As part of this year’s Skulls celebration, we’re incredibly excited to reveal a brand-new game mode for Combat Cards: Draft Mode.
It’s amazing to finally see this feature come to life in-game. Draft offers a completely different style of play and opens up a whole new way to experience Combat Cards.
This first Draft event will feature Orks vs. Space Marines to match the Armageddon theme of Skulls, and it’ll also give players the chance to play with Wazdakka right from his release.
While this debut event is designed specifically for the Skulls celebration, Draft Mode is something we plan to bring into the regular event rotation in the near future. It won’t be a permanently active mode, but instead a limited-time event that appears each season.
To celebrate this first-ever Draft event, and to make sure everyone can jump in and try it out, we’ll be giving away plenty of free Draft Tokens during the first four days of the week-long Skulls event:
Day 1: 150 Draft Tokens
Day 2: 150 Draft Tokens
Day 3: 100 Draft Tokens
Day 4: 100 Draft Tokens
Draft Tokens
With Draft Mode comes a brand-new currency: Draft Tokens.
Each Draft run has an entry cost that can be paid using either Draft Tokens or Plasma. For this event, entry costs are:
50 Draft Tokens
1000 Plasma
From the free giveaways, you’ll have enough Tokens for 10 Draft runs.
On top of that, Draft runs will also reward additional Draft Tokens as part of their prize structure. With a strong run, you can potentially earn enough Tokens to keep drafting indefinitely!
Because this is a special event, any Draft Tokens earned or claimed during the Skulls event will expire once the event ends. In future standard Draft events, Draft Tokens will be added to your inventory permanently.
Drafting a Deck
Every Draft begins by building your pool of cards, starting with your Warlords.
Each pick presents a selection of cards, from which you choose one:
Warlord picks: 2 options
Bodyguard picks: 3 options
By the end of the draft, you’ll have a total of 15 cards to build your deck from.
Warlords can be any Warlord from the event faction, in this case, Orks
Bodyguards are drafted across fixed rarity slots
This event’s draft pool will contain:
2 Warlords: Any rarity
2 Legendary Bodyguards
3 Epic Bodyguards
4 Rare Bodyguards
4 Common Bodyguards
All card selections are fully randomized within their pools, and cards will never repeat. If you pass on a card, that’s your only chance to draft it for that run!
Enhancements are also fully randomized. You’ll be able to inspect cards during the selection process to see their enhancements, and once drafted, those enhancements remain locked in for the entire run, so it’s worth checking carefully before you pick!
Importantly, Draft cards are completely separate from your personal collection:
Every card is available to draft, whether or not they are in your personal collection
Card levels and enhancements are set by the event, not your own cards
Drafted cards are not added to your collection
This means everyone enters Draft on equal footing. Players can experiment with cards they don’t own and aren’t dependent on collection progress or enhancements to compete effectively, which is a core part of the Draft experience.
Once your draft pool is complete, you’ll build your deck as normal and head into battle.
Draft Opponents
For this event, Draft battles will be against AI opponents.
(That doesn’t mean PvP Draft is off the table, it’s definitely something we’d love to explore in the future, but it’s still further down the line.)
As you progress through a run, opponents will become increasingly difficult. To complete a Draft, you’ll need to achieve:
10 Wins
Before reaching 3 Losses
The difficulty spread for this event is:
3 Easy Battles
3 Medium Battles
4 Hard Battles
Opponent decks are all custom-built and follow the same drafting rules as players. They use the same deck point limits and the same rarity restrictions.
Each difficulty pool contains multiple decks for every Warlord in the opponent faction. Additionally each deck shares no bodyguards with another deck in the same difficulty pool. So even if you encounter multiple decks using the same Warlord each deck will still feel distinct and maintain the variety that makes Draft exciting.
Enhancements on opponent cards are also tied to difficulty:
Easy: Bronze
Medium: Silver
Hard: Gold
Draft Event Screen
Draft Mode also introduces a brand-new campaign layout. We’ll be looking to roll out elements of this throughout the game for an updated campaign experience in future as well.
In draft, as you progress through a run, the reward track updates dynamically, allowing you to preview:
Rewards already earned
Upcoming rewards
Your overall Draft progress at any time
Rewards are only granted once your Draft run ends, either by reaching 10 Wins or 3 Losses.
Your final reward is based on your highest win milestone. For example, finishing with 6 wins awards the 6-win reward tier, rather than all rewards from 1–6 wins combined.
Draft Tokens are heavily integrated into the reward structure. Every reward tier returns some Tokens, while runs of 7 wins or higher will reward more Tokens than the entry cost, effectively meaning that Draft run is free!
Event Rewards
For this Skulls event, rewards are focused heavily around cosmetics, culminating in an exclusive cosmetic set available only during this event.
As you reach higher win milestones, you’ll unlock cosmetics from different reward pools:
3+ Wins: Cosmetics from previous Battle Passes
7+ Wins: Cosmetics from previous special events
10 Wins: This year’s exclusive Skulls event cosmetics
Each reward grants one random cosmetic item, with any cosmetics you already own excluded from the reward pool, guaranteeing a new cosmetic every time. These cosmetic rewards combine, meaning a full 10 Win run will award 3 new cosmetic items.
If you eventually collect every cosmetic in a pool, you’ll instead receive bonus Draft Tokens to go towards the next run.
Alongside cosmetics and Draft Tokens, you’ll also earn increasing amounts of Ork cards throughout the event which will really add up across multiple Draft attempts.
No matter how many times you enter Draft, there’ll always be something worthwhile to chase.
Once a run ends and rewards are claimed, you can immediately start a fresh Draft. There’s no limit to the number of runs available during the event, the only restriction is the duration of the event itself.
The Future of Draft
As our first Draft event, this release is just the beginning.
We fully expect Draft Mode to evolve over time, and this initial event will be incredibly valuable for gathering feedback, balance data, and ideas for future improvements.
We’d love to hear what you think, what kinds of Draft experiences you’d like to see in future events, and how your runs go.
To support that, we’ll also be opening dedicated Draft channels in Discord so players can share:
Draft builds
Successful runs
Wild card combinations
Memorable moments from their events
We can’t wait to see what decks you put together. Get out there, raise the banner and muster the greatest WAAAGH! you can!