2027 Organized Play Rule Changes

Dice Throne announced a new set of rules that go into effect in organized play on January 1, 2027, and you can read the full announcement in the official rules update. The changes are four new rules, a round of hero errata and the confirmed return of Buh, Bye! to organized play. Below, I break down each of them and share my thoughts on how these changes impact heroes as they're currently understood. Clarifications are still coming on the parts that are unclear, which may change my thoughts.

The New Rules

Rule 1. Active Player Priority

On your own turn you act whenever you want, in any order you want, and when effects land at the same time, like Burn and Poison in your Upkeep, you choose the order. You also now get the first chance to alter every roll, including your opponent's defense roll.

Rule 2. Acting on Your Opponent's Turn

On your opponent's turn you can only act at three moments. The first is after they announce an Offensive Ability. The second is after your defense dice are rolled, once your opponent has had their first pass at the dice and before the defense resolves. The third is just before damage is applied at the end of any Phase, as long as someone is actually taking damage that isn't isolated. At each moment you take one action at a time, the action resolves in full, and your opponent may answer with as many actions as they like before you take your next one. You can keep taking actions until you choose to pass. Everywhere else, like their Upkeep or their Main Phase, you simply can't act.

The deeper change is that nothing interrupts anything anymore. You can no longer spend tokens in response to What Status Effects, so removal always does its job. You can no longer answer a card after it's announced, so a play like Invulnerability resolves in full once it hits the table and the time to fight it was before it was played. You can still dig with Getting Paid! or Triple Up! inside your windows, and you can still spend tokens you already have to make room for new ones before they arrive. When the damage coming in is isolated, your options shrink to effects that prevent or avoid it, and healing doesn't count as prevention.

Rule 3. Other Dice Rolls

Any roll that isn't a Roll Attempt, like an ability's bonus dice, a status effect roll in Upkeep or an Evasive roll, only accepts actions that change those dice, and that now applies to both players. Dice mods themselves always work, since rolled dice can always be altered outside an Ultimate. What's gone is the surprise setup, where a player showing no CP would play Getting Paid! into So Wild! in the middle of a rider roll. If you think you'll want to change a roll like that, the CP and the card have to be in place before the roll happens, which also tells your opponent what you might be holding.

Rule 4. No Reshuffling

When your deck runs out you simply stop drawing. You still gain your CP during Income, and Adventures and Missions keep their reshuffles. The stated reasoning is that a deck was never meant to be drawn twice in one game, so nobody should get their Twice as Wild! back for a second lap, and the stalling that strategy rewarded was pushing people to ban the heroes who used it. In practice this touches a short list of heroes who actually empty their deck, mostly Shadow Thief, Cyclops, Forgemaster and Paladin. I think this change is a bit moot. I've played my fair share of Shadow Thief games in organized play, and I've had only a couple of games where I go through my deck. I just don't think this is a very common issue, and I don't think this change in isolation will change the meta much.

Buh, Bye! Returns

Buh, Bye! is confirmed to return to organized play next age alongside these rules, and the timing rework is a big part of why it can. Under the old timing it created arguments the game couldn't cleanly answer, like whether it could remove an Evasive in the middle of that Evasive's own roll. Under the new rules it's just another action. As the attacker you can play it almost whenever you want, as the defender you play it in your three moments, and in both cases it has to land before a token is spent rather than in response to the spend. Every deck gets one clean removal that always works, and the heroes who lean on a single precious token feel it the most.

Hero Errata

Monk now gains Chi before dealing damage, though it still can't boost the attack that gained it. Paladin's Righteous Prayer now grants Crit and CP at the end of the Roll Phase, and Mighty Prayer grants Crit and Accuracy before its damage. Spider-Man's Ensnare now inflicts Webbed at the end of the Roll Phase instead of right after its damage.

How I Think It Shifts the Meta

I don't think most heroes will see a major shakeup in their performance because of the nature of their kit. Of course, plenty of individual games will be lost to these new rules on a case by case basis, but only a handful of heroes are truly nerfed or buffed by how the rules interact with their kits. Those are the ones I expect to move on my tier list, and everyone else should stay close to where they are.

Krampus

Krampus is the clearest winner. Bad Tidings used to be easy to shut down, because an opponent holding Coal could gain CP at the right moment and wipe their own Coal before the collateral damage landed. Under the new rules they can't respond that way, so Bad Tidings hits for its full damage even when the opponent already holds some Coal. That makes it a regular choice instead of a lane Krampus only uses when the opponent sits at zero Coal. This hurts most against heroes who can gain CP on demand. Forgemaster scrapping Ore or Jean Grey cashing in Acuity used to be able to wipe a full stack of Coal after it landed, and anyone holding a Getting Paid! could do the same, but now there's no window to do it before the damage is counted. Forgemaster is barely touched by the new rules otherwise, so Krampus may be a sleeper pick into him now. I'm not sure though, and I'll have to get reps in on the matchup to get a feel for it. Buh, Bye! coming back barely hurts him, since his Gifts and a single Coal aren't worth much to remove, which makes the opponent's copy a weak card against him. I have him moving up from the middle of B to right at the edge of A.

Cursed Pirate

Cursed Pirate is the other clear winner. Her steals and discards, like Walk the Plank, Abyssal Walk and Pillage, used to be easy to play around, because an opponent could wait to see the loss coming and then spend CP or play a card in response. Under the new rules they can't, so those abilities take what they're meant to take. Buh, Bye! coming back is a real answer to her, though. Parlay stops an opponent's attack from dealing any damage for a turn, so removing it is huge when they need to deal damage that turn. Heroes with other non damage abilities to use may opt to remove a Keg instead, but it's far from a dead card against her. She's one of the most played heroes in the game, so these changes will show up in a lot of matches. Still, I have her moving up from A to the low end of S.

Raveness

Raveness takes a real hit. What Status Effects and Get That Outta Here now take her entire Feather stack, and she can no longer spend Feathers in response, so holding a big bank is a liability. I think that will heavily incentivize Raveness pilots to burn Feathers to min/max the Nevermore roll instead of holding them, at least until the opponent plays What Status Effects. Buh, Bye! gives opponents a way to break Hex right after they roll the sixes they want to keep, and she loses a couple of her old tricks, like bringing Nevermore home to heal out of reach of a lethal hit and opening with Broken Stillness on turn one when going second. Her core engine is intact, since she can still re-roll and shift the Nevermore die on their turn, so I have her sliding from S to A rather than falling off. She's still one of the better heroes, just a less forgiving one.

Shadow Thief

Shadow Thief gets worse, mostly because Buh, Bye! is back and the attacker now acts first, so Shadows gained on defense or from Enter the Shadows! can be stripped before the damage lands. A skilled opponent will save Buh, Bye! until Shadow Thief burns dice mods to manufacture Shadows against a big incoming hit, and hope he isn't still holding Enter the Shadows! to bring Shadows right back. His deck no longer reshuffles either, which closes off the long games where he draws through everything, though that rarely happens in a timed match anyway. None of this ends him, because a skilled Shadow Thief still wins the late game. A big Buh, Bye! on his Shadows can leave him a turn too late, but that won't happen every game. Opponents want to end this matchup early, so they're drawing fewer cards and have less of a chance to find Buh, Bye! in the first place. Still, I have him dropping from A to B.

Cyclops

Cyclops has the biggest swing of anyone, though he sees little play and was already at the bottom of my tier list. His Support and Battle Plan used to be spendable in response to status removal, so a full bank was safe, and now a full bank is just a target. He's also one of the heroes most likely to run through his whole deck, so losing the reshuffle costs him in long games. His tier doesn't change, but he moves even further from the pack.

Tactician

Tactician gets clearly worse. Tactical Advantage used to be a safe thing to bank, because an opponent trying to remove it could be answered by spending it for CP, a draw or Protect. Now What Status Effects and Get That Outta Here just take the whole stack, so a big bank is a target instead of a safety net. Buh, Bye! coming back adds another way to hit Targeted or a banked Protect, and Protect can no longer be bought in response to isolated undefendable damage. Token re-rolls still work and the deck rarely runs out, so the hit comes almost entirely from the bank. I have the Tactician dropping from C to D.

Vampire Lord

Vampire Lord is hurt badly by the new removal rules. Blood Power is her biggest and hardest to rebuild stack, and she used to be able to cash it in for a draw of two cards the moment an opponent tried to remove it. Now What Status Effects wipes it with no response, and Buh, Bye! gives opponents a way to pick off a single Blood Power, often the fourth token of a planned heal, or one of the Bleeds she's applied. She was already low on the list, so I have her sliding from D to F.

New Characters?

We're getting a new single hero at the start of next age, and folks may start to get their Nexus heroes during that first age too. Those characters still have the potential to shake up the meta, similar to how Vanguard has with Druid and Forgemaster, so the rules won't be the only thing that moves it.