We have milk!

     So just before Essen the second expansion for Altered was revealed. They have clarified that it is a smaller expansion (90 commons - 15 per faction) and 2 heroes per faction (which are exactly the same cards as in Beyond the Gates). This makes the approximate set size of 414. Assuming that there will be 11 characters on average per faction, this breaks down to:-

90 commons 

180 rares 

132 Uniques

12 heroes

     So (sigh) this will not fit into one of the beautiful Gamegenic binders (which have 360 slots). I have asked them to add 4 pages, hopefully they will get to this in the future.

     The set will be winter themed (which is perfect for a January 31st release) and will have the heroes starting to head into the dangerous tumult. There have been three cards revealed with new mechanics.

A) Gear

     The first new spoiler is a Bravos card that is a new type of permanent called Expedition Gear (or Gear for short). The permanent type is played to an expedition and only affects things in the expedition that it is played to. Unlike landmarks, there are no limitations to the number of gear that you have in play. Additionally, it was clarified on the Angers English stream by Marcus that Gear will be able to have fleeting, so will work more like other card types. This will prevent Gear from being infinitely re-castable.

     The first gear that we’ve got is a doozy and it belongs to the best faction (Bravos if you weren’t already aware). Yes, Bravos has milk (Arcolano Milk to be precise) and our milk helps us get a boost in the expedition that a character joins. The milk gives the Bravosi temporary 1 boost in power to all characters joining the expedition (a bit like Popeye’s spinach) but gives them fleeting also. This means you can get the boost from hand (unlike Haven), but that you have a downside to doing that. From reserve it won’t matter, and this will make Basira’s plays with Haven even more powerful. You have to discard the milk if you successfully move forward, but you can always play it from reserve a second time. At a cost of 1 this is really good and better than charge in some ways (though it does only affect one side). Note that the wording says join rather than play. Token creatures still join the expedition even though they say create rather than play, so I think tokens will get the boost as well.

     As to the rare version, we don’t yet know, but it would be fun to think that it didn’t make your characters fleeting, wouldn’t it? My one plea is please, please Equinox don’t give our milk to the Ordis. They don’t deserve it, but I know mechanically that they’ll lap it up (pun intended).

     The potential for gear is pretty huge. You could have negative gear (traps) that affect your opponent’s expeditions as well as gear that grants keywords to all the characters in that expedition. How about a Muna piece of gear that makes all the characters in the expedition Anchored? 

     The other thing to note about Gear is that it is a permanent type. So any Unique or other card for that matter that counts permanents rather than landmarks will get better because of this. There are quite a few that look at a permanent cost 3 or less in Axiom that will suddenly get a lot better. Perhaps Sierra will shine a bit brighter in the future?

B) Region restricted Abilities

     The second spoiler is a Muna one for the card Demeter. Here she gains Eternal if she is in a region that has a forest biome. This doesn’t matter so much for the current region, but is more important for the one that you are going to. Perhaps this might mean there will be scouts that can peak at the region card ahead in the set as well? These types of abilities could apply to any biome stat and could apply to any faction. For instance we could have a Bravos mountaineer, or a water nymph in Yzmir and they could all give different abilities. Note that of the 8 regions, 5 will have a particular biome stat on them, though moving between regions on the same card will always result in you not being on the one that you want to be on.

     Although I don’t think Demeter is too powerful (she costs 6 after all), I think this has potential to be able to give Rin a boost in this set. As a large character I think that Demeter could either go into Bravos or Lyra as the OOF rare. At present I see that Rin is best placed to use this type of mechanic, though potentially it could spread nicely across factions as well.

C) Exhausted in Reserve

     The final spoiler is for a small Yzmir moth that can gain a boost if you have two exhausted cards in the reserve. We don’t fully know what the exhaust mechanic is yet, but we can guess. My expectation is that you can exhaust (tap) a card in reserve to help pay for a cost of a card, but then when exhausted you can’t use that card from the reserve this turn. It would then un-exhaust at the start of the next turn. 

     This is a way of making another resource that you can use to pay for costs of cards rather than just pure mana. I’m suspecting that with the addition of exhaust costs the up front mana cost will either be cheaper or you will get a discount. You may want to hold onto cards till late in the turn with exhaust costs as that will leave you more flexibility as to playing (or not playing) cards from your reserve, though if you suspect your opponent of having a sabotage then you could use them earlier in the turn as a resource before they are sent packing.

     I think these alt costs could be most useful in Ymzir. Being able to use the exhaust costs to play later in the turn would really go with Akesha’s strategy. Fen, Subhash and Treyst usually have excess characters in their reserve, so I could see those factions picking up the most of the exhaust cards - I mean, what true Bravosi gets exhausted?

     I love the thematic tie in of this, with the heroes struggling through the wintery lands and getting exhausted as they go, getting a boost from their friends to help them on their way.

     I really want to see things for the lesser used heroes to bring them up a bit in level. I’m talking about Atsadi, Nev, Auraq, Rin, Gulrang, Akesha and Lindiwe here. Arguably though some of these are doing okay for themselves at the moment with Rin and Lyra festival seemingly some work and Lindiwe getting to the top 16 at Angers.

     Oh and one last thing - really disappointed not to see Triny and Tlat in the expansion!