New Rotation System - Dev Blog
about 1 hour ago
Hello friends!
Later this year we will be implementing changes to the rotation system. The new system will kick in for the first time with the winter expansion at the end of the year, but we need to adjust several things in preparation for the new system. We plan to implement these adjustments alongside the summer expansion in a few months.
In this dev blog we will cover first what the new system will look like, why we are making these changes and finally what adjustments we need to make this summer. We are doing this now to give you guys ample time to prepare for the upcoming changes.
Let’s start with a quick overview and then dive into the details. The new rotation system has two key features:
We rotate only once per year
We rotate cards out by whole sets
To make this work we have to expand the current pool of cards that are a permanent part of the active pool found in the starter and level 12 decks, from the current 170 to around 400. This will be the big change this summer.
Why are we making these changes, you might ask. There have been two big complaints about the old system - that we rotate too often and that the rotation is too obscure, i.e. players can only guess what will be rotated. This can easily create frustration when hard-earned cards are suddenly removed from the active pool and players are forced to grind again to update their decks. It is not a sustainable model. With the new system, these changes only occur once every year and players will know exactly what will rotate out and when.
New Rotation System
Now to some more details. Once the new system is up and running (from the winter expansion later this year and going forward), we will rotate cards out once each year, always when the winter expansion drops.
When a rotation occurs, we will rotate out the two sets that were released two years prior. This means that in the upcoming rotation at the end of this year, we will rotate out the two sets that came out in 2024 (Covert Operations and Blood & Iron). Here is a nice graphic to make this clear:
Once Covert Operations and Blood & Iron rotate this winter, we will not have another rotation until the end of next year, when Naval Warfare and Homefront will rotate out.
So far so good, pretty simple, right? Well, there are a few caveats we need to address. First, the minisets. The rule with the new system is that a miniset is tied to the big expansion that preceded it and will rotate at the same time as that expansion. We saw this very clearly with the recently released Homefront - Early War - the cards are treated as part of Homefront in every sense. The minisets from last year, United Front and Air Supremacy, do not have this direct tie in, but will be treated the same. Thus, United Front is tied to Blood & Iron and Air Supremacy is tied to Naval Warfare. This means that rotation is not strictly tied to a calendar year, as the miniset tied to the winter expansion comes the following year. You can see this here:
An important thing to point out here is that with this new rotation system, cards will stay in the active pool for a varied amount of time, depending on when they were released. The summer expansions have the longest lifetime, of around 30 months, the spring miniset the shortest, or 21 months. The current system promises that cards will remain untouched for a minimum of 18 months, so the new system guarantees all cards stay active a bit longer than that, but of course in the current system a card could stay much longer than the 18 months. On the average though, a card should stay active more or less the same.
The second thing to note is how older returning cards are treated. We will continue to bring reserved cards back with the big expansions, around 20 each time. These cards then drop in the expansion packs same as they currently do. For rotation purposes, a returned card will rotate out again with the set it returned in. Let’s take Red Devils as an example. It returned in Homefront. This means, even if it belongs to an older set, that Red Devils will stay in the active pool for as long as Homefront does. To make it easier for players to keep track of this, we are adding a new field to the card detail section that will inform when the card will rotate, as seen here:
The third and final thing to note is: If Covert Operations and Blood & Iron are the first sets to rotate out, what about all the older sets? Base, Allegiance, Breakthrough, Brothers in Arms, etc. Well, that brings us to the big adjustment we need to make alongside the summer expansion. When the summer expansion drops, then ALL cards in sets older than Covert Operations will be reserved… with some exceptions.
This sounds like we are about to reserve the majority of the cards in the game, but the numbers are actually a lot more sane, due to aforementioned exceptions.
The Permanent Pool
The big exception is the expansion of the pool of cards that will become a permanent part of the active pool, as briefly mentioned above. We already have 170 of those, from the starter and level 12 decks, though there has been no indication in the client showcasing this up to now. We are expanding this to around 400 cards (more on this later) and many of those cards come from the older sets (including some that are returning from the reserve pool specifically to become permanently active).
In addition, any older card that has returned in recent sets will not rotate in the summer expansion, but rather when the set they returned in rotates out (like the Red Devils example above).
Finally, a large portion of the cards from the older sets has already been reserved.
Taking this all together, we foresee that the total number of cards we will need to reserve with the summer expansion is around 130, with around 50 cards being returned from the reserve pool. We cannot give an exact count at this time as we are still working on exactly which cards we want to include in the permanent pool, but it should not differ much from the above numbers. 130 is slightly more than what we have normally been reserving (usually between 100 and 110), but on the other hand a return of 50 cards is more than double what usually returns, so on the whole the adjustment will feel similar to a rotation of old (you can think of this one as the last one).
Why grow the permanent pool, you may ask. There are three key reasons:
Make sure the active pool has a high enough number of cards for there to be solid diversity. With this increase, the active pool will have between 800 and 900 cards at all times.
Make sure each nation has a minimum number of cards regardless of set rotation for them to be viable and support key archetypes that are part of their identity (this is especially important for ally (minor) nations).
Make sure we have a good spread of iconic units, equipment and themes to give strong flavor and pay homage to our World War II roots.
The permanent pool will have cards from all nations and have the same distribution of rarities for each main nation and each ally nation.
When the summer expansion launches you will be able to see in the client which cards are part of the permanent pool. As an example, here is how it would look if Red Devils ends up in the permanent pool:
Note that this is a work in progress, so the final wording may differ, but the important thing is that players can now see exactly which cards are never leaving the active pool and can thus be safely crafted.
We aim to publish the list of permanent cards in late April, so that you will have ample opportunity to familiarise yourself with it and take it into account when deciding how to spend your wildcards.
A couple of final things to note: We will keep the system that stops cards that are about to be reserved from dropping as rewards (including in packs) and add a warning if you try to craft them. So the last month before the winter expansion is released next winter you will no longer get Covert Operation or Blood & Iron cards in Core packs, for example.
Speaking of packs, the other thing to note is that the pack structure will remain the same - the shop will continue to offer Core packs and packs from the latest expansion. The Core packs will contain the cards in the permanent pool, plus cards from the 3 to 4 expansions in the active pool excluding the latest one. There is a minor exception here: any cards in the upcoming summer expansion that are also part of the permanent pool will drop only in the summer expansion packs, as any other expansion card. This is the only time this overlap will occur (as the permanent pool will be set in place moving forward).
So, taking together everything we have discussed here, here is the timeline of what you can expect on the rotation front this year:
April: List of permanent pool cards published.
June: Setting up the permanent pool in preparation for the new rotation system (many older cards rotate out or back in based on their permanent status).
June: Card details will show if a card is part of the permanent pool. If not, it shows when it will rotate out. United Front and Air Supremacy are tied to Blood & Iron and Naval Warfare respectively.
Winter 2026: First rotation with the new system, Covert Operation, Blood & Iron and United Front rotate out.
That is all for now. We wanted to give you guys an early heads up about what will happen this year for rotation, as the summer expansion will see a bit of upheaval when we are setting everything in place. But moving forward we believe we will have a much stronger system that gives the community better insights and understanding about what is happening on the rotation front.
Let us know your thoughts on this matter, your feedback is very much appreciated. See you on the battlefield, commander!
