A new Rare Targon Spell, Sunburst, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Spell, Zenith Blade, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Targon Unit, Rahvun, Daylight's Spear, has been revealed!

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A new Epic Targon Unit, Sun Guardian, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Unit, Solari Shieldbearer, has been revealed!

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A new Common Targon Unit, Solari Soldier, has been revealed!

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Often times in card games we are drawn to synergies like a moth to the flame. 

We think of the list that a  card wants to belong in and not where the card wants to be played.

This applies double to trundle.

Our instinct in to jam him into a ramp list with big cards, but why are we doing that.

This doesn't help him level.

Trundle levels himself, he isn't a build around.

He starts at a 4/6 regenerate that's a hard stat line to deal with,

Back him up with fury of the north and elixir of iron and he ain't dying

Then just play your free pillar on 8 after you have kept him alive for 3 turns.

Or they kill him and you play another and get another free pillar.

Boom now he's a 5/7 with regenerate and overwhelm, and that's all he has to be.

If you want synergy add tyndamere as a 3 of and that's it.

Then run just run good cards, starlit seer, omen hawk, and curve out normally.

Easy wins.

How have you been finding the Arena and what's the best strategy?

Thought I had a decent deck of good value stats and OP cards with a good curve but ended up going 1-3 as priest.
since classic, I've always spent 90% of my gold on arena runs, but I took a break over the last 2 expansions.

I hate this card. I hate it more than anything ever printed. It is worse than kaelthas in my opinion, but it's okay i fixed it.

"But won't they just play obsidian statue instead?"

hahahahahahah

I'm growing  bored with Runeterra.  I don't play ladder, Labs is incredibly random, and Expedition mode is, IMO, like Arena but worse.  That leaves Casual play, which is sometimes fun, but I have more Shards than I know what to do with and could craft enough Champions to have 3x of every existing one.  I've max leveled every region, and I'm just growing bored and frustrated with the mechanics and how much decks rely on a single Champion.

How is HS these days?  I haven't played in probably a year, but I've still watched my favorite streamers.  Battlegrounds looks really fun - is it free or do you have to pay?  How's the deck variety in regular play?  I do like what they've done with Ranked.  Playing LoR has made me really appreciate a lot of the mechanics of HS, believe it or not.

A new Common Shadow Isles Spell, Unspeakable Horror, has been revealed!

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A new Champion Shadow Isles Unit, Nocturne, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Shadow Isles Spell, Stalking Shadows, has been revealed!

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A new Common Shadow Isles Spell, Risen Mists, has been revealed!

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A new Common Shadow Isles Spell, Shroud of Darkness, has been revealed!

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Full disclosure - I stopped playing LoR right around the time they started introducing Gauntlet and Labs. Between a certain amount of burnout on CCGs in general and a fair amount of disappointment with Riot, I just decided it was time for a break.

With all that in mind, I've been following the latest expansion in the hopes that the new cards might renew my interest in the game. And some of what I've seen has been really encouraging:

• A much more significant emphasis put on the Support mechanic (which I always felt was one of the more interesting - yet least utilized - mechanics in the game)
• A major uptick in Regeneration in the Freljord. A while back on this forum I had noted that Regeneration is a form of healing, and that while it didn't show up on many units anywhere, that it made sense as the Freljord expression of the healing identity. At the time Riot said healing was a big part of the identity of the Freljord, but it plainly wasn't in the actual cards, so this is encouraging.
• The Gem token card. This one is a little obscure, but I like that Riot is willing to make a Burst speed spell that can't be cast in combat or in response to a spell. That is exactly what I think Glimpse Beyond ought to be, and I've said as much at least a couple of times on this forum.
• More sources of Obliterate. So far this is just Passage Unearned, but I'm glad there are tech cards that can respond to some of the crazier revive effects that have often created some very frustrating top tier decks. It might be a little too good against those decks, but hopefully it's weak enough against many other decks that it sees only limited play (which would be perfect for a tech card).

So, even without reveals from many of the regions, there's a lot here that makes me think this could be good for the game.

At the same time, I'm pretty worried about yet another massive influx of mechanics. With only a few regions having revealed cards so far, they've already introduced SpellShield, Nightfall, and Behold. Maybe there won't be too many new things with this set, but given how much was introduced with Rising Tides (Powder Kegs, Toss, Plunder, Nab, Deep, Vulnerable, Scout, Attune) it seems unlikely that this set will end up with a short list of new mechanics.

It may seem counter-intuitive to complain about new mechanics in a new set, but I think the Riot approach feels a bit like its not well thought out. By introducing so many new mechanics, and placing them in only small subsets of the regions, you end up in a state where content is much harder to balance. When new mechanics are paired with the new region and some supporting region (e.g. Toss in SI/Bilgewater) you can't think about how to balance new mechanics in isolation from the pre-existing balance issues between the regions more broadly. Moreover, any new mechanic is inherently harder to balance because the devs have no experience balancing it and have no audience feedback about the mechanic in action. So, it's way better to limit the surface area of new content to ensure balancing can be done well from the get-go.

By contrast, in games like MTG and Hearthstone, expansions typically highlight only one or two new mechanics, and they put those mechanics in each color/class/region, which allows developers to think about how fit that new content to the identity of each color/class/region. These mechanics also often deviate only slightly from existing content (e.g. Proliferate in MTG, which adds counters to cards that already have counters, or Spellburst in Hearthstone, which acts as a one-time "after you cast a spell" trigger). Following these patterns makes it easier to think about whether the mechanic is too powerful or too weak in isolation, or if it is too easily abused by a subset of the colors/classes/regions. 

Ultimately, I fear this reflects a continued reality with Riot's dev process, where they feel like they can constantly dump a lot of new content because they're constantly rebalancing the game. It's a philosophy that seems to emphasize "exciting new content" over "fun, balanced gameplay." In that way, it feels like there's a certainly lack of ownership in the quality of the initial work, and that bothers me.

(One related note - I have no idea how to judge the decision to break the expansion up over multiple months. Given how often LoR is rebalanced, the high frequency influx of new content may be fine and have no outsized impact on the way the metagame is formed. But it may also reinforce this apparent design philosophy that it's better to constantly throw out shiny new content in place of balanced content.)

I stopped playing it for some time because of it. Up until today that is. I try the mode again today and the same thing happens, again! Its completely rigged at the end. Things are completely fair and balanced up until you get to that last match. Then 100% time, ever time. It will brick your hand and place you against an aggro deck.

I have got to that last match at least 10 times now and it does that. I pull all expensive crap or just useless spells and can't do anything until turn 4 or 5 and by then I'm already dead. I'm not joking. It's done it every single time. Not once have I had a fair match on the last one and have lost all of them because of it.

Fix the damn system!

I feel like Trundle is just a really bad champ. He has good base stats and that's about it. He takes up a slot that you could put in an actual good champ, his mechanic that the deck has to be built around is just God awful, his champ card is Trundle's Icequake; which is also a horrible card; and his level up does essentially nothing. At most you will get is +2 attack, +1 on average, and if you get +3 or more, well congratulations, you have a bricked hand and you are probably going to lose. His only redeeming feature is that he gives you a free Ice Pillar which is an okay card, but even then I'd rather just run the Ice Pillar without Trundle eating up a champ slot.

But those are just my thoughts. What are yours?

It's always bothered me that I couldn't find a single source for Hearthstone's card and hero sounds. So, as someone trying to learn how to code, I built one as my first significant project!

HearthSFX

I spent most of the last couple months extracting and mapping the game sounds for each card and hero - Scholomance Academy included.

The site includes every play, attack, death, trigger, and entrance sound for each minion where applicable - including tokens and other non-collectible cards. The heroes and hero cards have all their available gameplay (thinking, out of cards, out of time, etc.), emotes, errors, and holiday voice lines. Any special interactions between cards and heroes are mapped in as well.

It's best viewed on non-mobile devices at the moment, but I plan on improving this for smaller screens in the future.

Please let me know what you think!

A new Epic Shadow Isles Spell, Encroaching Shadows, has been revealed!

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A new Common Shadow Isles Unit, Stygian Onlooker, has been revealed!

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A new Common Shadow Isles Unit, Doombeast, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Shadow Isles Spell, Passage Unearned, has been revealed!

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A new Rare Shadow Isles Unit, Duskrider, has been revealed!

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