New Rotation System - Dev Blog

Later this year we will be implementing changes to the rotation system. The new system will kick in for the first time with the winter expansion at the end of the year, but we need to adjust several things in preparation for the new system. We plan to implement these adjustments alongside the summer expansion in a few months. In this dev blog we will cover first what the new system will look like, why we are making these changes and finally what adjustments we need to make this summer. We are doing this now to give you guys ample time to prepare for the upcoming changes.

Let’s start with a quick overview and then dive into the details. The new rotation system has two key features:

• We rotate only once per year

• We rotate cards out by whole sets

To make this work we have to expand the current pool of cards that are a permanent part of the active pool found in the starter and level 12 decks, from the current 170 to around 400. This will be the big change this summer.

Why are we making these changes, you might ask. There have been two big complaints about the old system - that we rotate too often and that the rotation is too obscure, i.e. players can only guess what will be rotated. This can easily create frustration when hard-earned cards are suddenly removed from the active pool and players are forced to grind again to update their decks. It is not a sustainable model. With the new system, these changes only occur once every year and players will know exactly what will rotate out and when.

New Rotation System

Now to some more details. Once the new system is up and running (from the winter expansion later this year and going forward), we will rotate cards out once each year, always when the winter expansion drops. When a rotation occurs, we will rotate out the two sets that were released two years prior. This means that in the upcoming rotation at the end of this year, we will rotate out the two sets that came out in 2024 (Covert Operations and Blood & Iron). Here is a nice graphic to make this clear:

Once Covert Operations and Blood & Iron rotate this winter, we will not have another rotation until the end of next year, when Naval Warfare and Homefront will rotate out.

So far so good, pretty simple, right? Well, there are a few caveats we need to address. First, the minisets. The rule with the new system is that a miniset is tied to the big expansion that preceded it and will rotate at the same time as that expansion. We saw this very clearly with the recently released Homefront - Early War - the cards are treated as part of Homefront in every sense. The minisets from last year, United Front and Air Supremacy, do not have this direct tie in, but will be treated the same. Thus, United Front is tied to Blood & Iron and Air Supremacy is tied to Naval Warfare. This means that rotation is not strictly tied to a calendar year, as the miniset tied to the winter expansion comes the following year. You can see this here:

An important thing to point out here is that with this new rotation system, cards will stay in the active pool for a varied amount of time, depending on