During the last few months, Sergeant Volkov and the Matriarch demonstrated their full potential when working as a team: Wolf & Owl have been proven to be an incredibly strong combination, because doubling the spawn rate of an Owl did not only mean twice the damage, but also twice the meat shield. Once they hit the field, fighting the almost endless stream of Mice quickly became a disheartening endeavor for the opponent. Preventing the duo, however, was not easy, either: especially Lizards, Snakes, Skunks and Machine Guns served as powerful tools to safely get to the late game.

That is why this balance patch introduces several changes, not only to the interaction of Wolf and Owl, but also generally trying to empower aggressive playstyles in the early and mid game.

It also contains some modifications behind the scenes that should improve ranked matchmaking and prevent occasional desyncs.



Expansions start with 1/3 of their full health and slowly increase their max. hitpoints in the first 200s after construction.
Wolf buff lasts longer on cheap units, but shorter on anything expensive. A buffed Owl will no longer spawn Mice twice as fast, but only 50% faster.
Skunk gas deals less damage, but can be fired at longer range. Snake poison kills more slowly, but lasts longer.
Health automatically regenerates anywhere on the map (not only in friendly territory).
Toad, Falcon, Ferret, and Barbed Wire get a small buff.
Lizard and Machine Gun get a small nerf.
Neutral Cabins deal less damage.
Commander burrows faster.


Gristmill: Expansions will start with 50 HP and gain +10 HP every 20s, until they reached 150 HP (starting Mills remain unchanged, with 150 HP from the beginning). Mill HP is displayed during construction, when the Mill is damaged, or briefly after it gained +10 HP.

Wolf: Buff duration depends on the target's cost, i.e. 4s on t3 units/warrens and Drumfire Cannons (180 Food), 6s on Balloons and t2 warren (120 Food), 12s on t2 units, t1 warrens, Pigs and Machine Guns, 36s on t1 units. As a rule of thumb, one Wolf can keep 360 Food continuously buffed. (Previously it could buff up to six units/structures of any kind, and was thus much more efficient combined with t3 than with t1.)

Skunk: Has 6 range (from 4), deals 2 DPS (from 3).

Snake: Has 32 HP (from 28), can no longer attack structures. Each tag of poison lasts 20s, deals 1 DPS per tag, no longer slows down affected units, and prevents natural healing (previously 2 DPS, got cured only when natural healing kicked in). Healing in water or from Pigeons still works, but does not cure the poison.

Natural Healing: Starts after 10s of not getting hit regardless of territory (5s for cold bloods, at the same rate), and only if the unit is not poisoned. Previously, natural healing only worked in friendly territory, after 5s, cured poison, and was 3x as strong for cold bloods (Lizards, Toads, Chameleons, Snakes).

• Lizard: 7 HP (from 8).
  
• Toad: 8 HP (from 9), flat 3 damage in a 3x3 area (from 4 single target damage + 2 aoe); 4x "crit" factor on aoe damage against structures remains.
  
• Falcon: Shoots 16 bullets in one burst (from 12), then reloads for 2.4s (from 1.8s); damage per bullet, DPS etc. remain the same.
  
• Ferret: 7 DPS (from 6 DPS), i.e. one shot in 2s, dealing 14 damage.
  
• Owl: Spawns 4 Mice at 2s intervals, then pauses for 8s. Wolf buff will only reduce the spawn interval from 2s to 1s, not the 8s pause. (Previously 3 Mice at 1s intervals with 7s pause; Wolf buff doubled the speed.)
  
• Mouse: Cannot be healed, stimmed or targeted by focus fire, and cannot attack Barbed Wire, anymore. Life time to 36s from 30s.
  
• Barbed Wire: 8 HP (from 7), vision to 2 tiles (from 4), sell timer removed.
  
• Land Mine: Vision to 2 tiles (from 4; also fixed a bug that could result in a desync when Mines were sold).
  
• Machine Gun: 5 DPS (from 6).
  
• Cabin: 50 HP (from 32) and 1 DPS (from 3).
  
• Flying: All flying units/structures have +4 vision (from +2); only Balloon vision range has been reduced by 2, so it remains unchanged.
  
• Cloaked: Cloaked units/structures do not emit visible particles.
  
• Commander: Burrows in 1s (from 1.5s).

In November, the Tooth and Tail Championship 2021.2 culminated in a very close match between the Premier league finalists, mad Dr. Mishi and Tatanka, the master of Wolf-Owl. I really recommend you watch them: url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgAcMDAzeH0
Congrats to both of them, as well as to the other finalists: Queen Sasha (Premier Division), Meek, xnor, and Big Pimpintosh (Intermediate Division)!

Meanwhile the "Fall Open" of Gent's 21 Duels only waited for the Championship to end, and started right afterwards - a series of boss battles with special rules.
See the stages and challengers here[21duels.delamarche.com].
... and find the links to (re-)watch the casted episodes here[21duels.delamarche.com].

Enjoy!
EELuminatus

It's tournament finals weekend For Tooth and Tail! The modern meta master Tatanka faces off against the old school great Mishi today at 3pm CST (Sat, 21:00 UTC) on ToothAndTailTV[www.twitch.tv] for the grand finals of the 2021 TnT Champions Premier League!!

Tomorrow for the intermediate league finals we have our previous season winner Meek up against Xnor at 4pm CST (Sun, 22:00 UTC) on Tandordraco's Twitch channel[www.twitch.tv]!!!

A new season starting with clean ranked leaderboards, a couple quality of life features and fixes regarding multiplayer games, and a few balance adjustments come with this patch. You'll also find some news about past/current/upcoming community events at the end of this announcement.

We have seen lots of familiar names in Season 5, but also some new players making it to the top of the ladder (in no particular order):
NightSlayer, Kipo, Imari, Tatanka, Ploob, QQ, Trumpet, Melvinfro, Snake, The Gentleman, Arilou, mocaccino, Satoros, Tiki Gray, Pile, Big Pimpintosh, R22, Epicosity, James, and Meek have all made it past 1,000 points (hope I didn't miss anyone, you've been rushing past me way too fast).

Now we all go back to a fresh start. Have fun climbing the ladder, again, in Season 6, beginning now!
(Or simply take a few steps and have a good time anywhere on that ladder.)

These adjustments are mostly minor tweaks (Mole buff, Toad nerf, better counters against Barbed Wire), and a slightly bigger change to Mines, which are now faster to build, slower to sell, easier to reveal, and less efficient against units of higher tiers: That should shift their use towards offensive play, covering your retreat or protecting your siege and poke attacks.

• Commander: Reveals cloaked enemies after standing still for 1.6s (from 2s)
  
• Toad: 9 HP (from 8 HP), 1x speed (from 1.3x), 2 single target damage (from 4)
  
• Mole: warren has 24 HP (from 18) and loses 2 HP (from 3) per Mole spawn; effectively increasing the durability of Mole warrens, and reducing the loss per Mole from 10 to 5 Food
  
• Barbed Wire: 7 HP (from 14 HP), takes only 50% damage when touched; effectively making Wire more fragile against melee/aoe attacks and during construction
  
• Mine: 5s build time (from 10s), 2s sell time during which the Mine is revealed/can be attacked; 8 single target damage (from 14), revealing that unit if it is cloaked/can cloak

• Multiplayer on Mac has not been possible for a while due to some changes on the infrastructure TnT multiplayer is running on. but it's finally fixed!
  
• Ranked matchmaking goes faster to full search range (14/14, which means any rank in any region) and restarts automatically every 2 minutes (with full search range) to prevent your lobby and search from timing out. (There has been a bug that prevented you from finding a match after searching for too long without restarting the search - should be better now!)
  
• Hourly leaderboards don't get wiped completely when the next hour starts, only entries older than one hour disappear. (Thanks to pyro for significant help on this!) Also, the style of the "Me" filter changed, showing other players' rank in relation to yours.
  
• Some players reported crashes in local FFA games due to a divide by zero error. I cannot reproduce that issue, but I changed something that will hopefully prevent this bug from occuring. (In case you've had that issue: please tell me whether it actually got better with this patch!)
  
• Sometimes players started without a full deck in multiplayer games. This should no longer happen. It was a rare and irregular bug, though, so I cannot verify this is fixed 100% - please tell me if it still occurs!

The "Summer Open Lunch" of the (20)21 Duels just started. It's a competitive play-at-your-own-pace series of games against "bosses", each with their own special rules. See all details here: https://21duels.delamarche.com/

The TnT Dual Championship's grand finals will be streamed live, soon. This series of 2v2 matches has been interrupted due to the Mac multiplayer issue mentioned above, but now we are looking forward to see Premish vs MeekSlayer and Heartaru vs Satball in the semi-finals of the upper division, as well as SzenPaw (already qualified for finals) vs GEG (semi-), Gortoros or The Tatankas (quarter-finals) in the lower division - guess yourself who's in there or watch the finals to find out!

Tandordraco is now doing a show called TnTTalks on Twitch every other week, discussing various topics like tournaments, balance and meta with changing guests, showing highligths of recent games etc. - You can find it on Twitch[www.twitch.tv] or YouTube!

Kipo recently started a King of the Hill format: Players can claim a hill by winning a best of 5 match against a King of the Hill. There are four hills for different skill levels, and you can jump in or drop out at any time - just contact Kipo on the Pocketwatch Discord!

The first season of the 2021 TnT Championship ended in March, with these medal-grabbers: Meek (1st), Melvinfro (2nd), and The Gentleman (3rd) in Premier Division; Tatanka (1st), Kerpa (2nd), and Epicosity (3rd) in Intermediate Division; Leon (1st), Tandordraco (2nd), and Cavernus (3rd) in Beginner Division. Congrats to you, and thanks to everyone taking part in the Championship, as player, organizer, caster or viewer on Twitch!

The idea of TnT Clan Wars may have started as a joke, but eventually they also became a cool new tournament ending earlier this year, with Lizard Wizard Magic beating the Toad Road Gang for first place, and the Badger Missionaries in third place. Congrats and thanks to everyone involved!

Enjoy and have a great feast!
EELuminatus

https://www.twitch.tv/toothandtailtv

Going live for the first episode of the 2021 Duels Summer Open! Broadcasted by Delthius.

Horus takes on Epicosity for the bronze and Kerpa takes on Tatanka for the gold in the TnT Championship Intermediate Division. See you there![www.twitch.tv]

The new season of the 21 Duels is here! Prepare for 3 weeks of Tooth and Tail madness, starting from the second week of March onwards!
7 bosses are waiting for the reckless challengers who would dare face them with the craziest decks!
Sign up now, and take up this first challenge of the 2021 Duels, in March!
Score a lot of points over this season and/or the next ones, and you might even qualify for an epic final event coming up in late November!

Everything is explained here: https://21duels.delamarche.com/ (yes, the 21 duels have their own website now!)
Join the 21 duels discord if you want to signup: https://discord.gg/qcTe3Xx (everyone is welcome!)
Signups will close after the coming weekend.

Meanwhile the Tooth and Tail Championship 2021 is about to come to an end: the quarter-finals are almost finished, and semi-final matches will probably start being streamed this week. These players are currently qualified for the semi-finals:
Melvinfro, Meek, The Gentleman, Tiki Gray (Premier)
Epicosity, Horus The Holy, Kerpa, Tatanka (Intermediate)
Cavernus, Leon sderfw, Snake, Tandordraco (Beginner)

If you want even more: The first TnT Clan Wars are nearly finished, too, with semi-finals scheduled for 7th March and finals for 14th March. Yes, we got clans now: Badger Missionaries, Fox Babies, Lizard Wizard Magic, Pboop, Toad Road Gang, Formless Bearsloths (though I hear they come from another world)... all of them wonderful creatures.

By the way, if you recently had issues playing Tooth and Tail online, getting an error message like "Log into Steam and restart the game" whenever you tried: That issue should be fixed, now! If you still get that message (even after making sure you are logged in and restarted Steam), please let me know!

Today a new tournament series starts:
There are quite a few competitions going on for TNT right now, so the purpose of these tournaments will be to provide a periodic single day event that is slightly different from the Pocketbot Cup (an automated tournament happening each Monday).

Trumpet is kicking off the series today with the 1st Furball Cup: Saturday Open on his Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/trumpetsc2

The first open tournament starts now, at 1pm Eastern time. It is a double elimination bracket. To prevent the tournament running too long, not all games will be casted, instead the games will run in parallel.

The sign up, details, and rules are here:
https://challonge.com/tournaments/signup/kfQro4mZfX#/signup/peyrgsmkqe8
and this discord can help you find your opponents https://discord.gg/VeUj34eaKy if you didn't already join too many Discord servers!

Sunday will mark the next season of the...
We've got 48 players in 3 divisions (beginner, intermediate, and premium). Seeds will be determined this Sunday and the first matches will probably get streamed later next week.
For more information on the schedule etc., visit the Championship's Discord server: https://discord.gg/4y9mQdXqg6

This patch comes with three new languages (Ukrainian, Esperanto, and Dutch) as well as a couple of balance tweaks to make certain playstyles a bit more risky. Most importantly: Barbed Wire no longer heals and Mole Warrens even deteriorate, so they keep most of their strength, but you better make it count!
See all the details about this and some other, small improvements below.

• Pig: 18 HP (from 20 HP).
  
• Toad: moves at the speed of regular units on roads (x1.3), on all terrain types.
  
• Mole: Warren to 18 HP (from 25 HP), and the Warren loses 3 HP whenever a Mole spawns from it.
  
• Chameleon: can attack immediately after uncloaking (from 0.25s delay).
  
• Barbed Wire: 14 HP (from 16 HP), start building with 1 HP (from 2.5 HP).
  
• Barbed Wire, Landmine, and Mole Warren: never regenerate HP.
  
• All Structures: cure poison on themselves even outside territory (poison used to get cured only in territory).
  
• Stealth Reveal: Commander needs to stand still for 2s (from 1.2s). Changed visualization and audio. Enemy commanders will not see the highlighted tiles or hear the sound effect.

• Shared replays now also work if they have been played on Workshop Maps.
  
• Mice no longer regenerate HP while being attacked (which was particularly bad in Story Mode missions where water heals, e.g. Sage Marro Speaks).
  
• Increased the impact of the difficulty slider for Awash in Solawa (Food gain per kill now depends on difficulty) and Vacancee Downfall (enemy has more/less resources depending on difficulty).
  
• Fixed the localization of summoned unit names in Story Mode.

The game can now also be played in Ukrainian, Esperanto,* and Dutch!
Many thanks to Anastasiia Vestel, Daria Titarova, Dina Dusha, Faina Zholobak, Lesia Ivashkevych, Maksym Zholobak, Roman Hardashuk, Tetiana Nepypenko, Viktoriia Farenyk, Vladyslava Niroda, Yaroslav Strigun (Ukrainian), and Vincent "Babelismoj" Oostelbos (Esperanto and Dutch).

*) Unfortunately, Steam's language selection does not support Esperanto. So for now the easiest way to switch to Esperanto is opening the Options.xml (in %appdata%\ToothAndTail on Windows or in ~/.config/ToothAndTail on Linux/Mac) with a simple text editor, and changing the line "<LanguageOverride />" to "<LanguageOverride>esperanto</LanguageOverride>", restart and play. Revert that change if you want to play in any other language! (I'll try to find a more comfortable solution.)

End of July, the Tooth and Tail Championship 2020.2 started with almost 60 players.
It ended in September with these winners:
Premier division: Arilou (1st), The Gentleman (2nd), mocaccino (3rd)
Intermediate division: Sulomon (1st), Trumpet (2nd), Satoros (3rd)
Beginner division: elverdulerojorge (1st), Kin_Replica (2nd), Horus The Holy (3rd)

Shortly after that, The Magnificent 21 started: a team-based tournament with a lot of flavor, deck restrictions, and advantages for less experienced players.
See The Magnificent Gazette for weekly reports on the tournament!
In the end, the Badger Brothers barely defeated the Kasha Agency in the Grand Finals!

Mocaccino, the main organizer of the Championship, recently started a Pre-Season Cup, and more events are planned, e.g. another Boss Rush tournament (like 21 Duels), more seasons and spinoffs of the Championship as well as another 2v2 tournament early next year.
Jump into the Discord server[discord.com] to stay updated about these events!

Enjoy!
EELuminatus

In "The Magnificent 21" five factions of mixed skill levels will fight each other.
The first Episode of the community event goes live now, at 6pm EDT/ midnight CEST on ToothAndTailTV:
https://www.twitch.tv/toothandtailtv