Flail away with a new undead killer, and also get the Crimson Insignia!
Full details here >> Chain Reaction – Gems of War
Really happy to see gem creation troops nerfed! 
Yep, these changes looked helpful, and may address some of the worries in the recent thread: Dragons Are The New Webspinner! - #23 by psychetruth
Still have some concerns over gobbos though… but not game-breakingly so…
Am so sad on this changes. Now gem color changer troops are gonna be even stronger and popular. I think the gem creaters were just fine. The Rng factor could go either way. Most of the crying was due to how strong they are on higher difficulty like W3+ which should the point of playing on higher difficulties…
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Sorry guild-mate - but I can’t agree with you.
Good. They take skill to use. And don’t screw things up on AI teams, as the AI doesn’t have any skill.
Many correspondents here were disagreeing on that… and it seems the devs did too.
Not true at all - or at least I can’t remember seeing the threads about Celestasia etc referencing the high difficulties. Happy to be corrected. Playing on the higher difficulties is pretty broken anyway, (exploders clear the whole board, 10 point AOE damage, etc etc) - but that’s a different set of complaints…
Two new weapons… but, but, but… no one uses the Hero in their teams anymore 
Calling for a push to have the Hero counts as a member of the Capital for the purpose of Kingdom Team Bonus plz!
Or having the Hero Races compatible with existing races would be nice too. I would very much like to be able to use my level 400ish Hero again…
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Patch notes say attack:
Serpent
No longer gains Magic at Level 6
Gem creation no longer scales off Magic. Now creates 9 Red Gems.
Now Gains Attack, which scales with magic.
While card in game says says life.
I’m really hoping it is life, because I had a fun set of troops where the serpent was just a little too squishy.
Just a question: the event hasn’t started yet, however I noticed that the troops are already reflecting the new balances, is it always the case that balance changes are effective immediately after announcing?
From what I have observed so far, the answer is yes. Balance changes are usually implemented via the steam update (for steam version obviously), which is applied some time before the new event starts.
Then it must be across the board; people can’t play with different versions of troops. 
I just checked the database. It increases Life.
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I second @ctu1208, the hero should either be a citizen of all kingdoms, or of is capital.
He should also be of all races, or of his actual race.
One of the best suggestions I have seen is that the Hero be of your home kingdom and the weapons gain “Troop Types”. That would keep a choice still being presented, but also allow heroes to help out with bonuses. It might also encourage slotting some of the less used weapons to fill a type (something the bonus change did for less used troops).
Another good option would be to have it count as whatever you have the most of from a kingdom / troop type scenario. If there isn’t a “most” (only possible if all three of the other troops were different kingdom or troop type) then either revert to no bonus or perhaps mimicing the second position troop.
Main problem with it counting as all kingdoms and all types is you would be able to use one hero to fill out two kingdom bonuses. If you had two Adana troops, 1 Stormheim troop, and the hero, you would get lvl 3 Adana bonus and level 2 Stormheim bonus.
-Razlath
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I third this!
I’d rather not have the home kingdom decide which kingdom bonus the hero receives. Handling would be pretty awkward, you’d have to remember which home kingdom you need to migrate to whenever switching to a different one of your many preconfigured teams. Why not make it a property of the flag instead? Pick Forest of Thorns and your hero (if present) if considered a Forest of Thorns unit, he’s carrying the banner into battle after all.
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I like that as well. Would bring back some of the compromise where you might not get exactly the mana bonus you want for the sake of the kingdom bonus. Not sure if they specifically tried to eliminate that with the recent changes, but if not, that would work well.
-Razlath
I think it’s more likely that the weapons will be attached to kingdoms, making the hero count as that kingdom as a troop.
I’m not sure you’d be able to get a type bonus as well - that would be the compromise for using a hero troop that has great stats and loads of spells to choose from.