The Whispers from the Maze midseason patch, if there is one, will not be effective before the World Championship Qualifier events in Essen, Germany, or Dallas, Texas, according to Cédric Leblanc, Equinox organized play director.

If there is a patch, announcing it before the Dallas qualifier and applying it after could be a possible way forward, he followed up.

If that route isn’t taken, with the Essen event happening July 26 and Dallas finishing up Aug. 10, the earliest date for a possible midseason patch will be Aug. 11. The first online World Championship Qualifier organized through Board Game Arena, focused on European time zones, will be played Aug. 16.

The upcoming patch has been a point of discussion in the competitive channels on the official Discord since the May 21 AMA as the Equinox team is trying to balance practice and training options for players while causing minimal disturbance to qualifier hopefuls. Changes made in a patch take time to update in BGA, limiting one of the most available options for training and testing decks. In the past, patches have taken about a week to be fully updated on the platform.

Milestone patch planning

Game Designer Charles Wickham talked about the difficulty of integrating a patch into organized play events such as the Tumult Championships and World Championships during the May 21 AMA. Because the balance patch milestones are planned in advance, the team will do what they can to lessen the patch’s impact on competing players, he said.

In the Trial By Frost season patch, a milestone schedule was laid out as a roadmap for future game updates. That plan includes a larger season patch at the start of a set release, with a follow-up patch possible toward mid-season, about two months after release. For both milestone points, a “State of the Game AMA” is planned alongside as an opportunity to connect with game designers and engage in meaningful discussion.

The TBF midseason patch, which introduced the watchlist, landed March 21, two weeks before the start of the TBF Tumult Championships. Initially, the WFM preview article listed the Tumult Championships as running from July 26-Sept. 7, but those dates have since been removed from the article. A new date has not yet been officially shared.