The door shuts behind you. You hold your silver weapons aloft and demand surrender. Countess Jovana laughs.

“Foolish heroes. Everything that was done here, was done to bring you to this place. You thought you could save Cardhuntria from corruption by coming here and defeating me?”

She cackles, and Yurik chuckles.

“This place has been haunted long before Lord Makhail died, long before he ruled. This is the place where Saint Hedvig the Black was murdered. It is a holy site for us nightfolk. Her spirit remains in the soil, her blood in the walls. We are her new agents, and once we have transformed you, nothing will stop us.”

You agree that if she can defeat you, the brightest adventurers in Cardhuntria, that the rest of the kingdom would not stand a chance. But given all your feats, your rich legacy, the potent silver you wield, you assume that she cannot. On this day, you will bring peace to Cardhuntria, as you have so many times previous.

“Enough of this nonsense,” you spit. “We end this now.”

“Indeed,” she giggles. “Indeed.”

You charge, and then you remember nothing else.

Card hunters, welcome to a new age. The corruption of the Countess Jovana has spread across the kingdom. Svitlana fights on valiantly, and everywhere her Silverwood Inquisition does its best to protect small enclaves of humans, elves, and dwarves from the creatures of the night.

King Osirius has fled his castle, and rules from exile in the Silver Forest. The true masters of Cardhuntria are Jovana and Yurik, and, of course, their most loyal ghouls: you.

The foul magic of St. Hedvig has transformed the very land. Everywhere is darkness and treachery. Bands of inquisitors turn on each other over rumors of corruption. Witches cackle in every forest. Towns, where they have yet to fall to rampaging werewolves, have become the playgrounds of poltergeists. Priests of every order have turned on their sacred texts in order to experiment with the new black magics available to them, and many have been enlisted by Count Yurik as ghoulmakers, raising a regimented army of zombies and vampires.

Nothing is as it seems and everything is dangerous.

Walpurgis Night is here.

We will open our test server for a public playtest of our new expansion tomorrow. Detailed instructions on participation will be provided. Stay tuned! =)

They are stronger than previous foes, and manage to back you into a corner. Luckily you share this corner with the pedestal upon which Joleph’s lance rests, and you grab it in a brief moment of heresy and survival instinct. Its magic makes short work of the beasts and you decide to borrow it until your mission is done.

You find some other useful items in the temple: holy robes and small charms capable of turning blades.

Fully outfitted for your final confrontation with the creatures of the night, you ride on and reach Castle Mitternacht by noon. No guards try to stop your entry. You push the heavy doors open and step in.

Only a few paces into the entry hall, all the rumors about Lord Makhail start to make sense. Strange voices emanate from empty rooms; cold breezes blow through unblemished stone. This castle is quite clearly haunted. Wispy spirits pop up from the floor, doing their best to scare you.

You are frightened but you press on. When you attempt to throw fireballs at the pesky spirits you notice that their ethereal forms make them impervious to your magic. Even Joleph’s holy magic doesn’t hurt them–but your cold silver flails make short work of any that dare come near.

Here and there they turn a flagstone into acid, but, all in all, you consider the spirits a harmless nuisance until they begin melting your armor with a powerful evil magic.

You spend most of the day locked in combat with these otherworldly foes. It is a harrowing journey from entry hall to throne room, and by the time you have defeated all the castle’s ghosts, night is falling. You understand that the night somehow fuels these monsters, but still, you cannot turn back now. You stand at the threshold to the throne room and see Jovana seated within. Count Yurik stands by her side, rapier in hand.

It is time to end this blight.

To be continued…

You find Captain Teadora and a ragtag band of inquisitors in a melee with a pack of werewolves, easily outnumbered three to one.

She sees you and lets out an exuberant war cry. You join the fray without second thought, and begin laying waste to the werewolves. You fight your way over to Teadora, and are surprised to see the small child cowering behind her.

“We broke rank to save him,” she explains as you take her flank. “His father was taken by vampires, and we spotted him wandering off into the night.”

The battle does not last much longer; you manage to rout the werewolves with your new weapons.

Teadora and one of her inquisitors kneel by the child amidst the piled-up carcasses of your foes.

“It is over, Sasha. We can go home now,” she says.

The child stares back, blankly.

“His skin looks a tinge blue,” Teadora’s inquisitor points out. “Is it just the nightchill? Sasha, do you feel cold?”

The child doesn’t respond. The inquisitor reaches for his shoulder.

“Sasha–”

In a flash, the child turns and sinks outsized fangs into the inquisitor’s neck.

The inquisitor staggers to his feet, shaken and bloodied. Teadora swings at the child with her silver saber, but the little vampire dissipates into a swarm of bats that flies off into the sky. Before you can react, the inquisitor’s skin has turned blue and he too is upon Teadora, fangs seeking flesh.

Teadora’s saber is too slow to fend off this attack, but just when you think it might be over for her, her form shifts, and with one arm she sends the former inquisitor reeling. The rest of Teadora’s band surround him and finish him off.

Teadora hunches over, then looks up at you with bright red eyes. You see fur bristling on her arm where she made contact with the vampire.

“Please… kill me before I finish turning…”

Before you can decide whether or not to grant her wish, her own men bear down on her with torches. She howls as she burns, but her agony does not last long.

You return to your camp with heavy hearts. Despite having known Captain Teadora only a day, you feel like you have lost a close friend and ally.

You will remember her sacrifice.

The rest of the night passes without incident. On the third morning of your travels, you spot Castle Mitternacht on the horizon. A string of smoldering townships lines the way. A desire for revenge consumes you. You’ll take the castle by storm. You’ll burn the whole place to the ground. Every fallen comrade, every injury you yourselves suffer, will only bring you closer to your final confrontation with the Countess.

You spur your horses onward.

To be continued…

“Welcome, heroes,” says Svitlana. “I was hoping the Baron would send you. Come, my silversmiths will outfit you.”

This is your first encounter with the elves of the Silver Forest. You’ve heard the rumors that fey blood runs in their veins, but they tend to keep to themselves, and it is well known that their forest is haunted and dangerous. Besides accidental appearances in the Caverns of Chaos, there hasn’t been a sighting of one of the feyborn elves in over a hundred years.

A couple smiths wheel a cart of weapons over to you. You arm yourselves and thank Svitlana.

“You look like you have questions,” says Svitlana. “Allow me to answer them. Ever since Countess Jovana’s ascension to the throne of Castle Mitternacht, the night has taken the land like a plague, transforming the peasantry into horrible creatures with no goal but the destruction of civilization. Witches, spirits, werebeasts, and vampires rampage across the countryside. These monstrosities are new to this land, but our forest is no stranger to such incursions, and our people have long known how to stymie them. In order to save the most lives, we are here to share our secrets with you, and to bring the fight back to the Jovana and Yurik.”

“We are learning how to forge these weapons ourselves,” says Captain Teadora. “It seems only elves can learn the magic required to craft potent feysteel weapons, so the townships are conscripting all able-bodied elves in the forges.”

Svitlana does not look happy about this, but she also does not seem too happy to have left her forest in the first place. She notices your concern and shakes her head.

“We guard our secrets jealously, it is true, but we are not cruel.”

“Speaking of which,” says a young silversmith by Svitlana’s side, “you should probably wear these. They will identify you as members of our inquisition against Jovana’s blight, and turn silver before it can harm you.”

You accept the badges hesitantly. “Inquisition?”

“In order to enlist as many people as possible in our fight, we had to appeal to their sense of mob justice,” explains Teadora.

You nod. It would be good to end this conflict as soon as possible. Silver pitchforks, flails, and staves in hand, you announce that you will attack the castle immediately.

Svitlana wishes you well, but warns you to be careful.

“You might not notice the afflicted until it is too late. Sometimes you can spot a wound or deformity, but most of the time people look perfectly normal until they have their fangs in you.”

As if on cue, one of Teadora’s guards howls, then pounces on her.

She deflects his first attack effortlessly, but even as Svitlana’s elves ready their magic he begins to grow and charges again. His clothes burst at the seams, exposing thick fur. Thankfully the werewolf is outnumbered and quickly dispatched, but the rapidity with which he attacked convinces you that Svitlana’s warning was warranted.

Svitlana’s elves check Teadora carefully for wounds. “You never know when the corruption could spread.”

The entire camp mourns the fallen soldier. You excuse yourselves, thanking Teadora and Svitlana and explaining that you want to make haste. The castle is still a little more than a day’s ride away.

Later that night, you relax by your campfire, and reflect on your new information. The werewolf in Svitlana’s camp seemed fast and incredibly tough. You briefly consider that it might not be bad to be so strong.

To be continued…

Perhaps the trouble started further back. Lord Makhail had always been a private person. He never married, and rarely journeyed beyond his walls. He left his title to the Countess Jovana and her young husband Yurik. Unheard of until recently, the couple has a strange demeanor that lends itself to rumors.

Ever since they installed themselves in Castle Mitternacht, the servants swear they’ve witnessed an endless string of frights. One thing they’ve all attested to is the growth of the bat population.

The rumors reach the king, but he has no patience for them. He insists that the new lords of Castle Mitternacht are upstanding folk. The Baron of Shieldhaven is skeptical. He visits you at your Keep on the Hinterlands under cover of night, traveling alone.

“Heroes,” he says, “King Osirius has never met Jovana or Yurik. He has not seen how unnatural they are. Even the way they walk!”

He demonstrates.

“There are also various… disturbing reports from the towns near Castle Mitternacht.” The Baron looks unsure how to continue. Finally, after sighing, he shakes his head. “It would be best if you went and saw for yourselves.”

He assures you that you’ll be well paid for uncovering whatever foul plot is afoot at Castle Mitternacht, and you set out in the morning.

…

The sun is setting on your first day of travel. The first town in the Countess’s lands should be just around the bend. You look forward to a warm meal and soft bed before continuing on to the castle in the morning.

“Halt,” comes a voice from the shadows. You don’t see anyone, but then you notice rustling in the trees around you. “We have you surrounded, and we’re armed to the teeth in fey steel. Identify yourselves, and don’t try anything funny.”

“We’re from the Keep on the Hinterlands,” you respond. “You may know us as the victors of Cardstock.”

“Oh!” Several figures in sewn cloth hoods jump down from the trees and kneel. “Apologies for our insolence, heroes. We did not recognize you in this dusk light, and, as you may have heard, the night is dangerous here.”

They escort you into town. A makeshift gate opens before you, then closes behind you.

“We can never be careful enough,” says the leader of the band, who introduces herself as Captain Teadora.

You notice the bright silver barbs along the fence.

“Fey steel?” you ask.

“We don’t really understand it either,” she admits, “but you’re not the first aid sent our way. Svitlana, Warden of the Silver Forest, has been arming the resistance in these lands. Our assailants are nigh impervious to traditional weapons, but her retinue have magic that cuts through their defenses like butter.”

You decide you’d like to meet this Svitlana. Teadora agrees to lead you to Svitlana’s camp in the morning.

“For now, we rest,” she says firmly. “Travel is much safer by daylight in these lands.”

To be continued…

This expansion contains a LOT of new content: 35 new cards and around 250 new items. You can expect to crazy new card mechanics and items that should really shake up the metagame. Although the name and theme of this set is still under wraps, we can tell you that it features appearances from many new characters and places as well as old favorites like Crazy Sal, Wym, and Dzedd Grimsong.

Let’s get a little more specific. Expedition to the Sky Citadel brought you a ton of new cards and mechanics but missing from that set were any new race or class skills. Not so with this set! We made sure to cover every item slot this time around, and skill items actually got a little bonus love.

First let’s talk about racial skills.

Humans get Vanguard, a duration 2 trait capable of small, but significant, marginal bonuses to your party’s position. Vanguard comes on our new “Positioning” skill line, which ranges from Bossy Positioning—pairing Vanguard with Attack, Soldier!—to Savant Positioning, which adds Vanguard to an unprecedented double Forward Thinking. Of course, the advent of a bronze trait for humans means there’ll be some better tokenless human skills coming to the mix to compete with the likes of Raging Battler and Cautious Mobility.

Dwarves don’t get any new traits—they maxed out their trait luck already with Blind Rage and Immovable—but they get a new armor card that’s almost as good at preventing damage as Reliable Mail… and that’s not even looking at its special effect! Dwarven Resilience is in full force, a variant on Arrogant Armor that kicks in whenever your character takes damage… purging both them AND their attacker!

Elves are known for being nimble, and now they’re nimble like never before. Fleet almost makes their racial move card, Dash, into a Fly—they won’t get over rivers with it, but they can skirt enemies, jump over caltrops, and more, all while moving quite fast. In fact, they move so fast that area-of-effect attacks and harmful terrain deal them less damage. Elven Rapidity skill items combine Fleet with other Elven staples like Pathfinding and Elven Maneuvers.

Elves actually get a second new trait, but we’re not going to reveal it quite yet, because it ties more directly into the set’s theme. Here’s a teaser:

=D

What in Cardhuntria could be this be?

Now let’s talk about class skills!

There are six new trait cards for class skills in this set, two per class. One each per class is tied to the main theme of the set, and we’re going to keep them under wraps for now. But below you can see the other three traits!

Each is designed as a way to give the class something new to do, and as a more incidental benefit rather than a deck-defining thing. Wind Dancer helps step attack warriors put up some mediocre defenses (it’s also quite nice with Leadership!); Blight makes melee priests pack a little extra punch; and Acid Leak… wait, what does Acid Leak do? Is it really just a random effect that will probably never help you?

Stay tuned for more acid shenanigans. =)

That’s it for now, but expect more spoilers soon. We’re currently working on finishing up our item art and fixing a few bugs, and then we’re planning to get everything thoroughly playtested (details forthcoming).

Introducing the Jeweler.

Jewelers add an entirely new dimension to play—their abilities revolve around loot. A lot of the cards we have in development don’t fit into the classic class divisions; Jewelers have little in the way of damage, and they have no assists to help their teammates. Mostly they function as win conditions in a control-oriented party, but their abilities could be fun in a blitz deck for maximizing loot intake per minute of gameplay.

An example of the latter is the following Trait, slotted for the all-new Finance Skill items.

The most exciting thing about the Jeweler is that a full eight of its item slots are Treasure items. Yes, you read that right. All those ‘useless’ items, normally seen as simple sources of gold pieces? The Jeweler can equip them. As you’ll see, Treasures now have cards associated with them, and are equippable, so long as you have a Jeweler in your party.

Treasure items tend to have cards that interact with victory points. I’ll preview two of my favorite new Treasure item cards here:

Now, you may be wondering what the Jeweler does between manipulating your victory points. Well, the sad fact is the Jeweler is probably getting attacked, because your opponent doesn’t like the idea of you winning without a fight! Jewelers are pretty squishy (their hit points are actually the lowest of any class, 21/17/13), but they have a couple fun tricks up their sleeve on the defense. The following cards can be found on new Business Suit items.

Up next: previews of our new Jeweler costumes.

Also stay tuned for a sneak peek at our new playable race, Trolls.

So, in our dev diary where we talked about reactions, we saw a simple armor card, Solid Mail. This week’s card is a more complex Armor card – Crushing Gauntlets:

OK, so what’s going on with this card? The first thing you should note is that there are two grey rule boxes. That means that the card has two separate reactions. Each of those reactions can trigger separately in different situations.

The first box is an Armor reaction, just like we saw on Solid Mail. It’s not very good Armor – just two points of damage reduction on a roll of a 4 or more, but it is Armor nonetheless.

The second rule box is more interesting. This is a lot like the damage boosting that we saw from Bash previously. But, in this case, it’s a lot more general – 3 extra damage to ANY Melee attack and then return the card to your hand. That makes this is a very flexible damage boosting card that makes all your other Melee attacks better. And that’s why this rates a silver title bar.

What stops this card being over-powered? Why wouldn’t every warrior take this? Well, Crushing Gauntlets won’t necessarily hang around forever. You might notice that the Armor trigger doesn’t have a little card icon in the  lower right of it’s rule box. That means that you DON’T get to keep this card when it’s Armor reaction triggers. So, if someone hits you, and your gauntlets react to the damage from that they are gone. That’s right, no more crushing for you.

On the other hand, if you can maneuver yourself into a position where your opponent can’t attack you, or you wait until they’ve played out all their attacks, or you just stock up on Blocks to make sure you don’t get hit, you can crush them with every Melee attack in your hand. And, yes, Crushing Gauntlets do “stack”, so if you have two of them, you’ll add six damage to every attack you make. Nice!

OK, this perhaps isn’t the most exciting card in the world, but it does introduce a new category of cards – Armor cards. And in the future I’m sure we’ll preview some much more interesting variants on this basic card. Anyway, here it is:

Mail. Yep, it’s mail. Armor that stops stuff from hurting you.

You’ll notice from the grey text box and the little die icon in the lower left corner that this is another reactive card. Unlike the Block card that you saw previously, Armor doesn’t cancel a card that is targeting you. Instead, it is triggered by damage and it reacts to prevent some of that damage. In this case, it’s Armor 2, so it will soak up two points of damage from anything that tries to hurt you. Oh, and remember that the four on the die indicates that this card only triggers on a roll of 4 or more. So, about half the time you would take damage this card stops two points of that.

Hmm, that doesn’t sound that great, does it? But there’s one thing about Armor that is better than a Block and that’s the fact that you return it to your hand after it triggers! So, this card can potentially sit in your hand forever, soaking up damage. Sounding a bit more useful now I hope?

Wow, what’s to stop you just loading your hand with nothing but Armor and then sitting back while your opponent flails away impotently at you? Nothing really, except that you won’t have anything useful to do. Oh, any also, you can only keep two cards at the end of each round, so you won’t be able to stock up on too much Armor. Oh, and you can really only get Armor cards into your deck by equipping armor items (like the Old Chainmail that this card comes from) so that limits how much you can take. Oh, and also, there are probably cards that deal with armor in various different ways, so it might be best not to stake your entire strategy on it.

But none of that means that Armor isn’t pretty great for classes that can take it. I mean this single card can prevent a LOT of damage if you can keep it in your hand for a while. So Armor is definitely worth considering, especially if you are building a front line warrior or a tank.

I promise we’ll show some more interesting and complex variants on Armor cards in the future too.

So, the expanded text on that card should be pretty self-explanatory. This is one annoying card. There are you, plotting the perfect maneuver to get your Elf Warrior behind the enemy, you play your sneaky move card and BAM – Maze of the Mind! Now your opponent gets to control the move and I’m pretty sure he’s not going to put your Elf in position to stab anyone. Instead he’ll probably be facing a wall with his back to the enemy who’s about to unleash a barrage of unfair attacks on him.

Yeah, this is one nasty card. It usually does something annoying. Of course, as with most of these kinds of cards, you can play around it if you know it’s there by using your worst move card first and moving a character who has another move in hand.

So, Maze of the Mind is another  example of how we use the reaction system to come up with some interestingly different kinds of cards (well, we think so, anyway), not just blocks and armor.

A couple of technicalities to point out about this card. Firstly, the little boot icon in the lower left means this is triggered by play of Move cards. That means, yes, there are other cards that are triggered by movement too. The sharp eyed of you with keen memories will remember that this icon was a star on the mini card we showed before. That’s because we keep juggling this iconography. It was a star and now it’s a boot. By the time we ship it could be something else entirely. Let’s hope not though.

Finally, there’s no way to play this card, unlike Bash that we previewed last week. It will just sit in your hand until it gets triggered.

Secondly, note that there is no card symbol in the lower right. This means that you don’t get to put this card back in your hand after it triggers. It will only control one enemy move and then it gets discarded. It usually pays its dues though.

I love this card, mainly because it usually annoys the hell out of my opponent. I hope you like it too. Just don’t put it in your deck when playing me please.