Clash Buff Errata
De-Buffing Clash Buffs:
Addressing the Awakening Clash Buffs in a post-Awakening Alpha Clash
By David DeBates
When the Awakening set was created, Alpha Clash was an amazing idea and an incredible dream, but that was the most of what it was. Future sets were thought about, not fully designed. We had a direction to want to move towards, but not a clear roadmap on how to get there. It was a startup – a new TCG in a sea of new TCGs, fighting against the waves to be seen. Any company like that is bound to make mistakes, oversights, or other flawed decisions.
However, thankfully, the Awakening was a huge success, praised for its card pool and everything feeling important. It was a set of cards full of gameplay decisions, and other than a card or two occasionally being praised as too strong or criticized for being too weak, the set lacked complaints on a grand scale. Since then, future development has increased, playtesting has increased, and the overall process has completely changed on our end. With an increased number of Contenders and cards per set, it has been quite an engaging challenge to get everything where it needs to be.
All of that is important to mention, so that this can be said: we messed up with the Awakening Clash Buffs, but we are conscious of it and want to fix it. The cycle of Buffs themselves are admittedly very strong, but are also crucial for the game, albeit less pivotal as they were when only the one set existed. We definitely don’t want to remove them from the game, but the real issue isn’t even their strength. When the Awakening was designed, the intent behind Contenders and the number we create each set was drastically different, so we missed how these Buffs might interact with future Contenders and sets. Furthermore, with there only being the original five Contenders, the slight differences across the buffs went largely unnoticed, but should have been corrected long before this.
Incoming Support (AC1-021) and Energy Explosion (AC1-120) are both missing the stipulation regarding their Contender Affiliation, unlike the other three Buffs in the cycle. This oversight unintentionally makes these cards much stronger than intended when taking new and future Contenders into account. To save these cards in the environment of the game, we have elected to revert them back to their original intended design, to keep them in line with the rest of the Buffs from the set, rather than ban them. From today onwards, these buffs will now read as follows:
Incoming Support – 0
You can only play this card if your Contender is a black (Alpha Hunter).
Target Contender or Clash card you control gets +2/+2
until end of turn, then you may draw one card.
Energy Explosion – 0
You can only play this card if your Contender is a red (Alpha).
Target Contender or Clash card you control gets +2/+2
until end of turn, then you may draw one card.
We know that this change might seem sudden, or to some it might seem like something not necessary, but we have found that this could present a large issue if left unaddressed. Due to this being their initial and intended design, we have opted to revert these cards to that design. We hope that this transparency will show our desire to improve and correct our mistakes moving forward. The newest set, Clashgrounds, just dropped and has a ton of exciting new cards to build and clash with. So go out and get creative because we can’t wait to see what you come up with!