v1.8.2: Still working on balance...

With the big shake-up to the base set, there's still some major ripple effects to balance. I wanted to get 1.8.1 out, because it addresses most of them, while I'd take my time for this patch to focus more on fine-tuning.

Firstly, all cores have had their starting hp reduced by another 2. This is the same motivation as when they were reduced by 2 in v1.7.8.

Secondly, there was an major oversight. Murazond now reads "You cannot target me or my blocker with spells. Unaffected by (E8)."

Similarly, Emrakul (Chronomancer 11)'s text now has "Unaffected by (E8)".

(E8) now reads "Immediately execute a combat phase for all your lanes where you don't control a creature with 12 or more printed attack."

(E8) has been changed.

As for balance, the following changes are being made:

(F4) Drake: 3/13 -> 3/14

(F5) Berserker: 2/15 -> 2/14

(F6) Flame Wave: Life Adjustment 2 -> 1

(F9) Inferno: Reworked:

Target enemy.

! Damage it. Other enemy creatures take 7 damage.

2+

Dev Comment: This option was chosen over reworking into a chromatic sphere to mitigate the potential impact of drawing F9 and no more expensive F cards.

(F11) Armageddon: Life adjustment -1 -> 0

(F12) Dragon: 6/13 -> 6/14

(W4) Blizzard, Basic: Life adjustment 0 -> -1

(W6) Guard: 3/11 -> 2/15

(W7) Turtle: 3/15 -> 3/17

(A1) Griffin: 2/12 -> 2/11

(A2) Apprentice: 3/8 -> 3/9

(A6) Statue of Lightning: 0/20 -> 0/22

(A8) Burst Lightning: Life adjustment -1 -> -3

(E6) Nainen Totem: 0/22 -> 0/21

E7 and E8 swap places again.

Bloodlust (E7)

! Your creatures with up to X printed power unfreeze or attack.

11

Troll (E8)

R: I am healed 3.

4/22

Turn, Rank 7: Life adjustment 0 -> -1

Chromatic Sphere, Rank 4, 5, 6, 7: Life Adjustment 4 -> 3

Burst Lightning, Rank 7: Life Adjustment 0 -> -1

Portal Glaive, Rank 8: Life Adjustment 0 -> -1

Holy Blastwave, Rank 9: Power 1+ -> 0+

Triosurge, Rank 9: Life Adjustment -4 -> 0

Tank: 8/18 -> 7/20

Note that W6 was changed because it was too weak to F9, but then as a result of that change, F9 started significantly underperforming and needed to get buffed as well. There's going to likely be more changes coming - I'm of the mind of making Flame Wave a 7 power spell, and replacing Inferno with a 6 power basic chromatic sphere.

Card Removals:

To avoid balance issues with Emrakul and/or Murazond and/or future cards, and because it doesn't have a basic equivalent, the Natural Fury spells from Chronomancer have been removed from the game. A new rank 4 hasten is available that has 0 power.

Dragonslayer has been removed because I don't want to have to change it every time I change the stats of Dragon. I've replaced it with:

Big Game Hunter (Illusionist 3)

! Destroy my blocker if it has 7 or more attack.

4/2

Fearless has been removed from the game because it's overpowered, which is funnily enough the same reason it was removed from the game previously.

Portal Glaive, Rank 9 has been removed from the game because:

- Unneeded to complete the spell line (Portal Glaive Rank 8 already has a + sign on it.)

- Unneeded to fill a niche (Plague Wind is already a 9 cost 1-sided board wipe in banisher.)

- Overperforming in the stats

QOL Improvements:

I switched the targeting parser for the ai and game engine code from the old 'tar' system to the new 'AbilityType.TARGET' system, that has allowed me to reword some cards that had awkward wording. Sacrifice works slightly differently now, but it'll probably be changed again when I build a planned TargetType system. (The intent remains the same, sacrifice a basic ally for 3 of each mana, the changes are just the edge case where someone attempts to target a nonbasic ally with it.)

List of reworded cards: Brawl, Sacrifice, Natural Order

I changed the way targetting abilities work again. Now, the target ability is its own line, stating only a restriction on where the spell can target. What a spell does to the target is a play ability now.

Some descriptions are still a bit rough, I'll work on retemplating them over future patches.