It’s been a few months since the Robin Hood Patch and we have learned a lot from it, and drastically improved our investment and process in reviewing the cards to come—especially the Uniques and their algorithm. Balancing cards for a competitive metagame is a big challenge however, and while we believe we are working in the right direction, some impacts are already felt about the sets that are already done. Trial By Frost for example, was sent to print in early Fall 2024.

At Equinox, it is of the highest importance to provide you with the best gameplay experience, and we know that disparities in power level may lead to unbalanced or unhealthy metagames, which can be frustrating. Today, we’re deciding to act preemptively on cards we think are potential issues for the future of the game and your enjoyment.

This is especially true when it comes to unique cards as we don’t want the competitive metagame to be shifting around specific unique cards that would be so good they’ll become overwhelmingly rare and hard to find. This could cause a split within the player base, between those who have the resources to find the best cards for the shifting metagame and those who don't, and would become frustrated with the imbalance. This situation would be against the core value of accessibility Altered is championing, and this is why we think preventing these situations before they happen is better than having them happen and fixing them afterwards.

We are always looking for ways to improve how we engage with our community and keep the game feeling fresh. Inspired by digital games, we’re implementing specific momentum to create structured updates and a more cohesive experience. Here’s why:

• Community Milestones & predictable updates: By scheduling larger, cohesive patches into seasonal cycles, we can improve planning and communication. It gives players clarity on when to expect significant changes, minimizing surprise adjustments.
• Better planification and efficiency: By introducing structured milestones, Season Patches enable our design teams to better align their workflow, plan new features, and ensure polished, cohesive updates. This planning cycle allows us to maintain consistency in development while adapting to player feedback between patches.
• Flexibility for Emergencies: While Season Patches are the focus, we remain prepared for emergency patches when critical balance or technical issues arise. The seasonal structure merely helps reduce unnecessary complications while ensuring smoother operations overall.

We’re therefore implementing the following milestones, both at the start of the season (just before the release of a new set) and toward mid-season (approximately two months after the release of a set):

• A patch dedicated to updating the game—if necessary.
• A State of the Game AMA (Ask Me Anything) hosted on our YouTube channel with our game designers. This is an opportunity for the community to learn more about the team's vision of the game, share your own perspective, and engage in meaningful discussions.

TCGs are intricate games, with hundreds of different game pieces interacting with each other. Because of this, some cards will eventually end up stronger than we thought, dominating the metagame and requiring us to step in. The most common solution is to ban a card. While banning is never a great experience for players, it’s an effective way to remove a problematic card from the game.

It is a dilemma—we know that some players will be happy to see the oppressive card go, while others will be sad to lose their favorite card or combo. Some players will remain with unusable cards, and some cool designs will be forgotten, or remembered as “this cool card that was way too good”.

The Game Design team is also very attached to each of its designs, and seeing a card go is always something we regret. We feel like we could have nailed the design and that banning it is a waste of what could have been a great design.

As both a physical and digital game, Altered can track player collections like a digital game. This lets us update cards through errata and use POD technology to ensure the updated cards are available to players.

As you have seen with Robin Hood, finding a good erratum for a card can be both a puzzle and an entire craft. We have a lot of constraints that are imposed by the original design: people are accustomed to how a card works, its cost and its stats. The more we change, the harder it is for everyone to remember the erratum and have an enjoyable experience. Errata are also a form of gamble, as you can only realistically erratum a card once, or people will never be able to keep track of it, which means you need to get it right the first time.

In the case of Robin Hood, we thought that Robin Hood was acceptable in power level and we were wrong. Its core ability created too much of a frustrating play experience that we felt we needed to address the card as an emergency. Power level outliers will trigger a desire for action on our part, but it takes time to dedicate the necessary resources on the matter and come up with a satisfactory solution.

A suspension is a temporary ban we use when we aim to find a suitable erratum for a problematic card. However, finding the right erratum is meticulous work that takes time, and not every card will have a solution. While we strive to resolve suspensions whenever possible, some cards may ultimately remain suspended for a while or end up permanently banned.

IMPORTANT

• This patch will be considered effective with the release of this article.
• However, due to some technical challenges for its implementation on our app (altered.gg) and consequently its effectiveness on Board Game Arena, the “digital” patch will be applied at a later date, as soon as possible in the coming weeks.

We understand that this is not an ideal situation and we would like to apologise for the inconvenience. Many players from our community will not see this article and will probably genuinely bring their favorite deck to stores with cards that are now errated or suspended. Others will unknowingly launch games on Board Game Arena with decks that shouldn’t be legal anymore. The most important thing to us is that we believe, you all, as a community, will be helpful and patient with those that didn’t get the memo and explain the update with them.

In the future, a digital patch will clearly prevent the deckbuilder from accessing a card that is not legal. A card that has been errated will be errated within the system, with its patchnote integrated to it (like we did for Robin) and all necessary visual information available. There should be little to no confusion.

Regarding casual organised play (weekly expeditions), in case you would be playing against someone who does bring a card to play that is supposed to be errated or suspended, we believe in most cases the simplest thing to do is to put the card aside from play and let them draw another card in replacement. Regarding Waru, applying its erratum should be fine even if the card has not been reprinted, as for the existing Robin Hood.

Regarding competitive play, all players attending are expected to be aware of the latest updates about the game. However, we strongly suggest tournament organisers warn their attendants at the registration phase. Arbitral decisions will be made according to the current Tournament Guidelines.

Waru & Mack (Ordis Hero) - ERRATUM

Waru & Mack have been the star of Beyond the Gates, placing an impressive number of copies in the TOP 8 of competitive tournaments this season. During the time before Robin Hood's text change, the community was very vocal about the negative gameplay experience when playing against Waru decks. Despite updating Robin Hood’s ability for reasons you can find in our dedicated article, we also took the opportunity to investigate Waru’s power level in depth. Based on analysis of internal data and trends in competitive play, including cards from Trial by Frost and upcoming sets, we’ve decided to adjust Waru’s ability. While Waru isn’t currently dominating, our data indicates that his power level would likely become problematic in future environments. We’ve simplified his ability, removed the token he created, and introduced a weakness, while preserving his core gameplay identity.

Waru has been a strong force in the meta due to its exceptional consistency. While it doesn’t rely on power spikes, its adaptability in deckbuilding and gameplay has made it uniquely difficult to counter. Unlike other heroes, Waru lacked a clear weakness—something that balanced other top contenders. For example, Treyst decks can be disrupted by sabotaging their Reserve or making their Characters Fleeting, while Afanas and Teija players risk stacking stats on Characters vulnerable to removal. Waru, however, had no such inherent vulnerability.

One of Waru’s greatest strengths was the flexibility to decide whether to apply the sleeping effect to Bureaucrats, allowing players to adapt optimally to any situation. This level of flexibility proved too strong in practice. To address this, we’ve made a change: from now on, Bureaucrats played with Waru as your Hero will enter play Asleep.

Additionally, we’ve removed Waru’s ability to create a token. This mechanic was originally designed as a way to bridge Waru to other Ordis strategies and to help recover tempo after putting Bureaucrats to sleep. However, in practice, it allowed Waru decks to shift too easily from a patient, reactive playstyle—what the deck was designed for—to an exceptionally adaptable one that could switch seamlessly between defense and offense. By removing the token, we aim to reinforce Waru’s intended identity as a more deliberate, reactive Hero while addressing its excessive versatility.

These adjustments should encourage Waru players to diversify their deckbuilding by combining Bureaucrats with non-Bureaucrats, adding more depth to decision-making and gameplay. While these changes may feel harsh to Bureaucrat enthusiasts, we are confident that Waru will continue to shine as a highly technical and rewarding Hero. Even with these adjustments, Waru retains its identity and remains a competitive option for players who value strategic depth.

Ozma (Common & Ordis Rare) - SUSPENDED

While Robin Hood had all eyes on him, Ozma was one of the reasons we saw Ordis decks at the top of most tournament results. It is a key piece of both Sigismar and Waru decks, allowing them to play a lot of cheap cards at virtually no deckbuilding cost, as they have access to a lot of card advantage.

As the single Common with the highest winrate on BGA (over 59%), it seems way too good and deserving of suspension.

Finding a proper erratum for Ozma isn’t easy, as its identity revolves around drawing a card and part of its problem is its mana cost of {2}. Unfortunately, once it gets up to {3} Ozma becomes incredibly similar to Baba Yaga and we do not want them both to share the same design space.

While we haven’t found a satisfying erratum yet, we are continuing to test and explore possible solutions. For now, we’ve decided to suspend both the Common and Ordis Rare versions of Ozma. Suspending only the Common would likely lead players to use the Rare version, which wouldn’t address the underlying issue. Similarly, errating the Common to something that looks completely different from the Rare could cause confusion, making it hard for players to understand the connection between the two cards. By suspending both versions together, we’re ensuring that when we introduce an erratum, both versions will reflect the card’s original design intent in a consistent way.

The Bravos Rare version of Ozma, however, aligns more closely with the original vision for the card. Its card draw requires more build-up, which better matches the strategic choices we wanted to encourage.

Haven, Bravos Bastion (Axiom Rare) - SUSPENDED

The Axiom version of Haven, Bravos Bastion is probably the best rare card in Beyond the Gates. It’s been played a lot in Treyst and Subhash decks—and even in some Sierra decks—since it’s been revealed, and to great success. While it has an astonishing 63% winrate when you draw the card, it shows a 49% when you don’t, which leads to the feeling of randomness when playing against Haven decks. If the opponent has it, you may just have lost 14% winrate, which can feel very bad, especially if it shows up in the early days of the game.

The combination of low cost, Resupply added to it and long term advantage in the game, all of those in a faction with an abundance of 1-cost cards from the Reserve makes it a little too much for the Axiom Rare Bastion. Haven, Bravos Bastion is a very powerful synergetic card, which means its power level may only grow over time. This means errating it is a challenging task, because we need to find the proper power level that won’t become too good after a few sets. Simply removing the Resupply ability on the card might prove to still be too good eventually and we want to be certain of the actions we take. In addition, upping its mana cost to {3} may buff the card in the Sierra decks, resulting in extensive testing for us on various versions of the card.

While the Bravos version also has these elements, it doesn’t prove to be an issue because it isn’t featured in a faction with cards cheaper from the Reserve and a lot of Resupply. Its data doesn’t show any warning on our side, and feedback from players doesn't indicate that we should take action on it anytime soon.

For now, we haven’t found a satisfying erratum and will keep investigating/testing various solutions. As a result we have decided to suspend the Axiom Rare Haven, Bravos Bastion.

Unique cards are designed to be an unexpected surprise to players, but sometimes they come to also create unexpected issues to game designers. As we work on new sets, we're constantly refining the unique cards generation algorithm, and we expect the need for balance changes to decrease over time.

We love Uniques as part of Altered's gameplay, but we don’t want the game to be dominated by them. Right now, some powerful outliers may give that impression. In some cases, the solution will be to suspend a specific type of effect that appears across many unique cards, while in others, it will involve suspending certain versions from specific families.

The following unique cards, which emerged during Beyond the Gates, were fine within that metagame. However, we’ve realized that they could become problematic in Trial By Frost, and we want to address these issues before they arise.

Moonlight Jellyfish (all Uniques, all factions) - SUSPENDED

The Moonlight Jellyfish, with their ability to lose Fleeting when sacrificed, can lead to strange interactions where a player can loop two of them together, generating a massive advantage with minimal cost. For example, a player can loop them for just one mana each time, while simultaneously boosting a Maw for 2 every time. Even without the loop, these Jellyfish have proven to be powerful enough that we felt action was necessary.

The issue becomes even more problematic when we consider that some Jellyfish can return themselves to hand due to complex effects, adding layers of interaction that we can’t always anticipate. These kinds of rule interactions, while fascinating, introduce a level of complexity that’s not ideal for maintaining balance and clarity in the game.

While we initially tried to pinpoint and suspend only the specific Jellyfish causing the issue, we’ve realized that the problem runs deeper and involves interactions that are difficult to address in isolation. If we only suspend certain versions, players would likely find the broken Jellyfish we missed, exploit them, and then we'd have to suspend those as well—creating a cycle that we don’t want to continue. To avoid this, we've decided to suspend all Moonlight Jellyfish.

We have not yet found a satisfying erratum for the Jellyfish, and we're continuing to test and explore potential solutions. For now, suspending all of them is the most straightforward way to address the issue.

Foundry Armorer (all Uniques, Bravos only) - SUSPENDED

Some of the Bravos Unique Foundry Armorers featured the ability of generating a Brassbug whenever you gained a boost. The community quickly identified these Uniques as some of the most powerful things Bravos could do in Beyond the Gates. Unfortunately, with Trial By Frost coming out these cards may get out of control, generating an infinite number of Brassbugs very easily with the print of boost generators like Arcolano Milk or Bravos Rare Yeti. As a rule of thumb, we like that combos can exist in Altered, but we want them to require some setup, and assembling a common and a unique card doesn’t feel difficult enough.

Unlike with Moonlight Jellyfish, we are able to identify specifically the Uniques we would need to target for an erratum, but due to the aforementioned wait for a digital patch, we have chosen to simplify the understanding of the decision in the meantime. Therefore, Bravos Foundry Armorer Uniques are suspended for now.

Without the Bravos cards that enable those easy boost setups, Axiom Unique Foundry Armorers do not currently cause any issue and remain playable.

Gericht, Revered Dueslist (all Uniques, all factions) - SUSPENDED

Very quickly spotted by you, our community, this new Trial By Frost entry comes with its own issues, up to the point where some of them even infinitely combo with themselves. This is obviously not something that should belong in Altered in such a state of power level and we believe it needs to be addressed, right now, before the season really starts and people invest in the chase.

Hammering all unique Gericht from the start is a way to prevent any yet unseen issues from getting out of control too quickly while we investigate potential solutions.

As stated in the article addressing the erratum of Robin Hood, we are still working on the compensation system and will update the community as soon as possible about it. Any solution we come to will of course be retroactive.

Our number one goal remains for us to develop the game you want to play. By implementing these changes and suggesting regular updates where you, the players, can communicate about the state of the game and what you’d like to see, we hope to foster a space where you feel part of the adventure. As always, your feedback helps us grow.