Greetings, citizens!
Coming off the action-packed Anniversary season, we’re now diving into Votann Season—another exciting chapter! With the second wave of miniatures for the game’s newest faction, we’re seeing a surge of fresh content, including 10 new cards (featuring a brand-new Warlord!) this season.
To go alongside the miniature release, we’re also introducing the much-requested Votann Clan dedication. Votann fans, there’s plenty here to sink your teeth into!
Ranked Balance Update
We’re making a small but important tweak to Ranked. Specifically, we’re adjusting the maximum trophy loss and minimum trophy gain values. Right now, losing to a lower-trophy opponent can feel overly punishing, especially in the final arenas where progression is already tough. This can lead to frustrating back-and-forth grinding with little overall progress.
Here are the changes:
- Maximum trophy loss: -75 → -60
- Minimum trophy gain: +45 → +40
This narrows the gap between loss and gain from 30 to 20 net trophies. On average, this reduces the penalty of losses by more than 20%, making high-end battles more rewarding where they matter most.
Seasonal Balance Changes
Following our updated formula, this season brings buffs for three Warlords and one nerf:
Ûthar the Destined – High Kâhl of the Greater Thurian League
Position: 66th | Winrate: 67.9% | Playrate: 0.4%
Eye of the Ancestors: Whenever an enemy card destroys a friendly card, it gains a Judgement Token. For each Judgement Token a card has, it loses a minimum of [15% → 20%] of its starting Wounds when damaged by an attack. A card may have up to 3 Judgement Tokens.
With Votann in the spotlight, it’s a great time to give Ûthar a boost. Rather than adding more tokens (which rarely reach three in time to matter), we’ve increased the “true damage” per token. This small change is impactful: with two tokens you’ll now deal nearly the same damage as three tokens previously, and three tokens will cut opponents down by over half their health.
The Corpse Lord – Sautekh Dynasty Overlord
Position: 65th | Winrate: 69.6% | Playrate: 0.5%
Repair Protocols: When one of your friendly cards Readies, they gain [+25 → +40] Wounds.
The Necron underdog is back for another round of support. When we raised the bonus from +15 to +25, the Corpse Lord’s popularity grew, but since then he’s slipped again. Is +40 a lot? Sure. Will it break the game? Almost certainly not. This change should allow players to push Wounds into some wild numbers—and if it ever gets out of hand, we can scale it back. For now, it’s about having fun.
Arcadian Leontus – Lord Commander Solar
Position: 64th | Winrate: 74.1% | Playrate: 0.1%
The Lord Solar: At the start of your turn, the card with the highest attack gains [+60% → +75%] Melee, and the card with the highest Ranged attack gains [+60% → +75%] Ranged until your next turn.
Leontus is getting another tune-up, and while it might be slightly overtuned, the seasonal rotation makes this less risky. In the long term, we’d like to adjust his rule so the buff always affects the highest attack card dynamically, improving synergy with traits like Furious Charge and Precision Shot. For now, this increase should provide a meaningful bump in performance.
Inquisitor Greyfax – Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus
Position: 2nd | Winrate: 86.9% | Playrate: 6.2%
Change: +5 Cost
Yes, it’s Greyfax again! She’s had several adjustments over time, but she consistently sits near the top of the rankings—rarely outside the Top 5. Her rule feels balanced where it is, so we’re tackling her deck power from another angle by raising her cost.
Sharp-eyed readers may notice she’s second in winrate, not first. That top spot still belongs to Cawl, though he’s dipped by about 1% since last season’s nerfs. We’d like to give that change time to settle before hitting him again, but if Cawl remains on top next season, expect another adjustment.
With the Warlord changes done, lets have a quick look at the Votann bodyguard changes:
Votann
Ynnôk the Strong – Greater Thurian League Hearthkyn Warrior
+10 Wounds
Vynn the Lucky – Greater Thurian League Hearthkyn Warrior
+10 Range
Yvâ Blôhdfyr – Greater Thurian League Beserk
+10 Wounds
Svekh Thȗrkann – Greater Thurain League Kâhl
+10 Wounds
+10 Range
+ 5 Melee
Hâk Strykk – Greater Thurian League Einhyr Champion
-2 Cost
Kîmm Stûrmm – Greater Thurian League Hernkyn Pioneer
+ 10 Range
And finally lets look at the cards added to the general pool! There’s a big batch of 24 cards this season!
Cards added to the general pool:
Aeldari
Torc the Whisper of Death
Dark Reaper Aspect Warrior
Lann Sharnál
Swooping Hawk Aspect Warrior
Asurmen
Phoenix Lord of the Dire Avengers
Tamishar Rillietar
Warp Spider Aspect Warrior
Fyrram the Unyielding Fire
Fire Dragon Exarch Aspect Warrior
Phyllistra Dystari
Warp Spider Exarch Aspect Warrior
Fuegan
Phoenix Lord of the Fire Dragons
Ethriliac
Ur-ghul
Vypus
Sslyth
Sykil
Lhamaean
Kraxxith
Drukhari Medusae
Shellaia Shadowstep
Craftworld Saim-Hann Ranger
Kinshara
Wave Serpent
Fian Bhanlhar
Dire Avengers Exarch Aspect Warrior
Senn Rhianthari
Storm Guardian
Servants of the Emperor
Trooper Dovorr
Death Korps Medic
Trooper Karis
Death Korps Gunner
Denes-034
Death Korps Command Squad Servo Skulls
Trooper Jent
Death Korps Heavy Weapon Support
Trooper Pajk
Death Korps Command Squad Standard Bearer
Lord Commissar Garric
Death Korps Lord Commissar
Lord Marshal Dreir
Death Korps Lord Marshal
Tyranids
Biosigns Terminated
Genestealer
Inquisitor Greyfax Is always the same everybody is playing with here and 5 point of cost is insignificant it doesn’t do much change to here skill. Mmmm and the token guy… the problem with Votann is very slow and bored.
I mostly use Corpse Lord so I’m gonna enjoy this upgrade😁.
Definitely been needing a reason to delve more into Votann.
I really like those new changes.
Sincerly: the change in the point assignment is a bad new. I don’t care if I lose 60 or 75 beacuse even at high rank you win mostly of the time. But this game is already a huge time drainer: the problem is in the matching system. The previous month (with 30% buff) I hit 13k arena points, I stopped there not because I couldn’t hit an higher rank, but because I had no time to play more games.
From 4k to 13k I always scored not more than 45 points per game. I found higher rank opponents in less than 5% of the games. This imply play a lot of games and waste a lot of time. Even if in theory you could gain more than 100 per game this never happens in reality because of match assignment. This actually resulted in score an average of 46/47 points in the 200 wins I needed to raise from 4k to 13k. Now with this update we will need more games. More time. I don’t want to play 30 match per day, this game is not a work. You should create a matching system that let me chose the gap with my opponet. Let me face opponents with 2500 higher ranking than mine but give me 100 points if I win. By this way I will play half the time I play now and I will spend more money because I will be forced to max my decks
Sincerly: the change in the point assignment is a bad new. I don’t care if I lose 60 or 75. But this game is already a huge time drainer: the problem is in the matching system.
The previous month (with 30% buff) I hit 13k arena points, I stop there not because I couldn’t hit an higher rank, but because I had no time to play more games.
From like 4k to 13k I always scored not more than 45 points per game. higher rank opponents appeared in less than 5% of the games. This imply play a lot of games and waste a lot of time. In the 250+ games needed to hit 13k I scored an average of like 48 points. I found a 100+ points worth match like 3 times. Now with this update we will need more games. More time. I don’t want to play 30 match per day. You should create a matching system that let me chose the gap with my opponet. Let me face opponents with 2500 higher ranking than mine but give me 100 points if I win. This will make me save more time, and push me spend more money to max out my decks.
Right now the trouble with LoV is that it is nearly impossible to use all your deck points in Apocalypse matches and if you do, you forfeit your ability to build a list the way you want to. Since there are so few cards, making any list for any match makes this faction redundant and boring. I would have considered taking the ten new units, give each unit different wargear and release 20 new units to give LoV life and purpose.
Thanks for the update!
Votann feel very slow and boring sadly. Not really a hype faction to me. Greyfax is oppressive and 9/10 opponents are running that deck. Could we maybe see a chaos/abaddon buff?
I super enjoy the game and the cards, really happy that Play on tabletop are also involved.
Dear all,
While the intention behind buffing the weakest faction might be a good one inside your planning sessions, I believe you have failed to spot the elephants in the room.
1. Both lawn ornament leaders are boring and playing with them prolongs the game by an unreasonable amount of time
2. Lawn ornaments have 37 cards…
Sooooooooo, maybe it’s not the buff that’s going to solve the issue, but perhaps you lot actually doing some work and adding cards so that people can build cool decks and do pew pew to other factions that can choose from 100-200 cards.
As for balance, the 5 point change to Greyfax is going to do absolutely nothing, as you probably know. Also, congrats on trying to headbutt a non-issue and failing, while completely ignoring the actual issues.
As I may have previously mentioned, seeing this completely thoughtless random flailing that you guys call game development is partially entertaining in itself, however seeing the potential of this game being wasted is not.
There is no shame in admitting you are out of your depth.