On a cruise…
Then I watched your avatar, after that I noticed your Patreon-title…
Bon voyage, Pirate Captain Kenn 
Have fun
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i’m puzzled that so many members just disappear into thin air without a farewell or sharing the reasons with us.
even active forum members like @pauzemenu (& son) 
(hello! why did you leave? i miss you.)
that’s a bit disappointing.
just now, when missing pieces (pictures, dungeon, forge) are back and guildwar feels fresh and fun again. in fact more than ever.
and the announced BIG update (before XMas) may bring GoW into good shape again. let’s hope lots of bugs will be squashed.
in fact many things are already better now than before:
gem counts in battles is a great comfort function.
opening of chests is more fun.
all screens load faster now.
searching for best banners is much easier now.
being able to see defenses’ performance is nice.
idea of providing a point boost for different defense setups was 
i will stay and play, that’s for sure.
If they are not a Sentinel and disappear, it is often likely they got kicked by me. Other than that, maybe they just burn out on the game.
I’m really hoping that brings some of the visual style back to what it was. I’m trying to stay interested and engaged, but the game doesn’t feel as welcoming somehow. I’m also starting to think it’s time for the devs to retire characters (like Blizz does in Hearthstone, for example) from PvP play. I can’t be the only one sick of seeing the same defense builds over and over again in Guild Wars matches.
i’m running into lots of different and new defense teams now.
it was the right idea to encourage using 24 unique troops for 6 defense teams by providing 12k bonus points for guild war.
the playfield looks good again, and that’s the most important part for me.
i don’t think there will be a general rollback to the old look.
Ghost and SoulDragon were active and playing guildwar, so i’m sure you have not kicked them 
Yeah one of my losses yesterday was due to completely underestimating a dwarf team. I am cool with that. I really need to pay more attention. Good.
And no I did not kick Ghost or Souldragon
I did just kick all three recruits who were GW eligible. As two of them were MIA yesterday and the other only played 2 games.
When I get back from this trip this weekend I will lock the guild and attempt to recruit on the forum. I think perhaps we will fare better spelling out our semi-casual, semi-serious style to attract earnest, but not total hardcore types.
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Yeah don’t underestimate a Dwarf Defense on Red Day, those IronBeards can hit really really hard!
have not had time to write a guild recruit post, and swamped today and probably tomorrow. If anyone has some time and wants to try recruiting on the offical forums, feel free.
I’m not sure how it happened, but I’m back enjoying Gems of War more than I was, perhaps partly due to the game’s stability that I seem to now have? A contributing factor may be that I’m not taking GoW Guild Wars as seriously as I have in the past, but I do try to get my matches in without letting it dampen my enjoyment … the actual rewards are not lucrative enough, IMHO, to warrant getting stressed about mine or the guild’s performance.
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Yeah, I have not taken it all too seriously in some time. I do play GW to win each day, but i don’t spend much time crafting teams any more to win. I generally just have available 2 teams for any day, a primary CotD team (my favorite is today’s Yellow, which I used on all 5 matches of Gorgotha, Moloch, Famine, Abynissia) and a full Invulnerable team that I modify to be as CotD as possible, but on most days it’s just 2-3.
We are down to 18 members, as I booted Gaudrork who had been MIA for 2 weeks, and Magdalena who had disappeared mid-week. We don’t get a lot of recruits like we used to, which suggests that the game is really struggling for players on PC/Mobile.
I am still sticking with my policy that new members need to play Guild Wars daily until they have contributed 1million gold to the guild.
I can’t help but think that the GoW Guild Wars, along with all the disastrous bugs that were introduced with the change to Unity and then lingered much longer than they should have (I’m mystified how that patch made it through QA), must be contributing to a recent decline of the game.
Established players with good rosters are able to enjoy the challenge of the Guild Wars’ “color of the day”, as well as multiple defense teams, along with having beefed up troops from developed kingdoms, while newer or more casual players are forced to play matches where they are not competitive and just plain are not enjoyable … with other casual match-3 gaming options available, no wonder that lower ranked players would choose to play them rather than beat their heads daily against the wall of five frustrating matches with non-competitive teams.
Basically, if the matchmaker determines the guilds each have a 50% chance of prevailing that day, the lower ranked players in the guild would seem to just be fodder in the match tiers. 
i think for the guild war brackets there is no matchmaking at all, but it’s simply a league system of ascend and descend.
since we are not competitive any longer we have gone down straight 9 or 10 brackets.
time will come when our free fall comes to a halt.
our active members are doing great in guild wars.
just now we have made 107k points with (only) 68 attacks against opponents’ 102k points with 85 attacks.
but we are simply not enough active players to go up again.
I can’t imagine getting into the game now, as I feel like the barrier for entry would be pretty high. I remember posts about building solid teams around the basic Goblin, or how Luther was a pretty good troop to get early. I can’t imagine being competitive as a new player at this point. But maybe the matchmaking software takes that into account, at least for basic PvP matches.
I’m also really enjoying the game at this point, although the stupid defense resetting bug drives me nuts. I don’t mess with my team composition much, and I’ve found that some of my CotD teams play better now that I’ve gained familiarity with them. I didn’t quite know how to use some teams I thought were a little weak at first.
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I had the same thought earlier, and wondered if this might be the beginning of the end, and it occurred to me that if the publisher gave GoW to the MtG Puzzle Quest team, then they must be doing okay. But, it turns out that’s not the case, the MtG PQ devs’ studio was shut down in August, https://d3go.com/news/hibernumclosure/, and evidently there is a lot of MtG PQ player frustration with server issues. I might wander over to MtG PQ to see how it is now that it’s more mature, but without the thought that it has better long term prospects than GoW, IMHO.
While at their web site, I saw they removed “online support” from Adventure Time PQ back in June, making the game solely single player: https://d3go.com/news/update-adventure-time-puzzle-quest-removal-of-online-support/
At least Gems of War should not be subject to license fees like the MtG or Marvel IPs, so hopefully we can continue to enjoy this ride as long as it lasts. 
@Jammatal told me that “at some point” near the start of a new Guild Wars the app will set your defence team for each war day as your current PvP defence team. So my constant resetting of my defence teams on a Monday was just a waste of time.
If you want to allocate your daily defence each week to match the colour schedule then (a) you have to set your “first day colour defence team” as your PvP team every Monday (when the wear schedule is known) and (b) you have to set all the other defence teams every Tuesday.
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Excellent tip–thanks!
can confirm that it functions well this way.
just take care that your regular PVP defense consists of 4 different troops, and you will miss no bonus.
regarding competitiveness for new players:
i did extensive PVP test runs with all my top teams, and the winner was quite a normal team, no 3-color Mythic Special Monster included:
Emperor/Vakyrie/Queen Mab/Mercy can beat them all and scored 34-0 in a PVP season vs only toughest defenders.
ok, Emperor and Mab are born Legendaries, and all troops should be fully traited. so still a long way for a newbie.
but i have scored 5-0 with a basic red Orc team in GW.
and Goblins with Noobend Bros, Fizzbang and Snothelm have some good punch too.
so it must not be an all fancy team for at least a good start.
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Not to disagree, but I would like to mention that another factor, however, is that I suspect you have high kingdom bonuses to your troops … I know that when I face similar troops in the high-tier matches, they are much stronger than mine. A quick example that comes to mind is that their Kraken will do more damage on the 4+ matches than mine.
This is probably a very good point. I know I only have 8 kingdoms over level 5 for the double bonus, and seem to get outmatched on occasion from that.
The default team I use for just grinding PvP (which I don’t do often anymore) but also wins almost always is Krystenax, The Dragon Soul, Sylvanimora, Borealis.
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