In my previous article we highlighted the incredible team that helped us get End of Times to the finish line. I say to, and not across, because there's still a few things that we hold in reserve as the Elder team. Namely the Ultra Rare cards - These are almost never shared outside of the Elder team before cards begin to get opened in packs. This year you've already seen two, and if you read far enough in this one, you'll see the third as well! Ye be warned! Spoilers ahead! We also normally have an 11th hour stat change, or slight ability tweak, sometimes we've even added a brigade, or taken one away. This year we also made some art adjustments. You've already seen one. No More Pain had a different version of the "Sacred Heart of Jesus" we had it attributed as "Artist Unknown" during play testing, but during our final review process we had a discussion that it was potentially AI generated, so we swapped it for what you see now. We also swapped the art on five cards you'll see in this article below for images of the cosmos in NASA's public domain registry, AKA Secret National Aeronautics and Space Administration (or SNASA for short) art! But for our first card we have one of my favorites from the set, which had a NASA Space/Cosmos image from the beginning.
How do you represent the First and the Last with art? There's probably a few good ways to do it. As a team we felt that looking to the Heavens was an appropriate way of doing so. Tyler originally had a very nice piece of the Carina Nebula picked out for this card. Early on in the process I noticed that it was actually a little grainy, and suggested that we should use the iconic "Pillars of Creation" piece further emphasizing the First aspect. It's a beautiful piece that looks absolutely amazing on this card. While we changed the art only once (Well, technically twice after I asked that we not flip/'mirror' this particular piece) The ability on A&O changed frequently, weekly at minimum, sometimes every other day during the height of play testing. Tyler easily could have included this in his article a couple weeks ago, but he knew this one was near and dear to me so he let me have it. Dominants are notoriously tricky to balance, especially ones that span multiple themes. At one point this card had a placed ability (I loved the idea of the art being on the table) but that was really hard to balance. Another time we said "What if we make it like Ancient of Days and let it take a Genesis or Revelation card of each type from deck" and that proved to be broken in about a day. It had various secondary abilities, sometimes protection, sometimes bouncing opposing cards. At one point the Take and Protect was a choice between the two and a single hero protected. Then it was a choice and all heroes protected. Then we finally got to this version. Like a good chunk of our recent "Battle Doms" it should win a battle a good chunk of the time when used optimally. It's still got a good amount of play around with chump blocks, stalemates, regardless of protection abilities, etc.
One of the mini themes of the set is the Heavenly Temple (And Artifacts) - You've seen Heavenly Temple referenced on a few cards spoiled already. You haven't seen it yet, because it was being saved for this article. Originally it had the same art from Revelation of John on it. Not a bad piece, but during our final review we said something along the lines of "Hey, what if we found something new for this, and what if like Alpha and Omega, we lean into the idea of representing these Heavenly things that are beyond our human comprehension with images taken of the cosmos." We spent about a week hunting down the best images we could find, ones that drew visual parallels to the titles, ones that had similar naming elements. These are those cards:
The cosmic formation on this card is called "Mystic Mountain" it's a dust and gas formation within the Carina Nebula (visible from the southern hemisphere with the best views in early spring). We liked how the parallel pillar structures read as columns in this piece. There's also the idea of meeting God on the Mountain as seen with Moses, Elijah and many others in the Bible. The ability is pretty good too, setting up the theme with a nice CBP ability and then each turn going to grab a card. Go grab the Heroes you need to complete some of the strong Revelation bands, or if you have those in place already, go to the Reserve for niche heroes, or a strong enhancement, it could also come in clutch to retrieve a reserved Son of God or Three Woes!
Our next card is one of the artifacts that you'll definitely want to activate in the Temple:
This card has all sorts of thematic goodies going on with it. I love this star formation, an absolute classic, instantly recognizable to anyone who knows astronomy, the Seven Sisters - seven stars for seven lamps. I also really enjoy the subtle call back to one of my absolute favorite pieces of Son of God art from the AB starters. 2016 might be the rarest, but the 2018 reprint of that art is one that I frequently slot into decks. Then with the ability you see another 7 with a sneaky good look and take if you're in the Temple, but always able to play a lost soul, either for generation, or to get an effect that you need on the table. With all of TSC, Woes, Cloud Moses rotating in a year soul effects that are ongoing will become more reliable. I'm excited to see how that meta-game shift plays out.
Another incredible image from the Carina Nebula, this particular formation is called the Treasure Chest. The way the image was processed bringing out those golden hues, on a formation that could read as Altar made it our choice for this card. We also pull inspiration from the verse speaking of incense rising, the wispy gas formations coming off the chest invoke that rising aspect for me. This card will play best with Martyrs, they love the "double" benefit by putting something like Justice Seekers into the discard pile and grabbing an attacking Hero. The other revelation themes can still see some nice use from this granting CBP, though it is likely relegated to the Reserve in those.
Our next card with NASA art will shock and surprise anyone who knows me, and my love of Doug Gray art - This card's art changed twice! We originally had the classic Doug Gray art on it as a reprint with a ton of call-backs to the Revelation of John version. Then when Rob needed art for the packaging, he actually commissioned a brand new piece of art from Doug - We loved it as well, and put it on the Book! BUT then we themed up these cards, we debated if this one should stay with the new Doug Gray piece. Ultimately we decided that we should be consistent with the Heavenly theme for this set. It was a little tricky to find a star formation that worked for this card, but NGC 6302 the Butterfly Nebula does a pretty solid job with the wings doubling as sides of the book open around the central star representing the spine.
Going from one Life card to the next, we have one of the Trees from the Garden represented again in Revelation:
This is the second (and final) card in the set with some blue on it, highlighting the way the End of Times naturally call back to the beginning. You see this also on Alpha and Omega above. This is a very classic formation called the "Cone Nebula" but also very commonly referred to as the "Christmas Tree Nebula" because of the extremely pronounced tree shape, pretty perfect parallel for our purposes. We made a very concerted effort this year to make players have real, tough decisions on how to play Covenants and Curses. The GE side of Tree is crazy good - One sided negate that hits TC cards, Forts, placed characters, plus everything in battle! But the Artifact side is equally good - Battle extension and attrition has been good going all the way back to You Will Remain. Vow of Samuel is criminally underrated, and this is even broader than that.
And finally, as we got to add some bonus legacy cards to the set, I also got to add a bonus card to this article. Some of you very accurately guessed that with Image of the Beast making a return, we probably had a Golden Censer as well, and we absolutely did, but as a Heavenly Temple artifact, we chose to give it the cosmic treatment, with a sweet image of Messier object 82:
As an astronomy nerd I enjoyed helping find and select these card images. There are plenty of obvious parallels and visual connections. We rejected another dozen options that could feasibly be used in the future, (Sea of Glass reprint anyone?) I don't pretend to have all the answers, who knows that exists in these distant galaxies, light years upon light years away, things we can see, but not touch. Are they the Heavens? I think it's a fair interpretation, and one we've leaned into at least a little with our art selection on these cards. When I stare into the night sky, I feel humbled, as I witness the majesty of a creation I cannot fathom, I feel connected.
So, you've gotten this far and you're asking "John, you said we'd see an Ultra Rare! Indeed I did. Our last UR is extra special, and the answer to "How does a 147 card set have 148 cards?"
One of the reasons that Alpha and Omega was hard to balance was a certain someone (me, guilty!) felt that it simply had to be UR - The Pillars of Creation are fine on the 'rare' version, but exquisite on the UR borderless - I mocked it up as UR when I proposed the Pillars art way back in April. You'll also notice that we broke number convention to make it card #1 - Properly the Dual Armageddon should be #1. Very, very rarely do we deviate from our numbering conventions, they exist for a reason. If we were going to break it for any card this one seems worthy,
the Alpha, the First, the Beginning.
And also the Omega, the Last, the End.
I proposed two 'number breaks' for this card. I felt very strongly that it should be card #1. I also thought we had an opportunity to do something pretty cool, and somewhat unique, printing a second version of this, but not exactly a UR+ with different art and a different card number, namely the last card in the set. I even thought they could be different rarities. This is when it's a blessing that we have a great team of Elders who think through all the angles. We liked the idea of first and last, but had concerns about secondary market value for a UR and a rare version. So we decided to make them both UR! We also wanted to be cognizant of how secondary retailers market full sets - So it ended up being a little more similar to a UR+ with the 'same' reversed card number, and a different cosmos piece. With the Pillars so perfectly encapsulating the ideas of first and beginning we wanted to do our best to find a piece that evoked the mirrored idea of last and end. I presented a few options to the team and we settled on MSH 15-52 a pulsar wind nebula commonly referred to as the 'Hand of God' to represent those concepts.
With how sets are printed, and how UR go into boxes, we anticipate either version of Alpha and Omega to appear equally. UR are still 1 per box with foils roughly 1 in 10 boxes. Both variants will have a foil version.
