From Olympus to the Rainiverse: The Immortal Tactics of Formations

Raini Studios - Creators of RTLOL / $RST / $RAINI

7 min readNov 22, 2023

In the dynamic world of Trading Card Games (TCGs), every new set launch is an event eagerly awaited by players and collectors alike. The upcoming large expansion for RTLOL, titled “Formations,” promises to be a game-changer, introducing innovative mechanics and strategic depth that will undoubtedly reshape the landscape of competitive play. In this article, we’ll delve into the exciting features and mechanics of the Formations set, all the details of the launch, and explore how it breathes new life into the TCG experience.

But first…

The 2023 Rainiverse World Championship Results!

Congratulations to Cryptic Witcher, your 2023 Rainiverse World Champion!

After a gruelling month of high-level play, huge fields matched only by the record-setting prize pools… CRYPTIC WITCHER emerged victorious, with his Rainbow Champion deck taking down the opening event and carrying him to victory in the Grand Final!

Huh, that’s weird, that’s not the usual Rainbow Champion…

Since our launch on the Epic Games Store, and even before then with our Alpha/Beta versions, players have played, tweaked and refined their decks and strategies, mostly built around the incredible cards from our Genesis and Tempus sets (with a healthy dose of 7 Deadly Sins and Promotional Cards thrown in for good measure!). For the team and the community, the 2023 World Championship was the perfect way to close out this era of competitive RTLOL play as we look to the future and the world of Formations!

Did you miss the finals? Check out the MARATHON 9-HOUR live stream hosted by our very own Artkin and AlCaTrAzz on our YouTube channel!

From the entire Raini Studios team, a huge thank you to all of the players who joined us for our inaugural World Championships, and a special shoutout to event sponsors Merit Circle, Build on Beam, bluMint, and everyone who helped make this event a roaring success. We hope you had a blast and can’t wait to see if Cryptic Witcher can defend his title at the ’24 WC!

And now… Formations time!

At the heart of the Formations set lies a revolutionary concept: introducing formations as a central gameplay element. Gone are the days of straightforward minion placements; Formations introduces a tactical layer to battles, allowing players to arrange their cards in specific configurations to unlock powerful synergies and abilities.

To unlock these powerful new cards, you need to have at least 3 minions on the battlefield. As soon as you have done so, you’ll have Flanking and Surrounded minions!

Flanking minions are on the outside of the board, with at least 1 minion between them
Surrounded minions have a minion on either side of them on the board

Ok, that's all well and good, but what kind of abilities will this unlock? Well, let’s take a look!

In addition to Flanking and Surrounded, there are smaller themes for players to discover in a variety of colours, and we won’t spoil them all for you here… but let's just say, you don’t want to let a Blue deck run out of cards anymore!

Because in the game of cards, desperate times call for deck-sperate measures!

In Formations, 60 new cards are being added to RTLOL, with 2 Mythics, 8 Legendaries, 15 Rares, 14 Uncommons, and 21 Commons!

As with previous sets (and all on-chain collections moving forward), there will only be Rare, Legendary and Mythic cards available on-chain.
Commons and Uncommons can be unlocked in-game as Soul-Bound cards (more on these later).

Rare = Edition of 300
Legendary = Edition of 200
Mythic = Edition of 100

Yep, you read that right, we’re cutting back the total editions of Rare cards this time around. This allows us to increase the odds of opening Legendary/Mythic cards in packs, including Rainbow/Unicorn packs!

The Mythics make a return, including the much-anticipated Stacy Raini!

The When and How

Drop Commencement Date & Time: Wednesday, 29 November at 5:00 pm EST (Thursday, 30 November at 9:00 am AEDT)

Formations packs will be distributed on all three previously supported chains (ETH, AVAX, and BSC), AND starting with Formations, will also be available on the BEAM Subnet! as follows:

3 different kinds of packs: Rainbow 🌈, Unicorn 🦄, and Collector ✨
For Formations, there will be 200 🌈 Rainbow Packs, and 200 🦄Unicorn Packs available, and for the first time, they can be minted to the BEAM Subnet! (as well as 1700 Collector packs, including SUPERChad bundles, deets below)
Rainbow and Unicorn Packs will be made available via Rolling Raffles and Auctions, paid in 🌈 or 🦄 respectively
The raffles and auctions will be run the same as the 7DS mint, so check out that medium for the deets!
All Rainbow & Unicorn Packs will be 💸 free mints; no cost in $BEAM (besides gas fees) 💸
While all cards in the Formations mint are at minimum Rare, each pack contains 3 cards, and all packs in each pack type have different aggregate odds of containing Legendary or Mythic cards:
🌈 Rainbow Packs = 18.7% Legendary, 2.48% Mythic
🦄 Unicorn Packs = 38.59% Legendary, 4.92% Mythic
✨ Collector Packs = 63.94% Legendary, 10.49% Mythic
NEW! For the first time, Collectable (NFT) Cards will not only enable the card to be played in-game (and earn rewards with our upcoming P&E/C&E systems) but will unlock unique skins for Mythics and Legendary cards!
Packs of Soulbound cards will be available directly through the RTLOL client, with a slight price adjustment for Soulbound packs/bundles at the same time. These will also include all of the common/uncommon cards from the set as well!

oooooeeerrrrrr (and yes, players with Collectable Cards can choose the skin they want to use 😃 )

SUPERChad Collectoooooors, Unite

You’d think we’d find new art for this part… nah ;)

oh yeah, they’re back… AND BIGGER :)

Back by popular demand… there will be a very limited supply of Collector Packs, and SUPERChad Bundles available for Formations!

SUPERChad Bundle?

20 Collector Packs for the price of 15 💰
1 Mythic Card guaranteed 🎁
“ahhhhh I’m coooooollectiiinnnngggg aaggggaaaaiiinnnnnnn” 😮

TOTAL Collector Pack ✨ listings = 200 on BEAM, 100 on ETH, 100 on AVAX, 100 on BSC
TOTAL SUPERChad Bundle ✨ listings = 10 on BEAM, 5 on ETH, 5 on AVAX, 5 on BSC

Collector Packs ✨ can be minted for a fixed cost of 0.1 ETH (on ETH — converted to approx. equivalent AVAX or BNB for those chains).

SUPERChad Bundles✨ can be minted for a fixed cost of 1.5 ETH (or AVAX/BNB equivalent)

This means a total of 1000 Collector Packs✨ will be available for general sale (with the remaining packs held in the Raini Studios treasury for World Championship Prizes, Rainiverse Battle Pass rewards, promotions/giveaways/tournament prizes etc).

Wen Special Promotion?

I’m mostly putting this here so y’all know we write the mediums just before they go out ;)

Ok, so it’s been a helluva year. We’ve been heads down, building, launching games on Yuge Storefronts, launching Yuge expansions for RTLOL, running Yuge World Championships, and showing off the game at Yuge conventions and trade shows… so, we want to end the year in a YUGE way with the launch of Formations…

Black Friday Sale!

For the first week after the launch of Formations, all Collector packs will be HALF PRICE! (0.05eth, or equivalent).
Also, all SuperCHAD Bundles will be HALF PRICE (0.75eth, or equivalent).

We can’t think of a better way to say thank you to our incredible collectors and community, and can’t wait to see all of the Formations cards hitting the Rainiverse!

One more thing…

The team has been hard at work behind the scenes, building out a range of new features to improve the experience of all players in the Rainiverse. Features such as iOS/Android versions of the game, localisation to a range of languages, and most importantly…

Play & Earn, Collect & Earn, and Play & Win will all kick off from the start of Season 2 (1st of December)!

Full details in a follow-up medium for the kickoff of Season 2, but we wanted to give everyone the heads up that it’s here, it’s real, and it’s spectacular!