Tbh neither is a great counter… Entangle wears off, and Skeleton negates it with his attack buff anyway… Stoneskin saves you a bit, but that’s a (possibly OP) counter to all attacks not just Skeletons…
And my point isn’t that I can’t beat them but that I think it’s bad for the game, and my enjoyment of it, as we steadily head towards every team being the same TrueShot/Skeleton/GreenSlime combo…
Yes, I wish there was some kind of incentive for players to be more creative with defense teams. I had noticed the recent decline in goblin teams (which is a shame because I actually find them great fun to play now lol) and now have to skip 3-4+ invades just to bypass the skelly/shegg/bone teams to find an interesting team to fight. I can choose from a dozen teams when playing a non s/s/b team but have to use my own undead team against them with any hope of winning - which means I need to use it far far more than I would like. It gets stale.
By all means use that team for invades but it seems a shame that all the other great troop combos are ignored in the main and therefore players dont have a chance to think about creating/using the best team to counter with.
esslee, familair name, aren’t you using that Empowered defense build? Really annoying one 
Yep - its not skellies or dragons tho is it
I had the idea for an empowered team then it took a lot of time and effort to farm the stones to fully trait them all. It gets 50/50 wins/losses.
Phew, haven’t been around much this week. Doing things here, doing things there, it’s whatever.
Now on to what people are really wanting me to talk about! (Maybe, I dunno, do people read these?)
The ever eventful and obnoxiously informative, Weekly Gem Feedback Report! 
It’s the Holy Grail of news this week! Well not really… but it is amazing nonetheless! We listen for another deity through Yasmine’s Chalice!
Hulking up your team with essentially the equivalent of the fountain of youth, this chalice feeds the entire squad with a mystery growth serum so unbelievably potent that even scam artist’s wouldn’t try to sell it seriously!
That’s not all we’ve got though, we’ve got a series of troop tweaks hinting towards stat alterations for the upcoming 1.0.9! But considering a little too plentiful and minor, we’ll focus on the important changes.
Like how Avina’s finally decided to live up to her undead-slaying occupation by whacking Vampires and Skeletons with the equivalent of an SUV! Or how our buddy Gnoll’s getting a minor boost for rightfully exterminating those nasty Rock Worms so they stop dropping boulders in his berry patches.
Finally, ready your Goblin’s, Glade Warrior’s, and Reaver’s, because we’ve got some stones of Stealth coming soon to a chest near you!
Once again, this has been, the Weekly Gem Feedback Report! Match you next time! 
Not to mention the attack boost AND an extra turn on top of that, which makes Skelly still the perfect fit in True Shot teams. 10 mana is still dirt cheap for that spell in my opinion. At least it takes more than a single mana surge to top him off now (using +2 purple banner and Giant Spider with Magic Link) so the Skeleton coin toss may be reduced a bit.
Chalice pack appears to come with Arcane Stealth (mono-green) traitstones, is this intentional due to Forest of Thorns or is it meant to be yellow-green/vice-versa to suit the weapon? And/or is it a visual glitch only?
I haven’t bought the pack yet. Last thing I need is more mono-green.
It’s mono-green following the pattern of the kingdom
As long as we know for sure. Think people will stop at one this week…
For anyone wondering, on the consoles, our event item is goblin rocket for 70 glory. Red/Yellow troop. Explodes a gem, does 4 damage to a random target, and 1 damage to adjacent troops. Gain an extra turn. Level 1 stats.
And wouldn’t you know it? A Gloom Leaf package with those arcane beast stones I’ve been looking for! Real money bundle though…
It’s a great troop grab two of them
Or three. Or four. They get scary once Consoles get non-unique kingdom bonuses, if they don’t already (Steam user can you tell). It won’t last, but once they become unique you can start ascending troops…
Thanks for the advice. I’ve now bought 7 lol. 2 for actual use, and 5 for ascension later.
Edit: And we don’t get troop/kingdom bonuses yet so far as I know. We definitely don’t get the bonuses yall get on steam/mobile.
Edit2: I’d hold off on purchasing them for now. They aren’t being awarded after being purchased atm.
Can I just say, regarding the skeleton:
Avina
Spell now deals triple damage to Undead enemies
Mana cost reduce from 13 to 11
This is a great counter for them, and one everyone can get.
Hmmm…wonder if 1.09 will see weapons getting assigned to a kingdom for the team bonuses to make the Hero more viable? It’s always fun to speculate
Entangle doesn’t work on attack power ups. Another reason why, in my opinion, Skeleton should have been nerfed on another way (gain armor instead of attacks when using its spell).
Stoneskin sure helps, but it forces you to have a stoneskin frontline and cards having stoneskin generally don’t offer you synergy with a lot of cards…
I guess thats why current event offer stealth Arcanes, say helo to Glade Warden at every level of the game.
And don’t forget that all her traits also scream “I’m gonna wreck these Skeletons, passing through their armor to deal double lethal damage all while avoiding what they throw at me !”
(BTW, her spell base damage got a bit lowered though, still lethal to Skeletons)
Skeleton is rarely the front troop in a team, so entangle would work. If skeleton is the front, just use something with 2x skull damage to undead such as Archon Statue. That in particular has both Stonewall and 2x damage to undead.
I’m hesitant about ever nerfing skulls too much for there are always hard counters to troops that only do skull production and attack raise.
For attack or defense? In my pvp play two weeks I barely met a skel, over half were goblin teams, some trueshot and the rest random “pushover” teams of old lvl15 troops without kingdom bounus.
For the last week I actually had to abandon my well-working skel team and switch back to boar rider myself due to centaur crap – and really with whatever attackers they make me just want to uninstall the game immediately. Guess the recent gold cost removal is under the hood the hall pass to the player population to use the exit button for free without you devs admitting the situation… I will definitely not not go a single round on that team.
While of course skel is way OP for its own good, the move is the usual $#@$@ when you keep nerfing whatever the players try to use to keep themselves afloat against the overblown stats. Or just to allow to play more games in the same timeframe.
One of my most painful memories from MPQ are the devs idea to make games certain length – over 5 mins – and do all kinds of changes to achieve that.
That 1 extra mana is not the end of the world but the approach and its stability is bad.
(Btw to save a separate rant, let me mention feature I asked for a lot in the past, esp. the webspinner times: fast forward enemy turn. Fro me the main problem fighting gobs is not boredom or the occasional loss – it’s their endless amount of turns that kills my time. And the fix is NOT by any means to take away those turns, just allow option so they can happen in a blink. Si I can play may game instead of sitting there watching the AI playing solitaire. And nerfing player-driven tools just adds to this problem.)
The variant I met most had 3 trooshot things and Sheggra, Guess no need to explain.
Or you again meant the invader teams? There skel fits cool indeed driven by player, but again, what is the motivation to hurt that?
That exactly why TS should have been benched in the very FIRST days instead of waiting the investments to pile up, then be damned either you do or do not change…
As 0 gold is already in, maybe you could go the next step and remove “scouting” by just revealing the def team to turn the retreats directly to skips? And make skip free too? Then put them back AFTER the metagame got fixed so playing a pvp game has some internal fun, not done exclusively for the resulting resources?
@Shimrra - I suspect the ‘Spring Imp’ will be all green and require 16 arcane stealth.
Are imps released on the southern or northern hemisphere season?
Perhaps purple & red primals could be Equinox Imps??
Or the Red could be a Chinese New Year Imp and come out in early February!