Volume I
Volume II - By @snowshot
While I’m not a balance dev for this game so my cards won’t be the most balanced I intend to go into this to create a better faction identity that stays true to 4 of the major parts of Vanar’s identity, I will go over later. I wish I could help in the making of cards but I’m too young to legally be allowed to work but to make sure these are balanced if anyone’s willing to I would love to playtest these on Tabletop Simulator.
Vanar are the queens of positioning, they’re able to displace our opponent with the likes of Mesmerise and the best girl Hearth-Sister. Vanar also has the ability to punish said positioning with their keyword Infiltrate and put your oppenent into a catch 20 position with Infiltrate, Avalanche and Glacial Fissure. Faie Bloodwing herself also punishes bad positioning, it more prevents our oppenent from positioning optimally but with Cryptographer you get the ability to punish.
Vanar is home to the Vespyr tribe and many cards that synergies with Vespyrs, some notable cards are: Snowchaser, Frostfire, Iceblade Dryad, Endless Hunt and Icebreak Ambush.
Vanar has a unique type of Token Structure minion called Walls, these can be generated with the likes of Gravity Well, Luminous Charge and Grandmaster Embla. These minions generate large boards so they have synergies with buffs that effect multiple units like Razorback, the Ghost Seraphim + Flawless Reflection combo and Kara Winterblade herself.
Vanar has access to the strongest Stun cards in the game as well cards that synergies with them, some of the cards that Stun are: Permafrost, the recently deceased Frigid Corona and Illena Cryobyte herself. Some of the abusers are: Iceshatter Gauntlet and Disciple of Yggdra.
Those where all of the major themes but here are the mini themes:
Vanar has a whole suite of removal in the form of the transformation based removal called the Aspects, an example is: Aspect of the Ravager.
Vanar has the ability to raise their max mana permanently, examples are: Crystal Wisp and Malicious Wisp.
Vanar is an Arcanyst faction, all Vanar Arcanysts are: Circulus, Kindred Hunter and Ghost Seraphim.
Vanar is a Sentinel faction, all Vanar Sentinels are: Drake Dowager, Freeblade and Moonlit Basilysk
Now that we are over the themes what problems does Vanar have? Units are usually weaker statwise and aren’t good overall, they struggle with keeping a healthy hand size and they have no in faction healing.
Without further a-do, I shall post my work:
This card actually works only on your minions instead of any minion, the idea of this card is to turn 1 small minions into 2 small minions for a small fee. It’s value differs based on your target but for example on an Illusion or a Wall it would have quite high value but on a Seraphim maybe not.
This card seemingly looks useless but your oppenent removing these comes at a great cost, this means that you can essentially bar areas of the map from your oppenent and thereby impact how your oppenent positions themselfs.
Note how this works even on minions without infiltrate, this allows synergy with cards the effect infiltrated minions and minions with infiltrate in general.
This card is very similar to Cryogenesis but I believe this card is better than that cards current version but more fair and cheaper than it’s pre-nerf version. It has a small effect but this card also replaces itself. This card adds consistency to Vespyr decks and gives Vanar more cards which allow them to answer threats without negging themselfes.
Vanar lacks turn 1 plays but this also boosts Vespyrs.
Vanar always had problem with keeping a healthy hand size while answering threats. This card helps Wall decks as well as helping with that problem.
This gives stun a solid draw option as well as a solid way to answer threats.
The effect is mainly flavoured based but you can see how this card would help.
Vanar lacks solid AoE but giving them a strong generic option could be a bit much if they had good single target removal. This card could be played generically but has a much stronger effect in stun strategies.
Vanar has a small amount of cards that summon another minion when they die, the problem with them is that they lack immediate impact to be strong. This one also has to be answered by dispel or by transformation as if you don’t there is one unanswerable threat.
The Vespyr strategy is home to Draguar Lord which is well a Vespyr but it’s token isn’t. Vespyr decks tend to empty their hand quickly as it’s a very combo focused deck and this allows us to progress the game state and keep our hand size.
This provides a decent wincondition in and outside of infiltrate. Inside of Infiltrate it has the added benefit of being able to Infiltrate them as well as doing extra damage.
Infiltrate is a weird deck, it’s support exists and its mediocore but it lacks a strong wincondition, this requires set-up but if the deck is good enough this can become a dangerous threat.
This took me well over 4 and a half hours to write but these are my suggestions to improve Vanar while having them stay with the main themes.
I can especially symphatize because Abyss has tons of things as well that are just that 1-2 decent support cards away from being usable
