Welcome to our first preview of Fractured Crown (FTC)! We've learned many lessons through designing the Dawn of Ashes set, and by watching how our amazing community gradually developed a meta from the ground up!

FTC as a set really reflects how our team has grown. In this article, we'll be going over the design philosophies of the cards in FTC as well as the product design improvements for a better box opening experience.

1. More Generic Interaction

Our first goal with designing FTC was to make sure there were sufficient generic interaction cards for interactive decks. Losing to a deck, pulling up the Grand Archive Index to search for a card that could help your deck in that particular matchup, and not finding any is a bad feeling for constructed formats.

There might always be bad matchups between various decks in a meta, but having access to more generic cards that interact with a wider range of strategies will diminish advantages of some decks with proper preparation and/or sideboarding.

2. Slowing Down Advanced Elements

When initially designing the advanced element level 3 champions, the goal was that the game would likely end within two turn cycles from when a player’s champion reaches level 3. We felt that the advanced element cards designed for Dawn of Ashes hit this mark well.

However, we’re dissatisfied by how it’s limiting the viability of advanced element-less decks. In addition, we realize the advantage a player gets from being the first to reach level 3 is too large, even in a matchup where both players are running decks heavy in advanced element cards. Now, we’re shifting the “advanced element end-game timer” from two turn cycles to three turn cycles by creating cards that slow down advanced element strategies as well as creating cards that support no-advanced element strategies.

3. Hand Size User Experience

Grand Archive is a game that naturally has players handling their cards more than most TCGs. In a turn, you might put your hand down to pick up your material deck, shuffle your memory to banish a random card, recollect your memory and pick up your hand that you put down before, and then set cards down to activate cards during your turn.

All of this can become cumbersome when playing in person and your hand contains over nine cards. In addition, this might stress players from decision paralysis or information overload. We wanted to improve the user experience for resource management and to find a way to tend away from large hand and memory sizes.

Now, we are coining a new keyword: influence. A player’s influence is equal to the amount of cards in both their memory and hand. With this new keyword, we can design cards that incentivize having low influence, creating a better user experience when it comes to handling cards.

4. Diversifying the Material Deck

We’re pretty happy with how the material decks vary from class to class. However, when comparing the material decks of different basic elements in the same class, there is little diversity in the material deck lists.

In FTC, we’re introducing basic element regalias with the aim of making each basic element/class combination feel more distinct.

5. Introducing Phantasias and Fractals

To wrap it all up, we’re also introducing a new card type: phantasia. Phantasia is an object card type that represents lingering magic. Besides that, it doesn’t have any special game properties tied to it except for being another interaction layer that we can expand on in the future.

Among the phantasias, there is a new class of resource cards called Fractals. As another way for us to encourage better hand size user experience, all Fractals have a new keyword, reservable, which helps you pay for reserve costs. Fractals are mainly found as water element cards.

1. Too Many 1-of Duplicates

In Dawn of Ashes, material deck cards were as common as main deck cards of the same rarity. While this does make material deck cards more accessible, it led to a poor opening experience for those wanting to crack four or more boxes.

In FTC, we’ll be short printing all material deck cards within each rarity. In turn, this change increases the availability of main deck cards, which were notoriously difficult to get a playset for by just opening boxes.

On average, material deck cards will be short printed by 20% to 40%, compared to main deck cards within the same rarity. We believe material deck cards will remain very accessible even with this change. We’ll be watching for feedback and adjust in future products if needed!

2. Collector Rare Rates

In Dawn of Ashes, the first edition had 1 in 15 boxes containing a Collector Ultra Rare. We feel like this rate is a good spot for Collector Rares, but boxes were never at an accessible price point for most people after the product had released. Due to the high demand of DOA1E, 1 in 15 boxes really felt like 1 in 30 boxes.

In the Alter edition of Dawn of Ashes, the CR rates decreased to 1 in 30 boxes. This is primarily due to only having 4 Collector Super Rares in the set, and a goal of making the product more player-focused.

In addition, the pull rates for CRs were wildly random. We’ve had people flexing that they open 3 CRs in one DOA1E case, while another individual opened their first CR in 50 boxes. In most cases, the frustration of many is not worth the excitement of a few.

In FTC, we want more people to see what a CR looks like. Some of the CRs we’ve made are some of the prettiest cards we’ve ever seen in any TCG.

We’re increasing the CR rate back up to 1 in 15 boxes for FTC, but this time, the product should be much more accessible than DOA1E on release. In addition, the lower MSRP per box makes CRs even more accessible.

Lastly, we’re increasing the amount of boxes in a case from 6 to 18. With this, we’ll be also guaranteeing that each case has at least one CR. This change will prevent a lot of frustration from people opening lots of product and getting unlucky. Cases can still have more than 1 CR!

Now, we can't talk about CRs without showing off a couple. Here are some you can find in FTC!

3. Fractured Crown: Armaments

Previously, you get an average of 3 foils a box, 1 UR a box, and a CR in 1 out of many many boxes. Because of the wide margin in the pull rate of normal cards and CRs, it led to high variance box openings.

There was a need for a new chase rarity before CRs. In FTC, we’ll have a subset called Fractured Crown: Armaments (FTCA). It is a 26 card set consisting of common and uncommon regalia from Dawn of Ashes. The only difference is that they’ll be given a new exciting special card treatment! We’re excited to show off these cards soon!

FTCA cards will be labeled as SR rarity, and will appear on average 1 in every 3 boxes of FTC.

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This concludes our preview of Fractured Crown! We’ll be sharing more cards from FTC starting mid-June. If you haven’t checked out the product page for FTC yet, click this link!

Fractured Crown Product Page

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