Nidhoggr - a failure in multiple levels

Nidhoggr started as a disaster in 2024 but the recent buff managed to amplify this disaster very close to 2026.

Nidhoggr was the last airdrop summoner card of Rebellion. When its stats and abilities were shown there was some confusion among players. It had -1 armor and -1 HP to the opponent's team, it had 2 possible tactics with very powerful abilities - either blast and deathblow to 3 targets or +2 speed and execute to 3 targets. But it also had something called force reduction, which reduces maximum team size by 1. The confusion was how that would be applied if it was to the opponent's team, to the player's own team or even both. It was clarified that it applied only to the player's team. And it also cost 10 mana.

These things left most players scratching their heads and wondering if they were missing something. This card felt very weak. The tactics were very strong but the drawback was too harsh and it certainly didn't need the 10 mana cost, 3 more than the other legendary airdrop summoners in the set.

Mistake 1: gameplay testing failure

While the card could work when the mana cap wasn't too high or too low, it was really hard to use well. Whenever I lost to it I wasn't sure if it was because it was the best choice or if it was because my opponent had some other cards I didn't. I don't know how they ended up with this as the final card. It feels like they started with the tactics, which are indeed very powerful and decided it needed a higher mana cost. But they saw it was still OP so they added Force Reduction as a drawback and left the mana cost. The stats modifiers were added at some point, probably from the start, but those are less relevant (-1 armor is pretty good though). I guess it does honor the disaster that is Rebellion in terms of balance. A set with several useless cards, many cards which work at 95% power below max level, one that gets worse when it reaches max level (Fenmoor Haunt), and a few overpowered cards that are absolutely (or were at some point).

Mistake 2: failure to listen to feedback

When almost everyone was saying that the card was too weak they ignored it. Airdrop cards have a big advantage over the other core set cards: the card is revealed at least a month before release and it can be modified with feedback, without causing any harm to the game. Non airdrop cards also get revealed before release but it's different because a new set rotates another one out of modern and brings many other cards, some which are not yet known. It's much more difficult to judge those cards without playing the new format. When you're adding just 1 card into an existing meta, it's much easier to judge without playing. They should have listened.

Now we move on to the mistakes because of the change.

Mistake 3: changing a card in a meaningful after release

This is the worst one for me. It's one thing to make small adjustments, especially to intermediary levels. Or how they buffed Tasoshi Drakamoto while it was still being sold for vouchers (although it's still better to get it right from the start). It's also ok to fix how some abilities interact with each other and even rework abilities, especially when they are not behaving as players expected. A good example of this was the recent rework of armored strike. A bad one was the rework of weapons training. It wasn't a big deal because I think only one tradable card with that ability existed, at the time: Zyriel. Nidhoggr's change exceeds anything else done before, at least, since I play the game. To me, this causes many problems. Web2 games, even though they allow you to spend money, they are all clear about one thing: you own nothing. It doesn't matter how much you spend, they'll do any changes they believe will make them the most money, even if it turns items that cost you thousands to obtain obsolete (either by nerfing them or by having new ones with a huge powercreep). You also have to obey their rules, which might change at any point. They can delete your account for any reason and they don't need to justify it in any way. Most of them also don't allow you to sell your things. Web3 is all about ownership and removing those drawbacks. But if cards you own can change at any point, ownership loses its meaning. In web2 games anyone working for the company and sometimes even family members are not allowed to compete for prizes. That restriction doesn't exist in web3. Team members, including the CEO, can and are known to have their own account(s). Some of them even used bot farms in the past, a practice that everyone acknowledges created many of the problems the game still faces today. There's nothing stopping anyone who knows a buff or a nerf is coming and act before it happens. It can even be hidden if done on an account that people don't know it belongs to a team member. Another problem is that cards don't exist in a vacuum. Buffing one card can buff and nerf others indirectly. Specifically, this buff clearly nerfs other modern dragon summoners, mainly Akane, which used to be the best dragon summoner in modern.

Mistake 4: buffing a card in a TCG is a very weird decision

While nerfing a card creates a more negative feeling and it directly devalues a card that people own, it can be justified when the card creates too many problems. However, if they never nerfed Byzantine Kitty, we need to see something more oppressive to warrant a nerf (and no, Eternal Tofu isn't nearly as oppressive as Kitty was). But why buff a card? Nidhoggr was not the worst card in the game. Every TCG has cards that suck. That's the nature of these games. If no card was bad, no card would be good either. Yes, it is an airdrop summoner that the highest spender of the pre-sale got to design. But it's still just a card. It's not worth it all the problems it creates.

Mistake 5: this buff is terrible game design

Let's go back to when this card was designed. Despite all the flaws I already talked about, one thing is certain: the abilities are so powerful that they needed to design a drawback. While that drawback was too big, simply removing it was an even worse mistake. I don't know if the people working on card abilities and stats are completely different now from a year to a year and a half ago but maybe they are. If they are, that might be why the new people simply got rid of the drawback but I'm guessing there would be notes on why they used a huge drawback. Or maybe this decision didn't even pass this team. It might have simply come from above like "let's buff Nidhoggr by removing force reduction." Either way it looks like a big decision made lightly, on a whim and given almost no significance. It looks extremely lazy.

Mistake 6: the card is now OP

While it isn't as dominant as Kitty was, Nidhoggr is overpowered and, in a way, it is worse for the game than Kitty was because it is very clear when it is the absolute best summoner choice. 99 mana games with dragon available used to be interesting. Do I use Akane and get access to the powerful and high ma a dragons? Or do I opt to trade those for a summoner with more powerful abilities like Tofu or Lorkus? How it's just Nidhoggr with the best abilities and also the best units. No choice at all. If you don't have it, you know you're losing the game unless they mess up their team in a big way. I've lost more games to Nidhoggr than any other summoner ever since the buff. And let's not forget that when Nidhoggr was released, there were way less high mana games because they had not unlocked them yet. So now it's much more likely to get games where Nidhoggr is clearly the best choice. Above 70 mana Nidhoggr will almost always win but even between 50 and 70 it can still be very strong. It can also work well with less mana in certain rule sets like those that limit the team to 4 or 5 units.

Mistake 7: another example of the lack of consistency in Splinterlands

Almost every decision in Splinterlands has no direction, no consistency, and made on a whim. The interval between core sets keeps changing, one set gets a mini-set, the next one doesn't, the following does. Numbers are pulled out of nowhere (examples: hall of legends cards pricing, numbers for conflicts). I find it funny that they make such a massive change to an already released card but when it came to the CA conflicts they admitted to making a mistake with the BFs massive CP but they couldn't change it anymore. This resulted into players getting about 1/4 of the guaranteed cards compared to Rebellion with the same CP. So, players with a RF collection ended up getting way less cards than they were expecting when they bought into the set, while whales with their massive BF and GF collections were getting several 100s of RFs that they have no use for. For some reason, they couldn't change the way BFs counted for the conflicts or even separate conflicts between RFs and premium foils to make RF players compete between themselves and the rest for the premium foils cards. How is this a bigger change than a change to a released card?

Mistake 8: not going for a smaller buff

Even if I don't want to see changes to released cards, it wouldn't be as bad of the buff wasn't so significant. If they had removed Force Reduction but also made the tactics apply to only 2 targets each, we'd have a much more balanced summoner. It would still be very powerful and probably the best option for the really high mana games but it would be more balanced. A more interesting buff would be to keep everything as it was except for the mana cost. I don't think it could go below 5 because it could cause issues in Little League, but it would be interesting to see how it would do at 5 mana.

Mistake 9: ignored a DAO vote

I don't think the DAO should have a vote on gameplay issues. I think the DAO has already overstepped its purpose a few times. However, Yabapmatt clearly stated that they would do a card change approved by the DAO. If the DAO voted against it, why did they go against the vote?

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