0.7.43: the enemy lords play from their own decks

29 October 2026 Version 0.7.43 10 min read

The Lost Witch's turn on her pink felt board: her Rime Snap card held up big over a clump of the player's green slimes, a pink ribbon of hearts running from her staff to them beside a pale blue spiked line, two black cat Hex Familiars and a small purple Storm Apprentice on her roads, and her nameplate at 56 of 56 health.

0.7.43 is out on Steam, the itch.io downloads, the browser version and the Android download, and this post covers 0.7.42 as well, which went out on 28 October without one. The enemy lords now play from decks of their own: every turn a lord draws a hand from its own cards and plays what its energy buys, picked for the board in front of it, so meeting the same lord twice no longer means playing the same fight twice. A player's first march is now a shorter, directed act 1, laid out to reach Grix, the Mimic, a minigame and Wally in about a quarter of an hour, and ends on a look at what is further up the road. The lord now plays his spells on his own turn instead of at the start of yours. The Lost Witch has a new back-line unit, the Storm Apprentice, and no longer opens by charming your commander. At the Champions table, the builds your friends finish come to your shelf by themselves.

The enemy lords play from their own decks

Until now every lord played a script. Each round of it named the cards the lord would buy and the turns it would cast on. A look at the board could swap one squad for an answer to yours, but the shape of the fight was fixed, so a lord you met twice played the same fight twice.

Now each lord plays out of a deck, the way you do. The deck is built from the lord's own cards: twelve for an ordinary lord, fourteen for an elite and sixteen for a boss, each card in it about as often as the lord used to play it. Every turn the lord draws a hand of five, one more for each energy above four, and plays the best set of cards its energy will buy, judged on the board as it stands. What it does not play goes to its discard pile, as yours does.

A spell is weighed by what it would catch. A lord holding a blast plays it into a crowd of your units, and holds off while there is nothing under it worth hitting.
An army short of shooters values them more. A lord with a line of bodies already down sends its archers and spitters in behind it, and one with only shooters standing puts a line in front of them.
A lord with several squads of one unit already marching leans toward its other cards, so its army comes out mixed.
Each of the two Masked Challengers plays its own hand and marches its units down its own roads.

A lord has exactly the energy it had before, and no new cards, bonuses or relics come with the deck. Over six test fights each, Grix the Goblin and the Pale Rider opened in six different ways and the Fire Devil in five, where the old fixed turns gave each of them two.

The Lost Witch's turn on her pink felt board, with her hand played out: two black cat Hex Familiars on her roads, a small purple Storm Apprentice at her feet, and her Rime Snap card held up big over a clump of the player's green slimes where her spells land. A pink ribbon of hearts runs from the witch's staff to the slimes and a pale blue spiked line runs beside it. Under her nameplate, at 56 of 56 health, the two cards she played last stand on the board

A first march, directed

A player's first march on a new profile is now a shorter act 1, laid out so the game shows what it has early. It is still a real run: the cards, the choices and the fights are real, and the fights can be lost. Every later march is as it was, and so are acts 2 and 3 of the first one.

New Game goes straight to the pack draft as the King, with his own banner and no Ascension. Back on the draft returns to the title.
Act 1 is seven rows instead of ten, and the chart's opening pan always starts on Wally, the boss at the top.
The first fight is always Grix the Goblin, and he arrives on the entrance page the elites and bosses get, with a leap.
The first turn shows two notes, Break their warlord and Drag a card to a spot. The note about 3 energy a turn waits for the start of the second turn, when the energy comes back.
The next row is the Mimic, a treasure chest with teeth, which you can fight, feed or run from.
After it every node is a different minigame: Trolls' Long Rope, Knucklebones with a Goblin, The Mason's Wager and The Sealed Grove.
Then a fight or Simple Ton as an elite, a treasure chest that does not bite, a campfire or a shop, and Wally.

Grix the Goblin's entrance page: a green goblin in a gold crown and a red ermine cape, a bone raised in one fist and the other fist clenched, landing in a spotlight in front of his goblin village with a balloon behind him, glass shards flying where he lands, and his name on a wooden plank nameplate tied with bones

After Wally, won or lost, the first march stops for a short look up the road. The desk dims, a slip of paper unfolds reading "Still ahead", and three mounted prints of the game's own footage cut one to the next, each under the lord's painted nameplate: the Brass Colossus cracking the glass in act 2, Rex Mortifer dropping the field into the underworld in act 3, and the long zoom out to the galaxy, tagged "Zoom out in any fight". The music drops as the Colossus's claw hits the glass. Any press skips it after the first second, and it plays once per profile.

The Still ahead page: a cut-paper slip reading Still ahead over a mounted print tagged Act 2. In the print, the Brass Colossus's huge brass hand reaches out of the board at the viewer, its fingertips cracking the glass in starbursts, with the board of soldiers and the blueprint sea behind it, and the lord's brass nameplate, The Brass Colossus, on the print's corner

The lord's spells come on his turn

A lord's spells used to be placed and shown at the start of your turn, after "Your Turn" had gone up, so his card arrived in the middle of yours. They now go down on his own turn, right after his muster, and anything he casts on the spot lands before your turn opens.

This also fixes a fight that could stick for good. If a lord's card was shown big for the first time while Pact of Unknowing was asking you to pick a card to exhaust, neither could be closed. A card shown big can now be put away over that pick.

When an enemy spell on a timer is shown big, its countdown sits over the card, the same "3.5s" its telegraph carries.
An enemy card shown big for the first time no longer puts up its keyword tips on its own. They come up when you point at the card, so they stop covering the field.

The Lost Witch and her Storm Apprentice

The Lost Witch could open a fight by dropping Chain Lightning and Beguile on your commander before you had put anything on the board. Her charm no longer aims at your commander. On a bare board she holds her spells over herself on a clock and aims them at what you summon, and she spends Beguile on units it can turn.

Her army was two conjurations that both walk up and fight. She now has a back line: the Storm Apprentice, a pupil who throws lightning from her open hands. A strip of cut paper in the witch's storm ink strikes from her palms to her mark and hops on to a second unit. The witch puts a front-line body down first and the Apprentice behind it.

Champions: your friends' builds arrive on their own

The Champions table now fetches the builds your friends have finished. Anyone you have marched with in co-op, anyone whose build code you have taken, and anyone whose council code you type into Add is followed, and their newest builds are filed on their own tab when the game starts and when the table opens. A friend's build you removed stays removed. When builds arrive while the table is open, the tabs refresh and say whose they are. Our privacy page at pbandgames.com/privacy says what the relay sees and how long it keeps it.

A build also brings its gold now. The purse a march ended with is kept with the build and opens that seat's purse at the table, on either side, so its Sellswords hire out of it and the Dragon's Hoard counts it. A build saved before this update brings none.

Also in this update

Spiked Barricade has Spearwall 4 alongside its Thorns 4, so a unit that charges into it loses its Charge bonus and takes damage back, and a Flanker that strikes it takes damage back too.
The cards a Power hands you each turn (from Incubation, Unburied Cemetery, Marginalia and Pandora's Boon) now Exhaust when played, and Exhaust at the end of the turn if they are still in your hand. The card face and the keyword panel say so.
The enemy commanders' sparks, spores and wisps now come off something drawn on them, where they used to drift round the face as a haze of scraps: the torch, the hot iron in the tongs, the witch-fire, the Fire Devil's crest, the Myconid's palm, the soul in the Lich King's hand. The Treant drops leaves from his canopy, green or autumn once he wakes, and cut gold stars stream up the Fallen Star's tail. Each one is solid card that pops out and shrinks away.
Verdy B. Queen wears a garland of twelve petals round her chest in the three pinks of her tulip skirt, with a wave running round it that turns each petal over as it passes.

Verdy B. Queen close up on her board: a green-skinned queen with a beehive bun, bee antennae and a wreath of pink flowers, in a pink tulip skirt over a honey-striped base. Cut-paper petals in three pinks ride a ring around her chest, some across her bodice, some out past her arms and some behind her shoulders, each tipped a different way as the wave runs round, under her health bar at 56 of 56

A card you made at the Tinker's Workshop now always makes your highlight reel and run recap: its drawing going down line by line on the desk's paper, then a close camera on its squad marching to its first clash.

The victory recap after a short march as the Queen, its Moments of the March strip open on a crayon drawing taped to a sheet of paper on brown card: a stick-figure king with a yellow crown, a red body, a blue shield and a grey sword, labelled Sir Scribbles: drawn in crayon. Along the bottom, the strip's thumbnails run from the whole march and the drawing to Sir Scribbles takes the field, Chain Reaction and the finisher on the Elder Treant

The gift box that unlocks a warlord sheds its paper once 40% of it is torn away, about ten strips where it took more than twenty. Its loose ribbon lies on the table in satin loops.

The gift box on a dark wooden floor at the moment its paper gives way: the dark green wrapping printed with ships, anchors and treasure chests is peeling off in big torn sheets, falling around the box and showing the plain card box and the lid's printed ship scene underneath, with the red satin ribbon in loops on the floor and the warlord's luggage tag beside it

In a last blow, the dust kicked up where a figure lands draws behind the figures, not over their legs.
On a phone, a finger dragged slowly through a neighbouring card on its way to the field no longer switches to it. Only a finger resting still on a card for a second takes it.
A card played while the feedback form is sliding away is played, and F2 opens a fresh form.
In the browser version, the bosses are crisp on their entrance pages and in their phase breaks, where they had stair-stepped edges.

This post went out to players on Steam and itch.io on 29 October 2026, and is kept here. Comments and questions are read on either of those, in the Discord, or through the quill in game.