Frontier and Simple Living Legend lead the May Format Contest
Two new formats will be added to Board Game Arena for this season as the May Formats Contest has come to a close. Frontier and Simple Living Legend were this round’s top picks from a total of four proposals voted on by the community.
We received 305 responses from active voters, and we want to thank everyone who participated. Your opinions and ideas are helping keep Altered alive and growing!
The two new formats will be added to BGA in the upcoming weeks, replacing Standard All Uniques. Once they’re active, they’ll enter a community testing phase where they’ll be played and stress-tested by you. After that, the community will decide if one of the formats will be used as the new competitive and Arena format. Keep an eye out for updates from us about our next steps in adding these formats.
Remember that this Format Contest is the first of an ongoing rotation of community-grown formats and play options for BGA. If your favorite option didn’t get chosen or you have an idea that you didn’t get to build out in time for May’s contest, that’s OK. There will be more chances in the future.
Results
If you’d like to see a full breakdown of the results, find them here.
The two formats that received the most points are the following:
-
FRONTIER, with an average rating of 4.40/6
-
SIMPLE LIVING LEGEND (SLL), with an average rating of 3.83/6
Congratulations to Aran, noobiwow, [AJT] zerosuitsamuss, WildChild, [AJT] Matata, Rinku, Haalford, Benhol, Cohlrabi, Chile and The Kelon Guy for their work! These new formats will be implemented on BGA as soon as we’re able.
The two other submitted formats were:
-
AUTOBALANCING META STANDARD (AMS), with an average rating of 3.20/6
-
MULTIFACTION POINT SYSTEM (MPS), with an average rating of 3.14/6
While these two formats won’t be implemented this round, they may be resubmitted for our next contest. Thank you Aldenoth, Dragoist, Arestark, Giga, Wisefrank, Laumimian, Keldeofus, Ajordat, djj, Nox, gabrielbargiel and Heya(s) for your work on both these formats!
Meet the new formats
Both elected formats are very close to what Standard was from the beginning:
-
A deck must contain a minimum of 39 non-Hero cards plus exactly 1 Hero card.
-
All cards in the deck must be of the same faction as the Hero card.
-
It may have a maximum of 3 copies of a card with the same name, regardless of rarity.
-
It may have a maximum of 15 rare cards.
-
It may have a maximum of 3 exalted cards.
-
It may have a maximum of 3 unique cards.
What changes is the pool of unique cards available and the possibility for two players to play the same uniques. Frontier and Simple Living Legend each handle the pool in a distinct way, as described below.
Frontier
Find the complete description here:
The idea in one sentence: Every 6–8 weeks, an algorithm randomly draws a fresh pool of ~30,000 Uniques (5,000 per faction) from Altered's full catalogue — creating a shared, temporary legal pool that rotates each season.
How uniques work: During deckbuilding, a filter restricts every player's unique choices to the cards in the current pool. Standard deckbuilding rules apply otherwise. The pool is generated by a straightforward random draw with just two tuning parameters:
-
Faction balance: 5,000 uniques drawn per faction
-
Set distribution: each faction's 5,000 uniques are drawn according to fixed per-set weights (Beyond The Gates Kickstarter 5%, Beyond The Gate 5%, Trial By Frost 10%, Whispers From The Maze 10%, Skybound Odyssey 30%, Seeds Of Unity 40%)
Problematic cards: Before the draw runs, the current Equinox ban list is simply excluded from the eligible pool. That's it — no additional curated list for now. Within a running season, a narrow hotfix window allows ban updates during the first 2 weeks; after that, only genuinely game-breaking interactions can trigger a mid-season change.
What it promises: A regularly refreshed meta where every rotation brings the excitement of a "new set release" — a fresh puzzle to brew around. New players can be competitive on day one with zero unique collection. The simplicity of the algorithm is a feature: it is transparent, reproducible, and easy for the community to understand and trust.
Simple Living Legend
Find the complete description here:
The idea in one sentence: Start with all uniques legal (except Set 1), then let tournament results progressively “Living Legend” (ban) the uniques in the best-performing decks until the meta self-balances.
How uniques work: At launch, every unique from Sets 2–5 is available. After each Reunion-approved tournament with 8+ players, the top decks (1 deck per 4 players, rounded up to the nearest power of 2) have their uniques “Living Legend’d” — i.e. removed from the legal pool. A community vote decides whether this happens weekly or every two weeks.
Problematic cards: A “similar text” rule: if 10%+ of LL’d uniques share an identical text, all uniques with that text get LL’d together. A community-elected oversight group of 3–5 people (from Reunion OP/competitive team or volunteers) can adjust the LL rate, the frequency, the % threshold, and other parameters.
What it promises: A format that curates itself through actual play, no algorithm or committee deciding what’s “too good.” Competitive players keep the thrill of searching for the unique that makes their deck work — but the strongest uniques won’t stay strongest for long.
Scouring Uniques from the available pool will bring back memories of searching the marketplace for hidden gems. Achievements/badges could reward players who Living Legend cards across factions.
Active testing of both formats
Both formats will be live on BGA for at least a month. This trial period is essential: We need players to try them out as much as possible before the community makes decisions about their long-term implementation.
Your feedback during this period will directly help us refine the formats — tuning the Frontier pool generation, calibrating the SLL Living Legend rate, and identifying any interactions that need attention. The more games played, the better the data we have to work with.
Regarding SLL specifically, running tournaments during this trial phase is especially important. Tournament results will actively drive the Living Legend process, culling the most dominant uniques and shaping the meta in real time. While there will be no formal leaderboard or prizes during this initial period, a competitive leaderboard system is something we are actively planning. Playing in tournaments now means contributing to a process that will matter and get on the leaderboard retroactively.
Regarding Frontier, playing as many games as possible — and in tournaments — is equally critical. Frontier's pool generator is designed to improve season after season as it learns from real play data. The more games are played, the better we can validate that the current pool is producing a healthy, diverse meta, and the more confidently we can tune the generator's parameters for future seasons. Tournament results in particular will help us identify whether any Unique or archetype is pulling ahead of the field, informing the in-season hotfix policy and the design of the next pool.
The implementation of both formats will require a short lead time, as we are building robust unique filtering tools in the deckbuilder to help you navigate and build with the new pools. We want to make sure this experience is smooth before we open the floodgates!
What about the other formats?
To avoid splitting the player base too much and keep matchmaking fast, we try to limit the number of simultaneous formats on BGA. Until now, four formats were available:
-
Standard All Uniques
-
No Unique (the current competitive and Arena Format)
-
Singleton No Unique
-
Sandbox
The two new formats will replace the Standard All Uniques, which was announced to remain available for around two weeks. All other formats will remain playable on BGA for now. Once the new formats have been added, you will be able to play:
-
Frontier
-
Simple Living Legend
-
No Unique (the current competitive and Arena Format)
-
Singleton No Unique
-
Sandbox
It’s important to note, once Standard All Uniques is no longer available, you might lose the possibility to play unique cards that you owned on altered.gg if they fall into one of the following categories:
-
In Frontier: if they are not in the pool of 5,000 uniques per faction.
-
In SLL: if they are from Set 1 (Beyond The Gates) or if they win a tournament and become a Living Legend.
On the other hand, you will be able to play many new unique cards. We hope you will have fun in looking for the ones that resemble yours or picking out a new strategy to build around. You may continue to play any uniques in the Sandbox format.
For now, we have no capability to offer a BGA format with unique ownership yet. This is still being worked on, and we will communicate as soon as possible on our next steps here.
We want to thank everyone again for their help and energy in being a part of this Format Contest. This marks a milestone in the Re:Union project, building community spirit and keeping Altered developing in new and exciting ways. As a fully volunteer team, Re:Union’s mission is to preserve the future of Altered’s gameplay, making it accessible and open to as many players as possible. Help us out by sharing your talents and volunteering! Join our Discord to connect with the community and show your support.