KARDS Allegiance - New achievements and card updates
Dear friends!
The first-ever KARDS expansion "Allegiance" is ready for release on December 10. With Allegiance, we will see fundamental changes and exciting new opportunities coming to KARDS. Fantastic times!
So far, we have revealed that new nations and new mechanics will arrive with Allegiance (check out the previous two blogs here and here). In this blog, we are going to cover several other changes and adjustments coming with Allegiance.
Before we go into the details, here is a quick refresher about Allegiance:
Let's dig into the details!
The new expansion has 150 brand new cards that are only available by opening Allegiance packs or National packs. As bonus, if you are a new player, the starter decks have been adjusted a little and have a few Allegiance cards each.
Draft will include choices from both sets. The new ally nations - France and Italy - are available as options, but only as allies. To compensate for their limited card pool the rules for picking a card for them is a bit less restrictive than for the other nations, so you can expect a bit more variance in rarity picks when it comes to these two ally nations.
To celebrate Allegiance, the guaranteed fixed you get as a reward for drafting will be an Allegiance pack until the end of December! After that, the pack will be of the base set again. Other rewards remain the same.
We’ve also updated the store to allow for purchase of Allegiance packs, because that’s how we can buy our kids new shoes.
We are adding 26 new achievements to the game.
In addition to achievements based around playing some of the new cards (for instance playing French cards or Alpine units), we have also added achievements for ranking up and for drafting. Plus, we finally have the Countermeasure achievement. There are also two new hidden achievements to discover.
Because of the new achievements we have reconstructed the achievement rewards a bit to stretch them over more achievements. We also used this opportunity to make the rewards more consistent based on levels, which will result in some early achievement having better rewards, at the expense of some of the later ones. This, alongside the new achievements, should help brand new players gain cards faster.
Finally, we are making slight adjustments to 11 base set cards. Some of these changes we’ve been sitting on for awhile but didn’t want to deploy because of the World Championship, others are linked to the localization project, and some we just wanted to fiddle with. Without further ado, let’s get to them.
The Crusader is a mainstay of many British decks, often paired with Commandos. Having two key units both having Smokescreen puts too much reliance on enemy having removal orders as an answer, so we decided to remove Smokescreen from one of them. The Crusader seemed a better fit for a change, and the higher defense can actually be relevant, for instance against Gunship Mission and Eagle Claws. Plus it aligns it better with other British tanks, which tend to have higher defense than attack.
This change was actually prompted by localization requirements, but we actually find it hits the mark balance wise as well. Swapping Smokescreen for 1 defense weakens the unit a little bit, but the unit was a tad too powerful beforehand, so we’re very happy with this adjustment.
Another victim of the too-many-words committee, but here we felt we had wriggle room for an improvement. The new version not only reads better and fits better with similar effects on other cards, but also is slightly better in most cases. So a win-win on all fronts.
This one is a result of the thematic-matter committee poking its nose in. As can be seen on the picture this particular version is being flown by a French pilot, a member of the Group the Chasse Normandie 3, a regiment of French pilots that flew for the Soviets. To reflect that partnership we are altering the Yak 3 slightly, making it particularly powerful when allied with France.
Yet another victim of wordiness, the Ambush ability had to go. Increasing the attack to 3 is particularly powerful for this unit because you want to trade it with another unit to trigger the destruction effect and now there are many more trading partners to choose from. To reflect this, we increased the op cost to 2, as air units with attack of 3 with an op cost of only 1 is too powerful.
This seems like an innocent change. It’s not like increasing the damage of your orders has been lighting up the big stage recently, right? Right? Guys?
Now that winter is finally here, the bad-weather committee informed us that, due to heavy blizzards, achieving precision with your bombing was getting progressively harder. So we promptly changed this card, end of story.
This was a tough choice to make, because Rescue Mission is such a fun card. But sometimes tough love is what the baby needs and this card was becoming too ubiquitous in durdly decks all over. And we are not fond of cards being ubiquitous because it’s such a difficult word to spell.
Data indicates that players are not interested in combining their arms to get the most out of Combined Arms, so we are improving Combined Arms to allow for stronger combination of arms. Simple, right?
They said we couldn’t do it, but we didn’t listen to the naysayers and went ahead and did it. There are a bit too many ramp cards in the environment and more coming in the expansion. Changing this card was best because it already does a bit too much and we want pure ramp cards to shine more.
The variance on this card was already a tad high and with numerous new US infantry units arriving with the expansion, we felt the variance needed to be reigned in a bit. There is still a fair amount of randomness in the card - you can get a 2/2 or a 5/5 for instance, but it is getting more reliable.
That’s it for the base set changes. Note that as there are a few elite cards changing, if you feel this negatively affects your recent crafting decisions, feel free to contact us and we’ll work something out.
Otherwise, we are getting super stoked for delivering Allegiance. Keep your eyes out for the patch notes that details all the features and fixes found in the update.
See you on the battlefield!
The first-ever KARDS expansion "Allegiance" is ready for release on December 10. With Allegiance, we will see fundamental changes and exciting new opportunities coming to KARDS. Fantastic times!
So far, we have revealed that new nations and new mechanics will arrive with Allegiance (check out the previous two blogs here and here). In this blog, we are going to cover several other changes and adjustments coming with Allegiance.
Before we go into the details, here is a quick refresher about Allegiance:
- Two new nations become playable as ally nations: France and Italy
- 150 new cards in total with 22 for each of the the existing five nations
- Elite cards can no longer be used for ally nations
- 3 new core abilities: Resistance, Mobilize and Alpine
- New in this blog: 26 completely new achievements
- New in this blog: Balance updates for eleven existing cards
- New in this blog: Draft matches include now France and Italy as ally nations and yield expansion card pack as reward until end of this month
Let's dig into the details!
Allegiance Lands
The new expansion has 150 brand new cards that are only available by opening Allegiance packs or National packs. As bonus, if you are a new player, the starter decks have been adjusted a little and have a few Allegiance cards each.
Draft will include choices from both sets. The new ally nations - France and Italy - are available as options, but only as allies. To compensate for their limited card pool the rules for picking a card for them is a bit less restrictive than for the other nations, so you can expect a bit more variance in rarity picks when it comes to these two ally nations.
To celebrate Allegiance, the guaranteed fixed you get as a reward for drafting will be an Allegiance pack until the end of December! After that, the pack will be of the base set again. Other rewards remain the same.
We’ve also updated the store to allow for purchase of Allegiance packs, because that’s how we can buy our kids new shoes.
Achievements Unlocked
We are adding 26 new achievements to the game.
In addition to achievements based around playing some of the new cards (for instance playing French cards or Alpine units), we have also added achievements for ranking up and for drafting. Plus, we finally have the Countermeasure achievement. There are also two new hidden achievements to discover.
Because of the new achievements we have reconstructed the achievement rewards a bit to stretch them over more achievements. We also used this opportunity to make the rewards more consistent based on levels, which will result in some early achievement having better rewards, at the expense of some of the later ones. This, alongside the new achievements, should help brand new players gain cards faster.
Card Balances
Finally, we are making slight adjustments to 11 base set cards. Some of these changes we’ve been sitting on for awhile but didn’t want to deploy because of the World Championship, others are linked to the localization project, and some we just wanted to fiddle with. Without further ado, let’s get to them.
The Crusader is a mainstay of many British decks, often paired with Commandos. Having two key units both having Smokescreen puts too much reliance on enemy having removal orders as an answer, so we decided to remove Smokescreen from one of them. The Crusader seemed a better fit for a change, and the higher defense can actually be relevant, for instance against Gunship Mission and Eagle Claws. Plus it aligns it better with other British tanks, which tend to have higher defense than attack.
This change was actually prompted by localization requirements, but we actually find it hits the mark balance wise as well. Swapping Smokescreen for 1 defense weakens the unit a little bit, but the unit was a tad too powerful beforehand, so we’re very happy with this adjustment.
Another victim of the too-many-words committee, but here we felt we had wriggle room for an improvement. The new version not only reads better and fits better with similar effects on other cards, but also is slightly better in most cases. So a win-win on all fronts.
This one is a result of the thematic-matter committee poking its nose in. As can be seen on the picture this particular version is being flown by a French pilot, a member of the Group the Chasse Normandie 3, a regiment of French pilots that flew for the Soviets. To reflect that partnership we are altering the Yak 3 slightly, making it particularly powerful when allied with France.
Yet another victim of wordiness, the Ambush ability had to go. Increasing the attack to 3 is particularly powerful for this unit because you want to trade it with another unit to trigger the destruction effect and now there are many more trading partners to choose from. To reflect this, we increased the op cost to 2, as air units with attack of 3 with an op cost of only 1 is too powerful.
This seems like an innocent change. It’s not like increasing the damage of your orders has been lighting up the big stage recently, right? Right? Guys?
Now that winter is finally here, the bad-weather committee informed us that, due to heavy blizzards, achieving precision with your bombing was getting progressively harder. So we promptly changed this card, end of story.
This was a tough choice to make, because Rescue Mission is such a fun card. But sometimes tough love is what the baby needs and this card was becoming too ubiquitous in durdly decks all over. And we are not fond of cards being ubiquitous because it’s such a difficult word to spell.
Data indicates that players are not interested in combining their arms to get the most out of Combined Arms, so we are improving Combined Arms to allow for stronger combination of arms. Simple, right?
They said we couldn’t do it, but we didn’t listen to the naysayers and went ahead and did it. There are a bit too many ramp cards in the environment and more coming in the expansion. Changing this card was best because it already does a bit too much and we want pure ramp cards to shine more.
The variance on this card was already a tad high and with numerous new US infantry units arriving with the expansion, we felt the variance needed to be reigned in a bit. There is still a fair amount of randomness in the card - you can get a 2/2 or a 5/5 for instance, but it is getting more reliable.
That’s it for the base set changes. Note that as there are a few elite cards changing, if you feel this negatively affects your recent crafting decisions, feel free to contact us and we’ll work something out.
Otherwise, we are getting super stoked for delivering Allegiance. Keep your eyes out for the patch notes that details all the features and fixes found in the update.
See you on the battlefield!
