Uncharted Alliances is here! Bringing our 10th set to life has required equal parts creativity, community, and perseverance and the ARH team couldn’t be more excited to get it into your hands.
Extra gratitude is in order to Echo3 and our playtesters for ironing out the design, Sarah Evans & Marcosguijr for ensuring the cards look as gorgeous as usual, Echo7 and our intrepid rules gurus for making sure they work as intended, and especially Draiqil for arriving on the scene to repair the database/deckbuilder and Tabletop Simulator in time to accept the new set.
So what makes these alliances so… uncharted? Creatures! This brand new subtype brings allies small and (very!) large, feral and tamed, upgrade and support. Whether you like your Creatures to bring big dice, utility effects, or just enable events, we’ve got you covered. In fact, we like “Creature” so much that we’ve even retroactively granted it to old friends like Morai and Salacious B. Crumb.
Uncharted Alliances is now “live” in the ARH deckbuilder/database and Tabletop Simulator. We’ll aim to release the print-and-play files up in early February once the community has had a week or so to spot any last minute edits.
We hope you’re as excited as we are to get these new cards on the table and that you’ll join us for an Uncharted Alliances Release Party on Feb 28 at 9am ET / 2pm UK. The event is completely free and will involve multiple Swiss rounds on Tabletop Simulator. Each player will receive a doublesided Ahoska Tano/Sabine Wren promo card with the winner earning a spotgloss champion version. Sign up HERE on rollbetter.
Balance Changes
Although intentionally a more compact set than previous ones, the release of Uncharted Alliances punches above its weight with a major overhaul of the ARH Standard format. In addition to retiring the entire High Stakes collection, ARH mad scientist NuteShunsrey has removed 58 cards from the “Echoes of Destiny” reprint list and added a whopping 68 new ones.
Although you can explore the changes yourself in the updated ARH Holocron and deckbuilder/database, we’d like to call out a few specific changes designed to address recurring patterns in the ARH meta.
First: after multiple years with Ataru Mastery as an auto-include in any blue lineup, we’re moving it and its lil’ cousin Ataru Training to the “banned” list. We’re excited to see which blue abilities (including some spicy additions to the Echoes list) make the most of an Ataru-free world.
A set flush with massive supports (looking at you Zillo Beast!) puts extra pressure on cards that ramp quickly. In addition to bidding farewell to some of our most egregious “cheat out massive supports” offenders like Doctor Aphra, Outrider, and Dryden Vos, we’re also banning Leia Organa – Defiant Princess and her “play the top card of your deck for free” ability.
For some time, Leia has also served as one of the strongest pillars of the mill archetype, memorably playing a critical role in Toronto’s run to the 2024 Destiny World Cup crown. With one of ARH’s most powerful discard mechanics leaving the game, we’re also choosing to slightly soften another “massive support” enabler. Although we fully expect Jan Dodonna to still overwhelm opponents with big chonky dice, he’ll need to do this without a power action that lets him resolve those dice multiple times each round.
Finally, we’re also choosing to tone down Sabine Wren’s all-around power by removing “redeploy” from one of her signature upgrades, making the strategic choice to boost Sabine’s Westar a little more risky.
Looking Ahead
With the new set in your hands, the team is poised to spend some time reflecting on the next chapter for ARH. It’s clear from traffic in the ARH discord, posts in other online platforms, and direct conversations with members of the community that many players around the globe are still actively playing this amazing game.
And… over the past year, we’ve had a much more difficult time in identifying spaces where all those players come together to create a critical mass that attracts new players, retains existing ones, and guides our priorities.
Should ARH focus on “keeping the lights on” by maintaining and improving critical tools like the database/deckbuilder and TTS? Post periodic changes to the ARH Standard format to keep things fresh? Host regular meet-ups for online play? Release additional sets? Something else that would contribute to a thriving community?
The answer is ultimately up to each of you. Later this month, we’ll be undertaking a “galactic census” and hope you’ll take a couple of minutes to share what you want next for Destiny. We’ll plan on using that feedback – plus our observations of how the community responds to Uncharted Alliances – to inform our thinking with the goal of sharing what’s next in early March.
#destinyforever
