This little bundle of thoughts comes as some major considerations of design and purpose. I fell a few keywords are currently getting either underused or problematic. Underused for being too powerful to add anything else in the game using them or too situational to be played seriously besides a few staples, problematic for their design serves for certain specific ideas when in certain creatures but getting overbearing in others. It might be easier to explain what i mean case to case.
Forcefield: retooled as Forcefield:(n)
- Reduce the first instance of damage this takes each turn by n.
So for comparison, transforming the very definition of Forcefield into the same as Arclyte Regalia’s and truly differing it from Invincibility. I will partially blame Removelyst’s actual shape to this in a minor sense, as the current version of Forcefield makes the most standard methods to slowly remove threats (trading and pinging) harder and harder to execute.
Think the following: when we talk about the medium-lower brackets of force-field users - Sapphire Seer, Sunbreaker, Zoetic Charm, Sunsteel, the intended purpose of Forcefield in their case is to basically deny face damage, values between 1 and 2. Driving a gigantic creature to kill a measly egg instead of taking it face is, imo, already punishing/delaying enough. While as it hits higher brackets such as Kraigon, those beasts essentially fully devolve into “REMOVE ME NOW ELSE YOU LOSE”, nor it helps that our newfound creatures with almost as much HP as a General are already hard to kill. By making Forcefield a little easier to bypass, one can start discussing into making both them and general megadamage spells (hello Deep Impact) more usable, opening space to reduce our quota of hard removal.
Deathwach: Broken down between Deathwatch and Souleater.
- Deathwach: when an allied minion dies;
- Souleater: when an enemy minion dies;
The idea to break this one down is simple: there are things that would be ok to churn you entire army onto foes/are built around said principle and you wouldn’t even mind if it didn’t trigger on enemy death (Bloodtide Priestess in particular goes as a good example), meanwhile other effects starts getting questionable, if not actually abusive, when anything and everything triggers it (UnderGate, theoretical Stygian Observer combos, a few Crescendo combos). One can start to discuss really cruel prizes for killing enemies if barring you from getting it seven times by simply swarming.
Infiltrate: make it a permanent state
- Once this enters the enemy side;
By making Infiltrate effects a permanent state instead of temporary buffs, this opens space for some major shenanigans and revamping of the buff’s notion. First of all, it allows for infiltrate effects not to be necessarily absurd in order to be usable, maybe even making them one-time only events like OGs if able. Second, it allows one to improve Health or add other more long-lasting effects to it, as well craft cards around force-triggering the state/affecting units triggered with it differently.
A couple of bit more questionable ideas could be tweaking the Ranged and Flying Keywords into not being unlimited distance values, but that’s perhaps too game-changing for a single batch.
Overall opinions in those, as well for other keywords you feel might need tweaks?
