Images courtesy of Equinox
Hello everyone and welcome back to my penultimate Altered article on Card Gamer! I’m so glad to be able to write this one, because Equinox has actually delivered on what I mentioned they needed to get sorted before the prerelease of Whispers from the Maze; Marketplace and Print-on-Demand are now both live!
This is huge for fulfilling the promises made to deliver on these two hugely important features to the game and really fills in the remaining large void of their lack of inclusion at game launch while simultaneously still being advertised as a core part of the experience. My hope is that this leads to more people who were on the fence trying out the game, and for a more standardized secondary market now that everything is largely centralized on the app.
Whispers from the Maze News
Following from that, we got our first look at the new mechanics in Whispers, and both are exciting from the perspective of furthering the design space of the game. I’ll preface this with the face that among the few cards shown off thus far, none of them exactly have the potential to immediately slot into a competitive deck as the meta currently stands. As a result, I’ll be mainly discussing the mechanics themselves rather than give any sort of analysis on the spoiled cards.
New Mechanic: Passive Support Abilities
First up we have Passive Support Abilities, which, as the name suggests, are abilities that trigger while in reserve passively. All the ones we’ve seen so far, Sylas, Cryptic Warlock and Pastry Chef, both just gain boosts as part of their passive, with a cap on the amount that can be gained this way. I think that from a design space perspective this is both a logical progression and a big leap forward for the game. Trying to play for a future turn by pumping up a character in reserve while still playing to the general gameplan of your deck could be something that shapes the tempo of the game as it stands, or at least place an even higher premium on Sabotage. I think Pastry Chef’s design of having a enters play from reserve ability stapled onto it is the easiest first step to take, but I’d really like to start seeing some cards with from hand abilities like Sylas that reward you for keeping an otherwise dead card in reserve for a few turns rather than discarding it to overflow.
What I think these passive reserve abilities do very well in addition to just being good gameplay from the eye test, is tell the story of a game of Altered. My opponent and I are both rival adventurers trying to explore these fractured and mysterious lands, and each turn comprises of a whole day of us and our adventuring parties trying to meet up with each other. Having these characters that go to reserve and gain stronger while sitting there does a lot to convey the sense of resting up and “regaining strength” as the article puts it. The more days they rest, the stronger they come back to the expedition zone. That blend of storytelling and game mechanics is always the perfect marriage I’m looking for in a card game, and here it excels.
New Mechanic: Scout
The second mechanic showcased; Scout, lets you play a character from hand for a reduced cost at the tradeoff of being sent to reserve immediately. The main advantage of this ability of course, is to get beneficial enters play abilities for a much cheaper cost, acting closer to pseudo-spells with the added bonus of having additional synergies with other cards that care about characters joining expeditions. The card spoiled is quite interesting, functioning as an in-between of Helping Hand and Bravos Vanguard for two mana. I’m not sure exactly how to evaluate this mechanic because its purely down to the ability that’s being given. In a world where all the Scouts have equivalent hand and reserve costs, I’d be more skeptical of the mechanic. There’s clear potential here so far in what they could potentially do with the mechanic, or even giving characters in hand the keyword, as we’ve seen an expensive nine-mana character that sends everything else to reserve upon entering from hand.
Again, though, the marrying of narrative and gameplay mechanics is top notch here. It just makes sense for a Scout to be cheaper and come out earlier but needing to rest afterwards. There’s an ideal world where our decks begin to incorporate all these new mechanics with each set released and we have this beautiful amalgamation of an expeditionary force with all sorts of flavorful interpretations of various roles and jobs. How this will actually translate into the competitive though, remains to be seen. For the most part, it seems that the rate on these Scout cards needs to be pretty pushed to see any real play, or have such a high upside on the entering play ability to be included into decks. Like I said above, something with a relevant ability that has a reasonable reserve cost stapled on top would probably be the safe spot to aim for without making a card that’s just too efficient. As the game currently stands, we could do with less tempo and hyper-efficiency.
Prerelease Kits!
Lastly, huge news for the local game stores that carry Altered; Prerelease kits are now officially a product! This is great for a variety of reasons, as it helps get new players into the door with a sealed product that is more in line with how other card games do their prereleases, as well as providing an easier product for stores to hand out rather than opening multiple sealed boxes. No more feels bad about not getting the packs with uniques in them anymore, and also solves the issue of needing to open more boxes than necessary due to the odd amount of packs needed per player when playing sealed deck. Additionally, they’re also including all the usual new player onboarding tools such as a deckbuilding guide and tumult cards so everyone can play without needing to buy a starter deck. There’s other cool presentation stuff here, like the connecting panoramic card art dividers, but that’s just icing on the cake once the essentials were included.
Conclusion
Honestly, it’s so refreshing to have so much positive news about Altered coming out all at once after the constant delaying of Marketplace and Print-on-Demand. It still feels a little surreal to see that they’re finally up and running and I’ve already been browsing uniques nonstop. Unfortunately, my time here at Card Gamer will be up soon with my next article being my last, and it’s quite sad that it’s just as Altered seems to finally be fully realized from its pitch. I’ll leave my parting thoughts as well as a whole lot of resources on how to keep up with the game in my final article, and I hope to catch you there.
