The seal was broken and the Everborn emerged from their earthen prison, wreaking havoc across Faenar in their wake. Aeona’s lucidity is rapidly fading into madness, leading the way to paranoia, fear, and disconcerting changes among those closely connected to her domain. Malissus has made a deal with a devil to try to restore balance, but such bargains rarely yield positive results in the long run. And Orfeo is making moves that may lead to mass destruction, but no one is sure to what end.
In Roots of Ruin, we tried to do something new. We wanted to set the stage for 2026 and expand on what Age of Ascent couldn’t deliver on its own: a meta refresh and several new meta-relevant archetypes. We applied our new design and balance principles to the set, had a few balance changes here and there, and saw the meta grow with some of the brand new decks players came up with. With our newest set, The Walking Plague, we want to keep that momentum and continue to expand on some of the new themes, while revisiting some of the older ones to try and diversify the meta even further.
Abilities that tell a story
Times are tough around Faenar, and people are at wit’s end trying to deal with the reality of the Everborn invasion. We wanted to make sure the keywords and abilities we used represented that. You will see a healthy dose of Tempt fate in this set, and the inclusion of Tempt fate related cards. The ability is a good representation of how desperate people are and the risks they have to take to try and outlast the Everborn. It also serves as a pretty good indication of how Aeona’s madness is spreading to her domain and how the most connected creatures are becoming more feral and unpredictable as their sanity frays.
We also have some very story driven top-down designs in this set to represent some key story points taking place during these events. Aeona’s paranoia and sense of betrayal by her own forces trying to pull her back from the brink, the ongoing destruction of Ronella as Maydays forces clash with those who have been deceived by Orfeo, and the unfolding agreement between Malissus and the forces of the Nether controlled by Volkaaz. We think these do a great job adding flavor to the gameplay to represent the ever-evolving storyline.
Expanding on the good
We tried to find archetypes for the domains we have seen people enjoy since Roots and tried to expand on it with our designs. For instance, Discard Deception, Favor Light, and Everborn Nature have all proven to be solid meta choices and fun decks to play that have garnered a following of mortals that want to see them grow, and frankly all still had room to further define their identities. We want to grow these strategies wider, so there is more diversity in deck building within the archetype, as well as appropriate power boosts in spots where archetypes fall flat.
Bringing something new
We wanted to create some new archetypes that act as complementary strategies to others. This meant expanding Everborn strategies outside of what we built in Roots, where a bulk of the cards revolved around The Broken Seal, as well as crafting some mechanically fresh ways to play the different domains. War has been a fairly linear collection of aggro/midrange decks for several sets now, so giving it some control mechanics felt overdue. Deception has a theme around what we called questing, which was enabling certain abilities on cards by forcing the player to achieve a certain criteria in a given turn, and you can build these into their own deck or use them to complement some that may already be reaching these goals.
We did not forget some more generic strategies as well for people who like to brew. We planted some seeds in this set we think will help grow some decks in the future like singleton, mana cost matters, and god power matters.
Legends to remember
In Roots, we wanted our legends to be flashy and really help push an archetype as opposed to being generically good. We steered away from designs of the past like Oddi which was just a strictly superior Raid Reveler, or Irina who was the entire archetype onto herself. We really liked how Heliora’s abilities had depth in how they supported each other and other archetypes you could play with, or all the different ways you could bring back Orfeo in different decks.
Don’t get us wrong, the legends in this set are very good and very memorable, and they fit into a wide number of decks, but they do force you to think about their inclusion and how to best utilize them as opposed to just being a statistically superior card. Most importantly we think they are all pretty memorable and cards you will want to open and try out.
An Eye on Standard
Formats have been a community favorite for some time now, and amongst them Standard really stood out to us as something that helps the community. It is a great competitive entry point into the game, requiring cards that have been more available than stuff printed years prior that may be harder to acquire and shine for starting players. While balance in all formats is still paramount in our testing, we made sure to try and design enough variety into the set to help grow standard and the viable archetypes within.
A standard of Welcome, Core, AOA, Roots, Plague, Revival, and Spoils is now a generous enough card pool with enough distinct strategies that we think players are really going to enjoy playing it and competing with the decks they want to build, not the decks that are the most efficient card from the past 6 years. We will continue to refine the format as we develop more cards, with the intention of rotating it once each subsequent storyline arc has enough content to stand on its own.
Doom approaches
The outlook for anything that does not have a mushroom growing out of its head is pretty bleak in Faenar right now. The Everborn will continue to push forward because it is all they are designed to do, but the mortals of the realm will do whatever it takes to weather the storm and come out on top. Players will help us realize this story and reshape the world of Gods Unchained, but the fate of everything is still a huge question mark. We can’t wait to see what you come up with for these new cards.