✦ Set Preview ✦
Trial by Combat.
Six orbitals · One city
Where fighters from across the universe compete for glory.
Where fighters from across the universe compete for glory.
The wars were going to end one way: with a winner ruling over graveyards and ashes. When the leaders of the orbitals finally understood that, they made a compromise — Trial by Combat. The wars would be settled here, champion against champion, in front of the whole universe.
The beauty of Morocco, the glitz and glam of Vegas — underground cretins wagering on fate, warriors fighting for glory. The crowd roars at every twist of fate.
But make no mistake — this is not an exhibition. This is war, fought one bout at a time. The stakes are life and death for the fighters on the sand — and freedom and ways of life for the worlds watching from home.
Only stoneseekers have them — six apiece on a fixed rarity ladder of two mythics, an epic, a rare, an uncommon and a common. Twenty-four in all. Pick a stoneseeker:
A new foil treatment, debuting in Trial by Combat.
Shown here on two of the Hyperswords and three of the set’s Mythics.
Every Hypersword opens with the same line: on arrival, move a Wonder you control here — it equips this. The blade lands first and pulls its wielder across the sand to meet it. Ask the fighter afterward and he’ll tell you he stepped forward.
Jade won’t let go — two counters every round, and it can’t be nullified. Lucid sends men home. Insanity punishes everyone standing near it. Blood is the cruel one: at round end, anything still unarmed in that realm is destroyed, and it grows with every legendary card you control.
Heliosynth and Boundless have no Hypersword.
Every world swears its own oath.
Life to Petraia, Glory to Solfera, Freedom to Thalwind, Shadows to Umbrathene, Progress to Heliosynth, Eternity to Boundless.
Each one opens the same way: put an immortal counter on any number of Wonders with no abilities. Not on your champions. Not on the names the crowd already knows. An Oath only takes on someone nothing has been written about yet.
Five of the six keep a Wonder from dying. Oath of Eternity is the only one that says can’t be banished — and in a set where dying and being erased are two different fates, that is the difference between coming back and never having been here.
Six different art styles, several of them paying homage to the way a world like this one would remember its champions — carved in stone, woven into tapestry, set in mosaic tile.
A card you already own turned to statue. The same fighter woven into a battle tapestry. A frog mercenary laid out in tile.
Carved and plinthed — the character as monument.
Medieval tapestry — flattened, bordered, hung on a wall somewhere in the city.
Tesserae and grout.
A prismatic finish over the city districts.
Chibi reinterpretations.
A second painting of the character.
A trial can be a place you fight and a thing you fight.
The venues are lands — Trial City, Trial Arena, Trial Battlefield, Trial Territory, Trial Temple, Trial Outpost, Trial Chamber, Trial Landmark. The opposition is Wonders: Trial Monsters, and one Trial Champion. Rules text keys off them directly (“if there is a Trial here”), so the venue is a live part of the board rather than set dressing.
Six Trial arenas, one styled for each orbital — the venues the whole set fights in.
Trial Monsters.
One per orbital, sealed play is about to get spicy!!
Trial by Combat brings seven new keyword abilities. Every one of them is about the arena — who walks out first, who finishes big, who the crowd is watching, and who simply refuses to fall.
Eight tracks scored for Trial by Combat — hip hop to deathwave to a closing piano ballad. Press play.
Trial by Combat is Almost Here! — Wonders of The First