With the end of the current season comes the next balance changes. We have some hotly debated changes coming up for: Fear, Poison and the Cannoness. Along with the usual adjustments to some of the highest and lowest performing bodyguards, as well as a slight buff to Psychic Link. So, without any further preamble, let’s dive straight into the traits!
Trait Changes
Fear:
The Fear rule now reads as follows:
“While this card is on the battlefield the enemy card opposite has Fear, reducing their attack stats by 20/40/60%.”
Quite a big change, and one that we think will be an improvement for a few reasons:
- From a gameplay point of view it solves the issue of ‘wasted’ fear effects. It should now be much more efficient as it mitigates waste from unfavourable deployment orders or affected cards being destroyed.
- Thematically a card does not stop being scary, it either is or it isn’t. Applying a presence effect to the whole board would have been too strong, so we felt applying it to the opposite card made most sense.
- It also helps differentiate the role of small and big cards, more on that below.
It helps different cards in different ways and gives a more specific role than just ‘fear caster’. The general role of ‘fear caster’ meant that cheaper cards benefited more from the trait previously. In this new instance, smaller cards can benefit by becoming much more potent lane blockers against cards that would have previously killed them in one or two shots, or more effective at dueling other low cost cards. On the other end, high damage cards with fear benefit from having an extra layer of protection to continue to deal more damage.
This should add a new layer to the role and strategy of Fear cards while still being beneficial to all cards with it.

Poison:
The Poison rule now reads as follows:
“When this card is deployed it gains Poison. Unpoisoned cards attacked by this card are Poisoned, losing 3/6/9 Wounds at the end of each player’s turn.”
This feels like a much better representation of what poison should do, and solves the issue of potentially wasted poison on an empty lane or cards with health low enough that the Poison makes no difference.
A few clarifications:
- Poison does not stack – this is to prevent a card being poisoned multiple times and ramping up the damage exponentially.
- If a new card with a higher trait level attacks a poisoned card, the higher level poison effect will supersede it.
Poison and attrition decks will get a nice boost with this change and it adds the tactical nuance of being able to move cards around the lanes to maximise the spread of poison. It also poses a counter chance for playing against poison as a card is only poisoned when attacked, so if you are able to eliminate a poison card before it deals damage you will not be poisoned. We feel this will add some more strategy into both ends of the poison effect.

Psychic Link:
Psychic Link’s values are changing: +7.5/15/22.5% -> +10/20/30%
The reasoning behind this change is that while psychic link is a strong ability, it was very much restrictive in the sense that to get a meaningful boost you had to realistically have two supporting psykers. This led to quite limited deck build options, and as such reduced its usefulness. By increasing the percentage, having a single supporting psyker is viable for a good boost, while maxing out on psychic link is suitably rewarded given how restrictive, or potentially difficult, achieving that build is.

Warlord Rule Change
Canoness Veridyan – Adepta Sororitas Canoness
Spirit of the Martyr: Bonus attack value changing from 100% to 75%.
The reason behind this change, while influenced by community feedback, is based on the data. The Canoness has the highest win-rate of any warlord this season and significantly outperforms both other SoE warlords in both win-rate and pick-rate. As well as her top win-rate her usage rate has also been trending upwards across the last three seasons, and any position where a card is starting to become dominant is one that needs addressing. Her warlord rule is clearly the reason for this and since the changes to Badrukk her free attack damage output is noticeably higher.

Bodyguard Changes
Here is the full list of cards receiving changes this season, in faction order:
Aeldari:
Kalistri the Huntress – Howling Banshee Exarch:
- Cost: 15 -> 12 (down 3)
- Stat Change: +15 Base Melee
Morr – Drukhari Incubi:
- Cost: 13 -> 11 (down 2)
Athel Astaan – Aeldari Corsair Reaver:
- Cost: 9 -> 7 (down 2)
Necrons:
Illuminor Szeras – Architect of Biotransference {REWORK}
- Cost: 23 -> 31 (up 8)
- Lv upgrade: +8 -> +10
- Trait: Precision Shot -> Medicae
- Level Tree: W – W – TR – W – W – R – TR – W – R – M – TR ->
W – M – TR – R – W – M – TR – W – R – M – TR
Orikan the Diviner – Sautekh Dynasty Cryptek:
- Stat Increase: +5 Base Melee
Virus Carrier – Flayed One Outcast:
- Cost: 9 -> 6 (down 3)
T’au:
Shas’o Maisos – Commander in XV86 Coldstar Battlesuit:
- Stat Increase: +13 Base Wounds
- Level Tree: Lvl 4, 7 W -> R
Kor’vesa #7700184 – Vior’la Sept DS8 Tactical Support Turret:
- Stat Increase: +6 Base Range
Kor’vesa #5518320 – Vior’la Sept MV5 Stealth Drone:
- Level Tree: Lv 13 R -> W
Servants of the Emperor:
Aradia Madellan – Primaris Psyker:
- Cost: 15 -> 13 (down 2)
- Stat Increase: +10 Base Wounds
Severina Raine – Commissar of the 11th Antari Rifles:
- Stat Increase: +10 Base Wounds, +10 Base Ranged, +10 Base Melee
Guardsmen Bergensen – Death Korps Death Rider:
- Cost: 12 -> 11 (down 1)
- Stat Increase: +10 Base Wounds
Space Marines:
Belial – Dark Angels Grand Master of the Deathwing:
- Stat Increase: +15 Base Wounds, +4 Base Melee
Chaplain Moress – Ultramarine Terminator Chaplain:
- Stat Increase: +10 Base Ranged, +10 Base Melee
Chaos:
Tzax’lan-tar – Lord of Change of Tzeentch:
- Stat Decrease: -20 Base Wounds
Horlax the Heartless – Crimson Slaughter Terminator:
- Stat Increase: +2 Base Melee
- Trait Change: Precision Shot -> Furious Charge
Mistress Azaela – Infernal Enrapturess of Slaanesh:
- Stat Change: +10 Base Wounds
Orks:
Makari – The Greatest Grot:
- Cost: 13 -> 10 (down 3)
Tyranids:
Specimen: LV-714-FM-δ – Hive Fleet Leviathan Hive Crone:
- Cost: 35 -> 38 (up 3)
Hisser – Genstealer Cults Aberrant:
- Cost: 28 -> 23 (down 5)
Mallick – Genesealer Cults Neophyte Hybrid:
- Stat Increase: +8 Base Wounds
Specimen: BH-104-IA-Θ – Hive Fleet Behemoth Genestealer:
- Cost: 6 -> 5 (down 1)
The First Curse – Purestrain Genestealer:
- Cost: 6 -> 5 (down 1)
- Stat Increase: +4 Base Melee

New Features
A final small note to say keep an eye for an upcoming post on the latest build and patch where we will be looking to add some cool new features!
These look like great changes!
Please Add more Space wolves :D.
Please add Clans with ability to play matches with friends.
If you get a card before your level, it is unlocked. Please make it so we can also earn them from all packs now that it is unlocked instead of waiting to meet the level requirement.
Please Make it so our character picture can be any card, not just the warlords. Or, at least include legendary cards.
Cool changes, but I afraid of the SoE warlords are the most weak warlords in the game. Canonnes’ win rate is very good, it is true, but I think the SoE warlords damage is very low and they have to sacrifice their bodyguards to activate their abilities.
The Tau warlords abilities are OP, they don’t have to sacrifice their (huge damager) bodyguard, in fact they heal them to full health and incrase their damages.
Compare the Tau warlords damage and health with the SoE warlords damage and healths, both of them are epics, on lvl 5-6 the Tau warlord has 60 damage and 130-150 health, the SoE warlord has max 25 damage and 120 health.
In my opinion, unnecessary to pick the SoE psychers, because they won’t get any buffs or anything else from the warlords, so I hope we get an Inquisitor (maybe legendary) psycher warlord, who don’t need to sacrifise the bodyguards, or it will be very strong.
Hi Team… big fan of 40k so love this – but boy the cost curve is huge especially if you want to compete. Not great guys.
As for the game – some features/help needed:
1) you need to put the actual damage scores your bodyguards/warlords are going to do during a buff. Unless I’m missing something you can’t tell so you have to ‘guess’ how long to buff a stat before you strike and then miss out on the damage you need by a point because you don’t know what the actual damage is going to be- that’s annoying!
2) you need to be able to sort your deck out by stats/costs or just any kind of filter would be nice!
3) I spent £110 on the iPad version, reported a problem that it was crashing all the time so downloaded on my phone and had to start all over again – poor design! Where is the user log-in and transfer of account?
4) the daily rewards of gold/plasma are to low – they should be staggered depending on your level… which leads me to;
5) you need an overall score not a season score only – that will help with item 4. 38gold on a daily isn’t going to cut it when looking at this cost curve If I have to upgrade at skill tree level 7+ (150gold a time *330 cards… wtf?!?)
6)you need more players so you have to drop the cost curve – as you will undoubtedly want to launch new cards and decks at the current speed – drop off rates will increase because the long term fan base won’t be able to keep up- hopefully your thinking about long term future of the game and the positive image of the brand – don’t be to greedy please.
6) you need daily/monthly/weekly tournaments to allow people with different deck /skill size to compete- at the moment it’s those that pay more win more – there is a theme here (😀) but you got to widen the pool of opportunity rather than simple pay more – it’s to crude. My IGN is Grey Knight, you can see what I’ve spent in a week (I love the warhammer brand) but I won’t maintain that expenditure and you will lose me…(maybe extra cards for regular buys like a coffee shop stamp – free x after 10th stamp/buy)
I look forward to the changes. There have been a lot of good improvements lately. However we really need card sorts, filters, and searches. Especially with the updates, it would be good to sort and filter cards to be able to find what you want. Please look at adding better card and deck management tools.
Thanks,
vadersson
As a new player I’m having trouble parsing “Lv 13 R -> W”
It means the stealth drone gets a boost to Wounds at level 13 instead of Ranged
I love this game, but now, after the changes, the fear is permanent, until I don’t kill the bodyguard?
I think it is unfair now, because the Space Marines deck is full of high damage and constant fear combo bodyguards and my good bodyguards are much weaker now against them. The other factions has no any, or only 1 bodyguard with fear.
Please add more fear bodyguards for the other factions.
I’m not finding the changes to Fear or Poison an improvement at my level of play (trait rank 1). I do appreciate that they’re not immediately wasted on deployment in some cases (poor Medicae) but a semi-permanent 20% attack debuff in one lane is simply not nearly as impactful as the previous effect, especially when tied to to the survival of an often-fragile card. The benefits of fear used to be in protecting your OTHER cards, not simply stalling one lane (and it’s not even very good at that, until rank 2 maybe). Additionally I find it’s significantly worse for the warlords with it, who have to ability to position themselves to get the best effect our of it (poor Glog).
The poison change sounds nice, but in practice I’ve had a hard time actually using it to poison multiple opposing cards that weren’t going to die anyways, at least without doing it for its own sake, which is likely not correct. The magus and sanctus additionally have a more difficult time even living long enough to apply it one time. I know this is part of the intended ‘counterplay’ but it makes the very fragile poison cards feel pretty bad.
Finally, I’ll say that I’m loving the adjustments to over- and under-used cards. I’m not sure Tyranids need cheaper cards, though, they need better cheap cards (or actually, better mid-range cards).
Thanks!