KARDS - The WWII Card Game News

Hello everyone!

We have some important changes in KARDS arriving with a new currency, a special gift for everyone, and a change in the gold amount. Let’s go over all of these changes!

[h2]New currency for KARDS[/h2]

On March 24th, 2022, we introduced a new premium currency to KARDS. You can use this new currency to purchase offers in the KARDS shop, as well as items that are available for in-game gold.

This new currency, Diamonds, is now available in the KARDS shop and is shown on your account.

For background information, the reasons for introducing the new currency, the design behind it, and details on the pricing strategy, please check our previous blogs “A new currency for KARDS” and “Update on a new currency for KARDS.”

[h3]All items that you could get with in-game gold continue to be available for in-game gold, of course. [/h3]

More on gold below, but first, we have a gift for everyone in the player community.

[h2]$2,000,000 gift to the community[/h2]

As we are introducing the new premium currency to KARDS, we want to give the community a large “thank you” for valuable discussions, passionate engagement over time, and especially feedback regarding our new currency.



Everyone has now received free diamonds as a special gift from the team. In total, we have distributed diamonds worth more than $2,000,000.

The diamonds have been automatically added to your account; you don’t need to do anything extra to claim them.

Log in and enjoy the gift.

You can either save up the diamonds for future purchases or spend them right away on some premium items in the store - the choice is yours!

[h2]Gold Update - Everything times ten[/h2]

Additionally to introducing a new currency and the gift of free diamonds, we have multiplied all occurrences of in-game gold by ten. This is a purely cosmetical overhaul; you don’t lose out on anything or progress slower.



All your existing gold and gold income of any kind (for example: winning battles, daily missions, draft rewards, etc.) have been automatically multiplied by ten. At the same time, the gold cost of all items has been increased by ten as well. Your purchasing power in gold and progression naturally stays the same as before.

This purely cosmetic overhaul was done to establish a more natural ratio between in-game gold and diamonds.

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]
We also used this update to fix a good number of bugs and introduced the option to copy draft decks once you completed creating a draft deck.
[h3]General bug fixes[/h3]

• Sometimes, the wrong HQ was shown in the library when creating a deck. Fixed.
  
• The sound on the GINGA bomber was not correct. Fixed.
  
• Original card art was displayed in match history even if the player used alternate card art. Fixed.

[h3]Card bug fixes[/h3]

• Playing EAGLE DAY in KOMET could cause the card to stay stuck. Fixed.
  
• In some cases, PANZER III-E was not giving/removing buffs correctly when cards gained or missed blitz after entering the battlefield. Fixed.
  
• In rare cases, the destruction effect of YAK9 was not triggered. Fixed.
  
• In some cases, cards would not receive effects correctly from other cards on board after being released from CONFUSION from the frontline over to the support line. Fixed.
  
• Cards with "Cannot attack enemy HQ" effect could sometimes still attack the HQ after NARA REGIMENT was retreated off the board. Fixed
  
• Only one unit would die when two units affected by 2nd PARA's pincer would attack each other. Fixed.
  
• 37mm M1 AA GUN was triggering on units that were already at normal attack leaving a "-0 attack buff" (also on HQs). Fixed.
  
• The cost of the drawn card from TIMELY SUPPLIES would be increased, if it was drawn again from REDEPLOYMENT. Fixed.
  
• The skull icon was not displayed if a unit would be destroyed by DIVE BOMBING. Fixed.

[h3]AI bug fixes[/h3]

• FROM THE DEEP triggered after another countermeasure had sent the card to hand. Fixed
  
• PATRIOTIC WAR could cause the AI to behave incorrectly when it was in the AI hand. Fixed
  
• LYSANDER PL wasn't triggering when the AI played known cards. FIxed.
  
• WELLINGTON wasn't reducing its cost correctly on AI's turn. Fixed.
  
• CORSAIR F4U-1D's destruction effect could destroy friendly unit in some rare cases on AI's turn. Fixed.
  
• ARADO AR 196's deployment effect wasn't always correctly triggering when played by the AI. Fixed.
  
• COMMANDOS KIEFFER's trigger effect would sometimes ping a friendly unit in AI's turn. Fixed.
  
• SCOUTING PARTY wasn't working correctly when played by the AI. Fixed.
  
• LAND OF THE FREE wasn't working correctly when played by the AI. Fixed.
  
• Units would still trigger destruction effects when destroyed by AI's PATROL. Fixed
  
• UNITED WE STAND still had the pre-patch functionality when played by the AI. Fixed.
  
• Various fixes to the AI backend.

[h3]Other improvements[/h3]

• Added a button to copy a draft deck.

KARDS was updated with these changes on March 24th, 2022. Check out your new currency balance and the gift you got!

See you on the battlefields of KARDS!

Get ready for some more KARDS Open action as it returns this March with KARDS Open XI!

This time we are making changes to the start time of the first qualifier for KARDS Open XI to better serve different timezones. This is a test in response to feedback we have received during the last KARDS Open, we will closely monitor the effect of the change and based on that decide if this will be a permanent change or a temporary one.

SIGN UP NOW

Last KARDS Open saw a large and competitive pool of players and after three tournament stages we saw the Chinese player Noein5 emerge as the champion after defeating Darkness 3-0 in the grand finals.

In this coming Open tournament, players will have two chances to make it into the top 16 through one of the two Swiss Qualifiers held on March 26th and April 9th.

The KARDS Open is all about gathering together, meeting new people, having fun, and playing KARDS. To that end, we will be doing a random giveaway between all those that sign up and play in the KARDS Open XI qualifiers, where three lucky players will receive 4 officer packs once the qualifiers are complete.

Read on for a detailed breakdown of the different tournament stages.

[h2]STAGE ONE[/h2]

Starting Saturday, March 26th, with the swiss qualifiers, you will compete in a best of 3 free-for-all deck format. This means you can bring any deck you want and play it as many times as you'd like. No deck submissions and no deck restrictions! If you make the top 8 in this stage, you will advance to stage two.

The second chance qualifier will be Saturday, April 9th. This swiss bracket is open to any player who has not already made the top 8 cuts, so make sure to maximize your chances of making the top 16 by playing in both qualifiers.

This time the qualifiers will have two different start times to better serve different timezones. The first qualifier on March 26th will start at 13:00 GMT and the second qualifier on April 9th will start at our usual start time of 16:00 GMT.

[h2]STAGE TWO[/h2]

If you finish in the Top 8 from either of the stage one weekends, you will be qualified for the next stage - Saturday, April 3th to compete in the single-elimination best of 3 conquest. You will submit four of your best decks from four different main nations in this stage. (you will only use three of these decks for the first half of this bracket) You will ban one deck from your opponent and play a best of 3.

[h2]STAGE THREE[/h2]

If you've made it to the Top 4 during stage 2, you've made it to stage 3! In this stage, you will break out your 4th submitted deck and play in a best of 5 single elimination with one ban. These games will be broadcast live on Sunday, May 1st.

For all questions about participating in the Open and all things related to KARDS Tournaments, please join our KARDS competitive Discord: https://discord.gg/288DQexmng

[h2]FORMAT & SCHEDULE[/h2]

[h3]Swiss Qualifiers[/h3]

• Compete in one or both qualifier swiss bracket weekends.
  
• Top 8 from each weekend bracket moves on to Top - Cuts weekend
  
• Closed deck lists with no deck restrictions! Play whatever you want, whenever you want!

[h3]Best of Three matchups[/h3]

• Swiss Bracket with 128 player maximum (7 swiss rounds)
  
• Swiss Qualifier Bracket A March 26th @ 1300 GMT
  
• Swiss Qualifier Bracket B April 9th @ 1600 GMT

[h3]Top Cuts[/h3]

• Bring three decks from three different main nations
  
• A fourth deck must be submitted, which will only be used if you make it to top 4
  
• Top 16 Conquest format best of 3 with open deck lists and one ban
  
• Top 4 conquest format best of 5 with open deck lists and one ban
  
• Top 16 Bracket April 30th @ 1300 GMT
  
• DECK LIST SUBMISSION DEADLINE: April 30th @ 1200 GMT
  
• Top 4 Bracket & Live Stream May 1st @ 1400 GMT

[h2]Prizes[/h2]

The KARDS Open has a prize pool of $1500 that is split the following way:

• 1st: $600 USD
  
• 2nd: $450 USD
  
• 3rd: $250 USD
  
• 4th: $200 USD
  
• 5th-16th - 100 Gold

Sign ups are open now! - https://smash.gg/tournament/kards-open-xi/details

Dearest Kards players,

While working hard on the mobile version, more features and new cards, we are also proceeding with the work on the new currency described in a previous dev blog, in which we also asked for your feedback.

We really appreciate all the feedback from you guys and we have gone carefully through all your comments and debates. As a result, we have internally discussed and tested various tweaks and changes to the original plan and now want to update you on the status.

While many of you were pretty positive or neutral about the whole affair, others naturally raised concerns about some parts of our designs and/or implementation plans and in this blog we want to address some of the most common concerns.

1. The new currency is just a way to trick players into spending more.
   
   
2. Diamonds are not the right way to present the new currency.
   
   
3. Pricing changes with the transition are favorable only for big bulk purchases (good for high spenders only).

So let’s go through each of these, step-by-step.

[h3]The new currency is just a way to trick players into spending more[/h3]

Perhaps not much we can say about this other than repeat that our main goal with these changes is not to obscure the prices and/or “trick” people into spending more. We are doing this to simplify the process on our end greatly when we have the game running on multiple platforms and stores. With that in mind, we designed the diamonds in the way that 10 diamonds reflect $1 in real money to make the system as transparent as possible.

But we can also just be frank about the fact that we hope having this currency will increase sales of the cheapest items in our shop. Like single card-backs or other cheap items one might not necessarily pull up the credit card to buy but is convenient to buy if you have a bit of the new currency available.

[h3]Diamonds are not the right way to present the new currency.[/h3]

We got quite a bit of strong feedback on this and many suggested War Bonds as an alternative choice and some other suggestions came up.

The dev team debated this back and forth, mocked up and tested various designs but after all we decided to stick to Diamonds. While we realize diamonds may have some stigma as being the same thing as the most commonly used hard currency “Gems”, we also feel this is a strong benefit. We regard the familiarity as a pro and branding it as something else would not really be in the spirit of being transparent about what we are doing.

In regards to War Bonds, which we very seriously considered, there are a couple of cons that made us decide against them in the end.

• Although very thematic, players that are not history or WWII enthusiasts may not be familiar with the concept of War Bonds at all.
  
  
• While we managed to make them look pretty nice as objects (fancy paper bills), it proved to be challenging to design them as smaller icons needed in many use-cases in the game.

Finally, we feel that Diamonds are actually very thematic as well as having the pro of being familiar in this context and that our designs make them look the part very nicely:













[h3]Pricing changes with the transition are favorable only for big bulk purchases (good for high spenders only).[/h3]

We have considered this carefully and decided to reduce the diamond prices for the lower cost pack bundles. A base pack will now cost 14 Diamonds instead of 15, and an Officer pack will cost 43 Diamonds instead of 45.



We hope this provides some insight into the design process, and we look forward to sharing more info like this about some other exciting projects we are working on at the moment.

Peace!

Following the announcement of this month’s card balance changes a few days ago (details of the balance update), we have deployed these changes on March 10th.

We also thank all of our engaged players and the KARDS community in general for reporting bugs and discussing the game balance.

If you want to get involved, please join us on Discord!



A total of 10 cards have been updated, one was toned down in power, two got adjusted for strategic reasons, and seven received an upgrade to their power.

Please read the following dev blog for all the details and background info:Diversity is good

[h2]Adjusted down in power[/h2]

[h3]CLOSE AIR SUPPORT[/h3]
Old: Give a friendly unit +X+X where X is the number of British air units you control.
New: Target friendly British air unit and its adjacent units get +1+1.

[h2]Strategic Changes[/h2]

[h3]175TH MOTORIZED[/h3]
Old: Your tanks cost 1 less to deploy, to a minimum of 1. Attack 2. Defense 5.
New: Destruction: All your Soviet tanks in hand and deck cost 1 less to deploy. Attack 3, Defense 3.

[h3]UNITED WE STAND[/h3]
Old: Until the start of your next turn, attacks cannot put your HQ defense below 1. Cost 1.
New: Deal 2 damage to a unit. If this destroys it, gain 1 extra kredit slot. Cost 2.

[h2]Adjusted up in power[/h2]

[h3]332ND ENGINEER REGIMENT[/h3]
Old: Deployment: Gain 1 extra kredit slot. Defense 2.
New: Deployment: Gain 1 extra kredit slot. Your HQ gains +2 defense. Defense 1.

[h3]NAVAL TASK FORCE[/h3]
Old: Cost 2
New: Cost 1

[h3]10TH GUARDS REGIMENT[/h3]
Old: When 10th GUARDS REGIMENT receives damage, give it +1 attack. Defense 7.
New: When this unit takes damage, it gets +2 attack. Defense 6.

[h3]P-47D THUNDERBOLT[/h3]
Old: When P-47D THUNDERBOLT destroys a unit in combat, draw a card. Attack 3.
New: When this unit destroys an enemy unit, draw a card. Attack 4.

[h3]8TH CAVALRY REGIMENT[/h3]
Old: Operation Cost 2
New: Operation Cost 1

[h3]LAND OF THE FREE[/h3]
Old: Target friendly unit has 0 operation cost.
New: Reduce a unit’s operation cost to 0.

[h3]TYPE 96 AA GUN[/h3]
Old: Cost: 4
New: Cost: 3

Give us a thumbs up if you like this update. We also welcome more feedback in the comments below and on KARDS Discord.

Have fun and enjoy - and keep an eye out for the next update following our previous “Behind Enemy Lines”!

Hello everyone!

The meta has been evolving since the release of the last balance patch, World at War: Escalation, and World at War: Behind Enemy Lines. Overall, the diversity is increasing, which is one of our main goals for balance patches. We hope you can enjoy playing and battling against various decks.

USA Frontline midrange has dropped down a bit. Britain Air is maintaining its position firmly. Jaggro is also performing very well. Meanwhile, many control decks start to appear. Some are new, Japan/Poland deck for example; while others are simply coming back, Germany Discard for instance. The same trend was also spotted in the February OCC tournament. All the battles were recorded and can be found at our Youtube channel.

Now let’s take a look at what cards are going to be changed for March.

[h2]Adjusted down in power[/h2]

[h3]CLOSE AIR SUPPORT[/h3]

Old: Give a friendly unit +X+X where X is the number of British air units you control.
New: Target friendly British air unit and its adjacent units get +1+1.

The Britain Air deck has been one of the most popular decks for a very long time, which is good. We are very happy to know that our players enjoy such decks. The Air deck will be slowed down a bit with this change. However, buffing multiple units at the same time also means they will not be as vulnerable to single target cards as they are now, for example Flammpanzer and M16 HALF-TRACK. This new ability is also more thematic and might be used in other decks.



[h2]Strategic Changes[/h2]

[h3]175TH MOTORIZED[/h3]

Old: Your tanks cost 1 less to deploy, to a minimum of 1.
New: Destruction: All your Soviet tanks in hand and deck cost 1 less to deploy.

The old ability is nice and could shine sometimes. However, those medium and heavy Soviet tanks are not motorized at all, as this unit is forced to exchange in most cases for the HQ to survive. We hope this new ability will help Soviet tanks perform better in the middle and late game.



[h3]UNITED WE STAND[/h3]

Old: Until the start of your next turn, attacks cannot put your HQ defense below 1.
New: Deal 2 damage to a unit. If this destroys it, gain 1 extra kredit slot.

Standing together doesn’t always mean defending til the last breath. It could also mean fighting back and providing more resources.



[h2]Adjusted up in power[/h2]

[h3]332ND ENGINEER REGIMENT[/h3]

Old: Deployment: Gain 1 extra kredit slot.
New: Deployment: Gain 1 extra kredit slot. Your HQ gains +2 defense.

Obviously, this regiment is not bringing enough resources to the battlefield. That is why nobody likes it. Let’s load the truck with more goods for the battle.



[h3]NAVAL TASK FORCE[/h3]

Old: Cost 2
New: Cost 1

This “Choose One” option seems to be too expensive. Reworking a couple of cards for sending units back to hand doesn’t mean all such cards are going to be changed. Conditional or not cost effective retreating will remain as an interesting strategy. We will keep monitoring such cards and might adjust their costs accordingly.



[h3]10TH GUARDS REGIMENT[/h3]

Old: When 10th GUARDS REGIMENT receives damage, give it +1 attack.
New: When this unit takes damage, it gets +2 attack.

“+1 attack” is ignored quite often. The threat from +2 attack could be a different story though. Soviet does have quite a few cards that can trigger this ability. This might give the counter offensive deck a small push.



[h3]P-47D THUNDERBOLT[/h3]

Old: Attack 3. When P-47D THUNDERBOLT destroys a unit in combat, draw a card.
New: Attack 4. When this unit destroys an enemy unit, draw a card.

THUNDERBOLT isn’t really bringing any thunder. What can a 3 attack fighter do on the battlefield? The difference between 3 and 4 attack usually matters quite a lot. In addition, “in combat” is removed. Maybe some new cards that can trigger its ability besides combat?



[h3]8TH CAVALRY REGIMENT[/h3]

Old: Operation Cost 2
New: Operation Cost 1

Immune is quite an attractive ability. Maybe it is just too slow to catch up on the battlefield. Let’s see if a reduced operation cost can make your HQ safer.



[h3]LAND OF THE FREE[/h3]

Old: Target friendly unit has 0 operation cost.
New: Reduce a unit’s operation cost to 0.

Freedom is always a double edged sword. Operating for free is not always beneficial either. A 1-cost DIRECT HIT could easily remove such units.



[h3]TYPE 96 AA GUN[/h3]

Old: Cost: 4
New: Cost: 3

The Type 96 25mm anti-aircraft gun is designed to be an efficient card against air units. With a reduced cost, it will be more handy for battling against air decks.



That is all, these changes will be live soon. We will monitor closely how the meta will change afterwards. Please continue giving us your feedback, which is very valuable to us.

Thanks and see you on the battlefield, commanders!