Hi all,

This weekend, we’ll be making the following balance adjustment:

Deadeye Operative – HP increased from 1 to 2. Cost increased from 4BB to 5BB

We realize that Deadeye Operative has gone through more balance adjustments than any other unit during Prismata’s alpha period, but there’s a good reason for it. Deadeye is notoriously difficult to balance because its viability in a given match rests precariously on how efficient it is relative to buying Drones. Too strong, and mirror matches happen in almost every Deadeye game. Too weak, and players can’t go for the unit because it gets punished simply by Droning up. For Deadeye to result in complex, nuanced, and asymmetric games, we need to hit a razor-thin line in between those two extremes.

Our two most recent Deadeye design attempts were a 5BB 3HP Deadeye followed by a 4BB 1HP Deadeye. The former was too strong defensively and allowed Deadeye rushes to survive too easily against counterplay, while the latter was too cheap and made sniping Drones too economically efficient. Thus, we’ve gone with a version that is more expensive than the 4BB Deadeye, but has less HP than the 3HP Deadeye. In fact, it’s a strict nerf over the old 5BB 3HP Deadeye, but we found that it remains viable in a wide variety of Prismata blueprint sets.

This change will go live on Friday afternoon. We hope you’ll like the new Deadeye!

One last thing: Vivid Drone is the next unit that we’re looking to make adjustments to, so keep an eye out for an announcement soon!