Infinity Wars - Animated Trading Card Game News

Sanctuary Socials are back for another week! 🎮

🌟 Join us every Saturday at 5pm PST for Sanctuary Socials. Enjoy rewards, reduced queue times, and connect with Rift Runners worldwide! 🚀

🌐 What are Sanctuary Socials?
Sanctuary Socials are our weekly community events in Infinity Wars, designed to make your gaming experience even more enjoyable. Our mission? To eliminate those pesky queue times while creating a fun and casual space for Rift Runners from around the world to connect and socialize.

🎉 What's in it for you?
Participating in Sanctuary Socials comes with a ton of exciting perks:

1. 🎁 Exclusive Rewards: Just for showing up, you'll score incredible gifts like God Packs. Yup, you read that right – freebies just for logging in!

2. 📈 2x XP Gains: Boost your progress with 2x XP gains. Whether you're looking to level up your Prestige Pass or increase your in-game level, this is the place to be!

3. ⏳ Drastically Reduced Queue Times: Say goodbye to those long wait times and jump right into the action.

4. 🌟 Community Rewards: Shape the game together with us! Your participation counts, and you'll be rewarded based on how the community plays the game. For example, if Flame Dawn Purity reigns supreme during Sanctuary Socials, expect Flame Dawn-related goodies in the following week!

🤝 How to Join:
Participating in Sanctuary Socials is a breeze and open to everyone:

- 📣 Sanctuary Socials take place in our public Discord server, where you'll find a vibrant and welcoming community.

- 🎙️ Specialized Channels: Engage with like-minded players in channels dedicated to Deckbuilding, Theorycrafting, Lore discussions, and casual chat. Connect based on your interests and dive deep into the Infinity Wars universe.

- 💻 Not a Discord enthusiast? No problem! You can still join the event by simply logging into the game during Sanctuary Socials hours. Enjoy the rewards, reduced queue times, and the exciting atmosphere, even if you choose not to participate in the Discord discussions. We want everyone to feel included and have a fantastic time!

Don't miss out on the action – see you there! 🚀

[h2]Major Feature[/h2]
[h3]Multiqueuing[/h3]
New Quick play option is now available in the play menu. This will allow you to select from any or all online game modes and queue for each mode simultaneously, making finding an opponent quicker and easier than ever!

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]
[h3]General Fixes[/h3]
Changed Experience icon to use the orignal Infinity wars icon
Fixed daily quests selecting rift-run quests
Fixed Card grid overlapping Coyle Singularity purity selection panel
Fixed the notification text when a timeout occurs to properly show the opponents name that we timed out with.


[h3]Card Fixes[/h3]
Fixed Crystal of Madness drawing with two cards in hand
Fixed missing art for Koro Finder of ways Artifact
Fixed editing card name in deck builder switching selected card
Fixed Nero's Experiments not granting undead tag
Fixed Exalted Firebrands exhaust duration
Stabilized unstable bomb bot. Will now trigger if on field alone. Now correctly triggers at start of combat


[h3]Hotfix Changes -0.86.1[/h3]
Fixed issue causing auto login to forget credentials
Fixed issue where if you were logged in before Sanctuary Social started, you would not be granted promo rewards
Fixed deck info display in play menu disappearing when expanded
Fixed card item cycle buttons missing in inventory
Fixed missing description for Bek Dragon Tamer


Discord: discord.gg/y8KGxk4
Patreon: patreon.com/lightmarestudios

Every week, Sanctuary Socials invites you to experience Infinity Wars Classic with 2x XP, a God Pack, and the quickest queues! Don't forget to join us on Twitch for this week's livestream hosted by Teremus.

[h2]Minor Features[/h2]
[h3]Automated Store Rotation’s[/h3]
We have now begun our overhaul of our in-game store to better and more frequently showcase exciting cosmetics and bundles for everyone. A new weekly and daily rotation system has been added so be sure to check back frequently.
In addition to this, we have added over 100 new cosmetic items to the rotation, and several new alternate art bundles that have never been seen before.

[h3]UI Improvements[/h3]
With the new skinning system soon to be available, we have made many underlying UI system changes for the main menu that have resulted in various small improvements. Two examples are the more visible highlighting of the selected player deck, and a mini queuing panel that is shown beside the friend’s button while in-queue for a game.

[h3]Card Description Consistency Wording Pass[/h3]
Thanks to Reuben and Kevkas, hundreds of cards have had their descriptions updated to be more consistent with each other and their effects. This has also fixed a large number of spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.

[h3]Discard & Overcharge Targeting Changes[/h3]
We have done a complete pass over all Overcharge and several Discard deployment / activation effects to now use targeting, allowing you to choose which specific card to Overcharge or Discard in the hand.
The updated cards include:

• Agent Coyle, Hellbringer
  
• Devil of Despair
  
• Splatterer
  
• Vah’Nash, The Ritual Master
  
• Yagron
  
• Asu-Ra
  
• Agent Coyle, Divine Demonic
  
• ALL OVERCHARGE CARDS
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]
[h3]Rift Run Rebalance[/h3]
Thanks to all the thousands of Rift run games that have been played we have collected some excellent data on the various win rates of specific faction combinations, specific cards, and the overall pick rates during drafting. While overall the win rates for most common faction combinations were well within our expectations, there were a few key over and underperformers that we are hoping to address with a wide array of rarity changes.
Overseers were vastly overperforming other factions, with triple overseers especially being the single best purity combo. This was due to their high density of removal, evasive bodies, scaling threats, and easy synergies. With this update we are pulling back on Overseer’s removal especially in a massive way, as well as some of the top tier Champions. While at the same time diluting their 1P options especially by making some weaker cards more common.

Exiles have also received some similar changes, though their issues were often more to do with a few select cards being too common or impactful.

On the other end, Cult of Verore and Descendents of the Dragons have been consistently underperforming and have had a number of updates to see their most iconic tools appear more often, while also making sure some of their more niche cards are appearing less often as well as nobody wants their 5th Find your Way in the often tempo based Rift Run Format.

Other factions have also received many minor buffs or nerfs, and some of the rarest cards in the format have been made more common where appropriate now that the format has seen more playtesting.

Overall thanks to everyone who has played so far and we look forward to everyone trying out the new changes.

[h3]Card Balances[/h3]
A number of minor and major card balance changes have been approved by our Patreon voters and will now go live.

Sacrifice Changes
Players have continued to dominate with decks that abuse various repeatable sacrifice engines from the command zone, especially in conjunction with Nero. Likewise these cards have heavily restricted the design space of "Sacrifice Matters" effects in future releases. So we are looking to nerf or limit a number of these cards that allow repeatable sacrificing.
Nero, Crypt Delver will not be nerfed this patch, however the card remains on our watchlist and will be adjusted if these changes are not enough.


Demon of Gluttony: Can now only sacrifice a Character once per turn.
Goal: Both reverts the card closer to its IW1 functionality and restricts the card from sacrificing more than once per turn, limiting the frequency of free sacrificing from the command zone, which both opens up design space and indirectly nerfs "sacrifice matters" cards like Nero.

Rita, Shadow Priestess: "Sacrifice a Character you control: Heal Rita 5 health." changed to "Sacrifice a Character you control: Fully heal Rita. Activate this only once per turn."
Goal: Restricts the card from sacrificing more than once per turn, limiting the frequency of free sacrificing from the command zone, which both opens up design space and indirectly nerfs "sacrifice matters" cards like Nero. The card receives a minor buff by now fully healing.

Mega Unit 03: Activated ability can now only be activated while deployed.
Goal: While the artificial Character requirement made this harder to use than other sacrifice engines, being able to stack multiple Barriers while in the Command Zone made it difficult to remove. This has been given a Deployed restriction rather than a once per turn limit because we think that it's ability to stack protection once you have deployed it is exciting for such a high cost unit.

Candit's Thrall: Stats increased from 2/2 -> 5/5. Text changed to "When Candit's Thrall is killed or Sacrificed by an effect you control, draw a card."
Goal: Candit's Thrall has always struggled as an extremely low statted sacrifice fodder due to its high cost and low payoff. Likewise CoV requires more solid bodies to compete in Rift Run. So alongside the nerfs to a number of sacrifice engines, we want to significantly buff Candit's Thrall and bring it in line mechanically with cards like Rita's Thrall that trigger off being killed by a friendly Mass Death etc.

Splatterer: Add "Activate this only once per turn."
Goal: Splatterer has been having an outsized effect in Rift Run, especially as a commander, being extremely difficult to stop or predict with multiple activations. This change will allow for the card to remain reasonably common but reduce some of the most high risk/reward plays.

Volatile Genome: Add Exile 6.
Goal: With the large recent nerfs to Scramble we have seen some minor Volatile Genome play, but wanted to give it a minor boost via the exile mechanic, foreshadowing its effect but reducing its cost. We expect this'll now be a heavy hitter in most demon heavy decks.

Scramble: Cost decreased from 9 -> 8
Goal: The recent nerf to Scramble has been very effective at removing it from high level play as planned, and we believe it is safe to revert the cost increase so that it can be slightly more efficient for casual play and Rift Runs.

Scepter of the Deep: Increase morale cost of the flying Demon tokens to 4
Goal: Scepter of the Deep has shown itself to be a solid Control option in both Rift Run and Constructed, however we wanted to slightly increase the morale cost of the Demon tokens to increase counterplay in situations where the artifact is destroyed.

Enyah of the Infinite Possibilities: Add a minimum deck size restriction of 60 cards when using her as a commander.
Goal: As the cardbase has gotten larger with the release of new sets, and the number of multifaction cards especially has increased, Enyah has moved from a gimmicky deckbuilding restriction to a constructed powerhouse that will only get more power with additional releases. By adding a larger deck size restriction, this should help bring her back to her former power level until more permanent solutions like set rotation are implemented.

Unstable Bomb Bot: Changed "At the end of turn," -> "At the start of combat,"
Goal: A long requested change to bring the card closer to it's IW1 functionality, especially so that it can be used defensively to blow up a board state before combat. Should help buff Genesis in both Rift Run and potentially constructed.

Karckk: Now moves to the front of the Assault Zone when overcharged 6+ times.
Goal: A quality of life improvement so that Karckk can better make use of his Unstoppable and large stats to clear the way and be used as a game finisher in Rift Run or Constructed rather than languish at the back of the Assault Zone.

Marina, Touched by Infinity: Stats increased from 4/4 -> 8/8.
Goal: Early versions of lifelink being tested during Intrigue's development scaled with the Character's health, rather than healing for a fixed amount, this meant that early lifelink Characters were extremely understatted. Since the change to lifelink, most lifelink Characters except Marina have had their stats increased to a reasonable level, and so we believe its time to do the same with Marina, especially to help her to be useful in Rift Run.

Never Forget the Fallen: Remove the Beast clause.
Goal: 2 Purity Warpath is one of the most insular double purity cardsets, limiting deckbuilder creativity and helping reduce its power somewhat in Rift Run. Never Forget the Fallen as an already expensive and double purity card we believe is a safe candidate to make it a bit more flexible to work for decks that don't purely run Beast Characters.


[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]
[h3]General Fixes[/h3]
Fixed the replay system not supporting targeting the same card multiple times, resulting in the game replaying differently.
Fixed deck covers for a deck not saving after restarting the game.
Fixed the Console not unloading when closing it, which caused heavily reduced frame rates.
Improved main menu support for aspect ratios smaller than 16:9, now those with inferior technology can enjoy the menus, In-game support coming soon.
Fixed Purified Purpose quest incorrectly completing when using a mixed purity deck.
Fixed the item displayer in the inventory showing the incorrect item image after browsing card items.
Fixed input handling still working when the console or bug reporter screen is open. This stopped cycling of selected cosmetic card variations in the deck builder, and escape handling for underlying panels.


[h3]Card Fixes[/h3]
Fixed Vasir's Strategem not working with an empty hand.
Fixed Xac’s transformed card art to now show the Lord of the Pit artwork.
Fixed Luftkrieg Xi, Anti-Air Array from damaging friendly Flying Characters.
Fixed Mega Unit 01 to return its pilot to its original zone instead of the support zone.
Fixed Covert Battlesuit losing its keyword effects after combat with the opponents Fortress.


Discord: discord.gg/y8KGxk4
Patreon: patreon.com/lightmarestudios

[h2]Community Tournament [/h2]
Join jgsnowbaorder for the monthly Infinity Wars Tournament! Compete in a best of three Swiss-style format, with a cash prize for first place. Every participant receives at least one free pack.
Find more information and sign up here.

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]
Scramble: Cost Increased from 8 -> 9. Removed Exile cost. Text Changed to " Transform any number of target Characters you control into random Characters that costs 2 more."
Scramble as one of Exile's few high cost ability cards could be very exciting to the types of players who enjoy high variance transforms. However its power level, primarily in the disruption of the opponent's board state could lead to incredible swings in even more highly competitive environments where such a high degree of randomness isn't appreciated. Additionally it could also negate a lot of deck synergies or complex gameplans in a single turn. Due to this, Scramble is being reworked to be one sided, and its effect magnified. This also should give room potentially for other Exiles board wipes such as Volatile Genome more breathing room.

Evellee, Mage Guild Recruiter: Decreased stats from 5/10 -> 5/8 and her 2nd activated ability now exhausts her for two turns.
Evellee is a very exciting commander with a huge amount of deckbuilding potential which we have seen be a powerful option in a wide variety of decklists and playstyles. By reducing her health we hope to provide more counterplay options early game, while decreasing the frequency in which she can be activated will lower her power level, but not so much that folks can't continue to experiment with her.

Made Mighty By Metal: No longer has its cost reduced by 15+ Attack Characters in your Command Zone.
While this big Elephant has been performing well as a top-end reward for the 15+ Attack matters archetype, using it as a double or triple Command Zone option leads to it being extremely cheap at too early a point in the game.

Carrion Creeper: Health reduced from 7 -> 6
Carrion Creeper since having its sacrifice ability changed to only working on deployed Characters has been a powerful aggressive tool. However the high health meant it was often extremely difficult to trade off. This change, while seemingly minor, will likely allow for much more counterplay.

Champion's Herald: Removed cost reduction.
While Herald's ability is very telegraphed, the double acceleration of both haste and cost reduction often left very little room for counterplay. While this is a significant nerf to the card, its decent base stats combined with the expanding roster of Unique Characters means we expect it'll still see play in the future.

Cultural Exchange: Changed from Multi Faction to Hybrid purity.
Cultural Exchange was one of the most anticipated casual cards of the Revelations spoiler season. Unfortunately the high purity density of many locations have made the card incredibly narrow. This change still leaves the card at a low power level but allows creative deckbuilders a lot more freedom to experiment.

Defender of the Realm: Changed text to "Defender of the Realm has +4/+4 for each location you control."
A quality of life improvement to go alongside Cultural Exchange now that multiple locations are possible.

Ghost Knight: Text changed to: "When Ghost Knight becomes the target of an Ability, it permanently gains +4/+0 and is Removed until the end of turn."
While having a very unique statline, Ghost knight was in a very weird spot where it was resistant to single target removal, but doing so made it unable to attack, which often achieved much of the same goal. By adding a buff, it opens up a niche for the card to be used alongside Genesis or to dodge board wipes etc.
While we expect the card to still be niche, at least it opens up new options.

Intervention: The targeted Character's cost is now reduced by 2.
Intervention has long been one of the single least played and least powerful cards in the cardpool. Even worse, it looks like it could be used in a flicker/deploy synergy deck, but it was so tempo negative that it was actually a trap. This new version will reduce that tempo loss, and allow for clever plays.

Converted Prototype: Stats increased from 9/11 -> 11/11
Converted Prototype was one of the least played and least picked factioned "Vanilla" (Character with no abilities.) cards in Rift Run. While this card will remain weak, it will be a slightly less embarrassing option.

Luftkrieg Xi, Anti-Air Array: Reduced cost by 1. Changed text to "When an enemy Character with flying attacks your Fortress, deal 4 damage to that Character."
Genesis not only had an incredible glut of Artifacts at 5 cost, this artifact was extremely narrow and didn't even achieve its goal of negating small fliers very well. While more powerful options like Denial of Flight and Anti-Air Missile will continue to be the premium flying hate, this change will give an additional option especially for decks that want a critical mass of artifacts.

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]
[h3]General Fixes[/h3]
Card VFX optimizations: Ran a pass over all ability visual effects to ensure they all play at a reduced time, making it feel faster when executing in resolution phase.
Fixed the grid card display filtering in the deck builder not accounting for excluding from deck commander rules. E.g. Swarmer Broodlord.
Fixed deck builder allowing x4 counts of the first deck card, which exceeded the allowed limit.
Fixed 'Artificial' not being searchable in the deck builder when searching by card tags.
Fixed the filters not fully resetting when closing the Deck Builder.
Fixed commander rules not being fully supported for rift-run drafting. You can now properly draft a swarmer deck, or Bek dragon deck etc.
Fixed clicking profile display in main menu not showing the profile screen.
Fixed deck builder being openable from other menu screens due to overlapping raycasts.
Fixed Rift Run drafting not allowing unlimited counts of cards, including non unlimited cards.
Fixed Abandoning a Rift Run match not resetting the win streak quest.
Added failsafe for when you draft an illegal rift run deck, prompting you to redraft your deck.
Fixed Rift Run drafting including banned cards.
Tweaked Rift Run drafting rates.



[h3]Card Fixes[/h3]
Fixed Collector gaining stats from mission cards.
Fixed Evolving Parasite transforming into target even if it didn't kill it
Fixed Dive freezing the game when used on an Angel while Lilariah, Champion of Grace is on the battlefield
Fixed damage redirecting not working with Infect (This fixed Martyr Golem’s death from absorbing Infectious damage not being stolen by the opponent).
Fixed Infected Purifier being stolen by Infect death when it transforms when its death replacement effect goes off.
Fixed Guard not working when targeting opponent cards for the first target.
Fixed Ghost Knight's OnTargetted effect not working when targeted by an Ability card.
Fixed Kidnapped by Demons not advancing whenever characters you control are killed from an opponent's Tome of the Dead.



[h3]Hotfix Changes - 0.84.1[/h3]
Fixed Rift Run drafting system incorrectly choosing factions for the pool that are not matching the current commander purities, resulting in hybrid cards showing up way too often.
Improved Rift Run drafting pools to better support commander rules that ignore purities for cards. E.g. Bek, Dragon Tamer, Agent Coyle Synergy.
Fixed Swarmer Broodlord's commander rule only allowing Insectoid Characters in the deck. Now works properly with Abilities, Locations, Missions, Artifacts.
Fixed Ethereal Fusion's token showing the incorrect card art after combining the target cards into a new card.
Fixed Low Orbit Ion Cannon exhausting for 3 turns, when it should only exhaust for 2. Also updated description to be consistent with other exhaust abilities.
Fixed Champion's Companion not allowing the affected cards that were given Haste to use their Activate ability after it's deployed.
Fixed visual bug with the Exhaust 'zzz' display incorrectly showing on cards in the support zone after it's deployed, when it has Haste.
Fixed the Lifelink mechanic to only heal the fortress if the damage is combat (This fixed the synergy between Answer the Call and Kraos healing the fortress too much).
Fixed Jinhai Dojo allowing its Pay X effect to be used to remove characters even if the player has no resources available. Also add tooltip to list the currently removed characters by Dojo.
Fixed resource amount to be properly updated when using resource abilities (E.g. Jinhai Dojo & Siphon Structure)
Fixed Ferocity to allow targeting commanders during the planning phase.
Fixed Nix, Justiciar of Dawn not allowing targeting of commanders for deployment effect.
Fixed Demon of Fear not allowing targeting of your own cards.
Fixed Agent Coyle Mechborn's ability allowing unlimited activations in a turn.
Fixed Agent Coyle Mechborn's transformed dragon state keeping the activation ability and fixed its description to properly show its keywords.
Fixed Hellcaller not filtering for Demon cards when targeting the deck, now making it easier to choose a target.

Added new card art animation for Genesis Dragon. This is used for the Dragon token created by The Dragon Project and the art used for the transformed Agent Coyle Alpha One & Mechborn.



Discord: discord.gg/y8KGxk4
Patreon: patreon.com/lightmarestudios