Version history
Patch notes
Every notable change, balance pass, and new feature shipped to Grand Gambit.
- v0.21October 10, 2026
Titles, medals & a new administration experience
Compose your ceremonial identity, exhibit your achievements, and manage accounts and collections through redesigned pages. This update also refreshes game discovery, commander panels, cosmetics and the player handbook.
- Renamed Achievements to Titles & Accolades and introduced a Hall of Honours with top-left Accolades and My Titles tabs, a player display banner, searchable collections and a live title preview.
- Expanded the achievement catalogue from 59 to 90 entries and added 35 title definitions spanning military, court, noble, campaign and epithet styles. Requirements are shown per entry; upcoming achievements remain marked as upcoming rather than presented as currently earnable.
- Added saved title composition: a principal title, an optional ordinal from I to X, up to two additional honours, a territorial title and named territory, and an epithet. Ownership is validated by the server; equipping honours does not grant gameplay advantages or currency.
- Replaced achievement icons with 90 distinct military medals. Decoration complexity rises through Service Medal, Silver Decoration, Gold Honour, Order of Merit and Grand Cross, with ribbons, emblems and ornamental metalwork.
- Added selection and ordering of up to six earned medals for public display. Saved medal choices, title previews and earned progress remain consistent when returning to the Treasury.
- Extended achievement tracking for qualifying match feats, commander and deck accomplishments, campaign progress and tutorial unit inspection. Match rewards remain protected against repeat claims, and awarded achievements retain their completed display state.
- Added primary player titles and Honours buttons to both commander panels, including separate identities for both participants in player-versus-player matches. Public honours are captured when creating or joining the match; private opponent cards stay private.
- Introduced the Grand Exhibition honours modal with an ornamental portrait and full titles, a six-medal gallery, and a green detail panel showing the selected achievement requirement and earned date. Opponent displays are read-only, and your display points you to Treasury → Titles & Accolades for changes.
- Fixed the titles API bridge so titles can load and save through the website. Added clearer loading, retry, empty and unsaved-change states instead of misleading empty title lists and duplicate errors.
- Redesigned post-match commander cards with scenic banners, framed portraits, faction details, result badges and clearer resource and unit totals. AI commanders use their default presentation unless explicitly configured; custom portrait cosmetics are not inferred from their culture.
- Moved administration into a dedicated /admin page with a compact sidebar for Users, Treasury, Feedback and Audit log, plus a return-to-profile action. Staff access and protected-role restrictions remain enforced.
- Rebuilt user management around a searchable, paginated user table and account inspector. Added search by name or ID, role filtering, account counts, profile details and role audit history. Retained editing of display names, Bonds, XP or level, and Treasury access with filters and unsaved-change controls.
- Redesigned Treasury administration as a category workspace with item previews, counts, search, rarity filters, collapsible sections and section save controls. Administrators can manage rarity, fragment requirements, fragment drops and locked visibility. Refined nested scrolling and removed unnecessary outer page overflow.
- Reworked Game Modes into a compact 3 × 2 illustrated atlas: Endless Horde, AI vs. AI and Scenarios occupy the playable tiles, with three clearly marked future slots. Removed the extra slogan and fitted the desktop layout to the viewport.
- Refreshed the homepage with Victorian-inspired artwork and a redesigned Play your way section. Updated campaign browsing with an illustrated campaign library and clearer chapter presentation; planned chapters remain separate from playable content.
- Expanded full-art cosmetic treatments for Darius III, Attila, Henry VIII, Dzhengis Khan and Vault of the Templars, including dedicated signature-card rendering. Refined artwork previews, rarity presentation and the Candlelit War Room theme.
- Added a collector-style frame grid with search, ownership and rarity filters, pagination, preview and equip actions. Added three milestone frames: Gilded Hairline for finishing the tutorial, Ink & Ivory for 50 different scenarios, and Moonlit Silver for 50 qualifying multiplayer games. Milestone frames are earned through play rather than fragment packs.
- Updated the manual against current online rules: opening-turn income and draw exceptions, resource caps, draw-then-discard hand management, empty decks, reserve timing, doctrine duplicates, cards while in check, Feudal Summoning, special movement and pawn promotion. These are documentation corrections, not new rule changes in this release.
- Added handbook guidance for board controls, game modes, Titles & Accolades and in-match honours. Preserved printed-only variants separately and adjusted chapter navigation to clear the site header.
- v0.2October 9, 2026
Account progression, 68 scenarios & AI training upgrades
A new milestone for Grand Gambit: account levels and rewards, 68 scenarios, a more reliable PPO training pipeline, and tools to discover stronger decks.
- Added persistent account progression through 50 levels. Eligible completed matches award 60 XP, victories add 30 XP, and the first qualifying victory each UTC day adds 50 XP. Matches require at least five of your own chess moves; debug games, AI-versus-AI and Horde do not award account XP.
- Every level gained awards 100 Bonds automatically. Rewards are recorded once per level, including catch-up rewards for levels already earned. Scenario and campaign XP are not yet available.
- Added five-level account titles, starting with Baron at levels 1–5 and Viscount at levels 6–10, followed by Earl, Marquess, Duke, Grand Duke, Prince, King, Emperor and Sovereign. Levels do not increase card strength or match resources.
- Added a portrait level badge and account dropdown with XP progress, account navigation, progression details and sign-out. Refined badge numeral sizing for three-digit displays and enlarged the overview XP labels.
- Rebuilt the account overview with a portrait-and-XP panel, next-level reward, match and scenario statistics, and campaign/scenario shortcuts. Added watercolor artwork, a scenario image fallback, and a desktop layout that fits the available viewport. Detailed account match history remains unavailable.
- Added a 125-Bond daily reward after successful sign-in, with reward notifications and protection against duplicate payments on the same UTC day.
- Expanded the playable scenario catalogue to 68 and reworked repeated positions, including mirrored duplicates and unintended shortcuts. Scenario achievement tracking now covers the expanded catalogue.
- Fixed Queen card attachment being blocked merely because a Queen already occupied the board. Attaching to an eligible Queen remains distinct from adding another Queen to reserves.
- Added Queen Victoria and Isabella I, including their resource-square movement and resource-overflow draw effects, artwork and unit integration. Both are excluded from Endless Horde.
- Corrected default-border card rules and footer placement in Card List and Deck Builder while respecting the default-border preference. Improved post-match result and return-home controls.
- Extended the AI arena Balance Lab with deck evaluation, legal deck search, controlled card-replacement comparisons and card reports. Jobs support pause/resume, reproducible match settings and replay inspection; results do not automatically change card balance or template decks.
- Improved heuristic choices for counters, sacrifices, promotions, discards, searches and selected paid abilities. Added bounded card-and-capture lookahead without revealing hidden opponent cards.
- Aligned PPO training with live match decisions through shared automatic commander placement and negotiation handling. Queen reserve preparation now follows the same eligibility rules as live play.
- Stabilized PPO card and token identifiers with fixed-capacity, append-only indexes. Future catalogue additions can preserve existing input identities; checkpoints from before this structural change still require retraining. Incompatible models now report clearer reasons when loading fails.
- Reduced simulation overhead by caching the card catalogue, reusing legal-move calculations and skipping unused observation data. Card Studio edits still refresh the catalogue cache.
- Added a reproducible opponent schedule: training begins against weaker configured opponents before introducing the wider difficulty pool and periodic frozen-policy opponents.
- Expanded training and evaluation reports with wins, losses, stalemates, move-limit draws, cutoffs, episode errors, resource spending, repeated positions and check escapes. Training summaries update after each episode, with recovery checkpoints after training updates and bounded tolerance for isolated engine errors.
- Added tactical evaluation probes for mating moves, captures, exchanges, check escapes, reserves, counters, resource spending, endgame conversion and repetition. Saved policies can be benchmarked without starting another training run.
- Added resumable commander deck searches with parallel match workers, candidate deck variations and separate holdout opponents and seeds. The current search uses the heuristic controller; it does not train PPO weights or automatically replace standard decks.
- Ordinary practice continues to use the heuristic AI. Saved PPO play requires a configured compatible checkpoint; these training and evaluation upgrades do not yet establish improved playing strength.
- Fixed a missing progression import that could interrupt every page and added the progression endpoint to the website API bridge.
- v0.1.81October 8, 2026
Scenario progression, puzzle variety & interface fixes
Clearer scenario progression, more distinct early puzzles, and improved Treasury lock states.
- Unified scenario numbering across the library, game headings, completion screens and browser titles. Added Next Scenario after successful completion, except after the final puzzle.
- Fixed navigation between scenarios loading the wrong puzzle and redesigned scenarios 3–5 with distinct starting positions.
- Fixed Tactical Retreat coordinate cloning and applied independent coordinate handling to related movement effects and replay history.
- Connected the scenario rail controls to actual scroll position, including a moving indicator, clickable track and disabled end arrows.
- Improved objective placement and Lord Acton portrait alignment. Dutch Waterline now uses its board-based rank selector, and Siege of Leiden received additional starting resources.
- Renamed campaign return actions to Return to Campaign. Applied locked backdrops across entire Treasury tiles, with clearer labels and fragment progress.
- Development updateOctober 8, 2026
Board themes, collectible artwork & Treasury refinements
Expanded cosmetic collections, full-match theme previews and clearer artwork ownership.
- Added dedicated Treasury collection, achievement, pack and category routes, with authentication return destinations, collection percentages and consistent Inspect actions.
- Added Boards & Themes with ownership states, fragment progress and read-only previews using the shared match interface. Midnight Imperial extends navy-and-gold styling across the board, side panels, turn ledger and match dialogs.
- Expanded commander artwork variants, including Alexander, Sun Tzu, Dzhengis Khan, Nicholas I, Roxelana and Catherine. Full-art designs retain their own composition; standard artwork follows the equipped frame.
- Hellenic Quartermaster artwork unlocks after Alexander campaign mission 4, recognizes existing completions, and is excluded from fragment packs.
- Set card-art fragment requirements to 1 for Common, 2 for Curio, 3 for Antique, 4 for Artefact and 5 for Relic. Existing fragment totals are reconciled against these requirements.
- Added Oxblood Seal, Jade Cranes, Celestial Atlas, Porcelain Garden and Ember Phoenix sleeves; restored Manuscript Knights and refined animated Midnight Empire and Gold Foil sleeves.
- Improved card-art galleries, numeric card ordering, keyboard inspection, equipped-frame previews and frame cutouts. Refined chesspiece previews and opponent sleeve proportions.
- Multiplayer matches use each authenticated player’s equipped sleeve, captured when creating or joining the match. The landing hero also follows the equipped sleeve.
- Added Lord Acton’s tutorial prologue, sequential scenario unlocking and saved local completion states. Improved tutorial viewport behavior and shared match controls.
- Refined account navigation and compact header resource counters, including removing the Unopened packs text while retaining the count.
- Development updateOctober 7, 2026
Treasury collections, achievements & fragment packs
Collect chesspiece sets, frames and card artwork through a more consistent Treasury experience.
- Added Ebony, Porcelain and Imperial Bronze chesspiece sets with collection previews and board support, plus Ghost of War, The Winter Emperor and Dawn of Conquest full-art designs.
- Redesigned Frames & Portraits and Card Arts with larger previews, search, filters, carousel navigation and clearer ownership, equipment and rarity states.
- Added Unlocked only filtering to All Treasures. Default cosmetics and Jade Cavalry remain available in their individual categories.
- Added achievement category navigation, progress totals, search, status filters and paginated achievement cards.
- Packs award three cosmetic fragments, automatically unlocking items when their requirements are met. Added sealed-pack previews, framed reward reveals and an option to open the next pack.
- Clarified Full Art versus Artwork Only, improved enlarged card previews and fixed a Deck Builder loading issue introduced during preview changes.
- v0.1.72October 6, 2026
A new look, shared match planners & the first scenario
Imperial artwork, consistent navigation and footers, personal profile icons, and a playable one-turn checkmate challenge.
- Added the first playable scenario, Break the Siege: a 6 × 8 position with White starting in check and one turn to checkmate. The starting hand contains Sun Tzu, Break the Siege, War Elephant, and Samurai; Black has an ordinary king without a commander card.
- The scenario supports playing Sun Tzu, removing the checking bishop with Break the Siege, attaching War Elephant to F1, and moving F1 to F8. Break the Siege and War Elephant can be played in either order. Victory is checked against the resulting position; unsuccessful attempts can be restarted.
- Rebuilt the Scenario Library with a vertical scenario carousel, board previews, difficulty filters, mission details, and 20 planned entries. The first scenario is marked Ready and can be launched directly. Removed public links to the developer Sandbox.
- Applied the Match Planner layout to both computer practice and multiplayer setup, with framed panels, commander portraits, and the lighter Gold Horizon city-and-parchment background. Multiplayer retains Host and Join controls; desktop setup screens fit without vertical page scrolling.
- Pre-game setup now selects a valid personal deck automatically: account decks take priority, followed by browser-saved decks, with standard decks as the fallback. Loading account decks preserves any manual selection or match already being started.
- Updated deck selection with Standard decks, My decks, and Import code tabs, commander previews, and featured cards. Opponent deck selection uses the same inspector as player deck selection.
- Redesigned deck saving with an ornamental parchment frame, commander portrait, editable deck name, storage usage, and account-slot selection. Corrected slot presentation and removed the white border around the decorative frame.
- Replaced profile-picture uploads with a King and Queen artwork picker containing 17 King portraits and 5 Queen portraits. Players can select an icon or use their initials; saved icons also appear in the global header.
- Updated the homepage hero to Imperial River Terrace, with a lighter palace, river, and chess terrace. Nicholas I and Catherine the Great replace Sun Tzu and Roxelana as the interactive featured cards.
- Unified the charcoal-and-gold header with Play, Card List, Deck Builder, and Forum links, account access, settings, notifications, and the current version. The full header gives way to compact navigation on active playing boards.
- Applied the dark Gold Horizon footer to the homepage, Account, Login, Manual, Patch Notes, Forum and individual discussions, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Code of Conduct. Removed the horizon illustration from the footer itself.
- Added a resource-cost range slider to Deck Builder, matching the Card List filtering controls.
- Improved Sandbox with the shared match board, twin White and Black deployment controls, adjustable board dimensions, and red placement highlights. Campaign selection no longer shows the extra atlas header and fits the desktop viewport.
- Improved piece interaction with Move, Unit Ability, and Attached Cards choices. Added a projected-income inspector accessible from either player’s resource total.
- Corrected Nicholas I’s reserve-only ability requirements and automatically uses the first available reserve slot. Refined Catherine’s unit artwork, commander introductions, and the full-image error-page presentation.
- v0.1.71October 5, 2026
Smoother turns, reliable sounds & card selection
Clearer move timing, working hand selection, and updated Persuasion and Horde reserves.
- Chess movement and card draws now have dedicated sounds, including turn draws and hidden Horde draws without revealing enemy cards.
- Turn-ending actions finish their animation and wait half a second before the new turn, incoming hand, resources, and draw sound appear.
- Removed action delays during initial Endless Horde army placement, refunds, and king repositioning.
- Hanze Guilds and Spy Network use clickable hand cards for discard selection; fixed clicks failing to select cards and preserved duplicate-card selection.
- Added Draw random card and Draw from Deck to Debug tools. Deck draws consume the selected side’s deck and respect normal draw rules.
- Endless Horde opponent cards now sit together and use the same horizontal scrollbar as /play when the hand overflows.
- The turn ledger preference stays saved across matches and modes, with automatic display enabled by default until turned off.
- Persuasion now causes checkmate if it cancels the only legal move out of check. The sacrifice fallback remains when the player is not in check.
- New Endless Horde opponents start with one unlocked reserve slot and two locked slots.
- v0.1.17October 5, 2026
Clearer actions, piece abilities & match presentation
Follow enemy actions more easily and activate unit effects directly from the board.
- Added clickable gold ability badges to pieces, with card artwork, requirement indicators, and clear explanations when an effect is unavailable.
- Replaced coordinate lists with a Use effect button and highlighted board selection, including effects requiring a source and destination. Reserve deployment stays separate from unit abilities.
- Added short action pauses and delayed turn handover until opponent animations finish, followed by a pause before the turn ledger or Horde choice appears. Improved initial Horde deployment pacing.
- Added enemy card and affected-piece cues, plus a Resolving overlay with a 30-second countdown. Expired responses pass when possible or choose a random legal option when a choice is required.
- Added sounds for unit deployment, armaments, doctrines, counters, and immobilization.
- Redesigned doctrine galleries with artwork previews and hover rule text. Simplified Endless Horde metrics, displayed the opponent hand, and added compact doctrine and history controls with full commander ability and bonus text.
- Standardized card hover previews across game modes, adjusted own-hand preview size, and fixed clipped post-match replay content.
- Expanded Debug tools with hand and History card additions, additive resources, maximum-resource settings, reserve slots from 0–3, and piece removal on every rank.
- Changed Iron Discipline: while controlling five or fewer pieces, pawns may move one square in any direction to an empty square; captures retain their normal rules.
- Changed Catherine the Great’s drawn-card effect to play stratagems rather than only manoeuvres. Added an Immobilized status card excluded from deck building and draws.
- Added Nicholas I’s unique white and black chess piece artwork and refined commander strength seals.
- v0.1.16October 4, 2026
Debug board controls & card response improvements
More direct board interactions, clearer card responses, and improved Horde presentation.
- Added Debug tools for placing all six standard chess pieces and moving pieces without spending resources or consuming a turn.
- Added an automatic Deacon conversion prompt with source and target highlights, costs, and a Do Nothing option. Conversion is restricted to adjacent left and right squares.
- Improved opponent hand scrolling, parchment panels, commander portraits, card borders, and enemy card notifications with affected board coordinates.
- Added board previews and target highlights for card responses; fixed reserve selection interfering with normal movement and improved Don Cossack swaps.
- Improved Plotted Plagiarism, Vienna’s Relief, and Epilektoi selection. Break the Siege resolves automatically against a legal checking piece, and Out of Supplies chooses enemy reserve slots automatically.
- Removed Negotiate from the Horde card pool, combined Expanded Treasury upgrades, revised standard decks, and renamed Nicholas I’s deck to Imperial Eagle.
- Reworked post-match statistics into a fullscreen layout and cleaned up obsolete project documentation and test artifacts.
- Development updateOctober 3, 2026
Walls of Halicarnassus & smarter Horde card play
Alexander’s campaign gains a siege chapter, with stronger card handling across modes.
- Added Chapter IV: Walls of Halicarnassus on a 12×12 battlefield, with a campaign-only Siege Ram, artwork, and chess icons. Defend the ram for five enemy turns to breach the wall, then defeat Memnon.
- Improved Horde AI card priorities, resource spending, reserve targeting, paid abilities, and draw filtering to avoid duplicate doctrines and unusable cards.
- Fixed Out of Supplies handling full reserves and synchronized its cost to five; fixed Conquistador replacing a pawn with an empty square.
- Implemented additional campaign card effects, resource-cap and hand-limit rules, and check escapes through cards and reserves.
- Improved card borders and campaign opponent names, and rejected unsupported campaign cards before payment.
- Development updateOctober 2, 2026
Endless Horde arrives
Build an army and survive escalating waves of Mongolian commanders.
- Added king selection, army deployment, survival turns, card drafting, permanent buffs, commander rewards, and run results.
- Introduced seven Horde commanders with unique effects, scaling bonuses, artwork, and matching chess pieces.
- Added AI card play, reinforcements, resource progression, History recovery, and Horde eligibility controls in Card Studio.
- Built dedicated Horde screens and responsive card offers, with rarity effects and stacked buff displays.
- Added board targeting for several shared cards, optional live card costs, and fixes to reserve availability and cap effects.
- Added a custom parchment-and-chessboard error page with working navigation.
- Development updateOctober 1, 2026
Campaign dialogue, succession & turn ledger controls
Clearer campaign introductions and more control over turn summaries.
- Added illustrated Parmenion introductions and objectives for the first two campaign chapters, with Previous navigation.
- Added persistent turn ledger visibility preferences, manual access, and tutorial guidance for hiding and restoring summaries.
- Improved Crusader succession and Squire artwork, added board selection for successors, and required Recruit placement after Dragoon dies.
- Added Jacobite’s Move pawn option, unattached-king turn warnings, and clearer reserve guidance in Chapter I.
- Development updateSeptember 30, 2026
Granicus campaign & new cards
Cross the river with Alexander and his cavalry in a new playable campaign chapter.
- Added Chapter II: Granicus, with a 9×11 river battlefield, shared match controls, enemy turns, objectives, and saved progress.
- Added Bucephalos, Prodromoi, Arsites, Recall, Reservists, and a campaign Quartermaster variant with matching artwork.
- Refined Chapter I setup and protected resource squares, and improved campaign retry and chapter progression.
- Changed Employ Mercenaries to select a History unit before choosing its deployment square, preserving duplicate entries and cancellation.