Last January 5, 2022 there was a buff/nerf for Kindred in patch 3.0. I say this as both buff and nerf for the changes.
Kindred Buff:
The card's mana cost was reduced to 4 from 5. This is huge for spell decks like my Veigar-Senna-Kindred decks that relies on spell and skills to "slay" an opponent for Kindred's effect. Due to lower mana cost, I can now employ Kindred at earlier rounds meaning she also levels up earlier and starts racking up that +2|+2 every "slay".
Slay is a keyword in Legends of Runeterra when you kill an ally or foe by spell damage, kill spells or those that directly kills a card or battle.
Kindred Nerf:
The card's health has been reduced to 3 from 4. This is a nerf to Kindred battle centric decks which relies on Kindred dealing battle damage to level up. Both the level 1 and level 2 Kindred has been hit with the 1 health nerf which may not look bad but with only 3 health now, kindred can now be killed instantly by higher number of cards, may it be battle or spells.
With these changes, even if this is only an AI match, it's really satisfying to 1 hit your opponent's nexus with these insane damage increase. This makes Kindred an amazing late game win condition as you can only eliminate Kindred with this kind of firepower if you're using kill cards like Vengeance or Recall cards like Homecoming.
These types of changes can be used in other card games as well like Splinterlands. Having more win conditions allows you to have a more balanced team composition as you're not relying on tactics like rushing an opponent deck. Rush may be good if it works but works as a double edged sword if not. These scaling win conditions assures that you have a fight if the games get longer and overall increases your chance of victory.
Disclaimer for Transparency
- 1st Photo: Kindred's gif animation was from Tenor.
- 2nd Photo: Kindred buff photo was from Legends of Runeterra Wiki
- 3rd Photo: Kindred Battle was an in-game screenshot of Legends of Runeterra from my account, Canon.
- 4th Photo: Victory Screen was an in-game screenshot of Legends of Runeterra from my account, Canon
- Divider was made using Photoshop.