0.7.22: every lord hits back

0.7.22 gives every enemy lord a blow of their own. When you hit one of the 42, they no longer answer with the small lunge they all shared: each one swings, bites, shoots or sings at whatever reached them, with a paper impact cut for that lord and an extra that comes now and then. Also in this build: a pop-up book opens the game, Uncle Jim's paper notes replace Act 0, the Fear Drinker whispers in your ear, Puptential grows into one of nine dogs, the second boss at Ascension 10 comes through the first one's backdrop, a lost run hands you back to a burnt title screen, and the Mimic's fight is seen turned over.

Every lord hits back

Until now a lord's answer to a blow was the same short lunge on every one of them. Now each lord has a wind-up, a strike and an impact cut from paper in their own colours, sized to read at the distance you play from. Each one also has an extra beat. It comes on the first strike (or the second) and every third after that, never on every blow: Sift flips a coin back over his head, the Fire Devil flicks his contract at you and it burns, a daisy springs up where Wally's water landed.

The rest of the roster has theirs too. Gorehoof drops his head and hooks both tusks up through whatever is in front of him, then stands there and snorts. Simple Ton lets his log fall flat on you and an egg hops out of the nest on his head. Blastcap throws a lit stick of dynamite end over end and lights the next fuse off his helmet candle. Warlord Ash swings his torch round and a bone flips off it into his loot sack. Haldric slams his tower shield forward, and now and then his old kettle helm rocks down over his eyes.

Bill the Bull-Blooded chops his cleaver into the ground and tosses his horns. Vitrix slaps a molten gather on you that cools to glass and shatters. Mum swings her birdcage up into you and slaps two strips of tape across you in an X, and once in a while her canary gets out and flies a lap. Haft stamps his tower shield down and drives in a pennant where the line now is, and Hew leaves an X with her sword and a knife. Perihelion comes down on you like the star it is. Wynken kicks in his sleep and a counting sheep bounds off the bed head first. Silvertongue strikes like a snake and leaves a price tag swinging. The Avatar of Winter stops you in a block of ice, and in its second body it rakes you with three hands. The Mimic throws your own punch back at you.

Every form a lord takes keeps the blow: the woken Magnate, Rex and Verdy, the Foundry Titan with his bigger fist, and both of Wally's wolves, who rake three tears down through you.

A pop-up book before the title

The game now opens on a book. The lamp comes on over the desk, the cloth-and-foil cover opens, and four spreads fold up out of the pages while a narrator reads, with each word of the caption unfolding from a ball of paper just ahead of him saying it.

On the last page the camera goes in through a cardboard stage, the title theme comes in singing "Cardboard Conquest" as the sign drops, and the page you were looking at turns out to be the title screen itself.

It plays on every launch of the desktop game. Press any key once and it offers "Press again to skip"; a second press skips it. The volume keys, media keys and the mouse wheel do not count as a press. With Reduce Motion on, it does not play.

Uncle Jim's notes instead of Act 0

Act 0, the guided march through Jim's woods, is gone, along with its two scripted fights and the menu's "First march?" question. New Game now goes to the muster, the pack draft, Jim's send-off and act 1, the same march a veteran plays.

Uncle Jim now says what needs saying, on paper. Eleven notes go up, one at a time, on the real screens as you reach the thing they are about: pick 3 packs, sign your name, 3 acts to the crown, break their warlord, drag a card to a spot, 3 energy a turn, End Turn starts the fight, pick your speed, archers behind fighters, guard every lane, flankers skip the line. Each is a sheet with a name, at most one line, and a short film of the thing being done. What a note points at gets one pale line round its shape. A note never stops the game.

"Got it" puts one note away. "No more tips" puts them all away, and Uncle Jim comes through at a run and takes the note with him. Settings has a box, "Uncle Jim's tips", to bring them all back from the start. A profile from before this version that has finished a run starts with the box off, so a veteran is not taught again. The notes are for solo play only.

A save left standing on the old Act 0 road loads as an ordinary act 1, with its deck, relics and gold.

The Fear Drinker is in your head

In his fight, and no other, a voice comments on what you just did. There is no speech bubble, no caption and no line in the battle log to prove it said anything. It is a whisper set at one ear, so on headphones it sits right beside you.

The first thing he says is "Are you sure about that?", quietly, just after one of your first few cards. After that he picks his moments: a card you hover over the field too long ("Not that one."), the same card put back ("Good. Put it back."), a turn you sit on, a turn ended with a card you could have played, a pause ("I'm still here."), a hit on your crown, one of your units dying, an emote from the wheel (Help! gets "No one can hear you."), the Commander's Heart saving you ("You should be dead."). Each line is said once a fight, and lines you have not heard yet come first. There are 91 of them.

When he is nearly dead he stops taunting and starts asking: "Stop." "Wait." "You need me." When he dies, every line he said that fight comes back at once under his last one and is cut off. If you fall instead, he has a line for that too.

The whispers follow the Effects slider, and rise a little when you turn the music up past its default so the anthem does not drown them. They are in English whatever language the game is set to.

Puptential, and the Exp keyword

Pride Matriarch has left the Wild Pack. In her place is Puptential, a 1-energy puppy with a new keyword, Exp. Every enemy one of its bodies kills puts a point on the card, not on the body, so two Puptentials on the field fill the same bar and the bar carries on into the next fight. At 20 it evolves.

Nothing evolves in the middle of a fight. A full bar turns up in the battle's spoils as Choose Evolution, three faces at the crossroads: Pyret (fire, On Strike: Burn), Puddel (water, On Strike: Charm) or Beagloom (green, Growth). Each of those carries a 40-point bar and three final forms of its own, so a run walks one branch of a nine-leaf tree. Every form costs 1 and fields one body; what changes is the body, its keywords and its rarity. Skip the pick and it comes back after the next fight, because the bar is still full.

Taking the evolution plays the egg's hatching screen with your card in place of the egg. It has a Skip plate, which takes two presses.

The Exp keyword's other card is the Adventurer, in Vanguard: a traveller in a green tunic and a long cap, 1 energy, one body. His bar buys a level instead of an animal. Every 15 kills he gains +1 attack and +1 max HP for good, the bar resets, and he does it again, as many times as the run lasts. The upgraded Puptential evolves at 15 and the upgraded Adventurer levels at 11.

Twin Thrones break through

At Ascension 10 the last act ends on two bosses in a row. The second used to arrive behind a black cover on a freshly built board. Now, when the first one falls, the camera tilts up the back wall to the first lord's backdrop card, a warm light comes through it, and the second lord's shadow stands up behind the paper and takes two heavy steps toward you while the desk dims. Then he breaks through the picture of the board you just won, and his throne is already standing behind the hole.

Your health carries straight through, and a game closed halfway still resumes into the second fight.

The ruin

The three act plates on the title screen show the country a saved run is marching through. A lost run now hands you back to a fourth one: the Verdant Reach after you lost it. The castle hill and the fir wood are burnt down to matchsticks under a black sky, and in the middle of the horizon stands a toppled gatehouse whose arch is the only pure black in the picture.

Both armies walk one road. Yours files out of your own broken gate, over the fallen bridge and into that arch, and does not come out. Theirs comes out of it and away into the burnt wood. Your column is the deck the run you just lost was carrying. It shows once, on the screen the defeat hands you to.

The Mimic, turned over

The Mimic's fight is now seen from the other side of the table: you stand on the right and the Mimic, wearing your own warlord, stands on the left. Names, numbers, dice and speech bubbles turn themselves back so they still read the right way, and the cards print their figures facing the way they now stand.

When its phase break, The Mirror Cracks, goes off, the camera pulls back to the wall. The Mimic's backdrop card glitters, silvers over behind a ragged front and is gone, and a mirror stands in its place with the whole table and the fight in it for the rest of the battle. The glass shows the board the way a mirror would, from behind, so you see the far side of each cardboard sheet.

On the stage

Wally's pieces along the back wall were dyed dark at night. Now every one is drawn a second time for the dark: two windows in three lit, the rest gone out, claw marks down the doors, and the wolf at a window if anything comes up at one. His backdrop card goes to night with the mat as the moon comes up.

The snow that piles up as the Avatar of Winter loses health used to be a soft white blur over his mat. It is cut paper now, and it buries the whole desk. Paper snowflakes flutter down first. Then hills of scalloped white card come down all over the table as small mounds, grow, and run together like the contours on a relief map, until the board is the only thing standing clear.

When Perihelion turns the gravity off, the three sheets of board under the lanes now lift off the table whole and hang apart, each throwing its own shadow on the one below, and come back down in order when he falls.

Every enemy spell used to warn you with the same recipe: a dark die-cut in its colour with hazard stripes round it. Each of the 45 spell families now has a piece of paper made for it, in its own colours, with what the spell is made of cut and laid on top, and a pale centre that swells out as the spell comes down.

Pointing at a body now shows the ground its keywords hold, as well as how far it reaches. A reach is still a ring of dashes. An aura, a taunt, a trap's circle or a death blast is one unbroken pinked line in the colour of what it does: pink for a Siren's song, orange for an Ember Hound's heat, yellow for Ball Lightning. Pack Tactics and Spirit Rites ring the bodies they count instead. When you aim a Charm spell, a paper heart now bobs over every unit it will turn, where the skull shows what it will kill.

The battle plate, in paper

The End Turn plate is a paper label now: a blue mat and a cream face laid on it slightly off square, with the word in cut-paper letters. When the word changes (End Turn, Pause, Resume, Ready) the old letters ball up and the new ones unfold. The autobattle's clock is a ribbon that pleats as it runs down, the sky dial is a window cut in the plate with a paper sun and moon behind hills, the speed row is five chips of card with the lit speed in blue, and the plate hops as your turn opens. Every other bar that fills or drains, from the run header's health to an enemy spell's cast clock and a pack's experience, is a strip of paper that folds the same way.

Winning and losing

The won run's page now shows off the crown the war is fought for: a cardboard crown on a crimson dais with a gold sunburst behind it. Its row of plaques ends in a new one, Total Victories, every campaign this profile has won. The lost run's page has a room of its own too, a dusk set with a card sun going down behind a torn ridge.

The words on paper strips now unfold from scrunched balls like every title and banner: VICTORY and DEFEAT, THE CROWN IS YOURS, a lord's fall word, Rest, Craft and Warm the Egg in the craft room, LEVEL N!, an event's verdict, and the rest. So does the Wishlist now sign on the title screen.

Events

An event's result page used to show the same picture as the page you chose on. Now 267 endings have a picture of their own: a cut-paper figure of how it turned out, standing in the event's room. The Cutpurse sits with his hands up when you catch him, the Hourglass Hermit pours sand out of his sleeve, the Mudflat Derby's horse is hauled out of the puddle, and the Mimic sits back with goblets and coins on its tongue. The event's picture has also lost the red ruled border it had round it.

Seven plain events now leave a mark on your warlord, with no change to what any row costs or pays: a ten-year beard off the Hourglass Hermit, the Peddler's Patch for a little of your face, the Old Standard on your back, hair standing on end after the Galvanist's wagon, the Gilded Corpse's helm, horns after any Devil's Wager, and one of the Pale Court's ghost-lights circling your head.

The Seer's Tripod. Breathe in the fumes and Uncle Jim's head comes up on the stool, then another, then hundreds of them, until the page is buried and you have to find the way out. It pays with a new trophy, The Seer's Stare (eyes the size of saucers whose pupils swell and shrink on their own beats), and with +5 commander attack, so your commander strikes back 5 harder for the rest of the run. It no longer mends.

• The one-armed bandit gives you three pulls a sitting, and every line that lands pays. Its symbols are printed in their own colours, and a winning line punches each symbol up off its reel onto a paper star while the case hops and a heap of whatever the line was made of spills out of a new coin tray.
• The magnet pond's fish have to be landed now: once a fish is on the clip, keep the float's window over it until the line is wound in, or it gets away.
• Guardian Follows. The kind row gives the guardian a relic and gets a different one back. The greedy row takes all your health but 1.
• The merchant's face-down card leans under the pointer like the cards beside it, and once bought you trace its outline before it turns over.
• Uncle Jim's walk-up no longer reads lore. It plays back the best moment of the act you just finished, large under his speech, and he says what it caught and who it was against.
• Five events leave the game: Ferryman's Price, Apothecary's Shelf, Lost Caravan, the Frozen Sentinel and the Mystic Spring.
• The Eclipse Lens says what it does. The heart on the top bar sits under an eclipse while you carry it, an event row that would mend you says "refused" before you pick it, a flask it would refuse is dimmed, and a refused mend says "Eclipsed".

New cards and new drawings

Inferbro joins Pyromancy. He never swings: every attack spins a Fire Tornado up beside his mark, and with nothing in reach he lobs one as far down the lane as he can. A tornado drifts through the line instead of shoving it, catches everyone close to its mark, leaves Burn 1, and burns out in about three seconds.

Primrose Path joins Heartbreakers. For 1 energy it strews a stretch of road with petals, Lovers' Lane, and every enemy standing on it gains Charm 1 a second. It Exhausts, and the upgrade covers a much wider stretch.

The Space Rover replaces the Spaceman's Sentry Gun in his starting deck: an open moon buggy with a blaster bolted to the hood. The card brings two of them for 1 energy, fast cavalry that shoot from range, with 8 HP, 2 attack and the Sentry Gun's rapid rate of fire. Upgraded, it brings four.

The Siren is drawn again from scratch as the thing she is named after: a woman's head and arms on a bird's body, playing a lyre with her eyes shut. The card now summons two Sirens for the same 3 energy, and each note lands Charm 3. Her two evolutions are the same bird-woman now: the Siren Sovereign, crowned, with both wings thrown open and a gilt kithara, and the Dirge Matron, standing in mourning lace with one hand raised to whoever is about to hit her.

The 66 figures and props that play the little gags on a lord's card and mat were still the old dark-outlined icons. They are drawn again in each card's own colours, so the Houndmaster's pack runs his yard in their own coats instead of as a black cut-out.

Packs on a Type 2 warlord

A pack's look used to be drawn once, on a man's face, and every warlord wore that same face under the pack's hat. Nine packs now have a cut of their own for a Type 2 body: a woman knight under Vanguard's helm, a legionary under Steel Legion's with a braid over her shoulder, a noir detective under Draw and Order's fedora, an engineer under the Siege Works sapper helm, a mad scientist under Mutagenesis' goggles, a huntress under the Wild Pack's wolf pelt, a dashing bard under the Heartbreakers' beret, a trapper under Trapper's Delight's fur cap and a countess for Bloodletting. Each keeps the pack's hat or helm in every one of its looks. The draft's flying parts and the pack's commander in the Compendium wear the same cut.

A pack's bare skin now takes the skin of the warlord wearing it as well. The Witch stays green under any hat, both Boxers and the Spacewoman keep their own tones, the Dragon keeps the scales on brow and cheek, the Eternal keeps the night of stars and the Mummy keeps the wraps.

The Compendium's open pack shelf is now headed by the pack's commander, and clicking him changes the look that pack brings to your next draft.

Co-op

At the end of a co-op run the recap now has the party's tally: a row for every warlord, AI ones included, with their most-played card, and a column for damage, kills, biggest hit, units, cards and spells, the winner of each printed on a slip of coloured paper. The victory conga is the whole party, every warlord leading their own army. On the crown screen the dancers stand centred, each in front of a stack of paper sheets, one for every column of the tally they took.

• The Parting Fog pays the warlord who walked alone. Every warlord picks one of four landmarks in secret; the mill removes a card, the hanged oak adds one, the chapel bell transforms one and the standing stones upgrade one, and only a warlord nobody followed is paid. The reveal is staged in fog, with each ally's name tag dropping onto their landmark, and the page has two new pictures, one for walking alone and one for walking into each other.
• A joiner's fight now counts on the joiner's own records: the run tally, the warlord writs, the highlight reel, and achievements like Matryoshka for their own Bonewalker.
• A joiner reads every word the fight floats off a body, in their own language, sees the Mimic's copies of the party's Powers, and feels a drain on their own crown.
• A joiner's commander shows its wounds on their run header, red edge flash and battle log.
• A body made by another body (a merged Amalgam, a death split, a brood, a launcher's payload) fights under its maker's seat.
• A seat that rejoins a fight in progress is caught up on the lord's phases, the Mimic's copies and the round's spell telegraph.
• The right and middle mouse buttons draw on an ally's screen in the party lens, as the left one does.
• Your first co-op game points out the spyglass with a paper slip: "Watch your allies here. You can draw on their screen too."
• Ready flags stand on the field under the commanders' names instead of over the whole HUD.
• Allies see each other's event trophies and commander attack, and an AI warlord keeps a trophy he wins.

Balance

• Gene Therapy gives +2 max HP (+4 upgraded), from +3 (+5).
• Press Gang brings +1 unit (+2 upgraded), from +2 (+3).
• The Pack Grows no longer Exhausts, and its extra bodies leave at the end of the battle.
• Trophy Belt pays on every 2nd enemy that falls.
• Trapdoor costs 0, from 2.
• Flamewave that reaches the end of its lane with a charge left hits the enemy commander for 6 and Burn 1.
• Sirens come two to a card, with Charm 3 on every note.
• Hall of Mirrors copies a body once a fight. A lone World Tree no longer ends up ringed by four copies of itself.
• Two Colossal Oozes standing on each other now combine into The Amalgam.
• Enemy spells that summon units bring them up on the lord's half of the board.
• Each act now holds exactly one fight from the weaker roster, its first.
• No-Quarter Colors says the lifesteal it gives, 20%. It printed 30%.

Small things

• A boss break that changes the arena (the Magnate's kiln, Verdy's meadow, the Mimic's mirror, Winter's fortress) plays its cards after the change instead of over it.
• The battle log writes what the lord's spells did, under each cast.
• No idea stands on two lords' stages: each has its own geese, belfry, airship and the rest.
• The backdrop card is a plain print again; the felt grain stays on the mat and the pieces.
• Burning ground shows its numbers on the bodies it burns.
• The blood moon goes to its place in one move instead of rewinding the night.
• The crane over the Elder Treant's sky flies with the field instead of hanging along the top of the screen.
• A picked card's outline goes all the way round it, in the hand and in the deck picker.
• A trophy's name hangs on a blue ribbon in cut-paper letters.
• What the Eternal conjures in the void is solid as it arrives, and the void's hourglass and Two Cards are solid paper.
• The Compendium's centre crease runs under what lies on the page.
• The Vault and Trinket Fancier count the relics the Compendium lists, and a run's relics all make it into the book.
• An achievement's pop dances the warlord who earned it.
• Settings' Tooltip delay, Sound and Music sliders carry a pencil mark where they ship.
• Uncle Jim's card loses the round token in the corner of its picture.
• On the act 1 title plate, columns crossing the two bridges walk behind the parapet, and the castle's pennants are planted paper.

In the browser

The browser version now says what it is. The first time you reach the title screen in a browser, a letter explains that the download is free and is the better way to play, with co-op, the whole soundtrack, highlight clips and the full lighting and effects, and offers to go fullscreen. After it burns, the menu keeps two gold links: Get the download, and Toggle fullscreen, which now works on the first press.

The pop-up book intro and the Fear Drinker's whispers are in the downloadable game only.

This post went out to players on Steam and itch.io on 10 October 2026, and is kept here. Comments and questions are read on either of those, in the Discord, or through the quill in game.