Progress Update #41 🛠️ – Building & Planning Phase in Frozen Realms, New Covers for the Instruction and the Lorebook

Fantasy Tabletop Devlog – Building & Planning Phase Explained, Dread Mechanics & Rulebook Updates

Time is flying by, and we’re already in the second month of 2026… which obviously means that the prototype is getting that much closer!
Anyway, today we wanted to dive a bit deeper into the rules of Frozen Realms, and the Building & Planning Phase is what we’ve got for you – so enjoy!

First of all, let’s take a look at an important rule: only two of the same structure can be placed in one province.
Why is that?

Well… we wanted to avoid spamming certain types of structures in your provinces. For example, you could otherwise sit back and stack all your economy in the very heart of your empire, making it extremely hard for your enemies to ever touch it.
Another issue would be sitting on just a few provinces while still having a very strong economy, which could lead to multiple exploits against the game “AI”. Chaos would stand no chance with that kind of play.

That being said – this is not a hard limit for everything.
Remember: the instruction is one thing… but what the card says is what matters most. We’re definitely not excluding the possibility of adding cards that allow you to expand beyond this limit. We’ve even started sketching out some ideas already.
But that’s for the future! Maybe for launch? Who knows…

Another important thing in this phase is Deck Market replenishment.
As you can see, it happens at the end of the turn, not after you buy a card.

So let’s say you buy all 3 cards from your Deck Market – the market only replenishes once the turn ends, not before.

Next up: the Dread mechanic.

There are three Dread Tiers, each allowing Chaos to play more powerful Campaign Cards as Dread rises, all the way up to Tier 3.
One important thing to note is that Dread is tracked individually for each player.

However… once any player reaches, say, Tier 2, all players immediately set their Dread counter to 31, which is the start of Tier 2.
The same applies when Tier 3 is reached.

This forces players to play together, not in isolation.
And if it’s a free-for-all… well – reaching Tier 2 before others are ready might actually give you an advantage.

Quick reminder about game modes:
Currently, the game can be played as:

solo – against Chaos

players vs Chaos

players vs players

players vs players vs Chaos (if you want some fun… or total mayhem XD)

The key thing here is that you don’t need to learn separate rules for each mode. The structure of the game stays the same across all of them 🔥

Now back to the rules!

As you can see, there’s an Activation Zone and a Staging Area.
Each player can have a maximum of two Cards in their Activation zone.

When a card activates, it means Chaos takes an action – for example:
building structures on the map, sending raid parties into player territories, setting up camps, recruiting armies, and so on…

Here are three examples of Chaos Campaign Cards, from Tier 1 to Tier 3:

After activation, if a card does not activate, it’s placed into the Staging Area (this will be important later).
If the Staging Area is full, cards are discarded – this is intentional, as we didn’t want Chaos to get blocked just because the Chaos Gods had bad RNG that turn…

And that’s it!
Here’s the full section:

We’ve also updated the covers for both the Lorebook and the Instruction.
Using the Glacierthrower for the Commander’s Manual just made a lot of sense.
And Chaos vs Humans? A war as old as time itself… okay, not really – not even close – but it sounds good, so we’re leaving it 🔥

With that said, we’re wrapping up this devblog and getting ready for another week full of all things Frozen Realms!
See you next week 🔥