Back in December 23rd, 2024, I shared an article titled ‘What Have I Learned?’ found here: https://landofredemption.com/articles/what-have-i-learned . In that article I shared some guidelines I use for card design while sprinkling in some hard to spot spoilers, such as a hint to the 2025 set name when I said, “I considered writing a spoiler article about the next set, but I thought that time just hasn’t come yet and it was too early.” and I talked about an ability that was potentially a great idea that got reworked and became “repeat”. I don't expect to build in any spoilers for future sets in this article, because it is already chalk full of End of Times spoilers!
Since that article was written during the testing phase of Times to Come, it had no real spoilers. I forgot to go back and write a “What Have I Learned?” article for Times to Come. I think it would be really cool to write a "what have I learned?" article after each set to see how our team applies experience to improve year after year.
Instead of going into designing themes, I want to highlight 5 cards from the new set. Each card represents a card changing from conception to final product. The 5 areas will be; ability hardly changed, ability changed a little, ability changed somewhat, ability changed a lot, or the card was not originally included.
The first card is something that hardly changed. I could have selected other cards that did not change, but those are already spoken for to spoil later, so I went with something that hardly changed. I don’t think you’ll mind when you see this card. First up is the new Lost Soul titled, “Tormented”.
Original ability: (Unity) If drawn, you may paralyze a Hero for 5 turns. If rescued, restrict opponent from playing cards in their next discard phase.
What changed?: We took off the 5 and just made it an all game paralysis. 5 turns is most of the game anyway, and it’s easier to not have to track then to track each turn for almost the same result of an all game paralysis. My original note on this card was to show 5 months (from the scripture), but I thought 5 would be too long, so I went with 3 instead. Gabe thought using 5 for the scripture was a good idea, so we used that instead. We quickly changed this to an all game paralysis for reasons stated.
Background of this card: Daniel and Meshach were causing a lot of havoc in competitive play and I saw that players were relying on one or two main Heroes in their deck. Even with disciples, you could now paralyze John the Fisherman and assuming their other favorite Heroes like Simon or Matthew are meek, the opponent would have to use their bounce to reset John, or keep a Hero meek. The Lost Soul “Grieve” was shown by Kurt, so when you couple these two Lost Souls, you can cripple an offense that is focused on 2 Heroes. I was messaging Hendrix back in August of 2025 about some random card ideas as we tend to do and he mentioned an ability that would be really cool about restricting players from playing cards in their discard phase. I loved the idea and thought it would be great for an “If rescued” portion on a Lost Soul, especially for N.T. Lost Souls who only have 2 “If rescued” Lost Souls.
The second card is showing an ability that changed a little, called Outside Occultist.
Wait a second, that title doesn’t match! When writing this article I did not have “ability” in the area definitions, but then remembered we changed the name of Outside Occultist to Meddling Mage to align with magicians, so I added the word “ability” to the parameters for this article.
Original ability: Name a card: Restrict players from playing that card this turn. May band to a generic Revelation Evil Character.
What changed?: The first ability is functionally the same, Marcus just tweaked it for standardization and clarity. The second part changed from a band to Reserve access. One of my consistent misses in abilities for an entire set is lacking Reserve access. Not sure why, I just tend to do other things (probably draw and band!) and forget about our poor Reserve. For set design we roll out version 0 of the set, have everyone look and comment, make sure abilities are worded correctly and give our overall thoughts. We then go into version 1 with a clean document and pretty much repeat the same process while starting graphics. Most men tend to be more visual, which means our design team, especially myself, starts noticing gaps when cards are made. We were able to quickly spot Reserve access lacking and made a minor tweak to the ability.
Background of this card: I really like magicians using the word “hand” in their abilities as it reminds me of sleight of hand which is a common trick people use during performances that isn’t magic, just great stage performance, practice and impressively quick movements. This mage meddles with your hand by not letting you play a card from your hand, if they can name it correctly. It reminds me of, “Pick a card, any card!”.
This ability works very well with hand knowledge of course, but also benefits players who know the meta well, or in playgroups when you know the deck you are facing. I tend to play Brayden a lot, so I know if either of us used this card against each other, we would probably be able to name a card that would irritate us during battle!
The third card is an ability that changed somewhat.
Original ability: Protect animals in territory from harm. While there is a Hero in a discard pile, Enhancements used by your animals are regardless of protect abilities.
What changed?: The protection changed a little bit. Originally, we did not have room for “N.T.” although the whole team felt it should be there. Late in set design we talked about animals having a tough time blocking by the numbers, or broad “negate evil” card situations. We decided to take off the regardless of protect abilities and switch that to granting cannot be prevented status for N.T. animals while tying in the scripture still. The protection got better and we now had room to bring in “N.T.” for both abilities. The art on this card is perfect! It’s literally a field of corpses with a bird flying over them. Thank you, Viktor!
Background of this card: I tend to give Chris the nearly impossible task of finding scripture for crazy abilities I have, or for cards I want to make, but I am unsure if scripture supports it. I definitely look for scripture as well, but Chris has a knack for it! For this set I wanted a Fortress for animals, as I thought that would be really cool and unique since they don’t have one. Chris was able to find a verse that fit perfectly, and it was so perfect that you will see that verse more than once in this set! You will see a mini theme in animals for the vultures. These vultures love to pick through your discard pile looking for things, as vultures do. I always wanted to give animals protection in territory, as they are so easy to target when down. For this set, the animals that are down now have some protection and other animals might not need protection in territory as they might go back to your hand, we’ll see.
The fourth card is from the Thessalonica theme and represents an ability that changed a lot.
Original ability: Discard an evil card. If a Thessalonica Hero is in discard pile, you may take a clay Enhancement from discard pile. Later version ability: Negate an evil or neutral card. Look at the top 7 cards of deck: Take up to X good cards. Cannot be negated.
What changed?: Everything! I brought in the version 3 ability of this card to see the change. In version 2 of the document I left a comment saying Thessalonica needed another modifier and a negate, plus they felt slow. Playtesters gave us feedback that there was no way to negate a neutral card, so I brought that into the negate portion as well.
Background of this card: Thessalonica likes to get their Heroes out quick, so they should have cards that give strong payoffs for assembling Heroes. A cannot be negated negate that can target an evil or neutral card is great, but having the X be contingent on Thessalonica Heroes makes for a high payoff look and take ability. And don’t worry, this theme sets up quick, so that X will be plenty to look through and you still get the take 2!
The last card is my personal favorite. Here is a card that was not originally included.
Editor's note: When uploading this image, it came in larger and I could not reduce it. The preview looks slightly larger than the others, but not too skewed. I hope it's not massive when uploaded!
Original ability: Choose a character to block your lone Revelation Hero. After battle, discard all blocking Evil Characters.
What changed?: We dropped the lone clause. Although we are using lone for choose abilities, we felt a Dominant does not need that stipulation. We also slightly changed up the wording and brought in unity, as that was a bit cleaner overall.
Background of this card: Ironically enough, it was not in the set originally. Gabe pointed out that the title of this card is well known throughout the world both for believers and non-believers. I am glad he noticed a major event missing from the set! When Gabe brought up the title of this card on a call we were unsure what the ability would do. I went to scripture and reread the chapter the next day. I thought about this card for probably a week straight and when God gave me some creativity, I was ecstatic. I think this card is one of the most thematic cards in the set and I would think it could make a top 10 “most thematic ability to scripture list”. Now there’s an idea for a video.
The scripture talks about Satan gathering evil leaders and demons to meet for one final battle called Armageddon. We know who wins that battle, so the after battle discard was used to show that God wins. Choosing the character to oppose is to show the forces opposing each other knowing where they would go and fight. The art on this card is amazing too and it being a dual dominant looks so cool!
What did I learn?: I learned to not get so involved in themes that I couldn’t remember a major event in the end of times. But that’s why we have an awesome team and we listen to each other. You can thank Gabe for this card!
Overall, I’m counting down the days until this set is available! I cannot wait to see box openings and hear about ultra-rares. The art, the abilities, the power level, the overall themes, there’s so many things to love in this set. It’s also going to be really cool to see a set coming out months after Nationals. I think it’ll be great for the community and jump start a new seasonal tournament season and get people excited for State and Regional tournaments.
You all need to make sure to put in your pre-orders! Thank you for your continued support to the game and for taking the time to read my articles! God bless!
