Welcome back, sports fans!
Today is a very special day in the journey of Guild Ball. Not only is it release day for a brand new Game Plan deck, but we’ve also made the full set available as downloadable cards — so you can jump in and start playing right away, even while your physical deck is on the way!
You can get your own copy of the deck here. While you wait for your deck to arrive, you can find downloadable cards you can print out and play with here.
As with the two balance updates we’ve released since restarting active development, we’ve worked hand in hand with the Guild Ball Community Project on the design and development of this new Game Plan deck.
Thank you to all the volunteers working with the Guild Ball Community Project for their incredible work that’s been critical in bringing this new Game Plan deck to life!
Most of the content of this article has been written by none other than the head of the GBCP rules committee, Henry Kay, who spearheaded the development of the new deck.
Take it away Henry!
Gameplan Deck 2025 Design Philosophy
When we looked at the previous iterations of the game plan decks, we felt that the core mechanical structure was working solidly and did not need any reworks, so we kept this the same. That means the new gameplan deck has the same card count at 18 with the same distribution of initiative values - two cards each at +1. +2, +5, +6 and +7, with three cards at +3 and five at +4 initiative. This should make adapting to a new deck easier, as the ‘mental maths’ used when thinking about the opponent’s possible initiative values remains the same.
We also kept the bonus influence value distribution very similar, with values ranging from -1 to +2. A useful rule of thumb we used here was to think about what influence / initiative combinations would be fair on a completely blank card. The already printed Give Me 110% is a strong and useful but fair card, making +2 influence a fine benchmark for the lowest initiative values. At the other end of the scale, previous +7 cards with -1 initiative have had mostly even effects and a blank card here would also see play, although you wouldn’t often be happy to put it down. +6 initiative and +0 influence would also be playable if slightly below the bar, and a +1 influence blank card would be somewhere between +3 and +4 initiative - Aggressive Defense is a +3/+1 with upside in the previous set.
One of the other situations we wanted to focus on with the new release was avoiding the frequency of cards feeling completely “blank”. Previous iterations of the Game Plan deck have had several cards which could feel like you didn’t get any fun or useful effect when playing against certain teams because the effect wasn’t relevant.
Game Plan cards feel at their most fun to use when their strength and utility varies throughout the game, so that picking the right cards for a matchup feels rewarding and impactful (while not skewing anything in too punishing a way). We ended up going for four ‘play style specific’ cards in the deck - one each for ‘I score goals’, ‘I get takeouts’, ‘my opponent scores goals’ and ‘my opponent scores takeouts’. This should mean that in any given matchup there are at most two completely “blank effect” cards so you should rarely have to keep cards in hand that you won’t get to use the text of. We also made sure that cards that interact with terrain can be used on Obstructions, which means that they should matter more consistently.
Finally, there’s a decent amount of cards in this deck that assist you when you’re second in the initiative order. Going first in Guild Ball is inherently quite powerful, so there’s a few tools included here that give a counter benefit to going first.
With all that in mind, let’s go through the actual cards in the new deck!
Game Plan Deck 2025 Card Breakdown
Extra Shot
This is a partial successor to “Break Out The Knives” in the previous game plan set. This card allows your opponent to effectively veto one model from your possible buff choices. Then, you choose two out of the remaining five friendly models to receive the TAC bonus and free Sprint.
Usually your opponent is likely to exclude your Captain from the buff, leaving your two most impactful Squaddies to get the benefit. However, if you have very strong squaddies and a more utility focused Captain (or they’re taken out), your opponent might choose to exclude a scary squaddie from the buff instead. The free sprint should also mean that if your output is entirely focused on a single model (looking at you, Thresher) you still get a bit more use out of the card.
Feign Injury
This is the only card in the deck that relies on the opponent scoring takeouts.
One of your models being taken out before it can activate is particularly punishing - you lose out on any influence unspent on the model, but also you just have less total activations in the turn, which means unless you’re getting takeouts of your own, your opponent is guaranteed to have the last activation of the turn. This can create a snowball effect where the opponent takes that last activation and uses it to set up the start of the next turn, whether through damage or positioning or conditions, and then goes first next turn before you can heal or defend, gets another takeout, and has last activation once again.
Set Me Up
While footballing teams do the most kicking, every team in Guild Ball can make use of a good pass. A scoring team can put the ball on a model ready to score immediately, or move it upfield if you’re going to lose initiative to reduce the risk of the opponent making their own goal run. A more fighty team might want to send the ball further into safety, or put the ball on a slow but scary model who can pass the ball away again to extend their first-activation threat ranges without risking letting the opponent activate with the ball in a vulnerable spot.
Of course, you won’t always have the ball and when you do you won’t always want to pass it - as such this card has +1 influence to make it feel solid to play even when the text doesn’t apply.
Pep Talk
This is the other descendant of Break Out The Knives - instead of giving a stronger but more focused bonus, here the buff is weaker but more versatile. It should be particularly useful for teams that roll smaller dice pools like kicks and character plays - it’s not quite as good as a TAC bonus since you can’t stack it with actual Bonus Time.
Note that unlike many of the other buffs and benefits available, this one does work on your Captain. The ‘once per activation’ limitation is also not restricted to friendly activations, so you can also more frequently Bonus Time your counter attacks and so on.
High Press
Threat extensions have shown up in a variety of forms in the game plan decks. Dodging two models up can get you into range to hit or tackle stuff, but you can also use it to put more gangups on an enemy you’re planning to try and take out, or even get your models base to base to stop a slippery enemy with Unpredictable Movement or a good counter from dodging away. The ‘towards the enemy goal’ restriction should push players towards using the movement proactively, and the existence of threat extension cards in the deck means hovering your models just outside the opponent’s threat range is a less safe proposition.
Lost Focus
This is a merging of Punching Bag and Form A Wall, with some changes. Tough Hide felt bad to play in Brewers where all your models already had it, and was also overly punishing for certain teams who would be completely prevented from attempting a takeout due to a reliance on a high number of low damage results - sBrisket and Windfinder, for example, both found it nearly impossible to take out a Tough Hide model. 3 HP is a more consistent value, since it doesn’t change in strength depending on the specific playbook results being taken. In a similar way, Goal Defense was both very unreliable and also extremely punishing when it did matter - a penalty to kick dice/distance can still scupper a goal run, but in a way that can be sometimes mitigated by committing more resources or just making a less important kick before going for the big goal attempt.
Home Advantage
This is the only card in the deck that relies on the opponent scoring goals.
Like the ‘anti takeouts’ card, it doesn’t actually make scoring goals any harder for the opponent, but instead gives some compensation when it happens. Spending 1 MP to reroll the kick scatter also should help avoid bad situations where an aggressive footballing team gets a second goal due to a lucky scatter, and like the ‘anti takeouts’ card this one has +1 influence to make it less rough to play when the text doesn’t apply.
No Guts, No Glory
This card has a much higher initiative value than the old Give Me 110%, which is compensated with the damage downside. You can put the damage on a nice safe model at the back of the pitch, of course, but if you’re being aggressive with everyone in the team this might be harder to do safely, or a proactive opponent might find a way to sneak past your other models and capitalise on the damage. Morticians will be happy to put the damage into Memory who isn’t worth VPs, too.
In addition, this gameplan has a hidden extra use - if you use it and choose a friendly model with 5 or less HP, you will take them out - and then they will immediately arrive back on the pitch in the following maintenance phase. Your opponent will still get the VPs, but if they were planning to keep that model pinned down in a scrum, or make use of that model’s early takeout to gain an activation advantage, this card can scupper that plan.
Adrenaline Rush
This is comparable to Cool Head from previous iterations, but more limited in exchange for a higher initiative value. Getting to use Cool Head on an effect that would usually cost 2+ MP was a big swing early in a turn, while using it for just 1 MP of value would feel like the card was a bit wasted - here the value is a bit less highly variable. While some teams apply conditions and damage more than others, even if only dealing with a few KDs getting to clear for free early in the turn still makes a lot of difference.
Big Rivals
This is the only card in the deck that moves enemy models around, and unlike previous iterations it doesn’t change the model’s allegiance during that movement. This avoids complicated rules questions like sending Steeljaw into her own traps. The reason for the allegiance change on cards like Caught Out Of Position was to prevent them being used to push models off the pitch - here instead we prevent this by limiting direction in a way that cannot result in a ringout. This also means that, like the ‘dodge towards goal’ card, it’s focused on mainly proactive use cases and doesn’t help teams to ‘bunker’ as much. Speaking of bunkers, pulling a model out of their defensive setup is a strong use of this card - it doesn’t take that big a push to get an Apprentice out of Sentinel or Reinforced Plating.
Man Marking
The final threat extension card in the deck, Marked Target is a useful way to offer this benefit because usually, charging isn’t quite as good as walking up and buying attacks, so a model’s ‘maximum damage’ threat range won’t be increased by this card, unless it’s a Furious model or similar. It also only works on squaddies, so even vRage and vBoar won’t be using this to unexpectedly connect with captains.
Match Fixing
Unlike the other cards that care about specific win conditions, here the effect is good against both goalscoring and takeout teams but less effective against opponents who can easily flex between the two. It should also reward good reading of the game state and understanding of the opponent’s team.
If used well it might play out as a +4 initiative +2 influence card, but even if you do know what your opponent is going to go for with regards to VPs, they can still do things like wait until late in the turn to score, limiting your options for useful allocation.
Nowhere to Hide
Hunkering down around an obstruction is a time honoured tradition in guild ball and often a good terrain piece can make a lot of difference when it comes to blunting enemy attacks - mitigating the TAC penalty can open up takeout options and make goal runs less risky. Remember, goals are terrain pieces, so if the only Obstructions on the board are ones your team is currently benefiting from, you can always choose a goal to avoid punishing yourself with your own gameplan.
Catenaccio
Unlike the old Singled Out card, you can’t use this one to make your captain super deadly. It still has several different use cases, however - you can buff one of your strikers to go on a goal run and tackle + shoot, or increase the odds of hitting a T<< result to slip past a counterattack. It’s also effective when defending against goal runs - when you’ve had the ball tackled away, +2 TAC on your counter attack can mean the difference between a striker escaping and being Knocked Down or getting some Smashed Shins. Sometimes, though, it’s not the footballing teams that are being proactive - if someone is using the ball to dodge their team around or has otherwise left it in a dangerous position, you can let them keep the ball and instead use that TAC bonus to do damage.
Rushed Back
This is the card that cares about the holder scoring takeouts. A card with six initiative and no influence penalty should have a minor effect, so we decided on an effect that doesn’t make getting the ball rolling with an initial takeout any easier, and also doesn’t provide an immediate payoff for takeouts scored, instead delaying the card’s benefits until the end of the current turn to give the opponent time to mitigate the effects.
What a Strike!
As with the other six initiative card, the effect here is minor and focuses on payoff rather than enabling. Footballing teams are often momentum starved, so this card should help them remain competitive on initiative without impacting their actual goal scoring threat or their ability to get that final goal off a high initiative card.
Brown Envelope
Cards with +7 initiative are often used to try and end the game or gain a big advantage - the original game plan deck had Lone Striker which had a similar -1 TAC penalty to this card. Lone Striker felt rough to use because it had both the TAC penalty and -1 influence, here there is only a singular penalty. Both effects can be worked around to score VPs first anyway if you have enough overkill, or you can instead activate a less important model to ‘soak’ the penalty and have your big payoff go later instead if you need to avoid the penalty.
Gengenpress
One of the issues with making a high initiative card with a downside is that if you play it and still lose initiative, it feels very punishing. You burned one of your few high initiative cards, you still go second, and you also suffer an additional downside as well. This card still has the initiative penalty you’d expect from a +7, but the card text does a lot more when you lose initiative, so you can play it a little more aggressively when trying to contest without it being as much of a disaster if you don’t succeed. Reallocating 2 influence means if your opponent takes out a model that had influence allocated to it, you can put it elsewhere. You can also reallocate if the opponent puts a model into another particularly bad spot, like Blinding or debuffing your usual payoff model, or you can threaten a snapback goal if your opponent scored immediately.
And that’s all from Henry on the cards in the new Game Plan deck!
You can get your own copy of the deck here. While you wait for your deck to arrive, you can find downloadable cards you can print out and play with here.
Until next time, sports fans — Perkins out!
