What is the Ancients Format

This is a topic that is rarely, if ever, discussed. So it makes sense to take a moment today and just review what the vision for Ancients is ahead of announcing some changes to the format.

It’s generally known that Ancients is Open with a few banned cards. And restricted cards. And reserved cards. Now let’s add some ignored most recent printing erratas. And errata a few things ourselves for good measure. How confusing!

According to the original tablets scribed by pillars of the community from decades past:

”Ancients is a limited Open format. What this means is that the majority of cards printed in Warlord’s history are legal in an Ancients deck. However, in order to create a more balanced environment, there is a Ban list, a Restricted list and a Reserved list.”

While this elevator pitch sized description still holds up today, sometimes it’s good to revisit formats when years of hindsight becomes available to see if the vision has changed or whether we can do a better job of articulating a format’s desired identity. And that’s our starting point for today.

On Format Identity

Before we can ask the question of how we get what we want out of Ancients, we need to first get an idea of what exactly it is we want. We need a set of goals, a target destination, a format identity to strive towards. In the case of Ancients, the goals could be described like this:

Most of the cards throughout the game’s history should be available.
Most turns, particularly the first, should have a relatively similar number of actions taken by each player.
Most games should be battling back and forth with each player participating.
Most games should be decided by various forms of combat and die rolls.
Cards not involving die rolls with game-winning impact should be monitored.
The format should be as fun as possible for as many player types as possible.

At first glance this might look like redundant nonsense. But after breaking down the original Ancients Format list and considering our new inclusions, some of which will be established today, those are stand out as the broad goals of Ancients. Let’s go through each of them one by one and see if they make more sense when unpacked.

1. Card Pool - Most of the cards throughout the game’s history should be available.

This is an important place to start and what we all expect from Ancients. If a card exists, we want to play it. This desire is especially compounded by the fact that we’ve only gotten 19 new cards in the last ten or so years. We aren’t like actively published card games where we have a steady stream of cardboard to pull from - as we increase the size of the Ancients list, we decrease the cardpool of the format almost permanently and that’s a bad feeling. This is why we believe in the Ban, Restricted, Reserved structure to this day. While it certainly looks more cumbersome than a lot of other card game formats, there is also a sense of elegance and minimalism to it. The least amount of action against the fewest number of cards to achieve the desired format is taken.

Examples - Archer Tower, Makusog Cavalry

2. Speed Limit - Most turns, particularly the first, should have a relatively similar number of actions taken by each player.

Within reason. There are a number of consistent or semi-consistent first action win decks that can be built from the Open card pool. Winning in the first action means that only one player got to play the game which is obviously wrong if you compare that to what most players’ expectations are when they sit down to play Warlord. But what about the first turn? If a deck is consistently beating most other decks in the first turn almost regardless of the matchup, then that’s a combination of speed and consistency that probably crosses a line. The speed can be there once out of so many games, but when the consistency is high (reflecting a measure of resilience to interaction) then we consider issuing a speeding ticket.

Examples - One Last Time, Ring of Piercing

3. Goldfishing - Most games should be battling back and forth with each player participating.

Many if not most Warlord players have experienced a game in which their opponent did everything and they did nothing. This doesn’t refer to having a bad hand and your opponent having a good one, I’m talking about when your opponent picks up their deck and puts it into their hand over the course of ten minutes of you watching them draw 1-2 cards at a time. Or when they initiate a semi-infinite combo. Digging and goldfishing like this is strongly felt in a game where the “my action, your action” pace of play is the norm.

Examples - Mirror Magic, Nepheline Gargoyle

4. Infinites and Alternates - Most games should be decided by various forms of combat and die rolls.

One of the biggest goals in creating the original Ancients Format list was to hedge against all of the infinite combos and alternate win conditions. Warlord is a two player battle card game about ranks and die rolls. Satisfying an alternate win condition or initiating an infinite loop using just a handful of cards kind of ruins things for the majority of players. Most of these types of strategies can start with certain combo pieces in play or assemble them in the back ranks away from interaction. While players who love synergy and engine building should not be and are not without options, infinite combos and alternate win conditions are just experienced differently in Warlord and violate the core spirit of the game for most.

Examples - Apprentice Ramah, Malrog’s Lair

5. Broken Cards - Cards not involving die rolls with game-winning impact should be monitored.

Sometimes a card is simply too good and explaining why can be both easy as well as difficult. It can be hard to draw a line as power ranking cards is a tricky subject - particularly in Warlord where dice and a generally casual playerbase is involved. But cards with massive, often game-winning, impact that don’t require a roll are particularly suspicious in a game where we want our bombs to be Chain Lightning and Obliterate. We want a format where we’re drawn to cards that are above rate not above the fundamental laws of the game.

Examples - Fields of Bone, Gravity Flux

6. Fun - The format should be as fun as possible for as many player types as possible.

That’s right. Ancients is for you and it’s meant to be fun. If a card is inherently a fun sponge for most then it is judged more harshly on other metrics it might violate. Whether you are competing against the global community in the online events, looking for a baseline of balance within your small playgroup, or just learning the game and trying to get an idea of what cards fall into a sort of community taboo, this format’s for you. The combination of points one through five is meant to help us arrive at this sixth and final point. When a card gets banned, restricted, reserved, scattered, smothered, covered, or whatever term gets used you as a player aren’t being targeted. Instead, the health of the format and the enjoyment of the playerbase as a whole is being considered.

Examples - Orm Al’Ghast, Wyvern’s Flames

I think these points encapsulate what Paul and original contributors were going for when they established Ancients. Presently, I think our objective as a community is mostly to just carry their torch. There are some quality of life updates to the game rules when playing Ancients that we could explore, but even with gameplay or rules changes, we’d be striving toward the goals above.

Goals for Today’s Update

Overall, what follows will be the largest swath of cards to hit the Ancients format list since its inception and will include a small re-tooling of how Ancients interacts with the 10th Anniversary Open Reprint Set. Many of today’s changes are cards that could be described as violating one of the above categories, but they are also an attempt to alleviate some of the pressure being put on players’ flex slots or ‘meta’ cards. These are the cards that allow you to meaningfully interact in bad matchups but have limited application elsewhere.

There are a myriad of strategies in Ancients, despite the existing banlist, that either violate or bump up against the parameters regarding the spirit of the format. And most decks have a very small amount of space for trying to not instantly lose to those strategies. This problem is then amplified by the great variety of oppressively fast and consistent decks. For example, you might know that an event or local group’s meta is heavy draw combos, frontline fighters, golden gun, and uber. Almost no matter what deck you pilot, you only have 2-5 slots where you can afford to insert relevant interaction against any of those. And each of those decks likely win on turn one or effectively get out of reach turn one. If you hedge against one of the archetypes, you’re flat-footed against the other three. While broader ‘meta’ cards do exist and there is some intersectionality between the pillars of the format, most of the powerful decks in Ancients require that laser-focused silver bullet answers show up on time. And that can make the format feel a little too much like a game of ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ where many decks are just unbeatable for others that can’t afford meaningful interaction.

So while it brings us little joy to put a card in time-out, knowing that the greater goal is the health of the format for casual and competitive play, we feel the updates below are the best way forward. We hope that by alleviating some of the pressure on those flex or ‘meta’ slots, players will have less broken decks they have to present a turn one answer for.

Reserved List

The following cards are reserved in Ancients, meaning you may not start with them in play:

Ardanaalis is reserved in Ancients.
Brel is reserved in Ancients.
Nelwys is reserved in Ancients.

In the case of Brel and Nelwys, your Warlord is in danger of being killed as early as a player’s second action of the game. It doesn’t happen every game, but it happens often enough that one has to commit headspace and deckspace toward trying to stop it. Not only do you need the answer to these two turn one, but in some number of your games you may need the answer in your second action or you were too slow. And that’s an unhealthy amount of pressure to put on the format, not to mention the occasional second action wins created by these two cards being too fast.

Ardanaalis is a card that we’re reserving for now until further notice. The goal here is not to totally erase Ardanaalis decks, but just to present a speed bump. Particularly in conjunction with Kargaz Dythanus, Ardanaalis can often provide upwards of 20 strikes in the first turn. And while it’s a really cool interaction, it’s a little too consistent when coupled with card draw, redundant reanimation effects, and Ardanaalis starting in play. There are enough ways to find or draw into an early Ardanaalis that we feel that the Ardanaalis decks can jump through that hoop and still show up as a solid strategy.

Restricted List

The following cards are restricted in Ancients, meaning you may not have more than one copy in your deck:

Suicidal Charge is restricted in Ancients.
Trade Routes is restricted in Ancients.

At its tamest, Suicidal Charge offered five strikes from Blood Worm out of Crucin Bascar. At its most medium, Suicidal Charge offered copies four through six of Bull Rush to your High Priest Nassiral deck. And at its most powerful, Suicidal Charge not only produced a ton of strikes but also put one or two copies of Amoudasi’s Inferno into play in your front rank. In each of these scenarios, Suicidal Charge was probably too fast. As a community we’ve learned to live with Suicidal Charge and always appreciated the fact that at least die rolls are involved when it steals a game away. But in more recent months we’ve witnessed an evolution in the format where High Priest Nassiral decks are too consistent and Tavis/The Nemesis are too powerful when running the full suite of Suicidal Charge.

In the case of Trade Routes, we want to slow the combo decks of the format down a bit. Many of the best finishers in Ancients have the item card type, namely Ring of Blasting, Ring of Piercing, and Vorpal Blade. Coupled with enough ways to retrieve an item from your discard pile, Trade Routes really had no drawback or choice involved. When you’re churning through your deck with card draw, always seeing a copy of Trade Routes meant that you always found your win condition early, often in the first turn. By restricting Trade Routes, the hope is that item-based combo decks lose some speed and consistency.

Banned List

The following cards are banned in Ancients, meaning your deck may not include copies of them or play them for any reason:

Daedelia is banned in Ancients.
Healer’s Pact is banned in Ancients.

On a video call reviewing these proposed changes was a newcomer to the secret Warlord cabal meetings named Westley. If you’re unfamiliar with Westley, he’s been in charge of registration, pairings, and general communications for the online Warlord events. He also plays in them. Westley had a bad feeling that something might happen to his beloved Daedelia which, to his sorrow, was confirmed during the meeting. You see, of the 37 decks Westley had built for Ancients, Daedelia was in 34 of them. And only a third or so of the 37 were actually Elf Warlords. Was Westley correct to put Daedelia in nearly all of his non-Elf decks? Probably not. But was he correct often enough? Probably.

Daedelia gets two paragraphs. Because she’s tricky. There’s no one single reason why she crosses the line. Instead her effect on the format and subsequent banning is due to a number of issues which, when you stack them all up, is one strike too many. Enough that we can use bullets points:

Body plus a card - Aggro decks cry
Card effect, not an action - Anti-draw doesn’t apply, Raziel
Level 3 back-up action user - Incentives, Trade Routes, Back Alley Tavern
Can be recurred - Severed of Flesh, Helm of Undying
Turbo draw decks - Bershar, Lekar, ambassador decks
Out of faction draw - Ubiquitous, combos are too smooth
Elves don’t need her - They’re still on top

In some ways it’s as much The Lost Bride’s fault that Daedelia is getting banned as it is Daedelia’s. Elves with six copies of characters that draw a card without effort or restriction puts them dangerously close to being a tier zero faction. But Elves without Daedelia means they can just move onto lowering skill, creating extra characters out of thin air, reusing spells, or performing ranged strikes. They aren’t short on playables without Daedelia in their faction, in fact there are a ton of good options waiting in line. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of pain.

Healer’s Pact is a card known by few and loved by maybe no one. On its face it’s some charge card meant to accrue value over the course of many turns of healing. But much like Mirror Magic before it, it is a card that nobody plays unless they have an infinite goal in mind. In this case, alongside Figurine of Protection and Pain Conduit, Healer’s Pact infinitely reduces wounds. And while that doesn’t win the game on the spot like true infinite combos, it does put the game in a vise grip that usually ends many turns later or results in a tie. Ties are lame and locking the game out of running its course is unfun for most. Goodbye, Healer’s Pact - we never knew you.

Ignored MRP’s

We’re going to rebrand this section of the Ancients Format list. Previously we had made a 10AORS Clarification section with Ignored and Accepted 10AORS ‘most recent printing’ errata lists due to the 10th Anniversary Open Reprint Set having a few too many careless MRP’s. Two things occurred to us recently. First, we realized that we don’t have to explicitly accept an MRP, that happens automatically. So we can just cull the Accepted section and focus on the Ignored section. Secondly, it occurred to us that maybe one day we go beyond the 10AORS’ MRP erratas and nullify a few others. That’s not happening today, but it’s fun to put on the table.

With that said, here is a refresher on the list of the 10th Anniversary Open Reprint Set Ignored MRP Errata:

Assassin’s Arrow
Boomerang
Ghost Bog
Johan Halfblood
Kelemmen
Ravenwild
Seize Life
Unseen Arrow

The changes the 10AORS made to these cards are varied - some were nerfed, some buffed, a name change, some ceased to function at all. But, in the context of Ancients, just pretend the cards above were never reprinted in the 10AORS. Refer to their last printed version before the 10AORS for rules text and card names.

Conclusion

And that’s all for today. A lean 7 cards enter purgatory. Honestly these changes feel like chopping off an arm or a leg, but we made the least amount of changes to impact the format in the most positive ways that we could figure out. It’s perfectly normal if today’s update is a contentious topic whether it be you think we missed something or hit something that didn’t deserve it. Warlord is a beautiful game with a lot of replayability and varied outcomes due to the dice component. And that understandably leads to varied opinions on what’s too good and why.

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Ancients Format Goals and Update