Spoiler Alert!
May 14, 2010
Yes, we have the full visual spoiler of Wrath Gate available to download, but you'll want to wait a few minutes. First, we have an important message from Cryptozoic R&D regarding the Class Starter Decks and the upcoming Continental Championships!
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Hello, World of Warcraft Trading Card Game fans. As you probably know by now, our Class Starter Decks are slated to hit the streets in July. While there are some exclusive cards in the starter, the decks are primarily composed of reprints. The cards selected for reprinting were selected on the merits of simplicity, relevance to the MMO, and mechanical flavor for each particular class. While these decks haven’t been released yet, the reprint list is live and these cards are legal in Core tournaments, including the upcoming Continental Championships in Las Vegas, USA and Paris, France.
We had initially intended for these decks to be released alongside Wrath Gate, but some unforeseen delays caused the date to be rolled back. Some of the cards, detailed below, receive functional errata in the Class Starter Decks. The cards that received errata did so due to our concerns about intuitiveness or outdated language, not for power level. The following errata will go live with the update to the Wrath Gate OCR update and will be effective with that update. That means the listed cards will work differently for all future tournaments, including the NACC and EUCC. 1. Polymorph changes from “loses powers” to “loses and can’t have powers”We always felt it was strange when a Polymorphed ally gained a power, especially a passive power like mend which worked just fine on a Polymorphed ally. In addition, tracking the time stamping of Polymorph vs. powers added onto allies before and after the attaching is unpleasant. This synchs up Polymorph with our other “loses powers” effects, which going forward will always say, “loses and can’t have powers.” 2. Chain Lightning changes from “choose two other heroes and/or allies” to “target up to three heroes and/or allies”Chain Lightning was originally worded this way to simulate the function it has in the online game (henceforth referred to as ‘MMO’), where the spell has a single target but also hits additional different enemies. However, we feel now that this ability hitting untargetable heroes or allies was extremely counter-intuitive for the average player, and the wording on Chain Lightning was both clunky and hard to parse out. Chain Lightning now works the same as Greater Chain Lightning, in-line with every other Shaman ability that can hit multiple heroes and allies. 3. Consecration changes to “Deal 2 unpreventable Holy damage to each opposing hero and ally” The powers-that-be back in the day wanted to simulate a “small AoE”, which would have a limited effectiveness in multi-player games. While their hearts were in the right place, the original wording is non-intuitive to both MMO players (since Consecration doesn’t target in the MMO) and TCG players (since the language is so bizarre compared to all of our AoE effects). We changed Consecration to line up with our other AoE effects. 4. Shadowfiend changes from “Unique” to “Pet: 1”Shadowfiend used to function differently in the MMO, with the Priest having no control over what the Shadowfiend chose to do. Additionally, pets were a design space unique to Hunters and Warlocks. Now Shadowfiend works like a pet in the MMO, and both Mages and Death Knights have pets as well. We felt, because Shadowfiend looks like a pet in every other regard (gold border, class icon in the upper-right hand corner), it was natural to assume that it would be a pet. Shadowfiend is a pet in the same way that Water Elemental, Holy Guardian, or similar allies are or will be.While functional errata are never ideal, we didn’t want to reprint cards with archaic wording or functionality, especially in a product intended for new players. We believe these changes make the cards in question work the way the overwhelming majority of players would assume while synching them up with similar cards or templates. Head over to the forums for any questions or comments, and anyone heading out to the NACC, I’ll see you in Vegas.-BearladyBrala4L----
Thank you BearladyBrala4L! We're packaging this announcement with the Wrath Gate spoiler so that you're fully prepared for the NACC and EUCC.
And now... what you've been waiting for: download away! Enjoy and have a great weekend!
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