Duelyst’s first major expansion launches later this month, here are 8 new cards

Duelyst’s first major card expansion, Denizens of Shim’zar, will be launching on August 30th. It will bring 105 new cards (including token minions) to the game, a small number of which are a brand new minion tribal, Battle Pets. 

Developer Counterplay Games adds four new cards to Duelyst every month, but Denizens of Shim’zar is going to have a much larger impact on the game than anything since its release this spring. For context, there are currently 400 cards in Duelyst, so after adding the Shim’zar cards to the mix, they will make up roughly 20% of the entire collection.

These new cards can only be acquired through specific Denizens of Shim’zar Spirit Orbs (Duelyst’s card packs), which still give you five random cards for the same price. Shim’zar will also have a pre-order deal where you can buy 50 Orbs for $50, a discount that also comes with an exclusive card back. But in a particularly cool twist, 10% of all pre-order proceeds will be put into the prize pools for the official Duelyst tournament circuit and World Championship. 

If you’ve been aboard the Denizens of Shim’zar hype train, you’re probably most curious about Battle Pets. Counterplay has previously revealed that Battle Pets are minions that won’t be under your direct control, instead acting independently but in a very predictable, counterable way. This makes them easier to predict and play around, but Battle Pets generally give you more value than the mana you are paying for them to compensate. They gave us an exclusive on the first Battle Pet of the set, Z0r, which you can see by flipping through the card gallery below.

Counterplay’s Emil Anticevic wouldn’t tell me exactly how Battle Pets move, instead saying they wanted players to learn it through the game. He likened it to Shadow Creep, saying if they were adding that mechanic to the game now, you wouldn’t be entirely sure how it works until you saw it in-game. Similarly to Shadow Creep, there will be information about the behavior of a Battle Pet when you mouse over it. Anticevic also made it clear that although there are other cards that specifically interact with Battle Pets, overall the new tribe is only a small percentage of the Denizens of Shim’zar expansion. 

A dozen or so cards from Denizens of Shim’zar have already been revealed, but today we get to show off eight more. You can flip through the gallery below to see the new cards, along with my thoughts and some insight on their design from Counterplay—including details on a nerf to Lyonar's Divine Bond. You can also download the full resolution PNGs here.

Image 1 of 8

Z0r (neutral)