Card Balance Changes September 2024

Hello friends!

On the whole, the meta is in a pretty healthy place. There are no dominating decks and many different archetypes thrive. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement. The Retribution mechanic continues to polarize the player base, plus it hurts the viability of various other decks. One of the new kids on the block - the French Mill deck - has also become slightly too big for its breeches and needs a slight adjustment. And as always we round out things with a few key buffs to help support or enable new decks.

But before we go into more details of cards receiving nerfs and buffs, let’s start with some text updates on a few cards. These are not intended to strengthen or weaken cards as such, and more just to align them better with current technical capabilities and future changes. Let’s take a look.

UPRISING

Old: Deal damage to target unit and all other units equal to Polish units destroyed this battle.
New: Deal damage to all units equal to Polish units destroyed this battle.

 Uprising is actually going to its original design. The only reason the targeting version was required was for players to be able to see the amount of damage to be dealt, but it made the text on the card quite clunky. Now that we can show numerical counts on cards in hand, the targeting requirement is no longer needed, so the card is going back to the original version.

FEIGNED RETREAT & CONTEST DOCTRINE

Old: Discard your hand. When you deploy a unit this battle, draw a card.
New: Discard your hand. Your HQ gets: “When you deploy a unit this battle, draw a card.”

Old: Develop a German medium or heavy tank. Tanks you deploy this battle get +1+1.
New: Develop a German medium or heavy tank. Your HQ gets: “Tanks you deploy this battle get +1+1.”

 These cards (and the one below) will functionally continue to work exactly the same. However, we want to clarify that their battle-lasting abilities are actually becoming part of the HQ. This has no impact at the moment, but if we do add cards in the future that interact with HQs (like Suppress them), then this will make it clear that it will impact these effects.

Alright, let’s take a look at cards getting a change this round.

YANK

Old: This battle the first time you Develop each turn, also Develop a RETRIBUTION.
New: Your HQ gets: “This battle the first time you Develop each turn, also Develop a RETRIBUTION.”

 Yank is also specifying its ability is now a part of the HQ, but on top of that it is also seeing a price hike of one. Yank continues to give great long-term value, especially while its effect cannot be interacted with at all. The slight cost increase is not a great hindrance, but does often mean that it comes online a turn slower, making it that much more risky spending a turn not affecting the board. Let’s see if this keeps it in check, or if we need to yank its chains some more.

OUTRAGE

Increasing the cost of Outrage however is likely to have a much greater impact, especially for the value-enabling BLUE & GRAY and 121st INFANTRY REGIMENT units. OUTRAGE still generates a valuable RETRIBUTION to punish your enemies, but justice now comes at a greater cost. Will justice finally be served to those nefarious RETRIBUTION lovers, or will those that oppose them still end up black and blue (and gray)? Only time will tell.

B-24J

Old: Deployment: Suppress all enemy units.
New: Deployment: Suppress target enemy unit and adjacent units.

 Suppressing the whole enemy army greatly affects many loved archetypes, such as tokens, mobilize and alpine. It is a shame when a single card can have such a negative impact, so we are nerfing the B-24J a bit. WHITE DEATH is now the only card capable of blanking the enemy board, but as a minor ally card it is a lot less influential. Suppressing up to three key units can still be quite potent, so if you find yourself on the receiving end of cards like BOMBER MAFIA, make sure you position your units with B-24J in mind.

HONOR AND LOYALTY

Some people say the French Mill deck is an honorless phoney of a real deck, but let’s compromise and say it is a natural resistance to slower decks. Nevertheless, it is gaining a bit too much traction for our tastes, so we are curbing its enthusiasm a bit. Let’s see how many players will remain loyal to it after this change.

FIRST RESPONDERS

The first response to this card has been fairly negative, as even if it can come down like a ton of bricks against aggro decks, it was a bit too slow at release to really hit home. Now that it can come down a turn earlier it is a much better tool against aggressive strategies and can also provide valuable support to guard matters decks or counter-measure decks. Let’s see if the second response improves on the first one.

92nd NAVAL BRIGADE

This card probably saw more adjustments in testing before Covert Ops launched than any other, ranging from 3 to 5 defense and between 2 and 4 in kredit loss. In the end we opted for a fairly conservative version, as we didn’t want the Covert deck to be too strong. This has not been the case, though the deck is quite decent, and there is room for a slight improvement. More potent seamen has a higher chance of penetrating the meta and giving birth to something wonderful.

WORKERS UNITE!

When WORKERS UNITE! came back in its changed form we feared it would union with some other cards for some horrible combo shenanigans. Now that the card has been allowed to percolate for a bit we are less fearful of this possibility and are willing to give it a more fair treatment. We will see if this will allow them to clock more time in decks and work their way to victory.

SHOCK ATTACK

SHOCK ATTACK is one of the early examples of a card being nerfed after being spoiled but before the official release, such was the shock of its earliest incarnation. We are not tuning it all the way back to 1 kredit, but at 2 kredits it still offers a lot more danger for a fire and brimstone deck to emerge. As the old saying goes: “Where there’s smokescreen, there’s fire.”

EMPIRE OF THE SUN

White haired Kards veterans with wild eyes and wobbly walk insist this card was once the mainstay of a potent Japan Control deck. Such mad ramblings should of course be dismissed out of hand, but maybe there is some truth to the rumors - an old-school Japan Control deck would be a thing of beauty for sure. Let us tempt fate and see what happens.

2e RMT

With a French card being nerfed, according to our interpretation of the Geneva Convention we must buff another French card to balance things out. The 2e RMT has an extremely strong ability, but it is a bit too slow to have a competitive impact. With a reduced cost it is now a much more attractive prospect, even if its other stats needed to be adjusted accordingly.

STUBBORN DEFENSE

Old: When an enemy attacks your unit, give your unit +2 defense.
New: When an enemy attacks your unit, give your unit +1 defense. Draw a card if your unit survives.

 STUBBORN DEFENSE has seen some limited play, but has on the whole stubbornly refused to become part of the competitive scene. We are now applying the magic bacon that automatically makes everything tastier - card draw. With bacon now being involved this is the real bacon and will for bacon see a lot of bacon in the near bacon. Bacon.

That is all. We hope that alongside the 18 reworked cards returning from the reserve pool there will be plenty of interesting things for you guys to try out and some popular decks are bound to see some changes as well. We will see how the meta develops over the next few weeks, we will of course monitor things closely and make adjustments if needed.

All these changes are going live on September 19th. Keep an eye out for the full patch notes as well, as there are a lot of bug fixes as well as UX adjustments in the update. See you on the battlefield, commander!