0.5.63: Forbidden Lore, and one look for the whole game

Written while the game was still called Warlords. It is Cardboard Conquest now, and the same game: that post explains the change.

This is the biggest visual pass the game has had. Every screen was rebuilt into one design language, four of the five warlords stopped being costumes and became rules, and the Infernal Legion is gone. In its place is Forbidden Lore, a pack about reading things you should not.

Forbidden Lore replaces the Infernal Legion

• The devils are gone and the pack is about knowledge now. Nineteen cards, all new names and new art, in abyssal teal instead of hellfire. The Exhaust mechanic stayed, because burning a page you can never read again is what it was always describing.
• The starter summons four Initiates, and each one hands you a Decay. Decay costs nothing and exhausts, so the deck feeds its own triggers from the first deploy instead of waiting to draw the right card.
• The Author is the pack's crown jewel, unlocked at level 3. It arrives with three Decay already in your hand and turns every page you burn into both attack and a body.
• Two new evolution paths. Deep Study grows the thing that read the page. Unravelling breaks the thing it was read to.
• The Archdevil and the Imp went to Pyromancy, where the fire actually lives. Blood Summon went to Final Rites and was repainted for it.

A new keyword: Fork

• Fork Chain branches instead of bouncing. A normal Chain hops from body to body. Fork splits in two at every body it reaches, so it goes one, then two, then four, spreading through a crowd as a tree you can watch travel.
• The Tinderling brings it to Pyromancy, summoning two ranged sprites with On Strike: Burn 1. Upgraded, it forks twice as deep.
• Slow Burn is a new Pyromancy power: your Burn lasts twice as long on enemies, and it stacks. Every ember in the pack doubles in value without a single card changing its printed number.

One design language, on every screen

• Sable lacquer, cut corners, and gold that means you can touch it. The interface used to be four visual languages depending on where you were standing. It is one now, from the hero plate to the End Turn inlay.
• The Compendium stopped being its own game. It shelves packs the way playtesters actually pick them, evolutions sit with their pack, and pack blurbs say what the pack does.
• Card stat badges are struck, not whittled. A garnet for health, a lit weapon for attack, and a big number still fits inside its badge.
• Gold is a coin now rather than a diamond, and a gold cost reads as a cost.

The lord does not just die

• A finishing move. The killing blow is its own moment, filmed against the death it causes.
• The last screen is a coronation, and he dances through it.
• A cast spell stands over your lord until you have answered it, and every enemy spell telegraphs in its own language.
• The crown volley replaces every direct-damage pressure rail. Each lord throws something different, and you can see what is flying and what it carries.

The chest is a chest

• It opens. The lid strains against its lock, gives, and tips back, and the loot comes up out of it on real light rather than flat shapes. The whole prop is drawn in the game's own hand instead of being a picture set on top of the room.
• Your loot survives a save. Quitting to the menu and continuing used to deal you a different three relics. It does not any more.
• A relic you have already been offered will not come back for the rest of the run, from a chest or a shop.

The fight

• Chain hits full damage on every jump, and you can watch it travel.
• The battlefield is lit: one sun, sky-coloured shade, and a pool to fight in.
• The top bar gets out of the way, and the map icon rides it properly instead of hovering above the fight on its own layer.
• Counterattack split into Retaliate and Thorns, which were always two different rules wearing one name. Free Placement is Free Deploy. Ritual is Spectral Call. Cloak and Dagger is Rogue's Gambit, with a new crest.
• Every upgrade that rewords a card now says so in green, so you can see what you bought.
• The King stopped being immortal.

Also

• Four warlords stop being costumes. Each one's signature relic rewrites a rule of the game rather than handing out a number. The King is the baseline the others bend.
• The Mimic's mirror cracks when it turns, and every Mimic card shows your reflection rather than a chest.
• The medic's tonic is a choice of three, dealt one at a time. Coup de Grace sweeps the line. The Wildcard Egg's upgrade lays a second egg.
• Uncle Jim stops wearing his squirrels' sprite, and mends three quarters of your wounds rather than filling you to three quarters.
• Damage numbers stop hiding behind the status word they arrive with.
• The run counter says March instead of Day.

What's next

Forbidden Lore is brand new and has not had a week of real runs behind it yet. If the Exhaust engine feels like it stalls, or The Author feels like it never arrives, the in-game feedback button is the fastest way to say so. Most of the list above started as a report.

This post went out to players on Steam and itch.io on 7 August 2026, and is kept here. Comments and questions are read on either of those, or through the quill in game.