KARDS - The WWII Card Game News

With great excitement, 1939 Games announces the KARDS World Championship 2019 and invites everyone to join!



Qualifiers started on September 5 and will end on September 30. Qualify yourself right now and join the Officer Club by climbing the ranks to Field Marshal in at least three nations.

Read on to learn more about this event and how you successfully progress!


The KARDS World Championship 2019 is an open event for all KARDS players starting September 5 and culminating in a grand finale in Iceland in December to crown the KARDS World Champion 2019.



To guarantee a fun and exciting event to all participants, the World Championship has four consecutive stages - each with increasing difficulty and in their own style.

While playing in the World Championship is already a great adventure on its own, the way to the final is sprinkled with additional rewards ranging from unique in-game items to cash prizes!


The World Championship 2019 has several stages, you need to be successful at each to become World Champion.

• Stage 1: Reach the Officer Club in September. You reach the Officer Club by climbing to the ranks to Field Marshal in at least three nations. Only players that have been able to reach the Officer Club in September will proceed to Stage 2. If you have reached the top 64 of the Officer Club in September, you’ll skip Stage 2 and go directly to Stage 3.
  
  
• Stage 2: Play through a series of tournament matches. Your three best days will determine your position; you can play as many matches as you like during this period. Only the best 64 players of Stage 2 will proceed to Stage 3.
  
  
• Stage 3: Play through a 128-player tournament in a traditional knock-out style. Qualified for this tournament are the top 64 players of Stage 2 and the top 64 of Stage 1. The best four players are qualified for Stage 4.
  
  
• Finale: The grand finale of the World Championship! All finalists will be invited to Iceland by 1939 Games for a thrilling adventure and to battle for the title of KARDS World Champion 2019!
  

The KARDS World Championship progresses through several stages as mentioned above.

• Stage 1, during which you need to reach the Officer Club, lasts the whole of September. This stage started on September 5 and will end on September 30 at 23.59.59 UTC.
  
  
• Stage 2, when you need to win tournament matches, is planned to start October 4 (Friday) and goes over two weeks until October 21 (Monday).
  
  
• Stage 3, during which you are competing in a full-fledged tournament, is planned for the first three weekends in November.
  
  
• The grand Championship finale is planned to be held in Iceland in early December. The exact date will be published in the near future.
  

Even though participating in the KARDS World Championship is already a great adventure in itself, we have sprinkled your journey through the various stages with additional rewards and prizes!

Let’s go over the rewards one by one.

• Seasonal Reward upgraded to one Gold Elite card at the end of Season 6 (September) if you have reached at least one Field Marshal rank in one nation or Captain rank in three nations.
  
• Everyone who has reached Officer Club in September (reached Stage 2) will receive an exclusive World Championship 2019 card back.
  
• Everyone who has reached the knockout-tournament (Stage 3) will get an upgraded version of the World Championship 2019 card back, together with a sizable pack of draft tickets.
  
• The finalists get a completely free trip to Iceland plus cash prizes totalling $6.500. The trip to Iceland includes the KARDS World Championship final and a fantastic, unforgettable time together with the dev team!
  

As the Championship progresses, keep an eye on the news and possible surprise rewards. The KARDS World Championship is a great journey, sprinkled with goodies for everyone along the way!


Let's go over some details of the World Championship 2019.

First, the tournament matches of Stage 2. With the arrival of Stage 2 in October, everyone eligible will see a new option to start tournament battles. To keep the focus, we will enable this option only for several hours a day (with a shifting window to accommodate our various time zones). Playing these battles will count towards your tournament score. This score will be used to calculate your position in the Championship. You will be able to keep track of your position. At the end of Stage 2, the best 64 players will proceed to Stage 3.

The tournament of Stage 3 is going to be a knockout tournament with 128 players. We have decided on this size to strike a good balance and to keep this first World Championship challenging and yet accessible enough. The exact rules for this tournament will be posted a bit later - right now you should fully focus on Stage 1!

Each of these stages and the World Championship finals in Iceland will be covered in-depth with upcoming separate blogs.


We, the KARDS dev team, are enthusiastic about the World Championship and are eagerly looking forward to the future.

We would love to hear your feedback in the comments below!

This patch is about card balance changes and bug fixes all around!


For more in-depth details of the recent card changes, please read the latest update September Card Updates and Improvements.

• DIVE BOMBING: Effect lasts until the start of your next turn (was: until end of turn).
  
• IMPERIAL STRENGTH: Effect changed to discard all activated countermeasures (was: Countermeasures cannot trigger this turn).
  
• ENCIRCLEMENT: The duplicated card now also receives the Blitz ability.
  
• ORDER 227: Your damaged Soviet units get +2 attack (was: Targeted Soviet units gets Ambush and +1 attack for each enemy unit in the frontline).
  
• BOMBING RAID: Cost increases to 4 Kredits (was: 3 Kredits).
  
• Ki-43 HAYABUSA: Cost increases to 4 Kredits (was: 3 Kredits).
  
• DAYLIGHT BOMBING: Damage dealt reduced to 2 (was: 3 damage).
  
• MOSQUITO FB Mk VI: Cost increases to 6 Kredits (was: 5 Kredits).
  

• SENDAI REGIMENT is not using effects when leaving the battlefield. Fixed.
  
• Buff is not removed when 10th ENGINEER BATTALION is returned to hand. Fixed.
  
• When picking an invalid target the targeting card was stuck until hovered. Fixed.
  
• The damage and death indicators did not follow the card when it moved. Fixed.
  
• PATTON effect is not being applied to cards newly drawn. Fixed.
  
• The deployment cost for A-20B is incorrectly calculated. Fixed.
  
• DEADLY DUTY didn't draws cards before destroying (e.g. in conjunction with YAK 9). Fixed.
  
• The notification text widget has been updated to match wider screens.
  
• Various improvements to prevent a match from accidentally stalling.
  
• Inconsistencies in the historic descriptions of cards has been fixed (thanks to alihangir for combing through the card descriptions).
  

• Wirbelwind has been updated with new artwork.
  
• Katyusha has been updated with new artwork.
  
• Improvements to the card and board rendering engine.
  
• Various airstrike orders now show correct aircraft shadows.
  

As always, please let us know what you think about this update and please report bugs either on KARDS Discord or directly via a bug report ticket.

Season 6 has started on September 1, 00:00:01 UTC, and with that we now know the winners of Season 5!



Congratulation to DARKNESS for scoring the first place of Season 5!
Runner-ups are Fendor, ROY1380, gabo, and BruceJohnWayne!


Besides the top players (who will receive physical rewards), everyone else is a winner too!
All the rewards for Season 5 have been automatically delivered to your account. Simply log into KARDS and collect the juicy prizes!

As explained in detail, the seasonal rewards increase with every 5 ranks. You have received a Gold card (the more ranks, the better the rarity) and 1-2 card packs.

• Then, for each Field Marshall you got a National Pack.
  
• Reaching the Officer Club gave additional rewards.
  

With the new season, we also have adjusted your ranks to keep everything fresh and challenging:

• For each nation, you will drop one rank.
  
• You will retain any stars you already had at your previous highest rank (e.g. you were a Major with 3 stars for Germany then in the new season you will be a Captain with 3 stars).
  
• Your Field Marshal ranks will get adjusted to Major at 4 stars.
  

We believe that this is a good balance between preserving your progress and keep the reward scheme fair towards new players.

Have a great start into Season 6!

Best KARDS enthusiasts,

Fresh with the beginning of September, we have an update for you! Following the August update, we continue the card improvements and also bring good bug fixes later this week.

Please comment below and let us know what you think!

Read on to learn more about the changes of the following eight cards:

• Dive Bombing (Germany)
  
• Imperial Strength (Japan)
  
• Encirclement (Germany)
  
• Order 227 (Soviet Union)
  
• Bombing Raid (Japan)
  
• Ki-43 Hayabusa (Japan)
  
• Daylight Bombing (Britain)
  
• Mosquito (Britan)
  

Stay with us as we go over the cards in detail!




There are a couple of reasons for this change:

1. Strengthen Dive Bombing a bit.
   
   German removal received a big hit in the last update and we wanted to strengthen their standard removal a little bit in comparison to the standard removal of other nations.
   
2. Make debuff effects a bit more meaningful.
   
   Having them last until the start of your next turn (so the enemy unit operates at reduced strength for their next turn) is a step in that direction.
   

The reason for this change:

• Clarity:The old effect could be a bit difficult to understand.
  

This does strengthen the card a fair amount, but we want there to be a strong silver bullet in the base card set against countermeasures as an answer to potential countermeasure heavy decks in the future. Note that the discard is universal, so don’t be the one that activates a countermeasure and then play this.


We wanted to give a slight nod to aggressive frontline decks and improving an under-strength card at the same time seemed like a match made in heaven.


Order 227 is one of these cards that we want to get thematically right, and the current version doesn’t quite get there. Coupled with the fact that after it was nerfed recently it became quite underwhelming, we decided to take another stab at the card that would both be more thematic and good enough to see play. Damage state of units being something that matters is also something we want to strengthen for the Soviets.


The recent changes to several removal cards made Bombing Raid stick out like a sore thumb. A possible 7 in total damage for mere 3 kredits was much too good.

So we’re upping the cost of the card to 4.


Burn is a deck people like to have robust debates about on Discord and elsewhere. From our standpoint, burn serves two purposes:

• A deck for (new) players with greater ambitions than card pool.
  
• Burn keeps to format in check - without it the metagame would quickly move towards bloated degenerate midrange decks.
  

Burn is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean we don’t put our critical eye on it from time to time. This is one of those times.

Hayabusa offers a lot for mere 3 Kredits, especially when compared to standard rarity 3 cost fighters of other nations. We contemplated adjusting its stats, but decided the best move was to increase its cost to 4.


This change is a continuation of our efforts to address some of the stronger removal in the game, as seen in the last patch. While Daylight Bombing doesn’t see a whole lot of play, according to our data, it does have one of the best win-rate percentage around and a strong removal that can a) also go directly to face and b) sets the enemy back on Kredit is too much. So, we’re weakening the removal part a little.


Removal is not just on orders, it is often also attached to units and there are few better examples than the Mosquito (well, there is a German one that comes to mind, but that is for the future). The main reason for increasing the cost is the same as with previous removal changes - to make it slightly more difficult for control players to rely solely on removal to deal with aggressive threats. Let’s see how much this change will matter.


Well, that’s it for this time around. Let us know what you think!

Advance your KARDS collection this weekend and get new exclusive cards all for free - here is how.

We offer you something special this weekend:
Time-exclusive, free bonus cards for your first win of the day in a PVP match on each of the next five days!

Let’s go briefly about the why and then the juicy details about the how. Read on!

As we are heading towards KARDS release later this year, we are curious to see what you like and if there are things that you are especially fond of. We hope for your feedback as we go along - all the while you will get some free cards out of it. Fair deal?

This is what you can expect this weekend.


The cards you can get this weekend are time exclusive for one month. This means, that once this special weekend is over, no one will be able to get these cards for one month.

After that, these cards will become generally available via card packs, as rewards, in draft, and you will be able to craft them. Until then, however, they are exclusive to only those who got them this weekend!


The new cards, one of each nation, are of limited rarity. The card cost ranges from 2 to 7 and their strength and abilities are aligned with their nation.

As we don’t want to spoil the surprise of these cards, we have decided to not go over the details here. Be assured though that these new cards are nice and competitive (no cheap or overpowered crap, KARDS is here to stay long term) and that the cards enrich the base set of each nation according to their main theme.



When you score your First Win of the Day, you get as a bonus a full set of these time-limited cards. As those cards are of limited rarity, you will get 3 (of the same) card in total as a bonus.

Each day, you can get a full set for one of the nations.

The event starts on Thursday, August 15, and ends on Monday, August 19.

You achieve a First Win of the Day only if you battle other players via the regular “Battle” functionality. AI matches, Draft matches, Challenges do not count towards First Win of the Day.

At the end of the bonus weekend, if you have managed to score at least one win in a PVP match each day, you will have received 15 exclusive cards of limited rarity.

Simply log into KARDS and score at least one win in a PVP match a day, that’s it!



To summarize this event:

• Five new cards of limited rarity, one of each nation
  
• Each First Win of the Day gets you a set of limited cards for one of the nations
  
• The cards are time-exclusive for one month and cannot get gained any other way between the end of the bonus event and end of the exclusivity period
  
• The event starts on Thursday, August 15, at 00:00:01 UTC
  
• The event ends on Monday, August 19, at 23:59:59 UTC
  

Please let us know what you think! Remember, we are here for you and to make KARDS a fun game for you. Your feedback is very valuable!

Happy KARDS hunting!