In case you have not heard the news, the first expansion set for Altered was announced on Tuesday, October 1st! This article is going to breakdown what we have learned so far about the new set, titled Trial By Frost.
Theme
The following quote comes from the announcement article on Altered’s website:
Now that the Solstice Gate is open and the Kraken is no more, it’s time to explore what awaits outside the limits of Asgartha. Beyond the unknown lies the source of the Tumult and the answers to the state of the world. But the Cais Adarra stands in your way, and you will have to face its many trials if you hope to continue your journey.
Endure through icy winds and snowstorms to prove your mastery over the elements. Tighten your boots and grab your ice axe, face the challenges head on, or try to adapt. Make your way to the heart of the mountain and look for the answers that await encased in the ice.”
Altered’s core set Beyond the Gates served to introduce the fundamentals of the Altered world, and this set is our first exploration past those established boundaries. The set is thematically centered around a region of icy mountains, and this theme can already be seen visually throughout the new cards shown so far. Speaking of which…
Spoiler Cards
Three Trial By Frost cards have been spoiled so far, all in their common versions. I’ll go over each of these cards one at a time, and discuss a little about what uses the card may have. It is important to note a few things. Firstly, the metagame for Altered’s base set isn’t even fully established at this time. Players are still discovering which cards and factions are the most powerful, and how all of the different matchups play out. It is very possible that the strategies these cards fit best into may not be the most effective strategies when the metagame dust settles.
In addition, the introduction of a new card set will of course turn the metagame on its head. These cards can not be properly assessed in a vacuum – they will release at the same time as many other cards, and the existence of those cards may make these ones either more or less powerful. It is impossible to say at this time! With all that in mind, we can still give these cards an overall assessment and speculate on where they could best fit.
Arcolano Milk
The first preview card introduces us to an entirely new card mechanic! Gear cards are a special type of permanent card that are played into a specific expedition, and stay in that expedition for until it moves forward. It has not been explicitly stated, but it seems to be the case that Gear cards do not count towards a player’s two permanent cards in play, as they do not use the normal board slots. It is also possible that this is only the case for Gear cards which say Expedition Permanent, which may not be every Gear card printed.
This is also Altered’s first time releasing permanent cards that do not have the Landmark type. In Beyond the Gates every permanent card was also a Landmark, meaning that effects which referred to Landmarks and referred to Permanents were interchangeable. Now these effects will have meaningful differences, which opens up interesting game design elements as well as metagame nuances. Will cards that only care about Landmarks such as Athena still be powerful if there are more non-Landmark permanents floating around? It may not be the case!
Moving on to the specific card at hand, Arcolano Milk boosts every creature you play in an expedition, but also gives them fleeting. This effect is really powerful for 1 mana, but it is also a really steep drawback to see. The drawback can be especially costly if you do not end up moving forward in the expedition, as you will still have fleeting on all of the creatures you played, and the creatures you play next round will be fleeting as well.
That being said, Bravos has ways to get around this drawback. Creatures such as Hua Mulan or Bravos Vanguard remove fleeting either from themselves or from other creatures you play. Bravos Tracer always has fleeting, which effectively mitigates the downside of Arcolano Milk. And of course playing your creatures from reserve into the Milk’s expedition is a way to essentially get your boosts for free. If you include enough of these cards in your deck you should be able to get plenty of value for minimal cost.
Arcolano Milk wants you to be playing an aggressive deck with lots of cheap creatures. Its effect is not really worth it if you are only boosting a single creature in a round – you want to be flooding an expedition zone with multiple bodies to get the most bang for your buck. Basira is the obvious home for this card, as she already cares about boosting your creatures. Kojo should be able to find good uses for this card as well, as Kojo lists are traditionally set up to be very aggressive and try to take an early game lead, which this card can facilitate. I don’t expect Atsadi decks with their singularly huge plays to be interested in this card, which is totally fine. Not every card goes into every deck!
Demeter
Demeter is the third card after The Kraken and Rin to care about a specific expedition type. Being a Muna creature it is unsurprising to see it rewarding you for playing into forest zones. It is also the second ever eternal creature, following in the footsteps of Hydracaena. While it is exciting to see this keyword on such a large creature, it is critical to note that eternal works entirely differently on Demeter than it did on the previous card. Remember that every tumult card has all three region types split across its two zones. This means that after spending time in a forest zone there is a 50/50 chance that the next zone also has forest, and a 0% chance that you will ever find three forest zones in a row. As a result Demeter is less of an eternal creature, and more of a weird anchored creature.
Even if it is not truly eternal, a 6/5/5 anchored creature is still a fantastic rate. When treating this creature that way you also have to consider that you are restricted on what zones you can play it into, but this is made up for with the potential upside of getting two turns of eternal in a row when moving into the right tumult zone. In a dire situation simply playing this as a vanilla 6/5/5 creature is not the worst thing in the world either.
The most obvious hero to play Demeter with is Rin, who really wants you to focus on advancing through forest zones. Teija can be a decent home potentially, as even partial eternal works well with his ability, but current Teija decklists tend to play cheaper anchored creatures which gain more comparatively from a single boost. Arjun decks tend to be built around cheaper creatures as well.
To be honest, I struggle a little to see what decks Demeter will fit into. She is at least a plant, meaning you can play her faster with Bountiful Meadow, and she can also take advantage of other plant synergies that exist in Altered’s core set (and presumably in the new one too). If Muna decks start extending their curve to play in more of a mana ramp style Demeter may fit right in as a resilient creature that can win multiple rounds on her own.
Moth Larva
This creature introduces us to another entirely new mechanic – exhausted cards in reserve! This spoiler card is a bit more of a teaser than the other two, as it doesn’t come with the full picture of how it works. We do not currently know what it means for a card in the reserve to be exhausted. There are some plausible theories going around – it could mean that there are cards with activated abilities that you can activate from the reserve. There could also be card effects that exhaust cards in the reserve, making them unplayable for the round (kind of like a weaker sabotage). Given the frost theme of the set my money is on this second idea, but until we know for sure it is impossible to gauge the true power of the moth.
One power creatures are always useful to have around, and a potential 2/1/2 is nothing to sneeze at, but also isn’t such a powerful effect that it is worth bending your deckbuilding around it. If exhausted cards in the reserve are really common, either because it is an effect you can trigger on your own cards or something that is cheap to do to your opponent, then Moth Larva may be worth playing as a generic body in those decks. Otherwise I expect it to be only played in super aggressive Yzmir decks that just want every cheap body they can get a hold of.
Other Set Information
Here are a few other things we know about Trial by Frost:
- The release date of the set is January 31st, 2025. It seems Altered will be settling into a three set per year release cycle, with a large set in September and smaller sets in January and May.
- There are no new hero cards in the set. Twelve of the eighteen heroes from Beyond the Gates will appear in the set, presumably to facilitate draft/sealed play. It will be interesting to see which heroes are cut from the set, and whether the themes of those heroes are still present in other cards.
- One in five booster packs will have an alternate art expedition card! These five cards are mechanically identical to the ones from Beyond the Gates starter decks, but having new art to choose from certainly breathes some fresh air into the expedition zone.
Conclusion
Altered’s core set was a really exciting release, but the first expansion set is always something special in a trading card game. It is the playerbase’s opportunity to see which envelopes will be pushed, and usher in an entirely new era of discovery. I hope to see you all playing with Trial by Frost in January!
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