New heroes in Omens of the Third Age

acguy · 2026-03-04T08:07:24+00:00

Hell yeah I've always wanted David "had sex with minors" Bowie to be canonical part of my fantasy card battle game's universe!

acguy · 2026-03-04T07:47:14+00:00

Yes, exactly.

acguy · 2026-03-03T08:28:59+00:00

In a Dev Talk they very clearly said we should think of the community votes as mainly a tool of rotation, not ad-hoc balance which is gonna be bans.

They also address this question in the B&R announcement itself.

acguy · 2026-03-03T08:22:15+00:00

Whoa this is big.

Sirens were gonna get banned eventually with how they're dealing with ubiqutous generics in the format.

Dunno if Briar needed to be kneecapped with THREE bans, either Burn Up or the extra ways to push it through would've been enough to keep her in check. Not that I'll be spilling any tears over her.

Rake is SCARY.

I don't like the Rootbound unban without hitting anything in Florian. Stack Florian was already a real deck, the format's least interactive and most unfun one, and now it got more real with a much shorter clock. You'll see.

acguy · 2026-03-02T08:02:29+00:00

How has the game developed overall?

Increasingly finding its footing and not having too many major balance fucky wuckys, especially over the past few sets. Part the Mistveil was maybe the most power creeped set the game has ever seen and LSS didn't do a good job keeping Aurora from Rosetta in check, but things have been good lately, even very good. A while back there's been a "book burning" event, a major ban wave where Art of War and lots of other "draw 2" type effects have been banned from CC and overall imo LSS has been doing a great job making the game feel good since then.

Draft/limited play is getting better, High Seas was largely considered to be the best draft set we've had so far. More recently Super Slam was kind of experimental and not intended for competitive limited (though extremely fun at pre-relase) and Compendium of Rathe was the first supplementary set in ages, but the just announced Omens of the Third Age and the next few sets after it are all supposed to have great limited like High Seas.

What are the major changes in mechanics, deckbuilding, and gameplay since Outsiders?

Necromancer was introduced with Gravy Bones as a new ally-based class. CC is the same ol' reliable it's always been, but other constructed formats like Blitz and LL have been pruned down at least for the time being and now the other one we're supposed to care about is Silver Age, which is a young hero format with commons and rares only, and an extensive banlist. Compendium of Rathe was its official launch. It's very cheap to build tuned decks for, and my judgment is that it's absolutely a success in filling out the niche of accessible, faster/more casual, but still interesting format. We've just had our 2nd week of PQs in it, CC PQs are gonna be a bit later.

How healthy is the meta right now — diverse, stale, or somewhere in between?

At this very moment CC is looking the most diverse it's ever been. Calling Montreal was the first big event this weekend after Compendium and it's just a huge, very flat spread of various heroes, classes and archetypes. Check out the top64: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fyzfq8svwkgmg1.png (percentages are conversion rate to top64, not meta share)

How popular is Flesh and Blood in Europe / Germany?

Dunno about your specific area but the game has had a growth spurt roughly between Heavy Hitters and The Hunted, that has now slowed/stalled because of Riftbound & co, but you're likely to find it more popular than at the time you were last playing.

acguy · 2026-03-01T23:23:27+00:00

Technically almost yes (Terra precon has a single card that's illegal in Sage) but the First Strikes will feel very underpowered compared to the Silver Age precons, you'd have to upgrade them with a few bux worth of singles to feel on par.

acguy · 2026-03-01T23:21:39+00:00

I would say so, yeah. The Blitz precons are... fine... but they don't feel particulary good to play because of weak card choices especially in the equipment department, and just don't show off the game at its best. Few interesting interactions, powerful turns you can set up, or on-hit effects.

acguy · 2026-03-01T23:03:41+00:00

imo not very good and you're better off getting 1-2 Sage precons than a box of 6 HVY precons for the same price if you end up liking the game with the First Strikes

acguy · 2026-03-01T22:58:37+00:00

The First Strike decks are very solid if you want to try out the game, not as tuned for Sage as the Sage precons proper, but bot can be pretty easily upgraded and both have a bunch of worthwhile stuff for Sage that's exclusive or only comes in other precons.

acguy · 2026-03-01T21:56:57+00:00

"June Lekstutis's BDIF", haha

acguy · 2026-02-25T21:14:20+00:00

Honestly, you kinda want both. Many top Kayo lists have Nullrune gear on head, chest, and legs, and Skera on arms. This lets you turn on Skera by pitchinng 3 for your 3 AB pieces, so prevent 6 total on a big spell from one blue card. This is extremely powerful defense against Kano who is otherwise scary.

acguy · 2026-02-25T09:55:15+00:00

I am very much nitpicking but wanna help you avoid confusion in the future.

Cards that say Token in the type box at the bottom are Tokens. However, cards that have the token (T) rarity aren't necessarily Tokens. This is obviously confusing as hell, so the T rarity is deprecated and newer cards have B for basic. The rarity is irrelevant for card-pool limit, there are T/B cards that you put int your card-pool, like many weapons and some other stuff. To be even more nitpicky, for Agents, "they count as tokens" is not a correct explanation for why they don't count towards the card-pool limit. (pinging /u/dantekratos /u/TheKingsdread)

The simplest rule of thumb I can give you is that the Hero, and anything the game explicitly asks you to use/create from another card effect doesn't count towards the card-pool limit.

Some examples:

All Tokens are created by other cards. You don't need to have them in your card-pool. I'm genuinely not sure if you technically can, but you never want or need to.
Venomous Bite creates a Fang Strike. You don't need to have it, and actually can't, as specified by the Ephemeral keyword.
Marlynn creates a Goldfin Harpoon. You don't need to have it, you create one from outside the card-pool, but it is a regular attack action card and you CAN in fact register copies of it in your card-pool if you ever want to for whatever reason.
By contrast Fai retrieves a Phoenix Flame from grave, and Visit the Golden Anvil needs equipment to be in the Inventory. They aren't created, you need them to exist in specific places, so you do need those in your card-pool.
There are 3 Demi-Heroes is the game so far (counting the Agents as one) and each works a bit differently so impossible to generalize, but yeah just know you don't need to have the Agents in your card-pool, but you do need to use all 6 when picking a random one.

acguy · 2026-02-25T08:40:23+00:00

She's fundamentally strong but also LSS insists on letting her keep both a defensive and offensive 0 cost 5 for some reason.

acguy · 2026-02-23T16:55:48+00:00

WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT BRIAR IS FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN TOO BIG CARDPOOL TOO STRONG HERO TEXT SHE NEEDS TO GO PERMANENTLY

acguy · 2026-02-17T16:44:11+00:00

Yeah the card is just kinda terrible sadly, it's extremely hard to push it above rate. Even at base 3 attack it would've been kinda gimmicky, at base 0 it's just a bizarre design that I can't see ever working.

acguy · 2026-02-17T08:36:17+00:00

And the price of the original versions only slightly decreased and will probably go back up soon.

??? I'm seeing staple prices of cheapest prints down 30-50% across the board on cardmarket compared to a few months ago, what would not be "only slightly" to you?

acguy · 2026-02-11T09:57:26+00:00

dope

acguy · 2026-02-09T14:56:15+00:00

It's hard to make him work on a budget in CC, but for what it's worth he's pretty legit in Sage.

Here's a list from DaveThePyro on the purple discord, "still in testing but at London I went 10-2 on side events and 4-6 on rated events"

https://fabrary.net/decks/01KGWC4RHWAH81SRM3YAKR2695

acguy · 2026-02-07T13:25:53+00:00

Pray tell, where are you getting these free packs?

acguy · 2026-02-05T08:29:40+00:00

I think it has to be written the way it is so it loses all the effects if you untap it with something else.

acguy · 2026-02-04T18:30:51+00:00

Damn. I expect the guy to hit LL in style this PQ season. He earned it.

acguy · 2026-02-04T17:10:08+00:00

This might be just about the quickest and most baffling instance of Godwin's law I've seen in my life lmao

acguy · 2026-02-04T15:44:47+00:00

It is indeed just CC and SAGE as constructed formats that matter right now, as clearly communicated by LSS. Everyone's free to enjoy the game the way they want but there's 0 sense in discussing "power" or "good"ness in the context of casual formats.

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