Your take on the new allies

[Sisyphos]

So let's talk about them.

Lily Rosecult: Seems fine as is, she's neither unfair nor underwhelming, at least when I included her in a Zhanna deck. This statement stands and falls with the capability of countering heavy armors and weapons. (Yes, i'm looking at you, nerfed shriek.) An exception to fairness were f.e. hunters, who stood no chance at all against a recursing King's Pride.

Kristoffer Wyld: Hardly a reason to include him in a deck, even in a (Lance) rush deck I ended up sac'ing him way too often and playing brigitte + blake/puwen instead, which is a combo much harder to deal with for the other player. Might do better if he was reverted to a 1/1 dealing +1 against allies or otherwise in the thread about him there are a couple of good suggestion on how he could be more worthwhile.

Brigitte: Great and versatile 1 drop, in the right scenario she can have quite an impact on the game, but sometimes isn't even deserving of a deck spot, just like it should be.

Armored Sandworm: What you get and what you pay for seems about in tune. No complaints.

Marshland Sentinel: Not sure why this guy is getting so much flak. True he is easier to remove than Raven, but he's also cheaper and has an absolutely superior ability that is unaffected by a lot of proven techniques of taking away the board from her. It all depends on how effective your deck is at getting allies safely into play (or in reverse how much it depends on it anyway).

Tainted oracle: I haven't tested it yet nor have I seen decks designed to take advantage of its ability. There's a lot of potential, but i'll refrain from judgement here.

Earthen Protector: Pretty lame tbh. Played after Aeon he's great and all, but that combo is hard to pull off and whenever you manage to do so it could've been a hardly any weaker Aeon-Raven-combo as well. When not combo'd with Aeon 1 out of 2 things happens:
1. There's a small guy in play that can easily be killed to trigger EP's ability with the result of you having a mediocre ally in play instead of a strong 5 drop you could've played over EP in the first place.
2. If it would definitely benefit you if any of your allies in play was safed by EP at some point, your opponent kills EP first because that's pretty easy.

Occasionally you can play him as a surprise before you have to let one of your strong allies die from a retaliation attack. Doesn't work very often though and is all in all not worth 5 resources.
Suggestion would be to give Earthen Protector more hitpoints and less attack.

[Sisyphos]

Hellsteed: As soon as you have any (unexhausted) ally in play that can attack, hellsteed is like a 2/2 with haste and ambush for 1 cost. Some have said it should be a unique so that its effect at least can't be stacked, but imo that wouldn't change how hellsteed is an auto-include in almost every deck (making stuff unique when it turns out OP instead of tuning it for better gameplay is also generally not a good a way to go). The attack buff should just be lowered to +1 and then the card is pretty much on par with fire snake. Snakes would start to add their damage earlier on, still function when other allies are crippled and help wearing down the durability of weapons and armors, while hellsteeds would give the benefit of haste and of adding their 1 damage to an ally's attack which often makes the difference between having to take a retaliation attack and not having to. Fair.

Flayer: Lots of ways to counter him and lots of reasons to do so. Card's fine.

Deathmage: Make him a 1/4 ally and he's good to go imo. A more extensive discussion on that can be found here and here – unnecessary to repeat all that.

Carniboar: Without any pro-active means of protecting Carniboar (like life infusion or valiant defender) there's not much of a chance to keep it in play and that's when the card doesn't belong in your deck. Doesn't mean it's underpowered.

Shadow Knight: Very hard *not* to include in a deck, esp. when you aren't playing a mage. Could be toned down a notch.

Minotaur: He doesn't look like a skilled defender and more like a bovine battle ram, which is why i'd prefer if he had a lower base attack and instead like a +2 bonus during its owners turn - it would make him less susceptible to being crippled in exchange for the weaker retaliation strikes … but that's just me.
While he isn't a weak card per se, he pales a bit against his 5 drop peers (shadow knight and plasma behemoth) and doesn't really have a role to play. With 5 resources and 1 of each 5 cost shadow allies in hand the only time to pick minotaur is when having to deal with sandworms and even for that shadow knight can still do quite ok. Maybe minotaur could use an additional health point or something (would at least make him the only shadow ally to survive a nova). Better ideas/perspectives?

Pack Alpha: Can't comment on it.

[Atomzed]

Agree with what you said in general.

Lily. combine with retreat, you can recurse weapons and armours multiple times. I'm now very concern abt item removals... Those without item removals (cough, cough hunters) are going to have it tough...

Kris. In his current form, I think he will be the worst human ally, even more lousy than Dirk and Sandra. 1 dmg, which can't even kill a snake. I hope Calmdown take a look at the suggestion in the Kris thread.

Birgitte an extremely well designed card. As you said, when played right it can swing the game, but it can be meh too. With this 1 card, it adds a lot more possibility to human strategy.

Marshland . Another card which I like. Well-designed and balanced. Yes it gets killed easily at 4hp, but hey, that's bec ppl find it a thread and will remove it ASAP.


Are you going to be commenting abt shadow allies too?

[Lahiri]

Lily Rosecult: I like her. Very useful for Hunters, Warriors and Priests. It seems balanced

Kristoffer Wyld: too weak. He can't control the board (nobody will run Blake anymore) and 2 damage to hero isn't worth it

Brigitte: she's an annoying card for your opponent. I don't like the 0 in atk but she's a good ally anyway. I agree with your analysis

Armored Sandworm: very hard to kill. It can be useful for Nishaven, but most of the time it won't be worth 5 resources. However I like it in some decks

Marshland Sentinel: Raven's always better imo.

Tainted oracle: I LOVE it. I like to play it with human mages (Especially Eladwen): it gives you some board control and if he dies you get 2 cards.

Earthen Protector: it seems very strong on the paper, but in fact I haven't found a deck build in which it fits

[Sisyphos]

Are you going to be commenting abt shadow allies too?

Done.

[Giskard]

That's how a balance thread should look like, fair commentaries on how every card work, their good and bad points and a couple of balance suggestions with a good reasoning behind.

Not the usual "All cards are OP, a 5cc drop that can beat every 2cc drop out there! Change it to 0/1 now!"

[sweetgab]

I agree with you mostly, and especially on the Hellsteed part, which seems to be the most dangerous card in this batch. At +1 attack 0/2 (non-unique) it would definitely be fair, and the only reason I see that it has to be +2 attack is that they want to give Shadow players a way to kill Puwen when they go second. But will first player Fire Snake -> +2 Hellsteed be the next Puwen -> Aidon?

[Darkshift07]

A well written post. I agree on most points. Regarding tainted oracle, I love this card on paper, but I've yet to think of a way to truly abuse it without it feeling like it's forced.

[iClipse]

Tainted oracle is awesome with wrath of the forest

[Dima]

you dont need so many cards lol!)