills on all Allies when matching 4 or more Gems.
This brings these traits from “not even new players will use these because they take 18 Arcanes to purchase” to “Worthy of experimentation.”
The relevant troop types are Stryx, Naga, Tauros, Wargare, Raksha, and Urska. Each of these types has a Mythic (Phoenicia, Euryali, Ketras the Bull, Wulfgarok, Ubastet, and Doomclaw) and a couple notable troops. Here are some of them:
Summary
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The other aspects of these troops are pretty great as well. You can actually deal a pretty significant amount of damage with them.
Looking at Cunning, assuming you have about 12 magic bonus from kingdoms/guilds, and your enemies have about 60 Life each (typical of high level PvP)… You’re dealing about 25 damage, plus (60 * 4 / 4) is about 85 DAMAGE TO TWO ENEMIES, DOUBLED IF THEY’RE PURPLE. I’m freaking out midway through typing this, this is literally objectively better than January’s Mythic.
Even the art is cool, check out Treachery:
Continuing on with the other changes, we have:
TROOPS
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The 6 new Guild Guardians enter chests Monday, December 16th.
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We have the troops of an upcoming faction! The common theme: UNRELIABILITY!
- Chaos Hound creates 7-10 Skulls or 6-8 Doomskulls, or summons a copy of itself. This troop’s ability is so inconsistent it’s mind-boggling, you have to cast it, hope you get skulls instead of a summon, hope you get enough skulls, AND hope those skulls align to create a match. Worst case scenario you hand your opponent a board of Doomskulls, and that’s not fun.
- Dementicore steals attack, drains Mana, or Silences. If you dropped the first one it’d be a good option to prevent an enemy from casting. Since it has Agile as well it’s probably at the front of the Faction team. Sadly its useless against itself since it has Impervious.
- Crazed Troll now doubles Blue and Purple instead of Red and Purple, presumably so it doesn’t all feed directly into the Legendary. Never felt the need to use Ice Troll so this really isn’t going to get used outside the Delve.
- Lyrasza is the Legendary. The spell Pandamonium (haha she’s a panda) deals AoE damage, or Jumbles the board and gains an extra turn, OR explodes 5 gems. I wouldn’t pay 16 mana for any of these on their own, why would I pay 16 mana to roll the dice and hope for the one I want? This faction is going to be a nightmare…
- Lyrasza’s trait creates a new Storm type. I’ll have to look at the code to figure out what it does later.
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Dementicore’s attack stealing is probably the best way to beat the faction to be honest. I could live without the drain Mana and Silence.
Lyrasza’s spell is quite bad, but I’ll bite the bullet and not want a buff if it means the AI gets this mediocre spell as well.
Chaos Hound is utterly useless and will probably be your win condition from the AI side lol.
I saw the +4/all stats on the stream, and was like, is that new? Pretty exciting stuff, especially since the first two traits mean the new guardians can be used in the first slot.
Well since randomness seems to be the theme of this faction, I actually don’t mind that the other options are Mana Drain and Silence. If you can actually get rid of the opposing Dementicore, you can focus Dementicore on their Lyrasza. She’s really the only source of damage they have outside of skulls.
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Spell text actually says “Deal [Magic + 3] damage to an Enemy and a random Enemy, boosted by each Enemy’s Life.” I took this to mean just the affected enemies by themselves (though your reading could be right, given text inconsistencies). So you’d be looking at more like 25+ 60/4 = 40 damage to two enemies, doubled if they’re purple.
That interpretation is correct, after double checking my code. It’s still not too bad especially with the trait giving +4 damage per turn.
Persistence still has a Devour chance, and can boost Wulfgarok’s damage easily.
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I’ve seen the art of the upcoming troops: these graphics have wonderful colors , high details and most important personality ! Great job of the artist/s ! 
Look to Mother of Darkness (Darkstone) , Broker of Greed and Envoy of Pride (both Sin of Maraj).
They are definitely better than the last months troop’s artwork…
In other news, Frostfire Keep is almost upon us. (What’s with these troop names by the way? Did someone have just a bit too much fun saying “frostfire” again and again?)
It is yet another status-based faction. Fortunately, the legendaries for these kingdoms tend to be good, and The Frostfire King is no exception. Passive freeze without being bound to Mab’s mana burn (with all its immunities), yes please! His damage is pretty good too, and the fact that he’s both elf and elemental type means he boosts King Avelorn’s damage twice. He’s a very solid addition.
I’m already looking out for Frostfire King and elementals. 
It’ll be a solid troop outside of factions. In factions, it’ll be average. story of its life
Don’t you? I sure do!
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Errr…has anybody given thought to what these new guardians will do for the mythics on decent looping teams?
Doomclaw becomes usable, and Wulfgarok becomes a bit more reliable. But the other four…their damage buffs can get pretty obscene, pretty fast. Ubastet boosts on team attack, and Ketras boosts on everything, while Euryali does true damage. Phoenicia does magicx2 to all enemies. Where I’m standing, their new damage numbers with a moderate number of loops start to look pretty nuts.
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My thoughts are that the Devs are trying to balance (or at least offset or provide an alternative to) fast teams/races with powerful ones.
Tauros/Urska do have 50% starting Mana options, though, and the Tauros one in particular can get nasty fairly quickly with Ragereaver and 1-2 Ketras. No status countering/immunity, though, or ideal Empowered start (Soothsayer isn’t fully reliable).
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My thoughts sound cynical but it’s more of an observation of an outcome we could be moving towards that makes sense and can’t be fairly judged until it happens.
I think you’re right: fast vs. slow is getting a balance change. I think the angle is less about fairness and more about economic adjustments. If players can win a lot of games quickly and the game continues in that direction, very small changes to rewards can cause very big disparities between heavy players and casual players. An ideal disparity exists, but obviously if it gets too wide the more casual players give up.
So I think resources will get nerfed more and more as more of this magic 5.0 update releases. They want to get players used to a slower curve. Later additions will introduce new ways to get rewards, and they will watch data about how different players attack them. That data will inform future economy adjustments. It’s easier to fix, “our payouts are too low” than “our payouts were too high and there is excess wealth”.
In theory, some day, this “live content” will reach their fabled end goal and all of this will make sense. The question is, will we like the interim enough to stick around? The nice thing about not-live content is we get to see finished products and don’t have to suffer through all the infrastructure to get there.
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A new way to win besides outpacing fast defense teams would be a welcome addition. Especially one that rewards good board management.
That being said, I’m not sure the ability to boost out stats like this cuts in favor of slower matches. It can go both ways, as the ability to wipe out a defense on turn one probably increases by using these new guild guardians.
Also, anybody got thoughts on the Maugrim Woods troops we’re getting, on what’s looking like a crazy Monday? Dire Cub is kinda meh for a Bountyhunter troop (too random, no damage or board control), and I’m not too stoked about Wargare Brute either (mediocre front troop).
Krampus, on the other hand, might be worth using. Like Dullahan, he’s a semi-random instakill option, but having a 2/3 chance of effectively instakilling an opponent is better than average, possibly giving him a role in scaling content. Too bad the traits are kinda haphazard (curse on skulls, for a non-first troop option, stinks, and random passive damage on red matches is pretty mediocre too).
Krampus would be funny to pair with Captain Macaw, otherwise eh. Those 3 troops aren’t that exciting . The Blue/Brown cleanser isn’t the worst, 10 mana for 3x cleanse + 8 mana back is okay, especially for the times when you don’t get free choice on troops, mainly on the brown side of things.
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Poor Centaurs and Orcs. They always seem to get the short end of the stick.
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Umenath
Mana cost increased from 24 to 25
Now a targeted spell instead of attack strongest
Boost ratio increased from 3:1 to 2:1
Now umenath looks more reliable, yes?
Tuliao
Boost ratio reduced
Captain Macaw
Mana cost reduced to 14
Staff of Insanity
Shentang weapon, looks like the faction weapon of Lyrasza’s Lair.
RANDOMLY CHOOSE ONE: create 12 purple gems, drain 5 mana from all enemies, give 0.34*M magic to other allies.
yes, one more 1 of 3, like other Lyrasza’s lair troops…
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