Hey there Guild Ball fans! Last time on the blog we took a look at Axe Throw Boiler (to give him his full title). Today we’re looking at a model (and Guild!) who we know has been highly anticipated. She’s wafting this way as we speak, but before we jump into looking at this model’s card, let’s take some time and go over the overall changes we’ve made to the Alchemists and why we made them.

The Breakthrough

As we mentioned on yesterday’s blog, one of the first things we did when we started the development of Season 4 was to take a look at the intended playstyle for every Guild as a whole, and then each model individually. This process helped us to identify not only which models needed to change, but also by how much and with what purpose in mind. These objectives were in addition to overall aims such as reducing complexity and tweaking game balance.

So the Alchemists are a funny one. Back in the era of Midas at the start of S3, they were one of the most popular Guilds. We made some adjustments to Midas, and the number of people playing the Alchemists dropped quite a bit. Despite them still having a respectable win rate, their popularity started to decline. The playstyle which seemed to dominate was that of Smoke sitting back and drifting AOEs across the enemy team, before eventually launching Veteran Katalyst at the opposing team for a 4 VP takeout.

This defensive, super stand off playstyle was one we knew we really wanted to strip away from the game in general in Season 4, but also the Alchemists in particular. The Alchemists were always intended to play closer to how Midas teams played at the start of Season 3, aggressive and goalscorey, with the option for a couple of take outs if the opportunity arose. As well as, of course, having strong and thematic uses for conditions like burning and poison.

More than that, however, the Alchemists have never really felt like a super coherent team. Their core design has always been a bit confused, and so we looked at Season 4 as a wonderful opportunity to redesign the Guild and make them feel like a coherent concoction. To this end, its certainly fair to say that the Alchemist’s Guild have the most in-depth changes of any Guild in Season 4.

One of the key things we’ve done across the Guild (and indeed, the game) is reduce the number of AOE plays and traits. AOEs are a great way of representing effects on the pitch, but multiple AOEs start getting clunky and difficult to manoeuvre around, particularly when it comes to moving them out from under models at the end of the turn. Heavy AOE playstyles are also often among the most standoffish and least interactive games Guild Ball has. As a result, we’ve stripped out the parts of the game which overused AOEs and replaced many of those abilities with similar effects that don’t rely on using AOEs.

As part of this, we also refocused the Alchemists around spending conditions to gain benefits, as you saw with Veteran Calculus. This is some really cool design space we opened up, and it’s something we’ve explored heavily with the Alchemists new direction. The Alchemists are one of the Guilds who’ve changed the most dramatically as a result, and we’re super happy with where they’ve ended up. They’re now much more interactive; they put out more conditions than ever (as they should!) but now they have to get up close and personal to do so.

So, enough teasing you, let’s let the cat out the bag and show off the Smoke card!