A new Altered French stream by Equinox as well as a new post about the 2025 World Championship just dropped a bunch of new pieces of information including:

• The team are working on a PvE format
• The 2v2 format’s availability on BGA was answered with ‘not yet’.
• There will be Official World Championship playmats as well as ‘Chibi’ versions of the Official World Championship playmats availble with tickets for the last chance qualifier entrants. There will also be art prints and pins available.
• There will be 2×2 and 3×3 sealed side events as well as normal 1×1 side events at the World Championships
• The new Axiom Boss ‘Triny and Tlat’ for boss battles was revealed
• The flying character on the booster packs is indeed the Ordis Trooper who has somehow gained wings in this set – has she ascended?

Excitingly they also provided us with a new card reveal. A card that is named after the set no less! Welcome to the new Ordis Spell – Skybound Odyssey.

It seems this set that big spells just ‘do more’. Here we are paying 5 mana for drawing a card, ascending both expeditions AND putting into play two character with base cost of 3 or less. The words “base cost” are significant here. This is a new term that means the cost you are paying for the card from the place it is being played from. So you don’t get to cheat a 3/6 cost unique into play from the reserve here, alas.  However this is value on a spell. In my view you are getting up to 9 points worth of mana here from a 5 point card. However to get that value you’d need to have the right cards in hand AND tie both expeditions. However on the biggest upside the card is real value. You have to pay one more for your trouble from reserve, but still it is potentially value.

I’m sure that although Sigismar could use this, the card is not really designed for him. He’d need to rejig his deck around quite a bit to get maximum value from this card. I could see Waru liking this though to get into play some bureaucrats quickly as well as draw and potentially sneak an expedition win this turn. I think the card though is designed to work well with the new Ordis hero Zhen and Zephyr. As Zhen draws more cards from your ascended expeditions moving forwards, she will potentially be picking up two cards after casting this spell (one for the spell and one for the ascended expedition moving forwards).

The rare is slightly more insane, costing 7/7 but giving you an extra free character up to 3 cost. However to get the maximum value from your spell you really need to have those cards in hand or reserve to cast for free. This could be tricky and make sabotage even more valuable against Ordis.

The OOF rare is in Bravos and is the same as the Ordis common. Although Atsadi might be able to use it as it’s a big cost (and he can play it due to mana ramp), I’m not sure he’s the target here. Sol and Halua want to cast things quickly and they get the other advantages from it (drawing cards and ascending expeditions). Since Sol wants to include midrange cards in her deck, I think this card is a perfect fit for her deck.

I for one am looking forward to the card reveals starting in full next week, and you may want to check here for something special on 10th and 15th September – just saying!