Mythgard just implemented a brand new set of balance changes to the game, affecting 6 cards!

  • Flame Scroll -> Costs 3 (up from 1), now deals 4 damage to the opponent (up from 3).
  • Locked in Ice -> Now has 'Lock a minion's strength to zero until Sunrise', no longer stuns the target.
  • Loki's Veil -> Complete rework. The suppression effect is now a standard action of the occupying minion, instead of being an Awaken tied to the Artifact itself, and it now also targets minions. Minions created in that lane also gain Stealth, which is the first time the keyword is seen outside of Harmony. If it wasn't for this change, we would've had to wait until next expansion for the keyword to get used outside it's original faction.
  • Pentacle of Flavors -> The numbers are switched around: it's now Blast 3, Regen 4, and Slayer 5 (it was Regen 3, Slayer 4, and Blast 5)
  • Profane Locus -> Attacking minions also get Fragile 1.
  • Ready for Anything -> The buff is no longer permanent.

Those changes didn't occur because the cards were over or underpowered, but because most of them felt bad to play against. Rhino's Phu gives us a deeper insight:

Quote From Phu

This set of changes was based primarily on player feedback (whereas the previous set were based primarily on data). Of course, not all cards can or should be balanced with respect to only data - some cards simply feel worse to play against than others, for example.

Profane Locus

-1/-0 -> Fragile 1

48% WR, 89th most used card

This card can be miserable to play against. We didn't revert entirely because the previous version was nearly never played. This iteration should be somewhat better than the -1/-0 version in that it doesn't shut down large amounts of early damage.

Locked in Ice

Fragile 9 -> Fragile 4

46% WR, 44th most used card

This card can be miserable to play against, and we were reminded that the original spirit of the card was to provide "removal" options primarily in limited.

Loki's Veil

Minions created here get Stealth

Occupying minion has Lurker and ｢@: Select a minion, lane enchantment, or artifact. Entities with the same name are Suppressed until Sunrise｣.

47% WR, 63rd most used card

We were never really comfortable with the "buffed" version of this due to how non-interactive it was. However, we didn't want to revert it to its much worse and never-played version (especially as a Mythic). The design of Loki's Veil has very few tuning knobs, so we decided to try something entirely different. Adding Stealth makes it much more flavorful and fitting Loki's portfolio, and extending this ability to Norden is an interesting twist. As a general note, the design team needs to remind itself to be especially careful about creating cards that shut down entire classes (especially ones as interesting and unique to Mythgard as Enchantments).

Ready for Anything

Remove "permanently"

53% WR, 30th most used card

This should help somewhat by reducing the synergy between this and Rush in RO. Although a 53% winrate is very much within the acceptable range, it's probably a touch high for this card in particular.

Flame Scroll (created by Shinobi of Fire)

(1) -> (3)

50% WR, 20th most used card

We think this change will leave Shinobi of Fire very nearly as good as it was before in that it's likely to do nearly about as much damage as previously, but give the opponent a bit more time to pull something.

All WR are given as Mythril/Champion over a couple weeks.

For general interest, the most used card is currently Wings of Abaddon.

The highest winrate card is currently The Recursionist

There was also a patch on the 19th that fixed a number of bugs in the game which we somehow missed. Whoops. Here are the patch notes:

Quote From Rhino Games

Features & Bug Fixes

  • Test cards should no longer appear in Core packs for Tournament Draft

  • Fixed a bug that failed to properly card count when unmaking

  • Fixed a bug where queuing for the Winter Holiday event with Victorious Podium in your deck prevents the match from starting

  • Fixed a bug where adding an Artifact to an existing stack wasn’t counting towards the Build for the Ages faction mission

  • Fixed a soft lock when casting an Ephemeral Mind Freak

  • Fixed a bug where Academy Analyst was reducing the cost for Items

  • Fixed a bug where transforming a minion on Guardian Plateau could erroneously generate Sand GuardiansBADCARDNAME

  • Fixed a bug where creating a minion on Guardian Plateauand having it immediately die could erroneously generate a Sand Guardian on the enchantment itself

  • Fixed a bug where a Blighted minion that dies and creates another minion was passing the Blight to the created minion while Miasma Catalyst is in play

  • The modifier for Hall of Matrimony now shows up in tooltips

  • Fixed a bug where a Gama Sennin banished by Profane Locus was not granting the Ring of Eternity

  • Fixed a bug where creating a minion during your opponent’s turn no longer triggers Model of Duality

  • Fixed a bug preventing the Deepest Winter board from being purchasable

  • Fixed missing strings on Season II ranked trims

  • Added explanations in the guide regarding the interaction of Demise effects and Banish vs. Ephemeral

  • Changed animation for Ephemeral minion death to better reflect when the card is removed from play

Known Issues

The various card bugs were discovered too late for fixes to be included in this update. They should be fixed in the following patch.

  • Mana cost reduction effects are not functioning correctly with respect to variable cost spells such as Anhelli and Extract Life

  • Transforming a minion on Whitemoon Arena or Nazca Memorial can result in the minion having double the intended stat bonus

  • Reanimate effects (Re:Spawn, Stairway to Hades, etc) don’t work for the right-player’s lanes in 2v2.

  • Guilds are NYI

BADCARDNAMEBADCARDNAME