Rules for Alliance-specific mechanics

Alliance

1. Alliance is considered an ability with the following text: “When you would reveal cards for the cost of a Loyalty ability for a card of the same alignment as this card, treat that Loyalty as if one more card had been revealed.”
2. For example: if you control “Zarabel, Pathfinder”, and then play the wild champion “Urzula, Spellbreaker” and choose to pay her Loyalty cost, you could reveal one Wild card from your hand and note Zarabel’s Alliance ability for the second part of the loyalty cost.
3. Alliance contributes to “Loyalty X” just like normal loyalty costs.

Bond

1. Bond is considered an action ability with the following text: “Choose one other non-token champion you control and group it with this champion as if they were attacking/blocking in a group.” This group is now bonded.
2. When bonding, place all champions in the bonded group close or overlapping to indicate that they are bonded.
3. Champions in the bonded group must attack or block as a group if able.
4. Text inside a purple background (the Soul) is now considered to be active rules text while the champion is in a bonded group.
5. If any number of champions in the bonded group are not able to block (such as being flipped) or attack (such as being deploying without blitz or being expended) when one or more members would attack, per step 3 “if able”, do as much of the action as possible, skipping any that are not possible. Example: Enchantress of the Lake is readied and bonded to an expended Djinn of Wishes. The bonded group attacks but only Enchantress can be expended to attack. This is constitutes a valid bonded attack since the Djinn of Wishes cannot attack and the Enchantress will attack alone.
6. Card effects may force illegal bondings when appropriate but players may not choose illegal bond targets. For example, “Ritual of the Hunt” can put 3 bonded wolf tokens into play but a player could not deliberately choose a wolf token and bond it using the “Bond” keyword. Card effect text must specifically name the target and force the bonding.
7. The group is only unbonded if there are less than two champions in the group or a card effect manually allows. When a group unbonds, physically separate the cards but do not change their positions (flipped, expended, prepared, etc.)
8. For example: “Ritual of the Hunt” unbonds all your wolf tokens at the end of the turn it is played.
9. When a bonded champion leaves play for any reason, it is considered unbonded from its current bond. Thus, transforming a bonded champion or returning it to play with a card effect such as “Teleport” does not automatically bond that champion to the old group.

Deadly

1. Deadly is a replacement for the common ability text: “Break any champion damaged by this card.”
2. For example: Thrasher Demon’s text would now be considered to have Deadly.

Herald {number}

1. Herald {number} is considered an ability with the following text: “When this card is played, look at the top {number} cards of your deck, put any of them into your discard pile, then put the rest back on top of your deck in any order.”
2. You do not have to reveal any of the cards looked at with Herald unless they are put into the discard pile.

Immutable

1. Immutable is considered an ability with the following text: “This card cannot be transformed.” and is a replacement word for the same text.
2. For example: “Dark Angel” (from Epic Vigilance) is considered now to be Immutable.
3. Immutable champions may be the target of text with “transform” but cannot be transformed.
4. No “replacement” champions (such as wolf tokens) will be put into play as a result of targeting an immutable champion with a transform effect.
5. For example: “Lycomancy” is played, targeting Galindra, the Paladin and a champion bonded to her. Galindra would be banished and put into a wolf token into play (unbonded) but since she granted the bonded champion immutable, the bonded champion would remain bonded to any other champions in that group if able and not become a wolf token.

Reserve {number}

1. Reserve {number} is considered a conditional ability with the following text: “When you have {number} cards in your discard pile, …”
2. Proceed with the remaining line of the effect text if the condition is true and you have the correct number of cards in the discard pile.
3. For example: “Reserve 3, This card has +2 Offense and +2 Defense”. This champion would gain +2/+2 if you have three cards in your discard pile. The effect is lost immediately when the condition is no longer valid, such as the discard being empty or too small.

Soul

1. Purple background on champions that is considered inactive unless the champion is part of a bonded group.
2. Soul text is considered active rules text, including all powers and abilities, as long as the champion remains in a bonded group. They do not have to be attacking/blocking as a group to obtain this text.
3. Attacking or blocking as a group, without being bonded, as a choice during the combat step does not activate Soul text.
4. Soul text may refer to some of the following terms:
   • “Bonded champions” Only refers to champions in the Soul-active champion’s bonded group. Does not refer to all bonded groups a player controls.
   • “Other bonded champions” same as above but excludes itself.

State-Change Champion Removal Rules Change

Unlike WWG’s official Epic releases, Alliance has instances where a champion’s defense may go to or below zero but not from damage. For example: a broken Giganotosaurus causes an opposing Demon token to get -4/-4, making it a 0/0 champion. In this instance, the champion will immediately break as though it was broken from damage. If it’s unbreakable that turn, nothing will happen. In this way, it is acting as a shortened version of “Deal 4 damage to each opposing champion. Champions damaged in this way have -4 Offense this turn”. The same applies to the “Reserve {number}” ability. Once the discard is banished, a state change occurs and all Reserve effects should be checked immediately.

Designer’s Note on state changes: This change was made because the potential upsides of our belief that a more flexible range of card effects outweighs the potential initial player confusion, if any. We believe state change breaks would be intuitive for most players and even if they had not read this rule, it seems logical players would naturally implement it anyway.

Patter Changes / Shortenings

Same patter has been changed or shortened to free up design space.

Designer’s Note on patter changes: WWG does a pretty good job of keeping most of the patter consistent throughout sets. However, some of the lengthy patter causes certain designs to become too wordy or potentially not possible. These have been changed for convenience. As an example: Fulgur Totem should read “(Wild Ally) -> You may banish this card in your discard pile. If you do, deal 2 damage to a target.” This takes up 3 lines in a discard textbox and appears very crowded. For brevity, we have shortened it to “(Wild Ally) -> Banish this. Deal 2 damage to a target.” I believe most players are aware that since the scope of the activation is from the discard pile anyway, it would not be necessary to include “in your discard pile” and since ally activations are optional anyway, it would not be necessary to include “you may”.