Designer Commentary: Tidying up the house

New year, new me… and that also means new Malediction. Last year, we made our first release through Gamefound. Then, by July, we released our full rulebook and the first FAQ covering your main topics of discussion. Right now, with everyone having received their boxes and having a dozen more games under their belt, we’re due for another update. Today, we’re going to walk through a few updates to the core rules, some cards, and our FAQ. Moving forward, every update like this will be accompanied by a short designer commentary, so we can bring to light those changes and, as the name suggests, comment on the specific topics and the reasons for those changes.

The good news is, most of what you’ve been playing for the last year still works just fine. Our main focus has been to iron out the rules on the resolution sequence for actions, rewriting the steps to declare actions, check for valid targets, and actually perform those actions. Those adjustments were also made to cover specific interactions between effects, what happens when a unit is removed from the battlefield while the action is still resolving, and other complex interactions raised by the community.

We also added a couple of errata for effects that weren’t working as intended or caused some confusion. For all cards, players were already mostly playing exactly as the cards were designed to work; however, since we cannot pack a game designer inside every box to clear those questions when weird situations happen, they need to be adjusted accordingly. Enforce Balance now can only affect opponents that have more cards in hand than you, as if you played the spell while having more cards than your opponent, actually would force your opponent to discard their entire hand. Heartstab Blast dealt damage to the chosen unit as well, so we changed that, too. In the case of Disembody, flat out changing the hit into a graze instead of the hit counting as a graze, so no questions of “for what purposes”. The ” ignore ” keyword (which is currently only used for Spell Immunity) was something that a lot of players were confused about when some effects could be, in fact, ignored. For that, we took time to cover most questions directly through the FAQ while also adding an extra bit on the definition for Ignore to clarify that applying as a whole also means being used as a reference point for effects like Amblis Transposition and Corpse Explosion. Lastly, the Absorb keyword was adjusted so that damage may be absorbed only once. The stacking of multiple effects that may absorb damage, something raised as a concern and a frustrating mechanic by the community. This way not only covers multiple uses of the Protection ability and the Martyr’s Vexillum, but also for future cards, like Rush of Salvation.

We also added some clarifications for rules in team play for Allegiance and Nemesis, including a rare but still necessary adjustment to the victory condition. In standard play, having 4 relics gave you 40 mastery, which is enough to win the game. However, in the case of team play, where you need 50 mastery to win, your opponent could just not play units, therefore making the game last until deckout, which clearly is not the intended experience. Therefore, if someone is able to claim all relics in play, they will win the game guaranteed, so be sure to get down there and fight for them.

Everything else is mostly small wording tweaks to improve clarity or keep things aligned with current and future releases, including a few updated FAQ answers due to the aforementioned rulebook changes. Most of the questions were related to some of the updated rules, as we expect them to be a common source of questions due to recency. Other common topics addressed were uses for LoS and LoE. These effects allow deployments outside of the deploy phase, and, as always, specific interactions between effects and how to resolve them. You can check both the updated rulebook and FAQ by clicking here or on our website, in the Game overview section. All new changes are highlighted in magenta, so if you already know the previous version, you can jump straight to what’s new.

About a year ago, we unveiled Malediction to the world, and what an incredible journey it has been! Through trials and tribulations, we released our first physical game worldwide. We saw players joining each other at stores, online, through Discord, organizing events, initiating new people, and ascending as Heralds of the Malediction. On behalf of all of us at Loot Studios, I want to extend our thanks, from the bottom of our hearts, to all those who embarked on the start of this journey with us to explore the Malediction. We’re so excited to show you what we have in store for the future, and you won’t have to wait for long!

We’ll be at Adepticon this year, so whether you are a veteran player, a newcomer, a newly ascended Herald, a tournament challenger, someone who wants to throw your hat in the ring for a chance to face me in battle, or just a friendly chat about a game we’re both passionate about, come say hello, Seekers! Until then, Nicky out!