Altered TCG Suspended and Banned Updates

Images courtesy of Equinox

Hello everyone and welcome back to another Altered TCG article! While I said in my last article that I’ll be going back to the Starter Deck reviews, some huge news in the competitive and constructed landscape broke just as the Trial by Frost set was released. Equinox announced in an article that a Season Patch had dropped for Trial by Frost, and with it some extreme nerfs to some of the existing powerhouses in the game.

So I thought it’d be more current and prudent to quickly go over the news, and then the early winners and losers of Trial by Frost.

The Altered TCG Season Patch

So the biggest news here is the creation of a suspended and banned list system. Cards that are suspended will be temporarily banned until a suitable errata is found or the card is officially banned.

As a concept, I like that it leans into the digital aspect of Altered, and being able to realistically do erratum like a fully digital card game, like Hearthstone, is quite a feat. Unfortunately, I do think the human element of feeling like you were scammed or ripped off due to an errata on a powerful card, especially in the case of uniques, is an unavoidable feeling.

Digital games usually provide some compensation for a card being banned or errata’d, but in a game with a physical element it’s hard to replicate the same level of compensation without acknowledging something as gray or nebulous like a secondary market (foilers a wildcard do not make). With that being said the suspended cards are all incredibly reasonable:

ORDIS

Ozma (c & r)

AXIOM

Haven, Bravos Basion (r, f)

UNIQUES

Gericht – Revered Duelist (all versions)

Foundry Armorer (Bravos only)

Moonlight Jellyfish (all versions)

ERRATAS

Waru & Mack – No longer creates the token and Bureaucrats must sleep when entering

Wow, that’s a hefty list, but also not particularly surprising to anyone who has actively played online. From a balance perspective, the Axiom-shifted version of Haven offered insane amounts of stats and resupply power for Treyst decks that really saw it dominate in a post-Robin Hood errata world. Similarly, it looks like Equinox is trying to stymie the “free” card advantage by hitting Ozma from Sigismar, though personally I’d really have like to see Teamwork Training go as well. They just printed Break the Ice, at least make Sigismar players use a rare slot on their hyper-efficient removal.

The three uniques being hit all make sense too; they all go infinite extremely easily and again, from a balance perspective, it’s not great to have some early signs of going infinite. While the argument can be made that everything can be removed or only lasts the few turns that the character is around for, without additional ways to remove fleeting, that’s still basically a guaranteed win in at least one lane if not both for two turns in a row.

It’s more important to preserve a positive play experience and it’s clear that all these uniques going wild are over the line when it comes to that.

Lastly, my poor beloved Waru, kidnapped in the storyline and now nerfed into oblivion. I did question last article why so many new Bureaucrats are getting printed after Waru was so dominant for much of the first season, and apparently this is the answer. I think this was an extremely heavy-handed nerf that basically renders the hero close to unplayable.

There was a level of skill expression that separated the good and bad Waru pilots in knowing when to sleep your Bureaucrats and when to push for advancement or draws. This is now completely reduced to a singular option of always sleeping your characters, which I can see reverted or changed again in the future.

Overall, this list is a positive change for the game, and there is no real best time to drop such a list on the players, especially when the uniques being suspended include one from the newest set. I just hope that these nerfs and erratum will be less common going forward as, while it is a good thing to even have that ability, it’s a harder sell before print on demand is even up and running.

Now let’s move on to the biggest losers and winners with the release of Trial by Frost.

Biggest Losers with Trial by Frost

#1 – Waru

No surprises here and not much left to say. I do hope that the nerfing of Waru can prop up Gulrang as a viable control option in Ordis, though frustratingly enough, Sigismar looks to be the ideal candidate to fill that void.

#2 – Treyst

The difference between a Treyst deck having a turn one Haven and one that didn’t was night and day a lot of the time. Double Haven was even more oppressive to fight through and the amount of boosts, in tandem with the cheap reserve costs, just made it a very hard clock and tempo game to handle when a single character can hold up a lane that would take at least two to match most of the time.

#3 – Muna as a Faction

This one is going to seem a little weirder, since the list didn’t affect Muna whatsoever. It would be reasonable to assume the #3 loser is a hero like Kojo, or even Basira, as heroes that could easily take advantage of the unique Foundry Armorer infinite.

While there is a case that can be made for the best possible Bravos deck being one that was built around just three copies of unique Armorer (and going by some of the online lists that was definitely the way things were going), Bravos still functions and gets a boatload of new exciting cards that are appealing and strong. In contrast to this, Muna gets almost nothing unless you’re playing a deck that cares about winning in forests, like Rin.

When looking at all the factions across both seasons, almost all of them have had some level of success, but Muna has definitely felt the weakest in constructed next to Lyra in terms of competitive success (this is not to say the faction hasn’t seen success, just that relative to the other factions it appears much weaker) and with a resurgence for Fen decks, Muna continues to languish.

Biggest Winners with Trial by Frost

#1 – Sigismar

Somehow, someway, Sigismar continues to just truck along. Aggro, Midrange, Control, he can be slotted into each respective playstyle and still work simply due to the free body every single turn. The suspension of Ozma is certainly a hindrance, but the deck has almost always played Baba Yaga as a way to cycle in the early turns and still gets access to the generous suite of removal offered to it.

With a ton of new cards that fit into one of the many ways to build Sigismar, it does feel at times that as long as you adhere to some loose rules on rate and mana curve, you’ll always have a playable deck no matter how bad some of the cards being included are.

#2 – Afanas

A deck that was already creeping up in popularity last season, the Yzmir spellslinger hero gets a massive boost with the many cards in Trial by Frost that swap cards from reserve with one in hand, recycling and recasting spells with cheap hand costs like Magical Training and Off You Go! while also being able to interact more with the new exhaust cards.

The hero is very strong – some would argue too strong when Helping Hand is thrown into the mix. It’s high time a faction so close to the top tier as Yzmir gets its time under the sun, and if anything, serves as a wakeup call for other decks to recalibrate their removal suite and what type of range to account for.

#3 – Fen

Another hero that was so close to the upper echelons of competitive viability, Fen finally got a lot of new cards that shore up her biggest problem: the variance of the top-deck. The new swathe of cards in Trial by Frost that let you swap cards in hand for one in reserve like Sleight of Hand and Nyala, Gifted Conjurer allow such a greater degree of control and freedom in playing more cards with from-hand abilities (Esmeralda comes to mind).

Fen is still gated by the one card drawn per turn and the occasional bout of bad luck when it comes to what gets put into reserve, but being able to modulate and mitigate the amount of randomness brought about in the new set gives the hero a breath of fresh air.

Concluding Thoughts

As Trial by Frost begins to settle into the meta and more of the cards start showing up, I expect some amount of shifts in the meta. Sigismar’s innate ability to just work is a prime example of a deck that performs well early on in a new format, and I hope that some further innovation and experimentation will push some of these heroes just below the top tier into the limelight.

Next article we’ll be back to the Starter Deck upgrade series, as this recent news was just simply too exciting to not cover. Until next time!

Looking for a good place to get started with Altered? Then check out our Starter Deck guides for Bravos, Ordis, and Muna.