Balance Update: October 1, 2026

Hey folks, today we’re nerfing a few Fractured Frontier strength outliers and taking a bigger swing at the Scorpion Brand New Day deck, since the Power cuts a few weeks ago didn’t do the job. Then, as always, a few buffs. Let’s get to it!

Thanos Fractured Frontier

[Old] 5/8 – Game Start: Load an Infinity Shot. Your cards have “Quickdraw: Thanos loads again.” On Reveal: Fire all loaded Shots.
[New] 5/8 – Game Start: Your cards have “Quickdraw: Thanos loads an Infinity Shot.” On Reveal: Fire all loaded Shots.

Thanos Fractured Frontier has been a tricky one. Players overwhelmingly enjoy playing with the card, but as we near two full seasons with it, there’s understandable fatigue with playing against it. That very high, sustained play rate comes from its strength, its flexibility, and how fun it is to play. The last two are great, especially for a Season Pass card. The first gets tiring over a long enough timeline, and we need to rein it in to keep the game fresh and let more cards shine.

Put simply, we expected chaining Thanos’s Quickdraw turn over turn to be harder than it turned out to be. We pre-loaded an Infinity Shot as a hedge against that difficulty (we’ve missed on quest-style cards before) and to make “living the dream” of firing all six Shots more achievable.

We know now, of course, that players have managed pretty well with being able to get a reasonable outcome of Shots on average. Even getting to 3, or so, makes Thanos a perfectly competitive midrange card with a very high ceiling beyond that, which has led to its sustained play rates. This should shift Thanos away from being the de facto splashable midrange piece and toward being a central card in Double-Thanos strategies and other decks built around a high density of cheap cards or extra card draw.

We prefer this approach over taking a hatchet to a bunch of Shots and Thanos’s Power, as it should shift Thanos towards being more of a dedicated build-around while retaining all of the texture that many of the more unique Shots provide to his play experience.

Domino

[Old] 2/4 – You always draw this card on turn 2, and not before.
[Change] 2/4 > 2/3

Jane Foster Fractured Frontier

[Old] 3/4 – On Reveal: Judge 4 other random characters. +1 Power (if yours) or -1 Power (enemies). Quickdraw: Judge the worthy again.
[Change] 3/4 > 3/3

The Quicksilver and Domino package was never the strongest way to play Thanos, but with a card that powerful to subsidize, its floor was high enough that it undeniably made games feel more homogenous and repetitive. For the long-term health of the game, supporting Wiccan and Thanos Fractured Frontier that easily should cost a little more.

Jane has proven a little over on rate. Alongside Venus, she’s comfortably been 1A or 1B among 3-Cost cards since the two could team up. We have faith she’ll still be an excellent addition to many decks at 3 Power.

Blink

[Old] 5/7 – On Reveal: Swap the last card you played with a card that costs more from your deck.
[New] 5/8 – On Reveal: Swap the last card you played with a card that costs the same or more from your deck.

Tao Mandala (from The Ancient One)

[Old] 2/- – On Reveal: Copy the text of one of your Ongoing cards here onto your other characters here.
[Change] 2/- > 3/-

We hoped the Power adjustments in the last OTA would move the needle on Scorpion Brand New Day. They didn’t, so we’re taking more substantial action.

We know Scorpion Brand New Day wins by miles once it assembles its pieces. Our hope was that a lighter touch, more player knowledge, and tech cards would let us avoid a bigger hit. We’d rather stay conservative so as many players as possible get to enjoy their decks for as long as is fair to everyone else.

Unfortunately, that just didn’t pan out this time, so we’ll be making much larger changes this week to attack Scorpion’s consistency and ability to replicate its Ongoing.

Reverting the Ancient One’s Tao Mandala to 3-Cost makes one piece of the combo clunkier to deploy. The bigger change is Blink: the Scorpion deck will need considerably different deckbuilding, and a higher Energy curve, to keep putting its namesake into play deterministically. That should be a healthy ding to the deck’s consistency and push it toward a real backup plan when Scorpion doesn’t land early enough to copy its Ongoing repeatedly.

Onto some buffs!

Zombie Captain Marvel

[Old] 4/5 – Activate: Destroy your other cards here to get +3 Power for each. Move to a location you’re losing.
[Change] 4/5 > 4/6

Winter Soldier (from Bucky Barnes)

[Old] 2/7
[Change] 2/7 > 2/8

Tombstone

[Old] 2/4 – On Reveal: Destroy your lowest-Power card at each other location.
[Change] 2/4 > 2/5

We’re buffing a handful of Destroy cards. Destroy as an archetype continues to be weaker and less represented than we’d like for a core archetype overall, and with the upcoming Zombie Venom this felt like a good time to make some changes. Particularly, we’re looking to help prop up the “Mass Destroy” deck a little more with these changes and move some more strength into Destroyers that aren’t just Carnage and original Venom.

Kluh

[Old] 5/10 – On Reveal: EACH player randomly gives a card in their hand -1 Cost for each different Cost among their cards in play.
[Change] 5/10 > 5/11

Basic Arrow (from Kate Bishop Hawkeye)

[Old] 1/1 – On Reveal: If you play a card at this location next turn, +3 Power.
[Change] +3 Power > +4 Power

Finally, rounding some things out, Kluh has underperformed a bit. Some of this is naturally having Thanos as a competitor as a 5-Cost card, but even with the nerf to Thanos we think Kluh can comfortably get the point given its symmetric nature and deck-building ask.

Basic Arrow is getting an extra point, a nice flavor mirror to the recent Hawkeye buff, mostly to give some strength back to a fan-favorite that’s fallen a bit out of favor over the course of the year. Kate Bishop is a fun, flexible card with potential in a variety of archetypes, so we’re giving her some love.

Text Change:

Hellcow Fractured Frontier – Added “Other” to more clearly communicate Hellcow cannot destroy itself.

Alright, that’s all for today folks, we hope that you enjoy this shake up to the metagame and have a great start to your Zombies vs Vampires season!