Multi-Targetting | IWC 0.44 Alpha Patch Notes

Welcome to the newest patch for Infinity Wars Classic, Alpha version 0.44.

Releasing with today is a HUGE list of balance and redesign changes, as well as a pretty long and serious article on Design Direction, from the entire team of us at Lightmare Studios. It also gives some details about the IWC Open-Beta, so if you're waiting for the game to come back in its free-to-play form, then this one interests you. Check out the full post here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/59029066

[h3]Reminder: FREE DEMO[/h3]
All players now have the ability to download Infinity Wars Classic through Steam directly. Just make sure your game is up to date and you'll be good to go! This is a great way to get hands-on with what we've created so far as a bit of a sample of what's to come.



[h2]Major Features[/h2]

Multi Targeting
The first iteration of multi-targeting is here!
A key feature to helping the majority of the remaining Infinity Wars 1 cards to be ported across is multi-targeting, the ability to target multiple cards with a single source as well as allow multiple activations of cards with on-field abilities.
This feature required a significant rewritting of our targeting UI as well as some networking code. This is due to the Infinity Engine being built initially for only mobile play in mind, meaning that ease of targeting and network packet size were significant limitations. However as our focus has shifted to IWC, Multi-Targeting has been a long standing feature request from the community and we are happy to finally be able to release it to everyone.
With the release of this feature we are also able to revert several card redesigns such as Cannon Fire and Fight!
Expect to see many more multi-targeting cards in future patches.
Please report any bugs found to us, as this feature touches many different systems in the codebase.

New Targeting Arrow Graphics
While overhauling our targeting UI for multitargeting we have modified the targeting arrows to a lovely new look, as well as being more consistent with the color coding of each arrow to showcase if the effect is positive (Blue), Negative (Red), or Neutral (Yellow)


[h2]Minor Features[/h2]

Store Updates
The cosmetics section of the Store is now open, with a number of purchasable Portraits and Titles for your profile. Be sure to take a look!

Card Pack Price changes
Intrigue Phase 1 packs were incorrectly costed due to an internal miscommunication, they now cost 500 gold.
We will be looking at potentially refunding gold for those who purchased packs at the incorrect price.

[h2]New Cards[/h2]

Putrifying Elkmare
Cost:6 Morale:4 (WP OR EX)
Character - Beast Demon
Untouchable
14/14

Confront the Aether
Cost:7 (CoVx2)
Ability
Whenever you play an ability card, If Confront the Aether is in your hand reduce its cost by 1.
Draw 4 cards.

Escalating Stain
Cost:4 (EXx1)
Location
When you deploy Escalating Stain, your opponent gains control of it and you gain control of any location they control.
At the end of turn, you lose 4 Health.

[h2]New IW1 Cards[/h2]

• Blood Arrow
  
• Cannon Fire
  
• Fight!
  
• Shrine to the Heavens
  
• Secluded Constructor
  
• Intimidating Rally
  
• Overcharged Bolt
  
• Laser Cannon
  

[h2]IWC Redesigns[/h2]

A large number of cards have been redesigned over the last several week due to gameplay or engine reasons.

Denial Cycle: Having already redesigned Denial of Surprise, it won't come as a shock that we planned to redesign the entire cycle, each being a powerful but ciche sidebard style cards at double purity.
The previous designs used "Can't be Undone" something which we neither support nor want to use in Infinity Wars Classic for technical and design reasons.
We'll be redesigning the rest of this cycle shortly, where possible we want the card to maintain its hate against the same style of card.

Denial of Force
Cost:2 (DoDx2)
Ability
Enemy Characters with attack 10 or greater can't attack this turn.

We have seen how powerful cards like Fear can be, delaying the game to give defensive decks breathing room.
While we don't want unconditional "Can't Attack" cards to nessesarily be common in DoD due to how defensive they already are, this conditional card can be a useful too against decks that are not trying to swarm the board.

Denial of Flight
Cost:8 (GENx2)
Ability
Kill all enemy Characters with flying.

While Warpath are the master of the Reach keyword, GEN has access to anti-air ability removal but lacked an expensive high impact version.
While pricy, this can allow powerful alpha strikes if you yourself are relying on fliers to close out the game.

Denial of Advancement
Cost:1 (OoSx2)
Ability
Return target artifact to its owner's hand. Increase its cost by 3.

Overseers have access to some of the most premium artifact and location removal, but as part of a larger balancing of artifact and location interaction, we want to give players a very cheap option to interact that wasn't as permanent as removal but could be used for a tempo advantage.

Defiant Cycle Redesign:

The defiant cycle was a cycle of cards that had an effect when removed from the game, designed most likely to work with overcharge that you got the effect without paying any resources often meant their effects were very low impact, and the card was overall useless, or the card was very powerful. In addition, the artwork for these cards are nearly all showing interactions between factions. Therefore to create more multi-faction options for deckbuilding this cycle is being redesigned to be various multi-faction Character cards.
Notably the most played card of this cycle, Defiant Footman, we plan to move to Morningstar Accelerator so that it is still an option in decks.

Defiant Monk
Cost:1 Morale:3 (DoD + EX)
Character - Human
At the beginning of combat, if this is in the Defence Zone, transform the front Character of your Defence Zone into a random Character that costs 1 more.
2/6

Defiant Hunter
Cost:4 Morale:6 (WP + FD)
Character - Beast
When you deploy Defiant Hunter, target Character in your hand costs 2 less and gain "At the end of turn if this is deployed, return it to your Hand."
12/8

Defiant Engineer
Cost:5 Morale:5 (WP + GEN)
Character - Human
At the start of combat, if Defiant Engineer is deployed and you control a deployed Character with attack 20 or greater, create a 4/4 Beast token in your Assault and Defence Zones.
10/12

Defiant Herald
Cost:2 Morale:4 (OoS + DoD)
Character - Angel
Vigilance
When you deploy Defiant Herald, target deployed Character you control is returned to its controller's hand. Its cost is reduced to 0.
2/8

Off-Faction Overcharge Cards: This faction was a series of Overcharge cards in Rebellion that were single faction cards that required a card of a second faction as overcharge targets. This essentially made them poorly designed dual faction cards.
With the change of the defiant cycle, we felt like a cycle of Hybrid cards with Overcharge effects would allow Overcharge decks to have more options across many factions.

Enlightenator XT2500
Cost:4 Morale:6 (GEN OR DoD)
Character - Artificial
When you deploy Enlightenator XT2500, you may Overcharge it once.
At the end of turn, if this was overcharged when it was deployed, it heals all damage from itself and gains +2/+2.
8/12

A defensive tool for DoD and GEN that works extremely well with the health buffs of both factions.
Angel's Bane
Cost:2 Morale:3 (CoV OR OoS)
Character - Human
When you deploy Angel's Bane, you may Overcharge it once. If you do, target Character in the Command Zone has its resource cost increased by 2.
6/6

Verore and Overseers often want to control the gameplan of the opponents deck, which is often based around certain command zone cards. This gives another tool to that strategy if your willing to pay the card disadvantage.

Once Was Clean
Cost:5 Morale:6 (EX OR WP)
Character - Beast Demon
Haste
When you deploy Once Was Clean, you may Overcharge it once. If you do, Once Was Clean gains +10/-10.
10/11

20 haste damage is incredibly scary, but the low health means even a single defensive token can be a huge swing

Nemophilist Angel
Cost:3 Morale:4 (OoS OR WP)
Character - Angel
When you deploy Nemophilist Angel, you may Overcharge it once. If you do, you temporarily gain 2 extra resources next turn.
8/8

*Overseers will now have some access to temporary bursts of extra resources to highlight their ability to gain a tempo advantage.

Drag Down
Cost:1 (SoAx1)
Ability
If target Character you don't control has flying, it loses flying and you draw a card.

As we were adjusting the Denial cycle, we also looked at other sideboard style cards. Drag down was one of the lowest impact cards in the cardbase and so was chosen to be card-neutral if it hits a target successfully.

Ancient Egg
Cost:2 (WPx1)
Artifact
At the start of turn, Ancient Egg's age increases.
Activate: Choose one-
- Pay 3 then Ancient Egg's age increases twice
- Sacrifice Ancient Egg: Create an X/X Beast token with unstoppable. Where X is four times Ancient Egg's age.

Ancient Egg's old design was incredibly random and unintuitive. Creating random beasts with modified stats based on the age of the egg. This also made the card an awful topdeck, as games didn't last long enough to age your egg if you couldn't play it early.
With this new design, you can now pay the extra resources that warpath decks can access to age faster. Also the stats of the beast created are now much more predictable, but the unstoppable keyword still encourages growing the beast to a large size.


[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Twins in Gray - We are keeping an eye on this card currently, but have no changes to it at this time
  
• Ruins of an Ancient Civilization - Whenever a Character deals combat damage to your fortress, it also creates a 4/4 Beast token.
  
• Honor Hill - text changed to "All Characters you control have their morale cost reduced to 0."
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Fixed a soft lock when the opponent leaves and the victory screen appears when looking at deck or graveyard.
  
• Fixed Fiery Resolve lasting more than 1 turn in some situations
  
• Fixed Vanguard Knight, Verore Brute, Zealous Protector artworks.
  
• Fixed Chain lightning not correctly checking artificial status
  
• Fixed Tome of the Dead being marked as both a location and Artifact.
  
• Fixed Jade Witch overcharge not removing a card from have if the target becomes invalid
  
• Fixed errors with the executable name that sometimes wiped decks that were built when releasing a new version
  
• Chalice of Madness no longer causes desyncs and has been added back to the deck collection
  
• Fixed Transformed conditionals not working
  
• Fixed location cards not correctly setting battlefield graphics in multiplayer
  
• Fixed Untouchable preventing graveyard targeting
  
• Fixed Adaptive Construct triggering twice when deployed
  
• Fixed On Play Wish effects (such as overcharge cards) not properly executing with it's wish effect trigger. This fixed Jade Witch and Angel's Bane.
  
• Fixed Fight!'s effect behavior
  
• Fixed the opponents battlefield cards not "squishing" within the layout width of the zone when processing the opponents moves in multiplayer.
  
• Fixed turn timer not showing properly on the first turn of following real-time games.
  
• Fixed deployment targeting actions not working properly, and not removing targeting arrows.
  

We've made a pretty big leap recently in terms of gameplay direction, driven by player feedback and guidance, and we hope it's everything you would want out of a redesign focused patch. Of course, there's the Design Direction post above to go and see again, but in the meantime, jump into some Infinity Wars Classic (or jump into the free demo) and we'll see you there!

Discord: discord.gg/y8KGxk4
Patreon: patreon.com/lightmarestudios