With the recent influx of new players, a question that is often asked is: what’s the difference between the Limited Edition and Unlimited Edition palettes in Achroma? That’s the question I’ll be answering today, and weighing up the pros and cons of each. I did previously do something similar in my achroma buyers’ guide, but I’ll go into a bit more detail here.

First of all, a bit of background:
When building a deck of cards, you need to pick a realm. All cards in your palette have to come from that realm, or be realmless. You can tell which realm a card is from by the symbol in the top left corner. Cards with no fixed realm have no symbol, and can be included in any deck. Below are cards from the 4 realms and one realmless card.

The game releases come in Chapters. We’ve finished Chapter 1, and are midway through Chapter 2. Within a Chapter, each realm is split into 3 factions, with 20 cards specific to that faction, including 2 legendary cards for each faction. There were also 2 expansion packs released for each realm known as The Rise of the Realm Runners, which are a great way to expand your collection, but I will not explain those here as these can only be bought as Unlimited palettes.

There are two ways to buy cards:
First edition releases. The 20 cards in each faction have been combined to create two similar palettes of 30 cards, each of which contains a unique legendary. As there are 6 legendary cards, 2 per faction, there are 6 possible decks. If you buy this product, you’ll get 2 decks, randomly selected.
Unlimited edition releases. You choose a faction and get 2 copies of every card in that faction, except the legendaries for which you’ll get 1 copy of each.

I tend to recommend new players get the First Editions. It gives you a product playable right out of the box with a friend (as you get 2 decks), and if you’re playing against someone already invested in the game it gives you two factions’ worth of cards to use to customize a single deck with. However, the downside is it makes it harder to complete the realm without trading decks, and gives you less control over what you’re getting.

If you wish to complete the realm for a Chapter, meaning 60 unique cards that you can use to build custom decks, there are two ways to do this:

1. Buy a First Edition collection, which guarantees you all 6 preconstructed decks for that realm.
2. Buy all 3 faction boxes from the Unlimited edition

At present since the first two releases, The Curse of Curdle Hill and The Siege of Draco Temple, have sold out of First Editions, if you want these cards you have to buy the Unlimited Editions. For The Fall of Flutterby and The Warriors of Wishwell you can choose either, and for A Conjuring at Curdle Cove and The Last Snow Dragons of Altari, you have to go for First Edition (since the Unlimited editions haven’t been released yet).

These two ways of completing the realms have their pros and cons:

1. Unlimited collections contain 120 cards, with 1 copy of each of the legendaries, and 2 copies of every other card. First Edition collections contain 180 cards, giving you 1 copy of each legendary, 2 of each rare, 3 of each uncommon, and 4 of each common. Both options give you all the cards you need to make any single deck you like, as deck restrictions prevent you from including more than 2 copies of any one card, however the First Edition just gives you more repeats of some cards to allow you to have multiple palettes on the go.
2. There were a few changes to cards after release, which are reflected in the Unlimited Editions. These are minor, but the Unlimited Editions are the most up-to-date wordings on all cards.
3. The Unlimited edition collections are slightly cheaper (£60 compared to £72-£80), though you are getting fewer cards.
4. You can buy the Unlimited Editions faction by faction (a third of a Chapter) for £20 each (or £18 with the discount code dracotemple), and pick up the missing ones whenever you like later on. This is a nice option if you want to pick and choose your factions, or aren’t ready to fully commit yet.
5. First edition cards are slightly more beautiful, with an embossed finish on the rares and legendaries.
6. The deck boxes for the Unlimited Editions have a nifty trick where if you sleeve your cards, you can remove an insert in the box and the cards will fit back into the box in their sleeves.
7. Unlimited Edition boxes also have a 50% chance of containing a rare alt art for one card. There are 4 alt arts for each faction.

Unlimited Editions are available here.
First Edition Collections are available here.

It’s worth noting that The Curse of Curdle Hill and A Conjuring at Curdle Cove are both from the same realm, as are The Siege of Draco Temple and The Last Snow Dragons of Altari. Therefore if you want to truly complete these realms, you’ll need to purchase both: an Unlimited set for the earlier releases, and a First Edition collection for the recent releases, for a total of £140 (or £126 with the discount code dracotemple).

If you want to buy the Ultimate Realm Box for Chapter 1, do consider the recently released Deluxe Realm Box, which was premiered at comicon last weekend. It contains all the Unlimited Edition palettes for a realm, plus the Realm Runner expansions for that realm, as well as some other excellent content including a beautiful Achroma Guidebook, access to the Achroma RPG, a realm playmat, and a Realmless expansion card. I wrote more about this in my article here.

If you want to read more about getting into Achroma and the products available, please check out my earlier Achroma Buyers’ Guide.

Welcome to Achroma.

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Next time you’re ordering achroma products, please use the discount code dracotemple at checkout on the achroma webstore for 10% off all orders, including pre-orders. By using this code, you are also supporting me, as I also earn commission on any sales using this code.
To activate this discount, enter the code at checkout, or go to shop.achroma.cards/dracotemple to automatically apply the code.