A. F. Kay - overall I think this hero is mostly fine except the person who faces her at turn 3 tends to take around 8-12 damage that turn where you’d otherwise expect something in the ball park of 0-6.
There have been times I’ve beaten AFK on t3 but that’s with heavy investment and the right heroes like dancing Darrel. I think giving 2 monsters from t3 or giving afk 1 t3 and starting at tavern 3 is a fair change that still makes afk a strong hero but nowhere near as punishing for the person that faces her t3.
Lightfang and brann - I think moving them to tavern 6 is appropriate. It feels like a lot of first place finishes are determined by whoever hits an early Lightfang or brann. With how powerful the cards are, they are above and beyond the power level of every other tavern 5 boss. Many games when you’re t4 and triple into bran, there is very little incentive to upgrade further as the battle cry buffs will carry you to top 4 at least.
I think cards like megasaur are really unfair. I’d like to see a tavern 6 custom monster which provides a battle cry to adapt any minion.
Currently the meta is to rush upgrades, aggro is in a really bad place because aggro means you draft low star monsters and do very little damage. Also the power level jump between t2 to t3 and t3 to t4 is huge so there is a huge incentive to push for early upgrades as investing in early t1 - t2 usually fizzles out fast and gets punished quickly.
The only hero I’ve been moderaly successful with aggro is Darrel.
In order to buff aggro I think damage for a round should also incorporate one or both of: the gap between a players tavern i. E. If your tavern is 2 and opp is 4, opp takes 2 extra dmg and also the discount of your tavern. So if you haven’t upgraded your tavern for 5 turns straight, you also do an additional 5 damage. This will dramatically shorten games out and appropriately punish greedy builds.
Current meta the early game damage is so miniscule and inconsequential that drafting a Strong taunt and buffing it will trade through an entire board of t1-t2 monsters and immediately stabilize you so that’s why I never see anyone trying it. You’ll be lucky to t4 with how far behind you are after that round.
I understand we want to keep the mechanics as simple as possible to help with new players so my suggestions might make things too convoluted.
I think cards like the skyshredder that drops a 4 cost minion, or any card that drops another card like seeds should have its damage based on the original monsters stars. For example, it doesn’t make sense that the 5 star mech egg spawns an 8/8 dino that does 1 damage while a 4 star mech spawns a megasaur to hit you for 6 damage. I understand the effect is random but the damage should be predetermined either make all consequent spawns deal 1 damage similar to all other token cards or make the tokens deal dmg on the original source card I. E. Even if a board is full of 7 rats from rat pack, you still only take 2 dmg as that was rat packs original cost…
I prefer the 1 star approach in order to keep the early-mid vs late game pair closer matched. Late game is already too powerful with where cards like light fang and brann are.
But I am enjoying the game and having fun, very nice work and hope to see more changes coming in thru this beta.