Patch Notes | Aether Realms

A way back onto the board

2026-09-21

Every kingdom has a new spell: Last Stand, 4 mana, two copies in every deck. Deal 1 damage to all enemy units for each unit they control more than you, up to 3.
It is deliberately a blank card when the boards are level or when you are the one ahead. It only ever does something for the player being run over.
Why it exists: once one side fills the board, the other almost never gets back onto it — anything you play is killed before it does anything. In testing, the trailing player won 16% of those games. With Last Stand they win 20%, and the share who never manage to get a second unit down at all fell from 8% to 5%.
The trade is that games run about three turns longer on average. We will live with it for a while and see how it feels — if it is wrong, it gets changed.

2026-09-20

The Wild Holds board skin had two white boxes sitting behind its buildings. Two of the Beast sprites turned out to ship with a solid white backdrop baked in; those are left out of the skyline now.

Every spell card in the game has new art — all 119, across all ten kingdoms. The unit cards were redone earlier today; the spells were the last of the old look.
A spell now shows which kingdom it came from: behind it stands that kingdom's own architecture, a different building on every spell.
And what it does: the symbol and its colour tell you at a glance — a blade for damage to one unit, a burst for damage to the whole board, a cracked tower for castle damage, chevrons for power, a shield for defence, a cross for healing, a fan of cards for drawing.
Spells you pay for out of your own castle — Blood for Power, Reckless Swing, Bloodlust, Crushing Blow — carry a red drop in the corner, so the cost is on the card.
Raise Dead and Ancient Wisdom used to share one picture of a fan of cards, which told you nothing about what Raise Dead does. Every spell has its own now.

Card Backs & Boards is now called Shop, because that is what it is — plenty of people never found the avatars in there.
Ten realm board skins, one per kingdom, 450 coins each: your kingdom’s own buildings stand on the horizon behind the battlefield, and the board takes its colour.
The 140 avatars are sorted by kingdom now instead of being one long wall of faces.
Your avatar is bigger everywhere, and it finally shows in a match: both name plates carry a face, yours and your opponent’s.

Every window can be closed with an X in the top right corner of the screen. No more scrolling back up from the bottom of the shop to get out of it.

A realm board skin you had equipped did not show up in your match. All ten do now.
Opening chat during a match put the panel half off the right-hand side of the screen.

Pick a face: 140 character portraits, fourteen per kingdom, in the Shop.
One per kingdom is free, so nobody is faceless; the rest cost from 150 to 400 coins.
Your avatar shows next to your name in the header, on your friends list and on the leaderboard.

Every rung of the Weekly Gauntlet is now a named opponent with a portrait — The Riverwatch, The Lamplighter, Ironhide — instead of a row naming a kingdom.
The eight champions are drawn from the same week seed, so everyone climbing this week faces the same eight.

Every unit card in the game has new art — all 273 of them, across all ten kingdoms.
All ten kingdom crests are redrawn to match.
Spell cards keep their current art for now.
Fixed: some card art looked blocky — the smallest sprites were being magnified nearly five times. They are scaled properly now.

Every kingdom except Star-Fallen now carries two copies of its main board answer instead of one, so roughly two thirds of your games contain one rather than a third: Earthshaker, Steam Burst, Rallying Volley, Plague Wind, Stampeding Herd, Blood Sacrifice, Coordinated Volley, Reckless Barrage and Warband Frenzy.
Star-Fallen is deliberately unchanged: its Scrapfield Purge scales with your hand, and a second copy made the kingdom far too strong in testing.

A friends button in the header, next to your name, showing how many friends are online.
Add friends by name, accept or decline requests.
Statuses: Available, Play with me and Do not disturb, plus Idle and In a match automatically. Someone on Do not disturb cannot be invited.
Invite a friend straight into a match — they get a Join button on their screen.
Watch a friend's match live. You see the board and how many cards each side holds, never what they are.

Eight computer opponents a week, climbing from Easy to Hard, in the AI Match tab.
Everyone faces the same ladder each week. Beat a kingdom at its difficulty to clear the rung and take the coins.
Clear all eight for a 300 coin bonus and the Unbroken title. Resets every Monday.

All fourteen achievements now grant a title — First Blood, Giantslayer, Siegebreaker, Legend of the Realms and more.
Wear one from the Achievements panel. It shows on your name plate in a match and beside your name on the leaderboard.

Your last twenty matches are kept: result, kingdom, mode, opponent, rating change, turns, units destroyed and castle damage.

Pairs you with someone near your rating; the range widens the longer you wait, and with nobody else queued you are paired straight away.
Play the computer instead while you wait — it leaves the queue first, so nobody is sent to an empty room.
If someone is queued on the other board, you are told and offered a one-click switch. Before this, you both searched forever.

A match now opens on the matchup: both names, their titles and kingdoms, instead of a bare coin flip.
An accidental refresh walks you back into your match instead of abandoning it.

The lobby uses the full width of the screen, and the leaderboard and site info now sit side by side.
Every card in the game has its own page under Cards, listed by kingdom.
Fixed: a crash where a single malformed request could restart the server.
Fixed: a friend with the game open in a background tab no longer shows as offline.
Patch notes now live in the header, next to Lore & Kingdoms, with a dot when something is new since your last visit.

2026-09-19

2v2 with a friend: you and a friend against two computer players, with an invite link to share.
Find Opponent no longer pairs you with a player who has already closed the page.

Elf: Woodland Ward and Fleetfoot Ward now last until your next turn.
Adjustments across Dynasty, Human, Clock, Fallen, Beast, Orc, Elf and Dwarf cards.

Cards no longer slide out from under the mouse in 2v2.
A unit carrying a Shield now shows it, instead of surviving damage for no visible reason.
Fixed two players in a 2v2 room swapping seats and drawing each other’s cards.