October 2, 2019
The release of Lightseekers’ new expansion, Shadow League, is almost here! Before we get there, we’d like to show you some of the new things you will be seeing! Along with the 186 cards you haven’t yet seen (210 if we include the 24 Battle Pack cards), we have a total of three new mechanics to talk about. One is a brand new Family, and the other two are new ways to interact with one of the biggest features of Lightseekers: Buff corners.
This post shows numbers of sets in regards to the latest rotation news. We will be showing a full breakdown of cards soon. For an overview of Rotation click here.
As the story of Lightseekers has unveiled the Shadow League and their hunt for the long lost colossi, it felt natural to start poking our fingers into the past of Tantos. The new Family, Artifacts, is themed around long lost relics of the world, typically associated with the ancient and mysterious colossi.
Similar to what we did with the Kreebal family for Uprising, we wanted to give all six Orders ways to interact with these new cards. Each Order has been given a number of Artifact cards (along with a few older cards that have been retroactively fitted into being Artifacts), and we’ve provided a pool of Unaligned cards that interact with them or benefit from them in different ways.
Thematically, we wanted Artifacts to feel like you’re actively “searching” for them; as if your Hero is going on an adventure to unearth these relics. For this reason, you will see a lot of the Artifact cards (but not exclusive Artifacts) sporting new icons in the corners: Quest objectives. These icons can be of Elements, Families, Attack cards, or Defend cards. A Buff whose active corner is such an objective does not apply its effects, but it rotates one step forward if you play a card of the associated type.
For example, if a Buff has a Kreebal symbol in the corner, it will rotate 1 step forward when you play a Kreebal card.
So let’s have a look at a few of these.
In the images above, you may have noticed the third new feature: square corners. This one is really simple. Square corners on a Buff don’t rotate by themselves. The only way to get it off that corner is through rotate effects on other cards. This, too, has been designed around the theme of Artifacts: once you uncover one, you can often keep it. However, we didn’t want to get too convoluted with converting them into items, or anything like that, so decided to go with this new type of corner.
Let’s take an example:
After entering play, the Radioactive Cipid will stay on its first corner until another card rotates it off it. There are a few old cards that can achieve this, but there are some new options as well:
Anyway, let’s get back to the subject of Artifacts! As mentioned earlier, Artifact cards will see some shared support from the pool of Unaligned cards.
One of the early design challenges with Artifacts were the Quest objectives. When having a card that relies on you playing other types of cards, sometimes multiple different types, the consistency of that deck can become a bit of an issue. As such, let’s have a look at the first (and to many, a probably most important one) Unaligned card:
Getting one of these Quest centric Artifacts into play is only the first step. We also wanted to provide a few ways to gain further benefit off them, or simply make them easier to advance.
Finally, let’s have a look at someone else who really likes Artifacts:
We hope you enjoyed some insight into what is coming with Shadow League and as always you can chat about this with us on Discord here!