Q1 Rules Update Recap
Hello fellow adventurers!
When we do rules updates we’d like to start posting some thoughts like this, talking a little about what’s going on, why, etc.. These thoughts are a little late, so apologies there!
As we’ve stated before, the wonderful thing about the rules being a living document is that we are able to make adjustments like this more regularly, and more easily track what’s going on. There’s always some small wording error, some unaddressed interaction, or a “ruling that should actually be a rule” that we find ourselves adding to our ongoing rules notes. From here on out, we plan to try and push any needed updates (other than emergency updates) about once a quarter, towards the end of the quarter (March, June, September, and August).
For those of you who would like to follow along with what has changed, you can find an ongoing changelog here.
In Q1 we had a handful of important changes, as well as a dozen or so clarifications. Let’s take a look at the clarifications first.
Q1 2025 Rules Clarifications
For the majority of the game's existence, equip locations were essentially a “replace”, where you would equip, say, a new Weapon, and were forced to destroy the old. Back in January this changed so that when you equip a new item with an equip location item trait you instead destroy items until you have one item in that equip location, meaning you could essentially equip a new item, then choose to discard that newly equipped item in order to get down to one item in that slot. Due to some wording errors there was some confusion about how this worked, and we made corrections to make this clearer. While we were at it we also clarified how cards like Light Hammer will work when equipped while you already have a Weapon (302.7.2) and that you must destroy items before reacts to equipping are performed, like Nightfire Manacles (302.7.3)
Some rules related to Damage Types and Action Traits were also a point of confusion after the January update and so a handful of items were updated there for clearer wording, and additional clarification. The biggest of which is a spelled out distinction between action traits and Damage Types (601.2.5). Basically this boils down to the fact that actions can have action traits that then dictate the Damage Type (601.2.2), but that a strike itself would not have an action type. In practice, this means that when a character with the Physical Damage Type performs an attack, unless something gives that attack action the Physical trait, will not be a “Physical action” (an action with the Physical action trait), it will simply be a Physical Damage action (an action with the Physical damage type).
The remainder of the Q1 rules and clarifications are minor items related to misspellings, the omitted faction for the Animal token, some clarifications on blank cards, timing clarifications, etc.. I’ll let you take a look at those in your own time.
Now let’s take a look at the major updates.
Q1 2025 Rules Updates
The first two are somewhat related, essentially removing something from two character types. The first, the printed Unique keyword being removed from Warlords. Many older Warlords were originally printed with the Unique keyword back in the “super friends” era of Warlord where multiple Warlords could be played in the same deck. Now that this is no longer the case, and the Unique keyword is essentially superfluous. There is precedent for removing Unique from Warlords seen in cards like Sorceress Ygraine, Krun, Uthanak, etc., and it has also been removed from any that are being reprinted in the Box of Greed. Of course this really only affects some rare interactions involving recurring a Warlord that has died, but it is a large change to a number of cards nonetheless.
The second is a little more impactful, and that is the decision to, in essence, remove the Overlord character type from all existing Dragon Lords that have it. In actuality the rule is more complex than that, preventing characters with a non-Warlord character type from having a lower, but what it boils down to is that you can now do fun things like play both Altus Darkheart and Drasek the Furious in the same deck. This was a tough discussion for us, wanting to remain true to the cards as they are, but be realistic about how we plan to use character types going forward, and be conscious of what the typeline looks like with so much information. The first instance you’ll see of this is the Morrigan De Danaan, which does not have the Overlord character type in the Box of Greed printing.
The final, and in my opinion most impactful, change is the complete rework of 104.2.1 and how dying works. In most cases, a character takes wounds, you check to see if wounds equal hit points, and if they do, it dies, it goes to the discard pile, end of story. 104.2.1 discusses what happens if, when a character has already been determined as dying, they take wounds again. It had long ago been ruled that you once again check for death, find a character to be dying, and instigate another potential point to trigger a react to the character dying. Because of this ruling, 104.2.1 previously supported that. But we have long seen that this is potentially problematic for cards like Gush or Elemere because there are effects that can work in conjunction with reacts to death that allow you to take finite numbers of strikes, or draw a finite number of cards. Because of this, and because it will do very little other than let people breathe a sigh of relief that these sorts of finite interactions are no longer a worry, and it lessens our design concerns around Death Reacts, we have changed 104.2.1 so that a character is only ever determined as dying once, and you no longer have additional react windows to death.
And there was much rejoicing.
Unless you played Elemere/Bascarite Swarm in your multiplayer deck, then you’re a little sad.
With that I want to wrap things up by saying that, as always, should you have any rules questions you can send those over using the form linked on warlordsots.com/rules, and if you have any other questions or concerns feel free to direct those to our email support@kingswood.gg.
May your die rolls ever be with advantage.
