Sometimes, some things turn out differently than expected. So did a few cards in Restoration of Balance, which lacked the necessary power or had too much impact in certain circumstances. Four cards will receive an errata and we will also change something in the Rules Reference Guide.
Crane Clan
First up is Asahina Diviner. Whilst we do want 1-drops that can have an impact, the ceiling with a potential +9 Glory in a conflict is too high. Therefore, we limit the ability to Max 1 per conflict. It’s still a good card, and it is exactly where we want it to be.
The next card is Crane Industry. Believe it or not, but we had concerns that this card would turn out too weak. We were proven wrong. So when we considered how to improve this card, we started by taking away the crutches that we thought the card needed: it isn’t discounted on defense any more, and it also does not replace itself via card draw. To compensate that, we made it asymmetric by default, so that only you can benefit from it. The desired outcome of Crane Industry was to let you play more situational 1-fate events, so we wanted to make it harder to play large amounts of generically powerful 1-fate events (for example Test of Skill, Overhear) by limiting you to one discount per event.
Nice side effect: the word salad is gone.
Lion Clan
When we were trying to tame stand effects, we over-corrected Chain of Command. We compared it to No Breath Wasted, which received a higher fate cost. So did Chain of Command. However, as it turns out, bowing a character is a more expensive cost than sacrificing a (potentially already bowed) character. In addition, Chain of Command removes itself from the game and limits who you can ready and whom you have to bow. Therefore, we reduce the cost to 0 fate.
Our last card is Stone Breaker. This card came in under where we wanted it to. It was considered nice by a few of you, but only rarely saw play at all. We buffed both modes as a result, and hope that this can make it feel good to include. It will replace itself with a new face-up card when you sacrifice it, which allows for some more actin in the dynasty phase. Additionally, it now lowers the attacked province’s strength by 2, which is more akin to the card’s name and image.
Updates to the Rules Reference Guide
You might have noticed that the little piece “(to a minimum of 0)” was removed from both Stone Breaker and Crane Industry. We will add a little paragraph to the RRG which states that reductions of fate cost and province strength always can only happen to a minimum of 0 per default. This saves us text space on cards and seems only natural. Other cards, like Those Who Serve, have to state explicitly, if they want to change that minimum.
The changes to the RRG as well as the cards updated on EmeraldDB and Jigoku will go live early next week.
Looking Ahead
You might have noticed, that the four cards shown today featured a new design. The colours and brushes on the cards are a bit different, as are the fonts for fate cost, province strength, military strength, etc. We had to redesign our card frames and how we approach bleed frames for printing (you can expect a more detailed article on that later today). This is also the reason why there are currently no cards for download on our site. Starting today, the new (and errata’d) cards for Restoration of Balance will be available for download again. Through the Mists will follow as soon as I finish the redesign of the cards.
We apologise to everyone who immediately downloaded the cards and sent them to a printing service, and now has to print the errata’d cards again. If that’s the case for you, please contact me on Discord, and we will figure something out.
To end this article on a positive note, we ordered test packs for Restoration of Balance from different print services, and hope to offer the cards on DriveThruCards (USA) as well as part of a mass order in Europe and the UK soon. You can be guaranteed that we will only charge the printing costs of the cards, without gaining any money from it.
