Release Notes... and Gem Sale!

With today's release, we have made the following changes and updates to Kingdoms CCG:

1. New, better starting decks for new players.
2. Reduced singles prices for all Gem priced commons, uncommons, rares, Tribes Epics, and all Legendaries. See out previous blog post for more discussion on Epic card prices.
3. AI Fix: Fliers will no longer set themselves to defend against non-fliers.
4. Revised the deck building rules to the Kingdoms format to make it more new player friendly. Rules have been added to deck builder. See below for more details.
5. The Draft format has been removed from the free tournaments. In its place we've added Pauper and Kingdoms constructed, and Tribes Sealed. The new tournament schedule will begin tomorrow.
6. Nomad, Ichor, Thania and Devroth will now appear as rotating heroes and will appear in Arena quests.
7. Nomad's gold cost has been reduced to 70,000.
8. Balancing Fixes:
   
   Quickdraw Cannon: This combo deck has long been the most hated deck in all of Kingdoms CCG. Back in November we made adjustments to this card to help players combat the combo, but the changes have proven to be ineffective. The current builds of QDC can "go off" in a single turn, making the reactive tools (like Cease Fire) also ineffective. With these issues in mind, we have listened to the community and worked with the Beta team to come up with two card balance changes that make QDC a more challenging deck to play, while not completely removing it from the environment (as some players have asked for). The new changes are:

• Quickdraw Cannon will now destroy itself if it triggers 5 times on a single turn. Note: Each QDC has its own trigger count.
• Gift of the Mystics now only affects the next 4 cards you play.
  
  Light Ascending:  As our first set, we are proud of the quality of cards put into Light Ascending. Many of the cards have had a significant impact in the overall environment and the reaction to the set has been largely positive. This said, we recognize that we didn't get the power level right on some of the cards. Some cards like Skullcrusher Giant skewed too high, and others, like Elder's Hammer, were the lowest in the game. We're now fixing some of these cards.
  
• Elder's Hammer can now target any Alchemy creature or 'Construct' creature
• Morningstar of the Ages has been reduced in cost to 3.
• Scroll Maker has been reduced to Manacycle 1
• Skullcrusher Giant now only removes 2 charges when attacking.
  
  Manacycle Wizard: When we took over Kingdoms, MCW was everywhere. It broke many cards in the game and warped the meta. So we nerfed the card hard. In the months following we have come to the realization that we came down too hard for an Epic level card. So with this release, we're fixing this:
  
• Manacycle Wizard has been given Allegiant back. Note: She will never, ever, ever be getting her card draw back.

Known Issue: Mind Over Body has a known bug. If played in a discard with spells, it will recur the spells, but NOT place creatures into the discard pile. It WILL place creatures into an empty discard pile. We will be fixing this bug.

New Kingdoms Constructed Format

The new Kingdoms Constructed format has been designed with new players in mind. Our research has shown that new players like to build decks around the cards of a single Kingdom and often assume that is how the game works. We also recognize that getting 4 of a single card can be challenging for a new player, so we've also reduced the number of copies of any single card in the format as well. The new rules for the Kingdoms format are this:

40-60 card deck
Maximum 12 rares and 3 Epics
No Legendary rarity cards allowed
Maximum of 3 copies of any single card.
ALL cards in the deck must be either Unaligned or belong to the Kingdom of your chosen hero.

The Kingdoms Constructed Format will now appear in free tournaments.

Finally... GEM SALE!

For the next week (until March 30, 2015) all Gem Packs are on sale for between 20-25% off. Enjoy!