Ancient appreciation thread.

In this patch, we address issues with Wizard, Archmage, and Illusionist, and many other small tweaks. KNIGHT For the King | Now specifies that it reduces the action cost instead of the resource cost. Providence | Now heals 4 HP up from 3, but does not heal if sent to the discard. It still draws a card when it is sent to the discard from play or anywhere else, similar to Survivalist cards. Providence was going in to a lot of decks because of its sheer value and utility, and we feel that while it is still a valuable and worthwhile card, this change enables it to be more useful when played from your hand, as well as reducing its all around power level. Rebuke | This card was overhauled. It now Counters a card at 0 -2 / range 1 unless they pay 3, and if the card is Countered, they’re Silenced 3. We’ve struggled to find a place for Rebuke, but this is a simple effect similar to Frostsnatch that we’ve found plays very well and adds a fantastic layer of fear to playing around Knights while they’re near you. Stand Aside | Received art. SORCERER Ashes to Ashes | Now only deals damage to each enemy when an enemy discards a card. Chaos Storm | Specifies that it must be reattached to an empty tile. Wording tweak. Embercrash | Received art. Imbue -> Flare | This card was overhauled and renamed Flare. It still creates Enchanted Terrain and Stuns, but the Stun is rangeless and works similarly to Providence. We realized that the play that Providence brought to the game was very enjoyable and worked well with cards in Knight and Sorcerer. We also needed to improve Imbue’s worth as a deck slot, and this shored it up quite nicely. Lash Out | If you Unleash Lash Out, it now Destroys all enemy cards. WIZARD Wizard hasn’t been playing well as a class. It felt like they didn’t have very many instant options for a class that feels like it should be able to dazzle with arcane magic. We’ve worked hard to fix that, and replaced a few of their weaker, less played cards. It was a very hard decision, but we also removed Enchanted Terrain as an archetype from Wizards. Cantrip has been working well, and because of that, it’s been very difficult to find space for Enchanted Terrain cards, making a lot of our designs busy and unintuitive. With Enchanted Terrain removed, we had a lot more space to freely explore Cantrip and shore up some other weaknesses that the class has, such as a lack of control. Magebolt -> Transfigify | Is a -1 +1 instant at range 3 that changes all control affecting another player into a different type of control. Magebolt was not being played as was contributing to some dead space in the class with its Enchanted Terrain creation. We opted for a fancy meta-counter that requires some thought and finesse to use well. Constellation -> Leyline | Is a -1 +1 with Cantrip that attached to an empty tile. At the end of your turn, if you’re in Leyline, you gain 1 power for each Leyline you control. This helps create some great flavor in the Wizard class, and provides a somewhat similar function to Constellation. It acts as an especially powerful power generation technique, but requires the Wizard to stay within its area, which lends itself to a blasty-mage flavor. Study Magic -> Starlight | This card functionally remained the same, but was simply renamed. Study Magic didn’t evoke a great sense of flavor, so we opted to change it to something a little more fancy. Comet | Is now a -1 -2 that deals 7 damage to enemies in or near a target tile at range 3. It may be alternatively paid for by spending two initiatives. Comet never really found an iconic place in Wizard, and we opted for a more cantrip focused approach to the card. Astral Force -> Stop | Is now a 0 -3 range 3 Slow 3 target enemy, and gain an initiative. Astral Force saw a lot of changes and had some great iterations, but ultimately, as Enchanted Terrain was removed from Wizard, it had to go. In its place is a way for Wizards to keep their distance and generate a substantial amount of value and leverage their range 3 position. Quicken | No longer grants an initiative if the card was already instant. SAINT Boon | Now shows you the top four cards instead of the top five. Dignity | Now provides 2 power up from 1. ERRANT No Mercy | No longer removes Chivalry. INVOKER Chaos Orb | Now costs -1 +1 instead of 0 -2. This card is wacky, and we want to see it in decks! We feel like it will be much more approachable and manage by generating power instead of costing 2 in an already power-hungry specialization. Spitfire | Now grants 2 power if you simply Unleash it (by spending 1 or more extra power) instead of by spending 5 or more. This standardizes Spitfire with the new Lash Out mechanic, and buffs it somewhat to hopefully render a bit more useful. ARCHMAGE Alter | No longer has Heroic. This change is because Alter doesn’t particularly need Heroic, and another card in Archmage is getting it… Counterspell | Cost was reduced from -1 -3 to -1 -2, and was made Heroic. Wow! Huge buff to Counterspell. We want to respect the feeling that players get when they think of a Counterspell, and truly help such a powerful effect shine. Get ready to get countered! Disintegrate | Received art. Spellsurge | Now has Cantrip. This card is awesome, but is sometimes quite difficult to play in Archmage due to the sheer power costs of their specialization. This should help somewhat mitigate its costs. Wish | Now allows you to search your deck for any card, put it into your hand, then shuffle your deck. We have avoided putting a card into the game that causes you to shuffle your deck for a long time now so as to keep the game moving along. However, we realized that this slow speed was already occurring with the effect we had created with Wish. While we’re still generally unfavorable to effects that cause you to shuffle your deck, it makes sense for Archmage to circumvent this rule and break the rules, as their specialization does with a few of its other cards. ILLUSIONIST While Illusionist is fun and rewarding, it was a bit too strong. We’ve moved some effects around and softened their ability to control with Confuse, and we’ve reached a great middle ground that’s kept the great gameplay of Illusionist while making them feel more on the level of other specializations in Ivion. Confuse | After you resolve an Attack targeting an enemy, they put the top card of their deck into their discard. You may apply an instance of control that that card is affected by that *they* are unaffected by. The new effect is a bit wordy, but it plays fantastically. It has limited the power of Illusionists to Cripple people on demand, and creates some uncertainty that we want with the aesthetic of an Illusionist. Echoes | Now causes attack cards to deal 1 more damage if there is another copy of that card in your discard. Echoes is a great card and feels great to play, but the damage ramped up a bit too much in the late game. Mirror Image | Now -2 +2. Still attaches to an empty tile. Before a card resolves targeting you, you can travel to your Mirror Image. It is Destroyed when any player steps in it. Mirror Image was too similar to Teleport, so we opted for a unique card. There is a lot of play to this card. Puppeteer | Cost was reduced from 0 -5 to 0 -3. Vanity | Received art. Refract -> Phantasma | Is now a -2 -2. Target enemy puts the top ten cards of their deck into their discard. Slow 2 and Disarm 2 them. There are a lot of absolutely fantastic cards in Illusionist, but we wanted to keep the mill strategy alive after removing Phantasma as a trait. Ultimately, Refract was removed and we’re experimenting with Phantasma. Schism | Now -1 +1, not an Attack, and allows you to play a card without paying or gaining resources unless any enemy deals 5 damage to themselves. This card is very playable now, and creates some compelling archetypes for Illusionists to pursue. Watch out! TRAITS Quest | Now requires seven tokens up from six. Quest was triggering just a tad too much. Destiny | Now shuffle two relics instead of three into your deck. Shuffling three relics into your deck with Destiny was a little overkill. It limited the amount of relics you could gain normally a bit too much, and relics were being gained from the deck too consistently. We’ve found that two is the sweet spot. Explode | Now deals 5 damage up from 4. This trait is awesome, and we want it to be a viable archetype! Creating and destroying Terrain as a payoff should be powerful, even if it is a trait. Unbound | Was removed and replaced. Now is a passive that causes you to draw a card while you have no cards in your hand. Unbound filled a very similar role to Prodigy, and as such, was difficult to justify as another trait slot in the expansion. We feel like this new effect will open up some interesting decks. Meta Magic | Was removed and replaced. Is now a double blue trait instead of a triple blue trait, and is a 0 -2 that grants an initiative. Timerunner was previously the ‘initiative generation’ trait slot for Cantrip Wizards, but we felt like it didn’t actually slot into the archetype that well. Additionally, Meta Magic was a bit too powerful when compared to other power generation traits, even as a triple blue slot. Timerunner | Was removed and replaced. Now is a passive that allows you to move diagonally the first time you move each turn. This card should open up a lot of deck potential, including decks that want to rush in quickly as well as heroes that want to stay at range and need to justify spending their actions to move. Counter Magic | Was made the triple blue trait. As Meta Magic no longer felt like it should be the triple blue trait, we felt that Counter Magic was a reasonable replacement. Strive for Glory | Instead of discarding a random card, now requires you to discard an Ability. A problem with Strive for Glory was that when you could discard any card, it offered a bit too many options. Now, it feels much more manageable from a choice paralysis perspective, and additionally isn’t completely busted with Survivalist. Phantasma -> Distortion | Is now a passive trait that redirects damage you would take to your power instead. Phantasma was neat and we’re glad that we experimented with it, but we felt like it might be more appropriate in Illusionist proper, and that we should perhaps find another way later to add mill as an archetype in traits. For now, we opted for a defensive and subtly powerful trait that felt very blue / green. That’s it for the patch notes! Join us on the Ivion Discord to discuss the changes and find some games!

This past Saturday, April the 20th, I had the opportunity to host the first Ivion tournament on Discord with the new Calbria expansion on Tabletop Simulator. The tournament took a grueling 8 hours to finish, and a pretty good turn out with 9 people making it out. There was quite a lot of variety to see between the specializations, 4 out of the 9 people brought the new Calbrian Specialization: Invoker. I guess the explosiveness of Invoker was an attractive play style for people to bring to the tournament. Some of the spiciest decks that I've seen was one from the user on Discord "Aldenwar" who brought his Invoker which ran apotheosis and raze to try and play a raze for free using his ultimate. He surprisingly did it a couple of times throughout the tournament. One of the other decks I was impressed with was the user "CriticalMaus" and the new Calbrian Specialization: Illusionist, which had slash of yore to bring back his ego shocks in part with Illusionists ultimate "confuse" to counter players cards which made it really hard to get anything through against the Illusionist. This was my first tournament which I had fun hosting and organizing, but I noticed some problems that came up during the tournament, one of them being that it took way too long. Each player had to have 2 decks and they had to win with both of those decks to win the set, then they would advance in the bracket. However, some of the tournament sets took way too long. To add on top of that there was also a losers bracket, so if you lost at any point during the winner's bracket you were put in a separate bracket and you could advance through that one. All of these things added up to the time being a total of 8 hours.I am looking into making another tournament for the discord and I promise this one won't be as long as the last one took. I would be happy to receive feedback from others, so if you would like to leave a suggestion you can contact me via Discord (my username on Discord is "Norse") or leave a comment in this thread. As of now I'm looking into the change to make set's best of 1 win and people would only have to bring 1 deck instead of 2. I'm thinking this change would cut tournament time in half, but if anyone has any other suggestions for me I would like to hear them. Thanks for everyone coming out to the tournament, I've been wanting to do this for a while, and seeing everyone playing and having fun was a real treat for me to watch. It makes me hopeful for the future of this beautiful game. Here is a link to the bracket - https://challonge.com/bh6lmd59 A link to vote for what you would like to see in the next Ivion tournament - https://www.strawpoll.me/17855037 If you would like to be able to join the next Ivion tournament, make sure to check out the Discord. I’ll be posting updates on there. Here is a link to the Discord - https://discord.gg/FpkK2y

I suppose that it was inevitable, in its own way. The fools that traipse among the discord server have at last risen from their self-approbation, to strike out with dull hatred against the true believers of the coming salvation. Those who would rather languish in lethargic content, than reach out and carve glorious destiny from the walls of their own making, call me a heretic, accuse ME of vile crimes and heinous manipulations. Their ignorance continues to astound, nearly as much as it enrages. But, this, as in all things, shall soon pass. For within these empty chambers, I can craft my masterpiece, a tool of vengeance that I shall bring to bear with righteous prejudice against these apostates and false heralds. For the moment, as I recoup my losses and lay the blueprint for my moment of exultation, I shall allow them to stay huddled within their cave, reading their false reality from the shadows on the wall. All too soon, I shall force their heads to turn towards the light.