Elemancer 3.0 (v9.0-9.2)
Having a strict number of turns changes the game in a major way. On top of that, each turn is now specified as combat or acquisition. I have restructured the rules to really delineate what you can and cannot do on each turn. Ironically, I think restricting player options makes the game better in this case as it reduces the cognitive load of each turn. You have fewer actions to choose from, so there isn’t as much analysis paralysis.
Most of the generic actions are still available if you choose not to fight, however you can’t use combat turns to gain cards or Gems. Partially this is because the rewards for beating monsters include gaining extra Gems, which you could just do by taking the turn off and discarding some cards. One issue I have with this is that it reads as the type of rule that designers put in as band-aid fixes to prevent players from taking actions they feel they should be able to make. Maybe I’ll find a better solution, but in my defense boundaries and restrictions exist for a reason. As much as players might want to, they can’t just do anything they want or the game itself becomes pointless. Counter-counterpoint: if multiple players across multiple playtests want to do a thing in your game, maybe you should find a way to allow them to do it. There might be something there that you as a designer aren’t seeing, so take that as feedback and work with it.
Forgive my impromptu tirade on the pros and cons of restrictive rules. Let’s look at some individual Elements and the issues they’ve had since the shift to Elemancer 3.0.
Monster Mash (v9.1)
First up is balancing of the PvE monster enemies. The rough estimates from the last article, and thus the initial changes in v9.0, I made were pretty good. But I found that certain monsters were consistently too easy to defeat. I also wanted to make the rewards more consistent. Now Tier 2 monsters will give either 2 Gems or the ability to Tribute a card from your hand or discard pile, and Tier 3 monsters will all allow you to Tribute a card. These rewards seem pretty comparable in Tier 2, and by the time you are in Phase 3, eliminating cards from your deck is much stronger.
Ice Ice Baby (v9.1)
One major issue I ran into with initial testing is that Cryomancy’s mechanics no longer work as well now that combat is essentially always synchronous. Opponents will always have fewer than 4 cards in hand any time there is combat, so those synergies are moot. That said, I started to take Ice into a different design space in the past few updates. I leaned more into the ability to play cards directly to combat and bonus damage if you’ve discarded cards or played them directly to combat. Good crossover with Chronomancy, but still distinct.
With this update, I’m moving Cryomancy’s mechanics solely into caring about discard and playing cards directly to combat. I removed the uninteresting abilities entirely.
Rock DJ (v9.1)
I overshot on power level with some Geomancy cards. One simple change would be to remove one of the card-only Gem colors (White or Pink) to reduce the damage ceiling on some cards. That would require rebalancing Gem distribution on cards. The other solution would be to update individual cards to have a more reasonable range of damage.
Before taking such a drastic measure, I’m rebalancing which abilities appear in Temples and Shrines, and nerfing some of the scaling abilities (keying off number of different or matching Gems)
Rock Lobster (v9.2)
Quick turnaround here, we’re still talking about Geomancy! I’ve changed the boss abilities to favor utility over power, but they should enable stronger hands as a secondary effect. I’ve also decided to add Gems to cards and move some around, alongside a shift towards more ‘matching’ or ‘mono-Gem’ abilities.
I’m moving away from certain ‘Reveal’ abilities which checked the Gems on the cards from the top of your deck. This is an interesting way to interact with your own deck, however it is much simpler to not have to worry about corner-case rules interactions. The main issue is with abilities that check whether a card from the top of your deck matches a Gem in combat and abilities that change the Gem on a card mid-combat. I’ll leave this one in my back pocket, but I’m removing this ability for now.
Ring of Fire (v9.2)
I determined that Fire’s Horror boss reward ability, which buffs Firestarter cards, was rarely useful now that overall damage has been revamped. Pyromancy performed pretty well during testing, but I wanted to make the Horror boss ability interesting, so I buffed its damage bonus. To counteract this, I had to nerf damage overall so that the choice to channel a Firestarter became interesting. We’ll see how this affects Fire builds overall, hopefully it doesn’t make the Element worse on the whole. The Horror boss ability should ideally provide a higher damage floor for individual abilities, making damage more consistent overall.
Time Warp (v9.2)
Chronomancy has a card draw problem. I’m enjoying the extra support for abilities that allow you to discard cards from hand for bonus damage, making them infinitely more useful than they used to be (they’ve been languishing for a while). However, too much card draw can cause some ridiculous things to happen. This would be on-flavor with Time manipulation, but it was a bit too out of hand for Elemancer. I also like that a lot of the time I’m holding cards in-hand to activate their Channel abilities mid-combat, or to discard to the aforementioned abilities. The player agency is pretty high for Chronomancy, lots of moving parts.
As always, I feel like Elemancer is in a better place, though I need to test my latest updates of course. It feels very close to a point where I can confidently share it with others and do blind playtests. Radically changing the game kind of threw a wrench in that, but I plan to get this version to a balanced state very quickly.
