The new season will start on Monday, October 28th.

Greetings, citizens, 

As Halloween Season kicks off, it’s time to let the Xenos—and especially the Orks—take centre stage! Get ready this Halloween Season for a wide range of Seasonal Ork buffs, a Trait buff, and two Warlord buffs.

Let’s get stuck in:

As the only Psionic Blaster, Ed Zappa has a lot of potential for good play, but doesn’t quite fit in a lot of decks to get that value, outside of perhaps Zagstrukk. By increasing his cost a bit, we’ve made him considerably more bulky, and given a good bump in damage output, which should make him much more viable, for a bit more cost, and see more use other than a secondary tech piece.

Medicae is quite a premium resource for the Orks, and with a number of the Warlord mechanics relying on Wounds totals (either directly or through attrition), it seems a bit harsh to keep that tool at a significantly higher bar than other factions. A small change, but with the range of Ork options, it could make a meaningful difference.

On theme we’re getting into the buggies! As the melee buggy, the Scrapjet often got sidelined, so a significant melee increase with a bit more Wounds should make both his Furious Charge and all-round utility much more appealing.

A more notorious buggy, the Squigbuggy was hit pretty heavily with nerfs in the Badrukk heyday, so it’s long overdue to revert that nerf, and let the most chaotic of the buggies out of the Mek Workshop!

The grot guns don’t lack for damage but are often glass cannons. Although the Mek’s haven’t made a glass cannon yet, they might be writing it down now… Before that inevitable disaster, we were bulking up the Smasha Gun a bit to be made of something a bit more substantial and Orky. Like scrap.

One of the earliest big cards for Orks, the Meka Dread has never found a consistent home. While the Shield and BGH is potentially a potent combo, it never felt like it justified the cost, so were supa-chargin’ both its weapons for maximum krumpin’.

Talking of big cards, Da Giga-Blasta doesn’t quite match up point for point with a number of other faction LoWs, and as we’ve seen with some other price drops for other factions’ LoW, we’re doing the same here.

On the same point as Hacksore, we’re doing more to make the Ork Medicae cards a bit more appealing. While the Painboss is the more expensive of the two mid-range Medicaes, stat for stat, they’re pretty identical, so we’re closing the points gap slightly, and making him a more prominent damage dealer to differentiate.

A newer Ork card, which is missing a bit of punch, and a Warboss can’t go around without being dead killy. So his significant attack increases, and an upcoming change below should sort that right out!

Moving on to the wider card pool, we’ve got a couple of changes to most other factions, most notably some big buffs for the Space Marine Primarchs, and a buff to Anti-Infantry!

When this card attacks a card with the Keyword Infantry, all attacks deal an additional 30/45/60/75  -> 40/60/80/100% damage.

Anti-Infantry has had a lukewarm reception throughout its recent history, so pumping up those numbers should make it feel much more impactful. The main, and fair criticism, is that compared to BGH, when targeting a 40pt+ card, it’s going to have a good amount of Wounds to get through, and almost certainly a target you want to take down. And while there are far more Infantry cards, often they’re low-priority targets or would be removed in 1 or 2 turns anyway. So this damage increase should hopefully create one-turn removals of the lower cards much more consistently, and be particularly valuable on mid-cost cards, which are able to clear lanes as effectively as bigger cards when facing the right target.

Well stated to fill a position in the Necron roster, that Stalker was likely asking a bit much for those stats, so is being brought down in cost.

While well-rounded attack cards are pretty valuable in every faction, Necrons prefer to lean more heavily toward one attack type. This left the Sentinel in an awkward spot for its cost, so tipping its damage output more heavily in favour of ranged should help.

Maelin has good damage output and utility with her Melee Scout, but as with a lot of the Sisters is on the more fragile side. Given the Zephyrim are one of the more elite of the Orders, giving her a decent chunk more wounds seems fair.

While adding more health to cheaper regen cards may seem like the more sensible option, there’s a limit to how much that can actually help in that price range. So, a more effective damage output makes more sense, and additional wounds can easily come by in thematic Mechanicus decks.

Both Primarchs sit at the lowest win rate for Ranked and have done so for some time. And while the 200pt games are not their real space to shine, we can see that other Supreme Commanders are having decent success at 200pts, so both are getting significant increases to their base stats. Guilliman’s balance damage output is now incredibly impactful, and the Lion was always quite fragile for a Supreme Commander, and he is having a serious increase in Wounds, which also synergises well with his Warlord Rule. 

Cheap Fear is always handy, but when you don’t do any damage at the same time, the card just becomes a stall piece, and with a lot of better stalling options, the Fellgor Deathknell just wasn’t doing the job. A good damage increase will help put that right.

Chaos Range is getting an increased amount of support with balance changes and new releases, and the core to that is having good baseline options to include. Kraarouth should now nicely fill that role with a meaningful Ranged attack coupled with Precision Shot.

Similar to the Primarchs we’ve got a paired buff here! The Norns are priced as LoW but not quite at that level. Add to that the number of older LoWs getting price drops, their cost was all the more jarring. They’re both getting significantly cheaper to field, and the Assimilator, in particular, should be much easier to slot into decks!

And that rounds off this Season’s changes. Last one to next Season isn’t painted red!

Cards added to the general pool:

T’au

Servants of the Emperor

Orks

Chaos

Leagues of Votann