วีดีโอ

The base floor of uniques needs to be raised as they allow for packs to be better to open, and for the average unique to be more playable. The ceiling for uniques is either correct or could be lower just a little bit.

I'm excited to play in a pre release tomorrow, with brand new cards, against other players with brand new cards!

I’m excited to see more sacrifice cards I’m just hoping we get some more cards that want to be sacrificed with only the jellyfish and stargaze the deck feels like it lacks consistent good sacrifice targets unless of course you have great jellyfish uniques

Very interesting for Lindiwe decks. With this in your hero expedition and Maw in your companion expedition, every sacrifice increases your stats by 2/2/2 on both sides. 🎉

Correct me if I'm wrong but you can technically play an expedition gear in your opponents expedition, so you can use moth lantern as pseudo removal so long as the moth is less value than whatever you're forcing them to sacrifice?

Seems like an odd card. Im not impressed just from reading it but i want to see how this plays out in practice. Im happy for anything that makes Lindwe playable without the royal jellyfish.

Im waiting on Jack Frost for Ordis.

I love this card! First the art is amazing again, second the way it can spawn multiple moths makes it cool for those jellyfish decks and third: Gulrang sac deck incoming! As long as you have defender, the card will stay in the expedition

Great reveal. A card Lindiwe really needed. I'm most excited to be brewing around Arcolano Milk, one of the first cards to be revealed.

I love this reveal, so excited for Trial by Frost, I feel like the entire meta might be in for a shock :D

I'd love to see Lindiwe getting in the mix (without 3x cracked Moon Jelly Uniques). Love the art on that token!

i definitely think uniques need to be tuned, it rly is, to me, a fairly normal balancing issue where they undervalued certain abilities and overvalued others. year 1 is always super rough for TCGs, but it seems to me like EQ is learning from their mistakes even set-to-set, so block-to-block i anticipate massive improvements. altered at its best is, to me, a lot like Xyz era yugioh in a lot of ways, with explosive turns, interesting resource management, tempo being a strong focus, all with distinct and viable outs to any strategy

I’d certainly like to see a narrower range for uniques. Either all mildly or all much stronger than the rare version. Though I couldn’t care any less for anyone who Easter money on a $1k Robin Hood. If you’re spending the kind of money that you could take your kids for a nice day out to Disney on a card game with no big events to win, then that’s on you, not the developers.

are you really quiting just cuz of that? That looks so "meh" to quit, respectfully. Here in Fortaleza we didn't have one single promo booster even we have 12 to 20 players in locals with a spike of 34 on release which may looks a few but make us one of the two biggest Altered communities in Brazil, and even with that Galapagos (ower distribution company) only sand promos to south and southeast regions even with the next set releasing this weekend... Oh, TbF was delayed to february 24th in Brazil. The "challenge 2" is similar, but don't get any compensation seens disrespectful, cuz we're expending ower money and time and geting nothing back. It has been an active effort to call new people and keep the old ones but majority droped (luckly much others get into the game). And in the end just looks like the company doesn' give a sh... I traveled to Porto Alegre on christmas and even they have only 8 players weekly they got the promos since early december, looks Galapagos just hates Brazil's northeast. If in the 1st set they didn't give prizes, what should happens nearly with set 2 and pod? And even majors events. How could I invite new people Altered when there is pkm, One Piece and other TCGs that at least give something to them? And I don't agree with the challenge 1, but nice video. I just needed to speech those things cuz them piss me off

I think all uniques should be at a level above rares. You can only have three of them so I’d rather be struggling to pick which three I should be putting in my deck then struggling to find three worth playing. Uniques are the “chase cards” of any altered set they should make you feel good when you pull them.

limited deck search for permanents and/or spells only could be a good feature. there also needs to be ways to play the more expensive cards without instantly getting punished. sadly the only viable cards that cost more than like 4 or 5 are cards with powerful on-play effects OR have tough

I have admittedly stopped playing as much ever since the Gamers Guild event. I have no one to play in person with, and there's only so much I can grind on BGA. I also haven't felt like deck crafting too hard beyond what I've already done (about a half dozen decks or so), because I lack the uniques to really make the deck flow.

I agree with these views, specialy with the uniques problem. The amount of trash ones I saw when reading them is insane. My first unique was an unplayable stinker that I dont even want to see anymore. The main problem is that the unique version can be a downgrade from the rare one or worse. I understand the idea of them, but the result is not healthy. Here's a quick idea I just came up with to make uniques: The unique is gonna use the rare version of the card as the base. Each alteration to it has a "weight" to determine how many things are added to the card. For example: the unique card has a weight limit of 5. A cost reduction on one of the costs of the card weights 2, while changing a "from hand" effect to a "whenever you play" effect could weight 3. Adding a new hability to the card could vary depending on the effect, so for example, adding "draw a card if x happens" could weight 3 while "if x happens, resupply" could weight 2 and so on. Maybe adding a reserve discard effect to a card that didnt have one could weight between 2 to 3 and who knows how many ways you can mix and mash these things to create a "unique" card. The idea is just a random thing I came up with just now, but the point is: your unique would, at the very least, be better than the already existing card that you might own. It might come with new art and what not, but this way you would be excited to see them appear cuz you would know for sure that it will be an straight upgrade. Sure, it would still create some cards that might be outliers, but at least these uniques would be playable.

I'm sorry, but if someone spent $1000 to have an inaccessible card so they could have a better deck than everyone else, I don't feel bad for them after said card was nerfed.

I quit after seeing the first big tournaments--why would I play a meta where decks cost thousands of dollars (because of a few key cards) for a brand new TCG? I played a decent amount with my precons on Board Game Arena, then felt the gameloop was solved. That said, I appreciate all the thoughtful analysis, Trickster.

I'm sad to hear about the podcast, I was a big fan and thought you guys did a great job of discussing the current state of the game.

Caring about your rank in a multiplayer online game is bad for improving. Yes, it can be frustrating, but you get better by losing too, not only winning. I play Tekken besides Altered online, and yeah it feels bad when you de-rank, but you know why you de-ranked. Maybe different factions should have different ELO, like Tekken characters have different ranks.

The 3rd challenge is definitely what worried me from the start. Some unique are worse than their rare counterpart and some are OP. It doesn't feel incredible discovering a unique cause most likely you won't be able to use it. So I would do less unique but very strong ones. But most of all, we need a new rarity. Since uniques are, unique, the odds of getting the one you want is close to null. Rares don't feel scarce. I feel like an Epic rarity with maybe a limited supply could add a bit more collection thrill.

Amazing and necessary feedback video! thanks

I wouldn't even mind if all the uniques by title were the same. Much like rares

I think hand size is one of their biggest problems. I understand that hand size and hand advantage is always something to balance a game around, but hand size has a direct correlation to how much luck is involved in a game. With altered, I play a purple control deck and still feel like it's just autopilot. Draw 2 cards, count my mana and how many cards I can play that turn. Charge the card I can't. Play every card available to me. We have a decent local scene and everybody pretty much feels the same way no matter what color they are playing. The game is just, who has higher numbers in their hand? I have 5 decks and purple control requires the most strategizing, but even then a simple flowchart could play the game for me.

7:10 Well we can say that for every TCG In the next expansion Unique will be more powerfull because a lot people thinks they are a bit useless haha

A dedicated app ala LoR with good matchmaking would definitely be my biggest expectation. The work developpers did on BGA is fantastic, but they are limited given the platform is intrisically not adapted to a TCG. I think they mentioned once it would not happen before a few years at least, I hope this is added to Equinox roadmap sooner. I liked to play Lorcana in LGS anytime work schedule allowed me to, but I dropped completely after Pixelborn disappeared. No point buying cards if you cannot test deck list ideas before bringing them in a tournament. I'm definitely the opinion that in 2025 a s-tier application stimulates in-person play. No doubt your constructive critics will help Equinox bring Altered where it deserves to be :)

Thanks for your video, I love Altered competitively and for the collection, and it's always a good thing to discuss and argue about problems or bad feeling on a game we love, specially with a young company (Equinox) which listen/read what the community has to say. For your points : 1 - Yeah, when I meet an axiom player who play double haven on the first 2 days, I KNOW whatever deck I'm playing and even if my opponent have a bad draw after this play, the odds of losing increase hugely for me 😅. But to be honest I'm sure we can say this for almost all faction (small step, festival, bastion Muna, Fen big CA & Sigi big aggro,...). But really not a internal game problem currently, only the fact that card pool is still low today, we had only one edition. In the future we'll have so much cards with different effect, we'll be able to manage any threat I think and we'll have more choice to develop more startegie, counter meta, create new meta...In the set 2 we can obviously see that some inexistent heroes will have a big push (gulrang, sierra, Auraq, Rin) with the new cards, and all of this will create an even more versatile and changing meta like never before. Only thing on this point I really agree with you is : From the very start when starting playing the game I found that 3 cards on the start is really sad ! I love that we draw 2 each turn, I love the supply mechanic, I love the start when we put cards in mana and keep the rest BUT I'm sure the game would have been better having just 1 more card at the start. Draw 7, put 3 in mana, keep 4, go ! Really keeping only 3 at the start can prevent a lot of choices/creativity in the first 3 days. It's a shame because I learnt in an interview that during a long time when play-testing the game and fine tuning it, it was 7 cards and keep 4 !! And then after they decided to cut 1 and go with 3. Please please make the 7th cards coming back. You can play 2 cards, start the day 2 with 2 cards un supply, 3 in hands, 4 mana : soooo many choices. You can keep for long term for the matchup while playing short term etc. 2 - Rapidly here : Yes but it was known from the very start that the competitive fields will really begin with equinox on 2025 and not before...Yes, things take time, specially outside Europe/Around France, but we have to not forget one thing : It's not Disney behind, it's not Bandai, it's not Wizard of the Coast, it's a very young and "little" company which start all of this...They don't have an empire with tons of sales/commercials with millions and millions to burn rapidly to extends the game all over the world and organize lot of attraction. But we can see that they are putting all their efforts to convince and extends their game in USA, it's only the very beginning, the game is 4 months-long since the retails of the first edition...they need time to grow, build, refine, consolidate the innovative features, fine tune the ecosystem, etc. I have no worries on this subject : I see all the effort. They really want to stay a very long time, so don't worry if some are quitting because too frustrated with the cards pools and/or not enough scene to play: They'll come back (we hope so) when the cards pool will be bigger and the scene in usa bigger and all the digital features and meta refined. 3 - Yes I agree. I don't know if you know it (because you don't speak about it, so maybe you can make a pin post about it in the comment section or write it in your video in the part where you talk about it) but Equinox has heard the legit complaint about the fact that too many uniques we get are average/less powerful than the rare too often. So they have increased the minimum % power of the uniques starting with the set 2 and all editions after. This means that the gap between an excellent top S unique and the other uniques will be less big, and that when you open an unique it should be with a good probability something interesting/powerful enough. We'll see ! For the robin it was very very toxic to prevent the opponent to play any cards during so many turns...now that some time and tournaments have passed since the nerf, we can actually confirm that they were right with the decision : The meta is more diverse/interesting now compared to before the nerf. Yeah armorier bravos is SS tier, but already with the set 2 we have some interesting cards which can do a lot of damage to this (return all character of one expedition to reserve) and you can play around "accepting" to lose 1-2 expedition this turn, then sabotage/put fleeting on the unique and don't see it a second times. Finally, if this kind of problem really comes up again and again, I'm sure they will easily find a way to solve this competitively with some rules. For example : Now your 3 uniques can't share exactly the very same effect/text. You can have one unique for example with "hand effect: Sabotage", another unique "When a character you control gain a boost - Sabotage" and another "When a character enter in one of your expedition - Sabotage" because it's not exactly the same text accross all uniques, but you can't have 2 or 3 uniques with the same text as the third one in the example even if the stats/support effect/mana/etc are different. Doing this allow much more of very strong cards with S-tier capacity to be available to purchase for others (because you can't have more than one with this text) AND avoid degenrate effect to be abused x3 in a deck AND this change will push creativity of deckbuilder even furthest and deep because you'll have to think about what mix of ability your deck need (instead of just thinking "okay this effect is top I want 3 of them and done). And it increase the adaptation and surprise effect playing our match, uniques can be seen as our "toolbox".

Thank you. Yes. #3. The uniques. I wrote several posts about exactly this on Reddit and everyone just called me crazy (basically). It’s nice to know i’m not alone on this.

I really want a oficial plataform for play, trade and order POD

I have a lyra unique that has X: every character of opponent gains fleeting. Was wonder if it is a good effect

Many of these reasons relate to why I have picked up a secondary game and worry it will become primary. It is one, first set the future is bright. I hope the landmark subtype will shift to quirkier uses in later sets compared to Haven. Buying and trying competitive decks is awkward when you can't pick up even an understatted unpreferred version of a certain affect to try it out, it's a text line that appears on uniques of a specific name, and a fraction of that name.

Okay, most people playing this game have never played a successful TCG when it first launched… the first two are definitely issues a new game will have to deal with. The unique thing will also balance out as more sets release. It just comes down to how this game handles itself. Do we get a standard rotation, or is the game eternal.

You gave a very balanced review of this innovative game poised on the release of set 2 Trial by Frost which will likely reward the skill of the best players such as yourself. It is understandable that competitive players such as yourself will immediately gravitate toward the constructed=standard play of 39 cards plus a Hero. However in my opinion Altered really shines in Limited, that is Sealed or Draft. I would suggest that Equinox favor Limited in its official Organized Play and reward winners handsomely with special juiced up opportunities to obtain uniques. I myself opened four KS displays and four more regular BTG displays and got the 40 or so uniques expected but only three or four were slightly better than corresponding rare cards.

One thing I was thinking about is that as the cardpool and mechanics increases that in future sets uniques formerly in the dumpster will rise from the ashes like dumpster fire phoenixes. Basically something that is clunky and bleh given the current cardpool could all of a sudden be decent in a future cardpool. Also, with the current cardpool it is easier to optimize the "best" decks. In the future will not a larger cardpool open more possibilities and diversify the meta or is that just wishful thinking?

I love how they handled the unique system for my part, maybe it's ot perfect but for over 250 games, i've encountered what.. 5 to 10 games at most where the opponent could set up a durable if not permanent deadly combo (muna anchoring /boost or bravos / axiom). I'm playing a white/black in magic with 2 cards entering a loop with "when you inflict one damage you gain 1life" and the other "when you gain one life the opponent takes 1 damag. This is a set up i make at least one over 4/5 games. I just think uniques are great the way they are and hardly game breaking due to the "ephemeral" aspect of each card (i play fen with 15 to 30$ uniques..)

Challenge 2: It is very difficult to get the right to offer official events :( This keeps us back here at my area. The communication is veeeery slow and if you do not have a real boardgamestore it seems to be very hard. If this does not work out for my region, I am out too :(

Yeah, Bravos Bastion is broken i'm tired sick of that card and i don't enjoy playing and losing against worst players just because they copypasted the Treyst deck and Bastion wins them games alone.

Idk how big altered decks are but in magic we have 2 of removals we hope to draw sometimes and in a control deck would simply try to draw through enough cards to get to the card we want...i guess the main problem of any card game that doesnt have a best of 3 format with sideboards is that there will always be cards you cant answer with your current deck and without the ability to change sideboard you just keep losing to the same deck

I also have to disagree with most of your points here. Other commenters have explained it very well, so i'm not going to repeat the points to spare you reading work. Let me just clarify for point 3: you SEVERLY overstimate how good people are at rating uniques. The price of a unique doesnt depend on the strength, it depends on how strong the general community thinks it is. One of the core skills of Altered deckbuilding, is searching for uniques that get overlooked, yet are super strong. Being able to correctly rate a uniques rather than following the echo chamber is a skill that is rewarded. You can definitly build competitive decks with relatively cheap cards. You just need to spend time looking for them.

For the uniques: I think what isn't talked about enough is also accessibility of the game as a whole. Uniques can really put a stop to the flow of the game. I had quite some games that I lost because I missed something about a unique. My learning basically was to take the time to really understand, what they will do, but that's not necessarily fun for me. I feel like 95% of the uniques right now would not be printed like that as a rare or common card, because the effects/stats/costs are just so ... off. Like, they dont follow the normal rules of what and how much a card usually does. Or how much text is ok for very minor effects. Some are just unplayable from hand or reserve but broken from the other. So they break the expectation, that a card will... make sense in it's entirety. Which could be fun, I guess... but like you said. It really becomes a hunt for the few top uniques.

I like the unique system, I just don’t like the balancing behind it. There are so many dud uniques that it makes you really think “what is the point”? Sooo many times I see a unique and think “filler”.

I’m going to be attempting to reply with this with some constructive comments and play a little bit of the devil’s advocate here. I understand most of your points and where they come from and even agree with some, but disagree on others. Hopefully none of this comes across as negative, but instead as a counterpoint. Apologies for the massive wall of text, but I wanted to give a thorough outline of my thoughts. First off, I understand the competitive mindset you’re approaching this with. As a competitive player myself, I agree on lots of the things you bring up regarding the game and its future. I would love large scale in-person tournaments all across the world and a full-on competitive circuit. I think that competitive play, unfortunately, isn’t the main goal of Equinox for this game. Instead, they are marketing it towards the average and/or casual player. The game is geared to be a lower barrier to entry (not cost-wise but knowledge-wise) than other TCG’s on the market, and I think that they’ve done a good job with that if that is their goal. For your first challenge with how certain cards feel polarizing when drawn too consistently, that unfortunately is just part of card games in general. You can view datasets from other online TCGs on card winrates when drawn in the first X turns versus afterwards, and there will always be cards with that. Whether it’s a Unique in Altered, a combo card in MTG, or an aggro card in Hearthstone, some cards naturally have higher winrates the earlier they’re drawn or vice versa. Additionally, things like Small Step, Giant Leap are much better when you don’t have them clogging a hand spot early on and instead you see your playable cards. Unlike in games like Hearthstone or Magic though, those cards that are serving a niche purpose can always be used as mana which gives them far more utility. I do, however, agree with you that I wish more high-cost cards could see play. I would love to consistently see people play cards like Issitoq or Sakarabru or Hydracaena as they feel powerful to play with. I am curious to see how they take this direction to allow higher-costed cards to shine. For the second challenge, I think that you should make a clear distinction when talking about competitive events that you’re referring to in-person competitive events outside of Europe. As of right now, there are a plentiful number of online tournament circuits that you can choose to compete in with strong players. The Altered Weekly Online League just finished up their Season 1 Invitational yesterday, Altered Corner Events has their Season 2 Finale upcoming, the Exalts have their online Celebrations and other tournaments, the Go4Altered Championship is almost underway, and nearly half a dozen other competitive events exist. To ignore those events because they aren’t in-person is not good in my opinion. Some of the best players in the world for card games only get the chance to compete online so we shouldn’t ignore this aspect. On the topic of BGA’s rating system - honestly, the points do not matter in the slightest. As someone who was Top 50 consistently last season and was experiencing the +2-5 points for a win and -10-35 for a loss, I cannot stress how little it matters until you actually receive something for your placement. It’s just a bragging rights title at this stage of the game. For the last challenge, I do think that Uniques provide a weird market-space currently. The market is wild and the expense for some of the best Uniques is a major detriment to being competitive in a lot of ways. I do think there are plenty of good Uniques you can find to work in decks in the $10-30 range, but there are definitely some power outliers. But I also think that you don’t need to be buying multiple Top Tier uniques for multiple decks. If your goal is to play competitively, it’s best to pick a faction that has a Hero that you can be competitive with and find Uniques that work well with that Hero. Sure, some variety is good, but it is excessive to be searching for high-tier Uniques for every deck you want to play when you can get serviceable ones for cheaper. And there are also a handful of competitive decks that don’t need crazy Uniques to function like Treyst or Kojo, so those are solid options for people to branch out into if they would like to play multiple Heroes On the topic of those who spent $1000 on Robin Hood uniques, the phrase “a fool and their money are easily parted” has never been more relevant. You yourself bring up the lack of competitive tournaments at this point - so why drop so much money when you’re playing for virtually minimal stakes? No prizing for tournaments so far (outside of PAX U’s Icebound oversized cards) has been so exclusive that it does not have a price tag. Spending this amount of money this early in the game’s lifespan on Uniques is just foolhardy. Anyone thinking that the infinite Armorer+Boost combo needs to be banned right now too with how the metagame has developed is just not paying attention either. If Bravos infinite combo was as strong as people say it is, it would have more results. It also is completely counterintuitive to your point in the first challenge where you say that removal invalidates certain cards from seeing play. The Bravos infinite combo has clear disruption points where you can answer the first card played, or sabotage part of the combo if they’ve already done it once. That’s even ignoring the fact that it is a two-card, 5+ mana combo that has little room for redundancy since you have to be using your Unique slots on it. I think that you are too harshly grading Uniques too, you are looking at them as the 1% of the playerbase that needs them for competitive purposes. 99% of the time, a Unique that is just a side-grade or slight upgrade to a Rare is adequate for the average player. It is only the hardcore tournament grinders that would need the best of the best uniques, and why should Altered cater to the minority of their playerbase and not the majority? I have seen so many players locally open a Unique that isn’t absolutely busted but still excited and put it into their deck because it does something new. I think this is the goal that Altered has been focusing on and I think they’ve done a good job on it. As a whole, I think you have good points for the competitive side of the game but they shouldn’t be catering towards the competitive players if they are in the minority. Focusing on the playerbase and community as a whole, I’d wager that there are far more casual and locals-only players than competitive ones. It just makes the most sense for them as a business to focus on them. I’m excited to see what TBF brings as well, so hopefully it can revitalize your interest in the game!

Resourcing 3 cards it’s literally discarding half your hand. This game needs resource 2 starts (as SWU), mulligan, bo3 and sideboard. Otherwise as you say on the video you just play with what you draw, few cards, few choices, no strategy, no way to play high cost cards, and basically just wishing to top deck the card you need.

I like the idea of competitive league play for this game, but anything like traveling for prizes at a tournament is basically a non-starter unless you have absolutely busted uniques which is a pretty tall order. The removal in this game is great, but the lack of any sort of sideboard makes it pretty lackluster. I would like to see them taking approach like the game flesh and blood, where it's still a best of one game but players can sideboard before the match starts. I think that is the only way for this game to be competitively viable going forward.

Not only does it take a lot of money to get the strongest uniques, it takes a lot of time. You have to constantly be browsing every marketplace forum for what you want to be posted, and be the first to message. It stings missing out on something you've been hunting for by 1 second. The official Marketplace won't fix this.

Point 1: You are right, but I excuse this and call it set 1 syndrome. Not sure how many new card games you have jumped into recently, but this has always been the case during the first set of any new card game. This was even true for Yugioh, Yugi-Kaiba format (where we only had the cards from those two starter decks) was infamous for this. Point 2: Very true for America. Have we had anything since Gamers Guild that wasn't at a convention? Lol. Im grateful for my small locals group, but I'm expecting more events I can travel to during Trial by Frost. Point 3: You explained this perfectly, and didn't miss any points. I was already out of the Market for S-Tiers so I didnt feel bad about releasing the Strongest Unique Effects video lol, I can't afford them. Uniques won't turn me off from the game, but I do consider the rollout for Uniques a failure. They can fix these issues moving forward, but unfortunately you can't close Pandora's Box once you open it.

Yeah totally agree on the unique part. When I discovered Altered, I wanted to be all in on the competitive aspect of the game, did all online tournaments on ExAltered. But with the impossibility to get good uniques (not the time, not the money), the big tournaments like Angers or Paris, and even online on BGA made me quit the competitive scene. I now only play casually at my LGS, and I’m having a lot of fun in the local meta where no broken unique is there. I have found this is the way I will enjoy this game, playing casually. I don’t know how they will handle these broken uniques in the future, but right now the competitive meta feels unbalanced and unfair

I agree with the BGA sentiment so much. Whatever rating I get to playing meta, I'll just lose again by testing or playing something new or cool. This much to the point that I just stopped caring about rating entirely. Would love to see the system be less punishing. Tournaments on BGA are very fun, would definitely recommend playing those for that competitive itch.