In 2016, Blue Manchu released the Castle Mitternacht expansion items, introducing a bunch of new mechanics. And then… that’s it. No balance changes or new items, for years. Blue Manchu got busy with their next game. Leaving everything as-is wasn’t exactly the plan; luckily for Cardhuntria, The Knights of Unity are here to update the items and cards you’ve been using unchanged since 2016.

First, the big news: we are aiming to release a new expansion, “Celestial Forge,” in the first half of 2022. Some balance changes will accompany the new cards & items. We also have a really exciting new feature slated to release alongside the expansion, but we are not ready to reveal it at this time.

There will be a separate post previewing the expansion cards. This post is primarily about the balance changes. We will be conducting a public playtest of these changes soon (alongside the new items), and this is where we will be describing the changes and providing some developer commentary and context for the playtesting. (Details of the playtest–start and end dates, test server instructions, pizza reward amounts, and survey questions–will be provided elsewhere, likely on the forums, Steam forums, & Discord. Stay tuned.)

General Methodology

As much as possible, we don’t want to nerf things. Players work hard for their collections, and when your hard-earned legendaries become less powerful, well, that’s a bad feeling. Most of the time we’d rather address balance by powering up weaker cards, or by just adding new content. But there comes a time when something in the game is so out of whack that attempting to balance AROUND it will create more problems down the line. With that given, we felt the need to address a few long-dominant cards like Lycanthropic Form, Howl, Vengeance, and Bless. In addition, we’ve buffed a few things. These changes will debut alongside an entire new set of items, and are explained below, side-by-side with their current versions.

Forms

Most long-time players will agree that one of the current balance issues is that werewolves are a little… too good. They’re definitely pushed, and their kit is just far and away the most universally useful out of the forms. Vampires and spirits get good stuff but are far more likely to get a card they don’t want in a given situation. Another issue with forms is that the Vampiric Form card was just… less good for vampires than the tried and true Talented Healer. This is somewhat simplified, but anyway–onto the changes:
– Lycanthropic Form’s armor no longer protects against fire damage
– Vampiric Form has a new effect: “Add Penetrating to any Unholy Melee attack you play.”
– Monstrous Hide no longer protects against fire damage
– Howl no longer heals

Old Version	New Version

These changes will go some way to evening the forms, but perhaps even more crucially we are adjusting the card pools to try to bring them more in line with each other:

You’ll notice the absence of All Out Attack on the werewolf side, notably, but also that Ethereal Form’s kit is more utilitarian now. Vampires get Impaler (shout out to my boy Vlad), which has a cool new interaction with the form itself. We’ve also removed the form cards themselves from the pools. This change will make it so that no unwanted form has a random chance to prolong itself past its initial duration, and it also means that Howl will no longer have a chance to activate ‘free’ reliable armor, and that Medium Garb will no longer randomly stop you from drawing cards from your deck.

Vengeance

So, we know Vengeance is really good. But possibly the worst-feeling thing about it is that if you use low rarity wizard control effects against a warrior holding Vengeance–effects like Winds of War or Force Blast–the entire effect is undone by Vengeance. This is a level of control resistance that warriors, with all their mobility tricks, frankly didn’t need. The fix we found for Vengeance was to put a damage threshold on the trigger, so it hasn’t been nerfed at all in the context of most damage, but it no longer punishes chip damage.

And yes, we decided to bring this change to a couple similar cards. Martyr Blessing should still be quite powerful without being as unfun to play against, now, and the change to Elven Maneuvers actually allows us to ‘unnerf’ the card a bit!
– Vengeance now only triggers if 3 or more damage is dealt
– Martyr Blessing now only triggers if 2 or more damage is dealt
– Elven Maneuvers now only triggers if 2 or more damage is dealt. Duration increased to 3, filter depth increased to 4.

Old Version	New Version

The levers introduced here allow us to further refine the balance of these cards as needed without any drastic changes, and we’ll be watching them closely during playtesting. The damage thresholds here also introduce some more nuance to the valuation of armor. Sometimes that Reliable Mail will mean that your opponent’s Weak Chop doesn’t trigger Martyr Blessing when they’re checking for blocks

Misc

Finally we have a collection of miscellaneous changes; some buffs, some nerfs. The general goal here was to rein in some situationally obscene base game effects while maintaining general worth, while boosting some underpowered cards from Mitternacht.
– Shifting Block now draws a card (after applying the form)
– Acid Leak now only places acid under enemies
– Boo! now grants a Panic rather than a Dash
– Bless now targets up to 3 contiguous tiles (like Wall of Fire)
– All Out Attack now removes Penetrating & Unblockable, and adds Easy to Block 3
– Perplexing Ray is now Arcane

Old Version	New Version

Shifting Block’s low power compared to similarly costed blocks (especially at its rarity) made Castle Mitternacht shields unappealing. Throw in the extreme uneven nature of the old forms and it just wasn’t good. It might still not be top tier, but at least now it replaces itself, and with the form changes it might be quite strong now (we’ll see in the playtest).

Acid Leak and Boo! changes are more minor, intended to push the needle just a bit on Castle Mitternacht wizard items.

Bless is possibly the biggest nerf to the strongest card in the game, but mind that it can still accomplish what it used to (12 points of healing and 6 cards drawn over 2 rounds). You’ll just need to do a lot more work to get that maximum effect, and possibly make more tactical compromises.

The All Out Attack change may be completely unnecessary now that it’s no longer in the werewolf deck. That said, we were interested in a version of All Out Attack that can still do just as much damage as before, while requiring players to do a little more work for those combo kills. I’d say this is the most tentative change in this batch. Let’s see how it plays out in testing.

Perplexing Ray simply should have been Arcane this whole time, and that is being fixed now.

Conclusion

Feedback is, as always, welcomed, but more importantly we look forward to your participation in the playtest and accompanying surveys. We intend to iterate, possibly multiple times, over the course of the playtest. We haven’t changed PvP balance significantly since 2016, and we want to be very careful. Any of these changes is up for further modification depending on how testing goes.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re as excited for the upcoming update as I am!

Final Standings

It’s been a long ride, three months of delicious struggle in Tournamentria. Without further ado, let’s congratulate our overall winners, true champions of Card Huntria:

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These fine people’s prizes have been shipped off and are en route to them.

If anyone wants to look over the old week-to-week stats, they’re all gathered in one convenient place on the Sorcererers’ guild site: http://sorcererers.dotq.org/season.php

Guild Season Performance

Over the course of the season, mostly for the heck of it, I kept track of how many weekly standing slots each guild occupied. Here’re the final totals:

1. Sorcererers (SRC) – 78
2. Power of Fires (PoF) – 58
3. Order of Ivory Flame (OIF) – 30
4. Rating Flayer (RF) – 21
5. Pizza and Coffee (P&C) – 14
6. Stexe (Stexe) – 14
7. NinetyNineKnaves (99K) – 9
8. Reavers (RVR) – 4
9. 420 YOLO SQUAD (420) – 2
10. The Red Devils (RED) – 1

These numbers don’t mean much, of course. They’re just a fun stat—”we placed a lot!” Over the course of the season, guilds trended toward dominating more of the chart, as Power of Fires and NinetyNineKnaves both became more competitive after coups. In general I think the more guilds and the more guildmembers the better for the game. The mini communities bring people together and create a meta competition that has no consequences, just opportunity for relationships to form between players (be they those of friendship or rivalry).

The best-performing guilds—loosely informed by the loyalties of the top competitors in the season—were the Sorcererers, the Order of Ivory Flame, Stexe, and the Rating Flayers. Power of Fires was right behind them.

Looking Back

I can’t believe it’s already been 3 months! When I came up with the season at the end of March, I had most of the systems figured out, but I hadn’t yet imagined everything that would come up. The drama, the joy. I’ve received countless complaints and countless thanks. Overall it was rewarding to run this event, and I intend to do more things in the future. I think, while there were flaws, the added incentives to ranked play increased participation.

The Future

I’m in talks with Blue Manchu about the future of PvP seasons. We’re going to be taking community feedback, assessing our own hopes and dreams for future seasons, and building a more refined system. If you want to leave feedback, you can do it in the comments here or in the ideas forum thread. One thing you can be sure of is that the next PvP season won’t start immediately.

In the meantime, I’m investigating a few other options for community events. I’m almost certainly going to be running another peasant tournament soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that. The SRC Card Hunter News page is great for staying abreast of these things.

When the next season comes—and come it shall—I’ll do my best to make sure its advent is visible!

Until then, Card Hunters.
-Flaxative

Week 11

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Several Sorcererers competing for the top spots in Most Wins this week, and the Highest Rated category has over 50% of its roster repping guilds. Average rating among the Highest Rated is at an all-time high—despite ratings at the top dropping this week, more rating points than ever seem to be concentrated at the top of the ladder, suggesting that the expected rating inflation resultant from Yogscast sending us thousands of new ranked players has begun. Standing isn’t particularly high this week, but it’s also not particularly low. Worth noting that despite the tremendous increase in ranked players, the number of players in bad standing has remained constant at 550—meaning that the percentage of tankers has fallen from 3% to 2%. Overall, the ranked playerbase seems healthier than it’s ever been.

Overall Leaderboard

With two weeks remaining in the season, it’s increasingly unlikely that there’ll be any major upsets. Still, some of the top slots remain in contention. Let’s see who’s in the lead right now:

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It’s going to be a tight race between Stexe and TheShadowTitan for 2nd place in the Highest Rated. In Most Wins, will ch33seman be able to overtake Fyra? Tuknir could easily fall from 3rd—xiang491 is steady and hasn’t missed a week of the season. At the halfway cutoff, Vakaz and Clubber Lang are in danger of losing out on the slime of their choice if blackhand_ and ntym13 keep winning.

Tensions are high—largely because 13 weeks might be a bit long and some players are burning out… but I’m excited to announce the winners in two weeks!

I’ll be on vacation next week, and unable to blog, so I’ll see all you fine readers at the end of the season.

Week 10

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A lot of new names in the Most Wins category, and some shake-up in the Highest Rated category.

Showdown

PaladinGP and Stexe, the two highest rated players over the course of the season, agreed to play a match against each other, which Sorcererer Fyra recorded! It’s a slugfest with a lot of player complaints about bad draws and Whirlwind luck—to which any observer can just say, “well, what can you expect of Whirlwind?”

Here’s the video:

And if you want to see discussion of the match, there was a forum thread.

Both players in this match appear to be running variations on PaladinGP’s classic Divide and Conquer build. Around the time the video was posted by Fyra, another user posted guesses and analysis regarding Stexe’s build—which was basically D&C with Vibrant Pains (remember how that item is fair? No? I wrote a post about it). PaladinGP then posted his own build in the interests of perceived “fairness.” You can find both builds in this thread: High Level Competitive Builds.

Despite the fact that both players are essentially running minor version updates or iterations on a well-known build, some sparks flew when involved parties didn’t like the fact that their “secret tech” was revealed. There were even accusations of build theft! Exciting times in Cardhuntria, folks.

So you see it here: the two best players in the game (arguably) use the two most broken things in the game (Whirlwind and Nimble Strike, not arguably), and the loser complains that it came down to luck.

Balance

Someone somewhere said, in the last week, that the PvP Season sucks and is doomed to “failure” because the game isn’t balanced. Valid constructive criticism for me? I don’t know. The only complaints I’ve received have been from the very top of the charts—people who run the cheese, subscribe to the cheese, love the cheese. It’s hard to take their feedback seriously, so you, the average reader, what do you think? Should Card Hunter not have competitions until the game is immaculately balanced?

Guilds

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There were fewer active guilds the last two weeks, but some of them are growing. Ninety-Nine Knaves in particular is growing quickly and becoming a serious contender for guild points, placing on the charts for the first time last week and again this week. It will be interesting to see how the final charts favor the different guilds.

Until next time!
-Flaxative

Week 8

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A couple quick stats—
• Most Wins category represented the smallest number of games played per week since the first week of the season. Burn-out? Leagues?
• Average standing among Most Wins players was at an all-time high.
• Average rating among Highest Rated players was the highest it has been as well, at a whopping 1726!

As always, competition is tough, and I extend congratulations to everyone on these charts.

Two Months of Encouraged PvP

There’s no question that the promise of prizes in the PvP Season has led to increased participation in ranked play. Players are also playing better than ever. According to the front page of Farbs’s Card Hunter Meta site, roughly 97% of players are in good standing. The percentage was significantly lower two months ago. In light of a swelling playerbase—bolstered, no doubt, by the expansion—and an increasingly competitive high-tier environment, the chart-toppers for the season thus far deserve some praise. Let’s see who they are:

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Will they stay on top?

Some of the players who play the most games are losing some steam, with weekly wins lower this week than any week previous in the season. There is definitely room for upsets in the Most Wins category, and as we can see some have already happened. Tuknir has fallen out of the top 3; Clubber Lang has steadily risen four ranks in the last month, climbing into the top 10; it’s neck-and-neck at the bottom of the list where a number of Sorcererers are jostling for prizes. I honestly have no guess at what the final standings will be for this category; I expect most of the faces on this list to remain on it, but I have no idea where on it they’ll end up!

On the other hand, it is increasingly obvious that it is hard to lose your rating-based rank if you don’t experiment or stop playing for a week. The folks at the top of the Highest Rated category have been mostly the same people week after week, and it shows in the overall standings. That isn’t to say there hasn’t been motion, however—Stexe in particular has crept up on his competition, and, being the highest rated player in the game currently, may rise one or two rungs in the season before it’s over.

And hey, let’s talk about that rise…

One bit of recent forum drama centered around one user attributing Stexe’s meteoric rise to his acquisition of a second Vibrant Pain, the warrior weapon most widely recognized as an absurdly overpowered piece of gear (perhaps, ‘the strongest’ piece of gear in the game). Stexe was quick to defend himself, claiming that the details of his build, combined with his tactical expertise, granted him his gain.

Vibrant Pain, and perhaps more generally the availability of Nimble Strike as an extremely undervalued bomb (only silver??), has been fueling bad feelings in the game’s community since inception. No one wants to lose to the thing; everyone wants to have one. Less competitive players defend it, pointing to their mediocre ratings despite their possession of it; hardcore players complain about it even as they use it. And most people who don’t have one want it gone.

Blue Manchu has been very careful about not rebalancing cards or items when the need doesn’t exist, and has taken what is basically a conservative approach to dealing with balance issues in the ranked environment. This approach is well and good in theory, but as a player who cares about the health of the game and who watches the games of top players, I have to wonder if it’s working.

Almost every game I’ve spectated in the top tiers over the course of this season has been a frenzy of Whirlwinds, cards that increase variance at the expense of tactics, favoring the player who has played less (where’s the fun in that?) or has on average better gear/draws. There is skill to using Whirlwind effects, to be sure, but there is also the fact that dwarves with Vibrant Pain simply do better in a storm than any other character/item combination in the game.

I think it would be really interesting to see what would happen to the environment and the (barely existing) metagame if these blatant offenders were brought into line. No one player has suggested a perfect set of changes, but Stexe accurately calls out most of the problem cards in this forum post from January.

Unsurprisingly, the PvP season’s Highest Rated category has been consistently dominated by players who play the cards with which Stexe takes issue. There will always be some options that are better than others, and in any game with a lot of options the competitive scene usually focuses on only a few of those. High tier PvP in Card Hunter, however, feels somewhat stagnated.

I’d love to see what the devs have in store to deal with this problem.

Want to contribute?

If you’re running an interesting build in ranked, and would like me to feature it in a future blog post about the PvP environment, please send me the build on the forums! I will happily cover it and show off your tech

Week 7

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A lot of familiar faces. A bit of rating shake-up among the top four in the highest rating category. Average rating there was very high again this time. Standing and total games stats were in good shape again this week.

I’m a bit light on commentary this week, as much of my Card Hunter attention has been focused on Cardhuntria’s Most Stylish, a deckbuilding competition that is currently in the voting stages. I also did a very long stream with CT5 on Twitch yesterday in which we did a wide variety of things including testing custom scenarios, playing ranked, and inducting folks into peasant. Be sure to check out the channel, as we do basically everything Card Hunter, and take requests from our viewers (we recently built, and played, an all-elf 1/1/1 party on the stream upon request).

Want to contribute?

If you’re running an interesting build in ranked, and would like me to feature it in a future blog post about the PvP environment, please send me the build on the forums! I will happily cover it and show off your tech

Week 6

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There’s a new face in the Most Wins category—PaladinGP, previously at the top of the rating chart. We can see how it cost him, as he is no longer at the top of said chart. CT5 says he started playing with elves. I applaud his efforts.

What else is there to say? Average standing, games played, and average rating stats are all down from last week, but not by much—still way higher than the start of the season. It’s definitely grueling to keep up, and we can see some of our previous chart-toppers sliding down a few rungs. I’m seriously considering the feedback that this first season was maybe too long; we’re only halfway through! To all those who soldier on: I salute you.

Totals Thus Far

The halfway mark seems like a good place whence to update you on the total season standings to date. You can always find these at the season page hosted by the Sorcererers Guild, but here are the latest:

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Impact of the Artifacts

Elven Trickery, Sparkling Cloth Armor, Barbed Platemail, Pushback Parry…
A few of the really obvious new cards get played.

But I haven’t seen any top players running new builds in ranked PvP truly enabled by the expansion. (Leagues are another question entirely.)

I’ll keep looking!

If you’re running an interesting build in ranked, and would like me to feature it in a future blog post about the state of Card Hunter PvP, please send me the build on the forums! I will happily cover it and show off your tech

Week 5

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Stats were through the roof this week. Total games played among top players went up by 100; average standing reached an all-time high at 9.35; average rating among the top rated hit a record 1720. Good job, Card Hunters! You inspire me…

… but how exactly do you do it?

I asked some of the folks at the top of the season rankings to answer a few questions.

How do you find time to play so many games?

bluebluegreen: I work 40 hours a week as a desk clerk at a run-down hotel. So I play before work for an hour, and usually 6 or 7 wins over the course of my shift, and then after work I finish getting my purple. I play a little longer sometimes; sometimes I find the Loot Fairy for extra lootz. On my days off I play all the time while watching TV or doing laundry or whatever. Basically I just make the time. (Category: Most Wins; Guild: Sorcererers)

Fyra: I have all the time in the world! If you have kids or a time-demanding job, the most wins category is not for you. It takes me about 4-5 hours to get through the 20 wins to purple, which is exactly what I have been doing to get the current spot in the season. (Category: Most Wins; Guild: Sorcererers)

Tuknir: Unfortunately at the moment I’m unemployed, and I’m also a morning person, so usually I wake up at around 8-9 a.m., try do the first 2 gold chests then go for coffee and a run. I really can’t play that many games in a row, or I get bored (especially if I lose then :p ) so I make a lot of small breaks. The objective is to get the 4 gold chest before lunch (13-14:00h). Before the Season I would usually stop at the 4th gold chest, but now I go all the way to the purple, so that was a plus side, people doing a lot more games. (Category: Most Wins; Guild: Sorcererers)

How do you maintain your rating?

TheShadowTitan: Well, looks like I can’t really maintain my rating (xD)—first week I had 1809, now I have 1724. The internet I use during the week is bad, so I get disconnected sometimes and that doesn’t help maintaining rating. And on weekends I normally don’t play Card Hunter. (Category: Highest Rated; Guild: Power of Fires)

Lord Feleran: 1. Theorycraft. I spend at least twice as much time analyzing cards, items and builds than I spend on the playing itself. 2. I always play to win. I never ragequit and never let feelings to stop myself from thinking. (Category: Highest Rated; Guild: none)

PaladinGP: I play the deck that I think is most likely to win on the current maps, and I play when I’m awake and alert! I also sometimes play when I’m avoiding work… I tend to lose rather too many of those! If playing for ranking, I consider if my current deck can deal with Cardotron 2000 before deciding whether to turn AI opponents on or off. I very rarely concede: I try to make the opponent fight hard for every inch they get. It’s not over till all 3 of my guys are dead, or that 6th star appears and I’m frozen in a corner somewhere. And even then, make sure your doors are locked for when he thaws out (Category: Highest Rated; Guild: Order of the Ivory Flame)

What’s your preferred strategy? Tell me your go-to team composition and general playstyle.

bluebluegreen: Well… my preferred strategy is to win early and often =P. Seriously if I’m losing a game I make a judgement call on whether I’ll be able to reach 2 stars or not and if I don’t believe it’s likely I quit early. I’ll get the time penalty in the queue either way so I try not to keep playing hopeless positions in order to save time and move onto the next game. It’s best to play the most competitive deck you can make because the higher the winning percentage the least amount of games you need to play for the wins. So my fun deck sits on the side lines 90% of the time. In terms of deck design, I’m playing a poor man’s version of Divide and Conquer most of the time and Mass Frenzy + step attacks when I feel the need to change it up.

Fyra: Warriors is my favorite, because it’s fast. Either you lose or win in less than 10 minutes, generally speaking. I used to play 3 human warrior girls (Typical Bejeweled Short Sword/Parry warriors) up until a few days ago. I became bored of playing the same over and over again, so I composed a new deck including 2 elf warrior girls and 1 human priest girl. I can already spot a huge difference in both win rate and time it takes to play. This deck is faster, fiercer and most of all, it’s more fun. It also includes as much girlpower!

If I get to name my new build it’s going to be called “Barbie Disco.” Why? Because, the important cards in the build are Barbed Plate (with Enchanted Harness), Elven Maneuvers and step attacks. The priest is just a simple Mass Frenzy/Martyr’s Blessing support priest. She has some attacks in there if she has to fight, but she’s mostly in the back being cute and helpful.

Tuknir: My preferred team? Easy: a variation of dwarven control wizards (3DC) that uses a lot of Path of Knives and Winds of War for the kill. I like to win, but I like to win having fun, and I do love killing enemy characters by “ping-ponging” them to the death. I have 4 “main” decks and sometimes the oddball one, and I change often. I play normal 3DC too, but in the current meta it’s really hard. My go-to team composition at the moment is 2 warriors and a Whirlwind wizard.

My general playstyle is reacting instead of acting. Opponent has Blind Rage? Pass. Opponent casts Martyr’s Blessing? Pass. Let him take damage or waste attacks and let the buffs end. Often it pays off. First thing to do? Check enemy team and then see what he’s doing and react accordingly. Then when you have a opportunity and know more of what he may have go for the kill. I usually play really fast, and tend to make mistakes :p, so let’s call my style “Rush-Reacting.”

TheShadowTitan: Since the start of the season I have been using a normal 3DC build with one of the wizards using Sub-zero Staff and the other two Staves of Winter, so I can have different types of encumber and encumber up to 4. The playstyle depends a lot on the hands I get on first round, defensive if I have a bad hand and offensive if I have a really good hand. When you are playing 3DC, you should only move your wizards to places that your opponent can reach you if you have blocks or Short Perplexing Ray/Winds of War and you are sure that your wizards won’t die. If you have a good hand, you probably should be aggressive and go for victory points but that also depends on what your opponent is playing. Victory points win a lot of games because 3DC don’t have much damage.

Lord Feleran: I’m running 2 warriors and a priest. Maybe I would run some build with wizard(s) but I don’t have enough good items for them at the moment. All 3 of my party are dwarves but I’d still like to test how elves would work with the new cool racials they got. Humans also got some great new racials like Bloody Command and Trainee Command. As for strategy, I value card advantage and HP advantage, like we all. I play aggressively and don’t value Impenetrable Nimbus for that reason.

PaladinGP: I take great pleasure in hitting people with large swords, so usually run with two warriors. It’s faster to play and satisfying to get to the top with a no-nonsense style! Generally, I like to maintain tactical flexibility, and the ability to respond to whatever the opponent does. I aim to play the player, not their cards.

Two more months—Think you’ll keep it up for the rest of the season?

bluebluegreen: There is no way that I’m quitting after after I’ve come this far, halfway through the season! Although I have to say I think next time you ought to shorten the season a bit, it’s a bloody marathon!

Fyra: I can’t say either yes or no. It will be a surprise!

Tuknir: I will try, but it’s pretty damn hard… Doing 30+ games every day (maybe more if I lose more) is time-consuming, and as I said before I get bored really fast. This good weather don’t help at all! I will try get at least 20 wins a day, but some days I don’t play or just can’t get many, so I need to compensate on another day that I may have more time. My goal is top 10, so will try do enough to get it, but a lot can happen in 2 months, so let’s go one day at a time.

TheShadowTitan: I think I can maintain at 1700 rating during the rest of the season but that isn’t enough to stay in the top 3. I think I will stay in the top 10 at least.

Lord Feleran: The 4th place is already far behind but I’m currently only one point ahead of TheShadowTitan. Will most likely be a tough competition with him during the next weeks. Paladin on the other hand seems to be clearly out of my reach this season.

PaladinGP: Point me to a bookmaker… I hope so!

Any advice for players who want to compete with the best?

Fyra: Oh my. Well. My best advice is to clear your agenda, that is if you’re going for the most wins category. You also have to keep it cool, it can be very frustrating to have your blocks fail for the 15th time, when you get the 5th Obliterating Bludgeon bashed on your head.

Tuknir: Pick a deck style you like: if you have fun with a deck the better you play. Check the forums; there are some really good decks posted there, which you can change to suit your needs. Also, try not rush too much, go for the kill but have a defense in place if things go badly. Only give up when things are truly lost. Most important: try to adapt to the meta, if your play stagnates you will fall behind. For example, on the Celestial maps, I took Toughness out for Duck, which helped against Whirlwinds.

TheShadowTitan: See what the top players are playing and try to counter them. If you can’t beat them, join them xD Have fun, good luck and play a lot!

Lord Feleran: Most important one: believe you can do it. Don’t believe those who say you need to pay to win or that you need better items to reach top—you don’t. PaladinGP, TheShadowTitan and I are all playing without a Vibrant Pain. Top 11 can be reached with almost anyone’s collection. If you find yourself losing to some builds too often, think what you can change to avoid that. Don’t be afraid to try something new—lost rating can be won back and gained experience will make that happen.

PaladinGP: Deckbuilding is crucial. Try to avoid ‘dead’ draws. Some of my favourite items have consistent silver draws, rather than a few great ones and some weak ones. This is well illustrated if you’ve ever had a bad experience with Fright: Often, one particular turn is crucial, and you really don’t want to draw a blank the turn your opponent comes at you with everything they’ve got. Try to analyse what went wrong when you lose a game: if you can take a learning point from every defeat, you’ll get better fast. Sometimes it’s pure luck, but not as often as it may feel that way. Deckbuilding weaknesses can be hard to see, so making a guild with friends to discuss deck ideas can be rewarding.

And most of all, enjoy this superbly designed game!

Whew! They all had some pretty cool things to say. Big thanks to these players for taking the time out of their busy card-hunting schedules to respond. I hope their advice proves helpful to all Card Hunters, whether you are trying to compete in this season or just improve your ranked game.

See you next week!

Week 4

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We saw several new faces in the tables this week, one of whom is an old player with new rating cred and a new guild! As always, those who made the chart deserve some congratulation.

• Average standing (and total games played) among the top 20 winners were down a bit this week, I think attributable to the launch of the Attack of the Artifacts expansion. This is the first week that total games has actually decreased, having gone up by a whopping 33% in the second week of the season and then increasing again by a smaller amount last week. But it happened: the constant free events of Attack of the Artifacts launch week did manage to poach some games—and that makes sense, because the launch events have been amazing fun. Honestly, I’m surprised that so much ranked play continued to happen in the face of all the new stuff. A good sign!

• Average rating among the top rated players went up another 10 points. Rating inflation? Destabilization due to map rotation change?

Totals Thus Far

I’ve been tracking the overall standings for the season since the second week, but now that we’re 1/3 of the way through the season, I figure I’ll share them here. This list reflects who would win what ranking if the season ended right now.

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The folks on top of this chart are all extremely dedicated Card Hunters, and definitely deserve their spots as far as I know. I think everyone on here is worthy, but it’ll be interesting to see who rises and who falls as the season continues. After all, there’re another nine weeks! Who do you think will emerge on top? Are the winners locked in, or could they still be supplanted?

Attack of the Artifacts Environment

It’s a little early to analyze how the expansion is affecting the season, but it’s not too early to say that it is. Several new cards are being played to good effect, but a few in particular caught my eye as I was spectating ranked games this week.

Card Hunter just got a whole lot more mobile, friends—elves are back with a vengeance. While dwarves will probably remain “better” thanks to their hit points and Toughness, elves just received an upgrade that will almost certainly make them a larger part of the game. Elven Trickery sounds good on paper. It’s even better in practice. Elven Maneuvers, in the right deck, is a trait version of Martyr’s Blessing—and at worst, it’s a free deck-thinner. Sparkling Cloth Armor isn’t the beast that it was during early testing, when it allowed you to move from any damage, including your own, but it is still an amazing card. It’s probably pointless to speculate too much, but I’m very interested in players’ thoughts on what’ll really impact the metagame. Will Elven Trickery push players away from warriors? Will 3DC become more powerful—or will the increase in elves reduce its importance? Firestorm is good against elves, but it’s bad against Elven Maneuvers and Sparkling Cloth Armor.

Are you aiming for the top of the season?

If so, how will you leverage the new cards and items to your advantage?

Week 3

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As always, congrats to those who made these charts (teehee). Competition was a lot tougher this week.

This week saw a few big improvements on the previous, and I’ll take them.

1) Average standing in the Most Wins category was 9.1, up from 8.3. This is a pretty big increase, and of course could just be a coincidence, but eh. I’ll take it!

2) This time, I found 20 active players in the top 34 highest rated players, up from needing to look at 44 players to fill the same number of slots. This means either 10 high-ranked players returned to the game, or 10 inactive high-ranked players were passed by active players, or some combination of the two. Either way, this is great! The fewer inactive players at the top the better.

3) The average rating among those 20 players this week was 1690—up a full 20 points from last week. Rating inflation? I think not! We’re seeing more activity at the higher ranks, and I expect that that’ll result in the playerbase as a whole pushing the rating envelope (and not just one or two outliers).

“Secret Tech,” Strong Builds this Season

• CT5 set up his Twitch stream, and was doing a test broadcast the other day. In addition to streaming his own games, I think he’ll be broadcasting the games of other top-tier players, so be sure to tune in from time to time to either check out the live stream or any recorded highlights. I’m working on my own set-up right now as well. Hopefully we’ll be able to provide some fun and interesting coverage of what’s working and not working as the season progresses.

• Gento, who made the highest rated chart last week, posted a build after my own heart to the forums. It looks hard to pilot, but he claims it’s a consistent 1500-1600 build, so I encourage you all to check it out, duplicate what you can, tweak what you will, and give it a shot! The build employs a dedicated elf vampire, a human support/utility priest, and a honey badger dwarf warrior. With all the Nimble Strikes, I have to wonder if the elf is even relevant, but Gento’s rating is sign enough! He didn’t make the standings this week, but I look forward to seeing him and his build back in contention soon.

• Arnie posted an Elf-centric build that apparently peaked in the 1700s, with a very simple name: E. It’s a mobility-focused aggro build that runs two warriors with a lot of movement and possibly the highest rate of Raging Strikes you’ll ever see at this rating! Arnie has been explaining some of his build decisions and playstyle in the thread, so be sure to check that out if you’re looking for strategy tips. As always, step attacks are king.

• I cannot wait to see how the upcoming expansion is going to shake things up, and I’m starting to get the crazy feeling it’s right around the corner! If you haven’t read about all the new cards and items, check the forums for info. Don’t let Fireball or Pushback Parry blindside you!

Guilds and the Season

Without saying too much, I’ll just leave this chart here for this week’s guild standings.

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Sorcererers have grown a lot, and recovered a bunch of ranking thanks in large part to the efforts of Huey Laforet and Tuknir. The top three guilds remain untoppled… but they’re beginning to flag on placement in the season’s standings! What will happen next?

Till next week!