2022 Seasonal Updates
Bannermen!
We are here today to announce our Seasonal Updates for A Song of Ice and Fire!
As we have done over the last few years of the game’s life, every six months we perform a balance patch to assess items such as overperforming/underperforming units, as well as modify and/or tweak the various Game Modes (or even core rules, occasionally) should we see need.
Unfortunately, this was disrupted during 2021 for a number of reasons.
In late 2020 we announced our upcoming 2021 changes, which saw the largest revamp of assets to the game to date. This was taken as our chance to streamline wording across the game, refine any core rules, and generally update things on a larger scale than we had previous done. Whereas prior patches saw changes to a handful of items, 2021 affected every facet in some form (usually just wording re-writes, but again we took this opportunity to modify things as we saw need).
Initially the full update, which consisted of the 2021 Card Packs, was to release at the same time as the Greyjoys landed on the shores of Westeros (January 2021), but various delays pushed this window back to April/May 2021. While the Greyjoys landed at this time, the card packs were hit by the paper shortage and further shutdowns that occurred in manufacturing. While this was being sorted, we made the decision to release the update digitally via our War Council App as well as the files for print on our website.
Flash forward to present, and it seems logistics has still proven problematic for some regions, as our 2021 Card Packs have only arrived in some area in December 2021/January 2022. Quite the delay. As we mentioned, however, the content has been available since May 2021 and we have collected a large degree of feedback and data in that time. While it is unfortunate that the physical cards are only now making it to numerous areas, we still wish to release our digital patch update per our intended schedule. As usual, all these files are available for free on the War Council App and available for download on our website.
General Overview
All changes are intended for Tournament Play and Competition. Casual players may elect to wave them should they desire.
- First and most importantly is the master Change Log file, which gives full notes over any and all changes, as well as comments explaining the changes. This file also includes the Printer Friendly versions of the cards.
- Next up we have the revamped Game Modes document. The changes here are likewise listed in the above Change-Log.
- And finally we have the updated FAQ, which features two new rules modifications, as well as some clean-up based on the current changes.
Future Items
- The War Council App will be updated with these changes in due time. Unfortunately, there is a slight delay in us releasing the files online for use and the app being updated (with variable times based on platform approvals- ie Apple might show up before Android, or vice-versa).
- We have partnered with some Print-on-Demand services in the US to offer quality versions of the updated cards, should users wish to take that option rather than print their own or utilize the app. We are still finalizing the specifics here but likewise we will have more information about this shortly.
- As we’ve stated in previous conversations, we look to do these balance passes roughly every six or twelve months. While this is a big gap, we will be evaluating the need for such as time progresses. The 2021 S01 update would be our largest, but it comes directly on the end of our largest general update as well. We do not anticipate any further updates to be beyond a few select items, much more in line with previous updates (v1.3-v.1.6, which again saw on average 4-5 cards across the entire game), but of course we continue to monitor the developing meta and trends to see if anything stands out.
