| Ed ecco le nuove regole
We reference “equipment” all the time on cards, but up until now, the word has never appeared on any type line. This is obviously not very clear, especially to new players without a background in the MMO. Starting in Worldbreaker, “equipment” will appear on the type line of all weapons, armor, and items. This has minor implications for certain cards (I’m sure King Varian will survive the nerf), but it was done for the sake of clarity.
This isn’t so much a rules change as it is a change in design philosophy. We will no longer be tagging new Rogue abilities as “Combos,” and Finishing Moves going forward will ask you to remove any Rogue ability in your graveyard from the game. The downside to this change is that previous Finishing Moves won’t interact with new Rogue abilities. The pluses are a significant reduction in complexity, more open-ended deck building with the new abilities, and a much easier time making Finishing Moves work in Limited play.
Druid forms are an important part of the class, but their original implementation is too complicated and frustrating for us to highlight at lower rarities. Since they are such a significant part of the MMO, we wanted to make them a little easier to play with and keep track of.
What this means:
1) New forms will not break when you play non-Feral abilities or strike with weapons.
2) They will still be tagged as “Form (1),” so playing a second form will cause one of them to be destroyed.
3) They will also be tagged as Bear, Cat, etc. on the type line, so cards like Feral Charge work as they did previously.
4) Old forms are not receiving functional errata, so non-Feral abilities and weapon striking will still destroy them.
Striking with Weapons
The new rules for striking with weapons are as follows:
You can only strike with a weapon as your hero attacks or defends. This is the only time you can strike with a weapon.
Striking a weapon associates that weapon with your hero for this combat. It doesn't use the chain.
While associated, your hero has that weapon’s ATK and damage type. Your hero also has Long-Range while associated with a weapon with Long-Range.
A weapon stops being associated with a hero as it changes zones, changes controllers, or stops being a weapon.
The previous rules for striking with weapons were very complicated and unintuitive, two huge warning signs for the basic rules of a game. In fact, whenever a card highlighted the exact timing window for weapon striking (say, something that destroyed a weapon at instant speed, or a strike trigger that exhausted an ally), we would often remove those cards from the file specifically because we did not want players to have to know the nuances of those rules. Additionally, the timing on the old rules makes no sense to a significant percentage of players; the instinct is to swing with the weapon as your hero is attacking, not to wait for a vague priority point to swing after your hero is in combat.
What this means:
In the overwhelming majority of circumstances, nothing. The places where you will notice a change in how things play are:
1) When you have multiple weapons to strike with, and your opponent has one or more protectors. Under the previous rules, you would know what your opponent was protecting with before choosing to strike. Now, the decision has to be made up front.
2) When your weapon is destroyed inside of combat. Before, your opponent would have to either blow it up before you struck or allow you to strike. Now, destroying it, returning it to hand, etc. at any point before combat resolves will negate whatever ATK value the weapon was adding.
3) That you can’t ready a weapon inside of combat and strike with it again inside of that combat.
4) That you can’t play an instant-speed weapon inside of combat and strike with it while attacking.
While this may seem like a long list, these kinds of interactions represent a very low total percentage of the times weapons are used, and weapons remain largely unchanged on defense. For whatever design space we lose with these changes (and I would argue things like “ready my weapon inside of combat and strike with it again” is bad design space, and something we shouldn’t have highlighted in the first place), we can more than make up for it with things like strike triggers occurring at a more meaningful time inside of combat. More importantly, the rules now synch up more with what a new player would expect, which is a huge part of making the game easier to understand.
Totems from Worldbreaker onwards will be tagged as "Ability Ally" and count as both card types in all zones. Previously printed totems will still be tagged simply "Ability." Most previous rules for totems have been removed. The only rules for all totems are:
Totems can't attack.
While in play, a totem is also an ally. As such, all totems counts as both "Ability" and "Ally" while in play. (This applies to old totems as well as new ones.)
The old rules for totems are pretty overwhelming. They are so complicated, in fact, that I have witnessed multiple rules violations or misunderstandings at the highest levels of competitive play. While trying to precisely capture the functionality of totems in the MMO is an admirable goal, we decided that a complete overhaul of totem rules was in order.
What this means:
The most obvious changes are:
Attachments stay on totems.
AOE hits them, just like any other ally.
The new totems count as allies in all zones, meaning that Chasing A-Me can get a new totem back, and Ancestral Awakening can search one out of your deck.
Old totems have the same functionality in play as new totems but aren’t allies in any other zone, so Chasing A-Me can’t get back an old totem.
We understand that this is large functional errata to an entire class of cards, but we felt the confusion would be greater if old totems worked completely differently from new ones. In essence, new totems are just abilities and allies at the same time. We hope these rules changes make totems far easier to understand, since going forward, the only rules concealed in the word “totem” will be “this ally can’t attack.”
Ben will be touching on a few more changes to the way the cards look and play, along with some previews in his upcoming article. There are some additional “under the hood” changes to some mechanics, but the things discussed here are the changes that actually affect gameplay. While this list may seem long, the actual impact of these changes won’t be seen in most games.
We understand these changes will be unpopular with some portion of the audience; people will either dislike perceived nerfs to their favorite cards or have just gotten used to playing the game a certain way. Also, communicating these rules changes to established players won’t be easy, and there will be some confusion at first. Change always comes at a cost. However, when making these decisions, the question we asked ourselves at all times was, “Over the lifetime of the game, will we be happy about this change?” We intend for the WoW TCG to be around for a very long time, and part of making that happen is ensuring that the rules of the game are intuitive enough for players of all ability levels to understand. We believe that these relatively minor changes go a long way towards that goal.
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