v1.5.6: New Sources of Power

On UI and Philosopher's Stone

Before we start with the meat of this patch, let's address Philosopher's Stone.

1. Philosopher's Stone and Jormungandr have been out for a while now.

2. The combination is busted as fuck!

3. Nobody discovered this combo until I ran into Visionary who randomly rolled it. I got destroyed.

As such, Philospher's Stone is being nerfed this patch. It now converts your basics into X-5 aether instead of X-4. To compensate somewhat, its life total has been increased from [37] to [39].

Secondly, the Shrapnel Storm Animation code has been fixed. Now the animations finish executing in at most 5 seconds.

Thirdly, new animation code has been added to the mana gain code. Anything that gains large amounts of mana (such as Triosurge, IndiHome Paket, and Philosopher's Stone) finishes animation in at most 5 seconds. The animation code has also been made more robust, capable of gaining 1500 mana at a time.

This is doable by turn 50 by combining the aforementioned cards. It's not necessarily imbalanced; the FixedPoint AI kept killing me when I tried to beeline for it in testing. As such, we're leaving this combo on ladder. Have fun!

The last balance change for this patch involves the managen. Since W5, when drawn by white, seems to underperform a bit, and leads to fairly static openers, one of its FE managen dice has been replaced with a FWAE die.

New Sources of Power

The new feature for this patch is the introduction of starred attack. Similar to + attack, the power of such a card can increase. How the power increases is described on the text of the cards.

Phoenix Hydra, Astral Drake, Spirit of Air, and Supreme Elemental will now have starred attack.

New Cards

Streamix [Banisher 35]

! Attack enemy creatures. Lose all fire.

+1 power per fire you have.

0*

Dev Comment: I haven't been having that much luck with IndiHome Paket Phoenix, maybe this gives me another thing I can try. By the way, the interaction with multicasting might not be what you expect.

Echo Slam (Banisher 7)

! Attack enemy creatures.

+3 power per enemy creature.

0*

Dev comment: This was originally planned for the Artifacts of History expansion, but we didn't have the technology to implement it at that time.

Mana Burn (Abjurer 7)

! Attack enemy creatures. They lose 1 of each mana.

+ power based on highest enemy mana.

0*

Dev comment: I'm not very happy with the way I worded this, but at least the effect is understandable.