0.7.12: every unit reprinted in flat paper

Every unit in the game has been printed again. The kraft edge is gone, and so are the dark outlines. Units, commanders, spell icons, card chips and the props on the table all use the look the card backdrops already had: flat printed card, lit by the desk lamp from the upper right, with a pale rim on the lit side and a soft shadow falling down and to the left.

This post covers everything since 0.7.9, because 0.7.10 and 0.7.11 went out without one. The flat paper look comes first, then the new screen transitions, then what the bosses do now, and a long list after that.

Flat paper

Here is the same fight twice, frozen on the same turn. The top half is 0.7.11 and the bottom half is 0.7.12.

The old units were cut out of cardboard with a brown kraft band round every figure and a dark ink line inside it. At the size a unit stands on the board, that band and the line were most of what you saw. Without them the colours carry the figure, and you can tell units apart across a crowded lane.

Closer in, the Avatar of Winter's host and the Brass Colossus's foundry crew:

All 1,238 unit and commander drawings were printed again, so every pack looks different. The King's Recruit, Archer and Spearman were drawn again by hand for the new look, and they are the first three below.

Every warlord's starter:

The big ones, where the kraft band used to eat the most detail:

And the other side of the table:

A few units were redrawn while this was going on, because losing the outline showed what was wrong with them. The Blue Jay was a blue ball with an orange wedge for a beak. It is a real jay now, with a swept crest, a white face in a black necklace and barred wings, sitting on a twig. The Beatdown Cop's nose read as two lumps once its outline went, so he has one broken boxer's nose. The second body types of the Gunslinger, the Boxer and the Viking got stronger arms.

Commanders

Your warlord and every enemy commander got the same treatment, rig piece by rig piece, including the Gilded and Ascendant looks.

The enemy commander icons on the map, the card stamps and the Compendium had drifted away from the commanders you actually fight. They are now cut from each lord's real rig, standing at rest, so the face on the map is the face across the board.

Spells, powers and card faces

All 733 spell and power icons were printed again in the same style. The card face's chips (cost, attack, health, squad size, rarity) and the pack crests lost their keylines too.

Paper transitions

When you win, the spoils screen crumples into a ball and is thrown off the desk, and the chart is already underneath.

Picking a node on the chart drops the chart back like a drawbridge, and the desk round it pleats away to show where you are going.

A shop or an event shuts like a book when you leave it.

Buying something burns it off the shelf: the relic's plate and its price tag burn away around the gem, and the gem flies up to your bar.

Losing is a flat paper card that drops in over both commanders and tears through the middle. It waits for a click, and then the whole battlefield crumples into the run summary.

A card that gets exhausted from your hand burns up like a letter in its own slot, and the fan closes once the fire is out.

A newly unlocked card is traced into being: a black silhouette, then its outline drawn in light, then the picture burns into colour and the burn spreads across the card.

Uncle Jim's panels arrive as a crumpled paper ball and unfold, and his screens leave in character. His send-off peels off the desk like a sticker, and when he is wearing the wizard hat, his check-in shatters into sparkling shards.

The boot card gets bitten away, and then the whole mat falls forward onto the title screen.

Players who came back after their first ten minutes get a thank-you letter now, and every letter in the game burns when you close it.

Bosses

When the Magma Magnate's kiln opens, the box burns. Once his last banner closes, the whole back wall catches at his kiln and burns away like a letter held over a candle. Behind it is his magma cavern, with lava running in flat paper bands and a gallery of his demons on the ledges, watching. The camera pulls all the way out before the wall catches so you see all of it.

The Avatar of Winter's arena is a snow globe. Snow piles up around the lane board as he loses health, and when he plays The Long Dark he shakes it: a gusting blizzard, frost growing in over the glass, the drifts icing over. His phase slam cracks the glacier down his own roads.

When the Brass Colossus stands up his foundry, the lights brown out. The room sags, stutters, sags browner and then catches, with a zap and an arc across the columns of the hall.

Rex Mortifer keeps a gallery of the dead. Every fighter you lose comes back as a translucent ghost, drifts off its body to a spot along the verge and stays there, breathing in and out of sight. The crowd thickens over the fight until the oldest start to fade out for the newcomers.

Wally's howl rolls down his own roads now. Every boss slam in the game hits the ground along that boss's lanes, 24 of them, each with its own marks, where they all used to share one shock ring.

Enemy plays are shown to you now. Each card comes up full size, aims, and is filed away, and a boss's phase beats play as cards the same way. Click, or press A, to skip.

The fly-over at the start of a boss fight visits every enemy commander, so when you fight two, the second one gets to taunt too.

The finishers were cleaned up so nothing blinks into the shot. Props get carried in, picked up or dropped in, and the snuffer lid comes down over the whole Fire Devil.

Every warlord has a second body

There is a switch on the muster wheel now that turns every warlord over to a second body type, drawn in the same style as the first. The King's other cut is the Queen, and the game calls her that everywhere her name appears: the muster sign, the Compendium, the lobby, the draft and the battle plates. Her title and blurb are translated in all ten languages. The Wasting's warlord got redrawn along the way as a plague herald with one censer, instead of a figure on two crutches.

Reading the fight

• Aiming a spell puts a skull over every unit it will certainly kill. It checks armor, shields, Fragile and Vulnerable the same way the hit does, and shows nothing when the kill is not certain (Undying, Invulnerable, a coin flip).
• Enemy summon cards hold for 1.6 seconds so you can read them, and the same card bought twice in a turn shows once, with the combined cost and bodies.
• Before you drop a unit, its outline stands where it will land and walks its lane.
• While you carry a card, the relics and powers it will set off breathe.
• Hovering a card in your hand no longer pops tips and range rings up on the field underneath it.
• Every enemy lord aims with his own reticle.

New cards and relics

• Sergeant's Dice Cup, a relic holding five card-reward rerolls. A Reroll plate sits beside Skip and turns each offer over in turn.
• Dragon Egg hatches one of eight coloured Dragons, each with its own On Strike.
• Sharpening Strap: the first summon each round gives a random unit +2 attack.

Sound

Summons land with a dry cardboard thwack and every spell card casts with a card flick, both recorded, each in several takes so two in a row never match. Melee hits come from recordings too. Metal deaths, growth spells and transform spells have new sounds, and cards that used to play two sounds on one frame now play one.

Balance

• Crown volleys: every unit on your commander's home ground blocks a shot, and the salvo flies the moment your turn ends.
• Beatdown Cop: 18 HP, 6 damage (was 13 and 4).
• Magma Magnate's crew hit for 1: Kiln Wretch attack 4 to 1, Ladle Runner 2 to 1. Both still set you Burning. Fire Front is Burn 1 and nothing else. Slag Brute's When Struck is Thorns 1 instead of Burn 1.
• Avatar of Winter: The Long Dark hits the whole board for 3 instead of 8, and no longer enrages him.
• Rex Mortifer's Bonewalker lays 2 skeletons instead of 4, and the Revenant has 10 HP.
• Offering costs 1 energy per soul instead of a card. Its upgrade widens the circle.
• Mystery Egg costs 1. Upgraded, it costs 2 and lays 4 eggs.
• Funerary Wraps: the Mummy's units deal 1 less damage (minimum 1), instead of half.
• Chaos Cocktail's Earthquake wedge splits only the enemy's army now.
• An upgraded Slime King bursts into 5 upgraded Slimes.
• Instar molts every 7 seconds, and every 5 when upgraded.
• Thirteen enemies moved on the 2026-09-16 telemetry round: the Bloodhorn hounds and bull ease off, act 2 and 3 fights get their length back, and Winter loses 13 HP.

Fixes

• A huge crowd can no longer drag the game down to 5 frames a second. Past a limit the fight plays in slow motion instead, and crowded boards draw far less than they did.
• Flankers no longer stack into one sprite.
• Night Vigilante stays in the lane it blinked into.
• A Cauldron's second Chaos Cocktail waits for the first wheel to stop.
• The Shattered Icon's Saint keeps the grudge the sexton warns you about.
• Auto End Turn waits for summoned bodies to land, then ends faster.
• Press-any-key screens ignore Shift, Ctrl, Alt, the Windows key and the lock keys.
• The game no longer asks for an itch rating.

This post went out to players on Steam and itch.io on 25 September 2026, and is kept here. Comments and questions are read on either of those, or through the quill in game.