New

• Varenth — a new faction (playtest) — Varenth is now playable: a scheming, attrition-focused roster of enchantments, damage-over-time, and bounty payoffs
• Two Varenth starter decks — jump in with Crosshair Cabal or South Sea Vendetta, both built from fully-playable cards
• New heroes — the Bounty Hunter (Track a target, then cash in the bounty when it dies) and Rix Oathbound, each with signature cards
• New keywords — Pillager, Devour (units it destroys are removed for good — no graveyard return), and Track / Tracked (mark a target for bounty payoffs)
• Dual-target spells — spells can ask for two targets at once, opening up new combo plays
• Dozens of new Varenth cards — Plague Hex, Knives in the Dark, Ogre Corpse Tosser, Pick Off, Relentless Pursuit, Sister of the Void (with its Eidolon token), Winter's Curse, Exsanguinate, Assault Ladders, Spiked Carapace, Shadow Walk, Steam Cannon, The Oath, the Tyler Estate cluster, and more — all with new art

Improvements

• Gold initiative coin — a clearer at-a-glance indicator of who holds initiative
• Sharper combat previews — damage previews clear lane-by-lane as combat resolves and match the strikes that actually land
• Clearer card text — keyword labels are surfaced consistently in card descriptions
• More expressive targeting — new targeting options (adjacent units, nearest enemy across lanes, random enemy, faction-conditioned effects) power the new card pool; Tinker Laser and Sniper Headshot can now target any unit
• Timed improvements — improvements can carry a lifetime and dispel themselves after a set number of rounds

Fixes

• Decay now applies after retaliate (post-combat), and piercing is calculated per damage packet.
• Combat preview parity and lane-combat timing cleanup.
• A hero's hand now refreshes correctly when a new deployment phase begins.
• Strike-damage modifiers are modeled explicitly so per-strike bonuses resolve correctly.