Like a firestorm in the Merchants' Quarter, The Awakening expansion set has a tremendous impact on the play environment of the Legend of the Burning Sands TCG. This new card set consists of over 300 brand-new cards, including more than 100 new Actions, 90 Heroes, and over 20 Spells.

Per tradition, The Awakening releases with a Starter display full of decks and a Booster display filled with card packs. But wait there's more. Packed in the Starter Decks are convenient cardboard chit sheets with punch-out tokens. Included are water tokens, +2 Blacksmith tokens, 'Bad Date' tokens, and Follower tokens. Easy to identify, these tokens enhance your play table by eliminating those confusing glass beads and coins.

Each Starter display includes 12 different decks, including 5 brand-new Factions. These 5 new factions are The Celestial Alliance, The Houses of Dahab, The Ivory Kingdoms, The Ra'shari, and The Yodatai.

The Celestial Alliance

As resistance to Khadi tyranny grows, the rebellion begins to organize. With the leadership of an otherworldly jinn, The Celestial Alliance spearheads the fight against the dark magic of the Caliph and her minions. This rogue faction combines the might of magical jinn and human warriors, forging a nearly undefeatable alliance. Fighting for magical freedom, their most important resource is no longer water, but their spirit.

SPECIAL ABILITY: A Celestial Alliance player remains in the game even without any water tokens at the end of a turn.

The Houses of Dahab

"With chaos comes opportunity"- so claim The Houses of Dahab. The greatest merchants of the city gather together like vultures around a fresh carcass. These are the men that control both sides of the coin. Weapon runners, conspirators, and down-to-earth slimeballs, their influence and power go to the highest bidder and their own selfish interests. But be careful; once they've gotten what they want from you, their next target may be closer to home.

SPECIAL ABILITY: A Dahab player may use any City Section without restriction.

The Ivory Kingdoms

The Ivory Kingdom now comes to the forefront of the Burning Sands storyline. These tribal warrior-priests ride on elephants and worship a vast pantheon of bloodthirsty gods, demanding human sacrifices. From this faction, look for their cult magic and their great skill with ranged weapons. If they don't kill their enemies from afar, they'll probably do it over a sacrificial altar.

SPECIAL ABILITY: Ivory Kingdom players get an enhanced ability with Archery and in no small supply.

The Ra'shari

Since the first expansion, we've seen guest stars from the gypsy faction, the Ra'shari. Now you experience fortune-telling, curse-casting, and fate- manipulating aplenty. Ra'shari are not great at water stealing and their strength isnit terribly intimidating either; instead their great powers derive from their subtlety. Ra'shari manipulate numbers, rearrange fates, and call down curses. One never knows what to actually fear in the Ra'shari, because you can't smell, touch or taste it. But you know it's coming, and that's the worst fear of all.

SPECIAL ABILITY: A Ra'shari player has the ability to change Fate values, manipulate cards in other players hands, and most importantly, affect the cards in his own hands.

The Yodatai

The Yodatai is going the be faction to fear. Invading from the North, these blond-haired, blue-eyed fighters are led by a legendary champion whose fighting spirit seems to pass from generation to generation, by blood. They look to conquer and assimilate; what they can't subdue, they destroy. Nearly all of these crusading warriors have the Berserk Trait. If that isn't impressive enough, their stronghold grants you a City Section every time you destroy one of another player's. However, because they are foreigners, they have no knowledge or power to summon Jinn. In addition, since home is so far away, supplies are short and sporadic. So if you venture to guess that they don't have everything they need, they're probably on their way to take it from you.

SPECIAL ABILITY: Berserk, Berserk Berserk. New factions aren't the only goodies found in The Awakening: a new card type called the Pantheon card also makes its debut. Similar to Omens, these cards an simply played on the table and generally have an "environmental" or "world" effect on the game. These effects range from reducing everyone's hand size, to enhancing your ability to duel, or to improving your chances in battles. Like Omens, you may only have one in play at an time, but in contrast, each player may have one of their own Pantheon cards in play at the same time.

A new winning condition is also introduced into the game. If a series of cards are played in a specified order you win the game. Much like the Story Victory, you do need to eliminate the other players from the table to the game with these new cards.

Raiding and dueling are both make much more viable styles to victory as well, and you are likely to find common card manipulation decks than ever before.

Get ready for over 300 new cards to add to the Burning Sands mix. With 700 cards to choose from now, there shouldn't ever be a dull moment playing this game.

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