Some of you may have noticed that we accidentally released a patch. As a result of our changing servers, this was necessary in order to make sure the game worked. We're aware there's some problems with it, since it was released prematurely, and we'll be trying to fix them as quickly as possible. Sorry for the late Changelog - we'll make sure to do better in the future.

The Neutral Festive Spirit card should be coming out within the next day or so.
Shield cardbacks are on sale again, now for 750 gems, for the next month. Buy 'em while they're hot!

Build: 25.5619 / 25.5620

Fixes

• Corrected the scrollbar sprites and color in the deck builder and arena deck builder.
  
• Fixed the double challenge message
  
• Disabled back button once the countdown starts after challenging someone
  
• Fixed problems with the End Turn highlight
  
• Corrected some issues with deployment mouseover hovering
  
• Corrected some translation issues (especially Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Italian) for Sherman Badger
  
• Fixed translation problems with Neutral Smokescreen (for French language users).

Changes

• New AI deck in the tutorial, to make it a little less challenging.
  
• Added various AI improvements

Balance Changes

• Neutral City Watch
  Gained Assault ability: your CC gains +2 HP.
  
  
• Alliance Afrika Korps
  Gained Fast trait.
  
  In combination with the changes to the Surgeon Major, the previous removal of the Fast trait for Afrika Korps was necessary.
  
  
• Empire Emperor’s Hand
  Overrun ability changed: now deals 4 damage instead of destroying adjacent units.
  
  His sheer destructive power was too much - this change means he will still be able to destroy most units through movement, but you can now protect your units with Shields, or simply through having a strong enough unit.
  
  
• Empire Supply Carrier
  New ability - On Injury: gain +1 MP. Move cost reduced to 0 from 1 (Fast).
  
  +2 Attack for 1 turn is useful, but given that you needed to pay to move the Supply Carrier around, and that it takes up space that could block other units, it was challenging to use. It no longer costs MP to move, and if used on your turn in the intended role, will almost fully repay the cost to play itself.

Full Disintegrate

• Empire Emperor's Hand

It’s been a long time since we updated, but have no fear: we are still here, and we’re working on improving the game. In a few days to a week, we will be posting a long explanation on some of the absence along with previews of things to come – but today, we’re here to announce something else: a downtime.

We are going to be down on Saturday as we move our servers to the Amazon cloud. The downtime will be scattered throughout the day on Saturday and once completed, we expect a lot of the freezes and problems with lag will disappear – not all, but a noticeable amount of them. We’ll make an announcement once the downtime has passed, and in the meantime, thanks for being patient with us!

We've all come out the other side of the holidays in mostly piece, right? Right! Good. Hello everyone. We ran a little New Years contest that ended recently and we just finished going through your submissions. There were some good ones, some funny ones, but we finally picked a winner. As mentioned the winner will receive a cardback, of their choice, and we'll get with them ASAP to hand it out. Without further ado -

Congratulations, the winner is Arthas!

“I want to be the very best, like no one ever was, and finish my card collection.”

We also decided, last minute, to have an honorable mention. You didn't win a cardback, no, but you're getting 500 gold just because we liked your submission and it was hard to pick.

Honorable mention goes to Scotsman

“I'm looking to up my game this year and break through to the vaulted ranks of Grandmaster.”

Becoming a Grandmaster is definitely the goal of a lot of players. Thank you very much, sincerely, to everyone that participated. Keep an eye out for the next contest, for cool prizes, and we'll see you on the battlefield!

P.S. Just to remind everyone about the Christmas card we're working on, that everyone will be getting for free, it's a Neutral Command Card called Festive Spirit. In case you missed it the art for the card is below. We look forward to being able to give it to you!

Hello everyone! Why not run a little New Years 'contest'? Sounds like a great idea. It is a holiday after all. It'll be a simple one. We just want to hear your New Year's Resolution for Face Off! For example: In 2016, my goal is to own all the Empire gold cards. Submissions should be emailed to jayme@isotx.com. Please keep your submissions clean, one per player, and the winner will receive a cardback of their choice!

To recap:
Write your Face Off New Year's Resolution (one only)
Email it to jayme@isotx.com, Subject: New Years Contest

The contest starts right now and will be open until 7pm EST January 4th. We look forward to hearing what your resolutions are! See you on the battlefield.

Hey everyone! Hope you're having a good day and that tomorrow is full of cheer. We just wanted to take a little time to get a video out to you. It's a little sappy, and a little cliché, but it has also got information about what we're doing for you for the holidays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe6jS4sipfc

If you're not interested in a video the short version is – We're giving you 250 tickets and a special festive unit. The unit wont be coming out until after Christmas, though. It's a little late and we hope you'll forgive us for that. Happy Holidays from Isotx and everyone stay safe! See you on the battlefield.

Yesterday, December 20th, the unit cardback design contest ended. After taking a little while to compile all of the entries and go through them we’ve picked our winners. Thank you to everyone that participated. It was really fun to see your creativity and ideas! Hopefully we’ll see even more for the next contest. As a side note the Deck Builder section on the website – faceoff.isotx.com – is live! Hope all of you stop by to check it out. Back to this contest and the winners!

In THIRD PLACE and recipient of 500 gems is Scotsman

Commissar in the Battle of Stalingrad. To me, it’s one of the more iconic popular memories from the Soviet front during the war and a brutal battle by any standard and the Commissar is a very uniquely Soviet image as well. He could be set in a boat commanding other soldiers as they cross the Volga River with a charred cityscape behind them.

In SECOND PLACE and recipient of 1000 gems is FrenziedKing

“Winter War” Setting: A bloodstained clearing in a winter forest, lots of snow. Foreground: A union walker towering over the wreckage of an Alliance tank and Red Army Soldiers battling MG42 Half-Tracks accompanied by Stormtrooper-esque units in snow camo.

In FIRST PLACE receiving 2000 gems is DerFloh111

As for the design it, the Flak tank should stay in some debris, firing away his cannons at something outside the screen, but at ground targets. The action needs to be included for the image to be livelier. The viewer should also see it slightly from beneath to give it a more dangerous and mighty look. Oh and if I may be selfish please give it the serial number 111 on the side of it, if I should win somehow.

Congratulations to all of our winners! This is the fourth contest that we’ve run, with a lot of participation, so thank you to everyone once more for making it a really fun read. Keep an eye out for the next contest and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

M Build: 24.5333
XL Build: 24.5334

With the end of the year fast approaching, we decided to release a build with quite a few bug fixes and some quality of life improvements. We're aware that there's still a problem with Arena and freezing, but we're working on trying to solve it on the back end. Send us a report when you encounter it, please; we hope to have it fixed very soon!

Changes

• The Tutorial Overlay button can be disabled from the Settings screen on XL now. (Hi, Devxx!)
  
• Improvements for the Tutorial overlay.
  
• Immobile units no longer have arrows around their move icons.
  
• Changed HQ Repair's portrait.
  
• Added a way to cancel secondary buildings (such as Medical Jeep's ability to move target ally organic forward by 1).

Fixes

• Corrections for the AI performing strange actions (like playing AoE cards wrong, or trying to move a unit with enemies or allies in front of hem).
  
• Partial fix for the AI sacrificing units in battle.
  
• Fixed the AI using Rout on its own units when it shouldn't.
  
• Numerous fixes for offline mode.
  
• Fixes for several different bugs in the challenge process.
  
• Corrected a problem with cards not displaying correctly if you change resolution in battle.
  
• Fixed the way the Arena cards display on smaller resolutions, like 1024x768, during deck building.
  
• Crafting should now always update the number of tickets automatically.
  
• Fixed a crash that happened under certain circumstances when you select a friend from the friends list.
  
• Fixed errors on the Neutral Zombie and Neutral Zombie Spider cards across all languages.
  
• Empire Fireburst Cannon can no longer target mechanicals when it has 0 or less attack.
  
• First play text has been changed to reflect the 9 cards in hand instead of 8.
  
• Mobile Command Vehicle now has a death animation.
  
• The gun firing on Mobile Command Vehicle and Airdropped Turret units now match their sound.
  
• Corrected a bug with the store window not showing correctly under certain circumstances.
  
• Fixed card tooltips showing incorrectly after you opened a pack in the store.
  
• Fixed friends not being removed when removing friend via profile page.
  
• Corrected a problem with dragging cards when building a deck (they used to appear behind other cards).
  
• Fixed friends list being out of sync with profile pages.
  
• Added a confirmation popup when you remove friends from your friends list.
  
• Fixed tooltips not showing up on first hover.
  
• Corrected one of the problems that might have been causing a 16% hang. Thanks LazyMornings for helping us find this one!

Cards

• Railway Gun - changed 'move foward one' to 'move forward 1 tile'
  
• Stuka Dive Bomber - now reads 'Deal 2 Damage to target' instead of '2 Damage to target.'
  
• Bumblebee - now reads 'IMPACT: Hit target and next enemy in same Row as target.'
  
• Tall Boy Bomb - capitalized Row

Silver and Gold, Silver and Gold, everyone wishes for Silver and Gold, how do you measure its worth?

How about just gold?

It’s been a little while since we shared anything about Union. We’re in testing phase of it right now and working on balance, so its release is fast approaching. Toward that end, our reveal for today is a few upcoming Gold cards for the faction.

Meet the Sniper Ace. It has 2 move in every direction, is 1/1, and is 8 cost. So why the cost? Because it is annihilator vs any and all organics, and it has a relatively unique feature: Permanent Shelter. You’re not bombing this one off the board.

General Winter is a 4MP cost command card that makes all enemy units suffer -3 attack for 1 turn, and then -1 attack on their next turn.

Stavka Grand Reserves is a 10MP command card. Sure sounds expensive, huh? You might find it worth it when you find out that playing it grants you three T-34 and three Red Army Infantry cards. Finding yourself out of units that you can play? Not anymore~ This card will help you make a comeback in the late game if you’ve run out of things you can place on the board.

We hope they’re as interesting to you as they are to us. Let us know what you think in the forums!

Last time I covered how to make a deck, played through the tutorial, and gave some pointers. In this video I cover how to unlock the other factions, since you start with Alliance, and talk a little about how Assault works. For the people who don't know there's the (?) button on the main menu that comes with a glossary on the terms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px47Cdz9dJk

I remembered to turn on the volume this time, though! Hope it helps. See you on the battlefield.