Hello everyone, and welcome to another update! Let's get right into this month's updates and surprises.
First, a quick shout out to the participants of the recent online tournament. Congratulations to sirGray for your victory! sirGray went through a gruesome series of battles to win with their deck "The Fading", which utilized an Ancients/Destiny Descendants combination featuring the newly updated Memoria mechanic paired with the Fatereaver mechanic. Since they almost won the last time with the powerful Wilt/Despair mechanic, it was great to see the control mechanics worked out in their favor!
In our continued effort to bring Guild Wars into a fully-realized state, there have been approximately 40 more cards that have been updated over the past month. The biggest focus has been on Twilighter to enable mechanic interactions between more mechanics beyond Darkness-related mechanics like Stealth or Nocturnal, or the sleepy Hypnoser mechanic. Twilighter tried to tie in too many different mechanics into one while relying on Darkness to be prevalent on all sides of the field, so now they have been updated to work better without sleep or Darkness. All card updates are live on the TTS cards or the Master Sheet, so feel free to check them out!
Most importantly, I would like to introduce the newest (and most likely final) guild addition to the custom guilds of Amoas - The Symaeth!
When it comes to more recent guilds, Fatal Factions: Guild Wars has quite a few wacky additions to your normal fantasy-based classes. From sleepcasters to necromechs and from insect people to aliens, there are quite a few unique denizens that make their way to Amoas (or have been sitting hidden, waiting for an overzealous creator to bring them to life). One thing that has always been true about Amoas, however, is the origin of its magics. All forms of magic come from a particle called Aether, which allows the several different kinds of beings to interact with it to seemingly create bursts of fire or bolts of lightning out of thin air. Aether is triggered by neurological pulses and stimulation, and works much like a muscle - the more you use it, the stronger your aetheric capabilities are. Some beings - like the plants within Vines of Adem - are born with strong aetheric capabilities, while others - like the mages of Aetherflame - have to become accustomed to it and strengthen their powers.
There are some beings, however, that are made up completely of this magical energy called Aether. That's where The Symaeth come in. The Symaeth (symbiotic aetherics) are magical beings - aen, aenwisps, gloun, ventars, even giants - who are either Aether incarnated into living beings or beings that live and breathe Aether. The focus of this guild is to either deplete an opponent's energy or share energies among themselves.
My hope with this guild was to create a set of mechanics that worked with some of the lonelier mechanics like the assassin's Stalk or debuffers like the ninja's Undermine and sleepcaster's Twilighter. To help you understand how these magical beings work, let's dig into their mechanics. It'll be quite a bit, so please bear with me.
Prismatic: X - Pay 1 resource: Place this card into your stasis zone. Return it to your hand at the end phase from anywhere but the graveyard or deck. While this card is in your stasis zone from this ability, X.
Telegraft - (Active Ability) A unit of your choice gains the Chained state until your end phase. This ability can only be used once per turn through all of your Telegraft units.
Aetherflow - This unit increases the damage, restoration, or stat changes of your Glimmer cards by 1.
Dark Flux - Pay 1 resource. Either decrease the restoration or stat increase a unit receives by 1 or increase a stat decrease that a unit receives by 1. This unit can perform this ability once a turn as a reaction on a unit that hasn’t been targeted by Dark Flux in the same turn.
Chime - When this unit and at least one other Chime unit taps to block, activate all Receiver abilities.
The first mechanics that we'll talk about are the most unique - Aetherflow and Chime, as they utilize a few unique terms like Glimmer and Receiver.
Aetherflow units specialize in utilizing cards with Glimmer. Glimmer's ability is: If this card is a spell or reaction, you can repeat the effects of its non-Glimmer abilities on a different unit and reduce damage, restoration and stat changes by 1. Repeat this effect until the damage, restoration or stat change would contain a 1.
Cards with a Glimmer ability bounce from unit to unit and reduce its effects by 1 for each target it bounces to. As shown by Spiraling Missile, you can deal a lot of damage if you have plenty of Aetherflow units on the field. If you have 3 Aetherflow units, you'll deal 4 damage to the first unit you target, then it'll target 3 more units for 1 less damage each time. Once you've hit your last unit for 1 damage, the final unit is tapped. Glimmer spells may seem very strong, but keeping Aetherflow units alive without using them for attacks or blocks is pretty hard to do. There are only 4 cards that utilize Glimmer, but if you have the theorycrafter's mind, you'll be happy to know that you can give other cards a weaker version of Glimmer to try out called Weak Glimmer. Weak Glimmer still allows bouncing and bonuses from Aetherflow, but weakens the card on every bounce quicker and gives less bonuses.
Chime units will trigger your Receiver cards by blocking together. Receiver doesn't have any unique descriptor, however, their Receiver ability will trigger when a Chime goes off. The Burning Aenwisp will deal damage to every opposing unit around it through Flarebloom when you Chime, which may very well change the outcome of your battles. You can also heal, power up, and gather Resources with other Receiver abilities on altars and attachments. The flexibility of Chime allows you to make a very defense deck paired with the priest's Congregate or utilize units that sit on opposing fields like the assassin's Stalk.
Dark Flux and Prismatic are easier abilities to explain. Simply put, a Dark Flux unit will be able to either weaken a buff or healing ability, or power up a debuff for a small cost. Prismatic, on the other hand, allows your units to gain buffs while they sit in the stasis zone. You may be revealing your unit, but if you have 4 different Prismatic units in your hand, then you have 4 different buff options to use constantly until you are ready to use them as a normal unit.
Finally, I would like to talk about the Telegraft ability as it has a little story to it.
Before the current stage of Guild Wars, there was an "Enhancement" mechanic that allowed you to increase a unit or attachment's stat by 2, continuous damage or restoration of a card by 1 or the power of a single-play card by 3. Eventually, the Enhancement mechanic was expanded to also add a target to a card or reduce the cost of a card in hand by 2 resources. Since all mechanics are not built equal, some units used Enhancements better than other (I'm looking at you, Etherlink) so it was eventually canned as a game mechanic. However, I wanted to give an option for adding targets the way that the old Enhancement mechanic did, so Telegraft is here!
Telegraft introduces a unique state called Chained, which is described as:
Chained State - This unit can be added as a target to one ability on your non-legend spell, reaction, altar or unit card. This only applies for abilities that target a single unit and for cards that do not attach.
Giving someone the Chained state helps opens a ton of options for single-target cards and abilities. With a little bit of work, you can throw a 3-plant potion to 2 units instead of 1 through the wild magician's Alchemy, or spread your high damage Inferno to an extra unit or two with your mages. The cost to chain is very high, but if you're a fan of spells and reactions, you can improve the efficiency of your cards by adding a target where you would normally only target one unit.
Dark Flux and Telegraft are definite game changers to the Guild Wars formula, but I am very glad to introduce The Symaeth as a whole. There's just a few more days of balancing to be done, but you will be able to find it in the TTS mod for Fatal Factions: Guild Wars PVP Mode on Steam! As a little treat, I'll also add in my other custom guilds, including the recent Soulis guild and my own first custom guild, The Vezsikt Network. I hope you enjoy!
As a final gift to you - and to celebrate spooky season - I will be working with the original queen of Fatal Factions herself to refresh and re-release her custom guild, Eclipse Stalker. Stay tuned for some vampires and werewolves to celebrate the season!
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