The game has a new name and a new look, and they are the same decision. Warlords is now Cardboard Conquest, because the whole game is cut out of card: every soldier is a die-cut standee on a corrugated base, every battlefield is layered kraft paper on a desk, and one lamp lights the lot.
Your saves came with you. Profiles, runs and unlocks all carried across on the first boot, demo included.
The same fight, both ways
This is the same battle, the same round, the same hand, shot twice. Left is what the game looked like a fortnight ago. Right is what it looks like now.
Nothing here is a filter. Every piece on the board was rebuilt as an object: die-cut edges that show their corrugation, one shadow per piece because there is one lamp, each standee leaning a little because nothing hand-cut stands perfectly straight. Allegiance rings and glowing outlines are gone. The stands are painted by side instead, the way you would paint your own.
Each fight builds its arena in front of you rather than fading one in. A bare box, then a torn construction-paper ground sheet in the arena's colour, then the roads paint on, then the cut-paper props drop in a wave. Every arena is dressed from its own theme, with a signature corner for the lord you are fighting.
Every screen came off the screen and onto the desk
The menu, the campfire, the shop, the chest reveal, the map, the spoils, the run summary, the compendium, the act transitions and the coronation all moved onto the same lit desk.
Cards are printed on card stock and hand-cut, so two Recruits in your hand are two separate cuts of the same card. Costs became pieces you could pick up. Keywords print in burnt ochre instead of glowing.
All 124 events are pop-up spreads now. The page creases, turns, and the pieces stand up out of the fold.
The menu wordmark is the game's name cut from corrugated board with a strip of masking tape across the O. The icon is a hand-cut crown on crimson paper. And the store capsule finally shows the game you actually play.
One more thing worth saying plainly: the three Realistic art-style boxes are gone from Settings. There is one look now, and the painted set is retired rather than deleted.
Ten warlords, and you open them by doing things
Five new commanders, ten in total. Boxer doubles melee and halves ranged. Pirate drafts a fourth pack. Witch pours every potion twice. Viking doubles the attack of anything already wounded. Ninja summons anywhere on the field. Each brings a seven-card starter deck, its own rig, field sprites, card art, a signature relic and a hand-drawn lair.
None of them is behind a win ladder. Every warlord posts a writ: a countable deed that any march can satisfy, win or lose. Do the deed and they take up arms.
Wally, the Neighborly
A new act 1 boss whose fight is the sky. The sun crosses in two rounds, and at moonrise the whole village turns: a dull villager deck by day, a vicious wolf book by night, every body mapping one to one and carrying its wounds through the change. There are two ways to finish him, because there are two of him.
More to walk into
- The guided march. A first run on an authored six-node road with a pinned seed, offered once on a profile's first New Game and replayable from Settings whenever you want it.
- The Wandering Bazaar. An event merchant stocking cards from packs this run never drafted, plus relic and flask shelves that exist in no other pool.
- Witches' Brew. Mints one of twenty-one potions from a shelf only the Witch reaches.
- Two minigames got real rules. The pachinko board is played rather than pre-rolled: slide the ball along a rail, let go where you like, and a real simulation carries it through the pins. The herald's sigil sequence grows by one call a round.
- 89 distinct arena gags across the arenas, one animation each, instead of a shared fading circle.
- Two packs were renamed. Rogue's Gambit is now Behind You! and Traps and Tricks is Trapper's Delight. Your saved pack XP, looks and emote lines are untouched.
The bosses fight wide
- Rex Mortifer was re-cut around a tide. Bonewalker is 1 HP, 2 attack, Undying 2, four to a play.
- The Mimic duplicates your line instead of warping it. Blanks muster five 2/5 bodies rather than two 4/10.
- The Dread Court trades one big diver for three cheap birds, and doubles its snipers.
- The Hushmaidens became a crowd. Quietus lands long Stuns and Silences off one small cast, and Every Word Unsaid bills you per silenced unit.
- The Frost Yeti throws your soldiers back down the road and drops Ball Lightnings that roll at your commander.
- Event Horizon folds your army into a knot and drops Starfall on it.
Every boss now opens its phase with its own object, twenty-one hand-drawn props between them, and all 42 enemy commanders got a resting beat.
Rules that were quietly wrong
- Fragile banks hits instead of multiplying them. Each Fragile doubles the blow and spends one stack, so Fragile 2 is two doubled hits and not one tripled one. Two stacks used to turn 5 damage into 15.
- Momentum raises the ceiling once, not once a turn. A single copy used to pay +1, then +2, then +3, compounding all battle.
- Stun adds up. Stun 1 onto a body with 3 seconds left leaves 4. It used to keep the longer and throw the other away.
- Repeating shield relics only cover unshielded units. Champion's Laurels was re-walling the whole army every round.
- A curse is not a spell. A free Decay no longer cashes spell relics, feeds Channeling or arms the Mimic's echo.
- Each warlord has their own commander health, priced against their signature relic, instead of a shared flat 110.
- Formation folded into Pack Tactics, which no longer reads unit kind. Auto End Turn is on by default for anyone who never opened Settings.
Co-op sees the whole game now
- The whole party watches the fight begin. The establishing shot, the roads painting in and the scenery falling into place were all refused in co-op, so a party had never once seen a battle assemble.
- Boss arrivals play for everyone. The fly-over, the nameplate slam, the taunt and your warlord's answer were solo-only. Barks are rolled once by the host and shipped, so both seats hear the same sentence.
- A party wipe gets the same last look a solo death gets: a frozen, inspectable board and the ledger of what killed you.
- A joiner sees the thing hitting its army rather than the aftermath: chain and fork arcs, Bombard shells, Contagion jumps, a Tank stepping in front of a blow.
- Four things that freeze a fight now stop it for the whole table instead of one seat: the settings menu, the Steam overlay, an unplugged pad and the feedback form. The banner says who stopped the board.
Controller, Steam Deck and touch
On a Steam Deck every mouse event is now treated as a deliberate hand, so the desktop's pad-echo guards and steering discount turn off and a thumb resting on a trigger no longer eats a tap. A finger on the glass takes the screen on every platform. Single-target aims snap to the nearest legal body. On phones the settings page, all nine compendium pages, the relic grid and the run summary can be dragged by their widgets.
A full board is back inside a frame
The heaviest fights were running at nearly twice a frame's budget and are now comfortably inside it. Per simulation tick, at 287 bodies: 19.86ms down to 8.71ms. At 220 bodies: 14.48 down to 7.36. At 140: 7.63 down to 5.09. Co-op snapshots fit inside a single packet again, and a card plate is cut once rather than sixty times a second, which is what used to make panels shake.
Fixes
- A commander's health bar drew underneath any body standing in front of it.
- Bodies could get stuck in a fold of the road on layouts that double back.
- "Regen 0" and "Growth: +0 HP" printed on bodies you could watch healing.
- The spell aim line painted across the card you had lifted to read.
- Gravity Wells could not find down on a road running up the screen.
- Landing on Bust on the Double Down wheel played the treasure fanfare.
- Dragging a potion out of the belt moved nothing on screen.
- Polymorph Scroll now shows you the two cards it rewrote.
- A boss phase break could freeze the game with no way out.
Every reworded card, keyword and screen went out in all ten languages, Wally and the Rex Mortifer re-cut included.
Cardboard Conquest is 871 cards, 21 packs, 10 warlords, 42 enemy lords, 7 bosses, 124 events, 275 relics, 33 potions, 79 achievements and 74 tracks, solo or in online co-op for up to four. Wishlist it and you will hear the moment the crown is up for grabs.