(!) Spoiler Alert (!) -- [Any Details Provided are Subject to Change] (Part 1)

Well yeah. But to do that, you still have to beat the first room.

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Looking ahead to next week, we have Mist of Scales troops. Algorak is a very standard Godslayer/Siegebreaker mediocre exploder, and Kobra continues to show that summoning troops who aren’t Legendaries or Mythics are generally useless to even mid-game players.

The bounty troop Amaru is the prize; a super-fast aimable curse that also stuns, yes please! Like Glutmaw, it will be very handy to pair with HKI if you need a curse, or to use with status-dependent troops like Scorpius.

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New spoilers…

  1. Werewood faction troops.

Not a fan… 15/20/25% chance to transform into the faction legendary means you can’t plan on using any 3 of those troops with any consistency… The faction legendary is an interesting dual converter but has a 25% chance of downgrading into one of those other 3 troops. Dual converters are designed for consistency, which random transforming itself into something else is the opposite of being consistent. Add to it 20% skull reduc, 20% chance to dodge, or hunter’s mark on a skull match for top slot defense and you’re looking at a very sketchy faction. I wish one or more of them didn’t transform. (preferably Werebear and Beastmaster Torbern).

Beastmaster Torbern’s 3rd trait is
Trait #3: Master of Beasts
Give 2 Life and Attack to Beast Allies when matching 4 or more Gems.

This 3rd trait doesn’t actually help much if an ally transforms as all bonuses are lost as the troop turns into something else.

Also worth noting:
Willow’s 3rd trait:
Trait #3: Wild Growth
All Beast allies gain 2 Attack and Life on 4 or 5 Gem matches.

We don’t really need a duplicate 3rd trait…

  1. Cunning, Defiance, Ferocity, Finesse, Persistence, Treachery

Interesting that they’re 6 commons in a cycle. They read like Guild Guardian troops, but could also be new gw reward troops? Will be interested to see where they belong.

Treachery and Defiance are the two weakest since they rely on status effects, where as others have scaling boost ratios (enemy life, tauros style buff) or have interesting effects (6 mana to all other allies if there’s a storm, 25% chance to random devour)

I rather like the idea of these troops (essentially a toolbox of tricks), though Im not sure where I’d use them. The 3rd trait self buffs them too and multiples could make them quite powerful.

  1. Baited Pet Gnome

  2. 01/06/2020 Forest of Thorns Kingdom Power 18

  3. Ice Rift faction troops.

They’ve been buffed and modified. While conceptually I like the fire and ice style, these troops don’t really have a standout win condition and don’t actually interact much with the freeze and burn gimmick (whoopee, a few extra points of damage).

In Faction vs Faction, Frostfire Witch is still largely useless. Frostfire Troll is just a 2 color creating troll. Frostfire Wraith will be obnoxious on the AI side, but about as useful as Redcap was in Wild Court on the player side. (without potions, almost negligible). The Frostfire King screams use lots of potions or don’t do much damage with it, though the enemy AI will bash your face in with it.

Kinda dreading this faction. I promise I don’t hate every faction… I think?

  1. Drifting Sands Mythic got nerfed from creating 10 gems, to 9. It already “looked” weak and this doesn’t help.
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It’s also worth noting that transform effects are based on the roster strength, meaning the AI will always transform into full strength troops not diminished in any way. Any AI spell going off may reset health/armor back to max.

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SPOILER UPDATE

We’re seeing some new troops upcoming, many of which are significant for their spell and abilities but for their gameplay significance.

  • The Baited Pet Gnome potentially signals a Pet Rescue rework or at least an expansion; “baiting” certain pets (to allow you to select from a limited set, or to discover a pet of a certain color, for example) is a concept that has come up on stream in response to potential pet changes. Note that this would not give the ability to choose exactly what pet you get, this has been explicitly counted out in the past.
  • Cunning, Defiance, Ferocity, Finesse, Persistence, and Treachery are all single-color Assassin troops, that deal single-target damage based on a boost ratio, dealing double damage if they are a matching color. The fact that they are from the Hall of Guardians is confusing, since it means they are NOT from the same kingdom as the Guild Guardians like Justice and Honor, which is simply called Guardians. I’m going to assume these are part of the upcoming mentioned Guild rework and this is simply a mistake. As for the troops themselves, I like the idea of new Guild Guardians but these are garbage, especially if their traits are staying as expensive as the other ones.

Other troops include:

  • The Werebeasts faction!
    • Beastmaster Torben was a troop where I was thought to myself “oooOOOaaauuugh” as I read it. Double convert is nice, and Hunter’s Mark synergizes well with that, but transform is a frustrating prospect, especially when the result is so unpredictable.
    • Werebear explodes Gems, Werebird deals targeted damage, and Werecat deals targeted damage and has a chance to create Gems. The latter is at least interesting, since if its ability triggers you’re almost guaranteed an extra turn, but the randomness of the faction and the variance between the troops Torben can transform into is going to be a pain.
  • Upcoming unspecified Bountyhunter; Crystal Turtle.
  • Shanbanu Vespara got… nerfed? Are you sure? The extreme randomness of this is major downer, I don’t think anyone is anticipating this troop enthusiastically.
  • A couple of tweaks to the troops from the Frostfire faction.

WEAPONS:

  • Reflection of Good got nerfed to Magic/2 explosions. What justifies making it weaker in that regard than Essence of Evil?

PETS:

  • I guess we’re getting micro muffins based on platforms? Do I have to find my old iPod touch to get the Apple one? Probably can’t even run the game…

Nothing in classes. They added flavor descriptions for the Frostfire and Werewoods

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Werebeasts faction looks frustrating as hell to use. We’ve just been cursed with Mirrored Halls troops with the win-con being 50% summon clones, and now this is happening? And that duplicate legendary trait absolutely cannot stay, two months to change it I guess.

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I’m curious about moonclaw. How can you summon a random gnoll, when not a single troop has that type and there is only 1 card with “gnoll” in the name (hint, it’s gnoll)?

Similar to how Cocoon summons a “spider”, there’s an internal list what a “spider” (or “gnoll”) is.

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I guess gnolls are those from wild plains who do triple spell damage vs a certain color

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They must be trying to make an impossible to complete faction. surely… I’d love to see the devs complete this Werewoods delve with the faction team at 500. I don’t think I’ve actually asked that of any of the other factions so far that I can remember, maybe one of the really early ones. Definitely one of those press X to doubt moments.

I am angry that the Werewoods troops are not:

  • Werewhat
  • Werewho
  • Werewhy
  • Werehow
  • Werewhen

Also the art concepts disappoint. “Werewolf” is from Old English “werewulf”, with wer meaning “man” and wulf being, well, “wolf”.

So a “werebear” is not a wolf-bear. It is a man-bear, and so forth. And actually “Bearwolf” sounds pretty cool, too. I also support using “wulf”. It’s demonstrably cooler.

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I find your name choices for the faction troops, questionable.

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So would a werebearschweine be half man/half bear-swine, or half man-bear/half swine? You know how bad I am at math. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::+1:

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I thought the win-con in Mirrored Halls was to copy a good troop or two with Doppleganger? That’s how I beat it with a 500 faction team anyway.

As for the Werewoods faction, yeah it does look frustrating. Its basically a race to see who kills fastest before all the transforming (which also means full healing) happens. The team does have a lot of tools to do high damage though. Of course that also means the enemy faction can kill you very quickly if luck isn’t on your side.

Summon clones - of something, yes, I never specified it had to be faction troops. To be fair, I did clear 250 with faction troops only because my target died before I could secure a clone from it, but my clear of 300 was incredibly fast by comparison.

Queen Moonclaw’s spell counts the number of Green Allies, then counts the number of Green Enemies, then creates 9 Skulls plus the count value, then summons one of the following three troops:

  • Gnoll, the Red/Green Rare from Wild Plains
  • Savage Hunter, the Brown/Green Rare from Wild Plains
  • Bane Jaw, the Brown/Purple Epic from Wild Plains

The troop IDs for this are randomly encoded into Queen Moonclaw’s spell. This is similar to how Cocoon randomly summons one of five hard-coded troops.

Interesting. Why not Wild Fang? It matches the criteria of the other 3.

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Thanks for the information :slight_smile:
I didn’t mean “What programming is involved for this troop?”, but rather “How can players know which troops can be summoned?”

It would be weird for Wild Fang not to be in Moonclaw’s summon pool. For that matter, shouldn’t she be able to summon herself too?

Not terribly excited for the new legendary, sadly, which seems like a marginal improvement at best over Bone Dragon and Tomb Robber. The coolest thing to me about it is the third trait, the first one to finally give teamwide boosts based on ally skull damage. Could come into play on Wild Plains events, where the attack gains (to the Tauros troops) and summon both would be useful.

The glory troop Bullserker is yet another Tauros attacker that scales based on its own stats. As an ultra rare, it looks like the worst of the lot.

(My personal ranking of Tauros: Ketras>>>Minogor>Chief Stronghorn*>Earthcaller>Bullserker.)

*Stronghorn’s third trait could improve its standing if we ever got some Tauros with better board control, to create a proper looping team.

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