Ruinstars is built around the idea that every squad has a clear identity. The Drone Pod floods the table. The Silent Choir dismantles it from the inside. The Despoilers get in close and make it hurt. That identity should be legible from the first unit you put on the table.
What these identities don't always give you is choice. A squad that plays the same way every game, against every opponent, on every mission, stops being interesting. And a squad list that forces you to build one specific way locks out players who have different miniatures, different instincts, or just different taste.
This update is about fixing that. Four squads have received new weapons, skills, and gear options. Every addition is designed to expand what you can do without breaking what the squad already is.
This update started from player feedback asking for more options, more flexibility, more ways to field the minis they already own. We took that and ran with it, and had a lot of fun doing so. As always, if you have additional feedback or ideas, reach out to us in our Community channels.
Interdictors
The Interdictors are the Hegemony's forward blade: adaptable, disciplined, and built for missions where improvisation is the only plan. They already had the deepest option list in the game; this update pushes that further.
Heavy Trooper is a new unit type for players who want sustained heavy fire. The Destroyer HMG and Rocket Launcher were already in the Interdictor kit, now the Heavy Trooper gives you a dedicated platform for them plus three new unique weapons: Lance Beam, Immolator, and Nullpulse. Each covers a different threat profile: Lance Beam punishes clusters, Immolator burns through cover and adjacency, Nullpulse trades raw damage for suppression, turning activations against the enemy.
Infiltrator and Cloak are new skill options available to both Strike and Assault Troopers. Infiltrator gives a unit a free move after deployment, before the first turn begins. Cloak is a once-per-mission defensive skill that takes a unit off the targeting priority list until its next activation. Neither changes the squad's fundamentals, they give you a way to open the mission differently and put pressure on specific objectives before the enemy has settled.
Drone Pod
The Drone Pod's identity is volume and expendability: Cheap units, disposable by design, directed by a Brood Mother who can spawn replacements mid-mission. The challenge: every Drone played identically, and the only build decisions sat on the Brood Mother.
This update adds selectable mutations to both the Brood Mother and the Drone. The framing matches the faction's lore: the Swarm is a chaotic collection of weird mutations, and these are the results.
Carrier turns a Drone's death into a resource: when it reaches 0 HIT, it places a Swarmling where it fell. Combined with the Brood Mother's existing Infest ability, this creates a pod that never fully depletes.
Hardened Carapace gives a Drone a re-roll on melee armor saves. It costs 1GP and makes each Drone harder to remove. It's a direct tradeoff against the swarm identity, worth taking deliberately, not by default.
Spore Cloud and Venom Sac are Unique options. Spore Cloud punishes melee attackers with -1 SKL on the Drone they're targeting. Venom Sac adds Stun to a single Drone's melee weapons, applying an ACT penalty to anything it hits. These don't define a pod archetype; they add one specialist to a horde that otherwise plays uniformly. One model with a specific job, doing something no other Drone can.
Silent Choir
The Silent Choir exists to make the enemy fight on the wrong ground, at the wrong moment, against the wrong targets. Misdirection, Compel, The Face Of Truth: the squad's leader units were already full of interesting decisions. But the line units weren't. Disciples and Adepts shared three weapons with no variation between them and almost nothing to choose at build time. This update addresses that directly.
New weapons are now available across all unit types. Physical options include the Ritual Dagger (fast double-strike), Bone Whip (Chain Reaction 1, jumps to adjacent targets), and Void Needle (Piercing, Rending 1). Psychic options include Shriek (short-range, Stun), Rend (No Cover, Chain Reaction), and Conflagrate (Blast) which moves up from leader-exclusive to broadly available.
New skills give Disciples and Adepts genuine build identity. Dark Shard upgrades ranged weapons with Rending 1. Fell Resonance gives melee weapons Chain Reaction 1. Harmony adds a melee armor re-roll. These are modifier options that change how units perform rather than adding new mechanics to track.
The Aspirant and Shroudbearer also gain Unravel (strips 2 TO from the opposing squad, once per mission) and an expanded skill list that reinforces their role as the psychic core of the cell.
Silent Choir now has a genuine choice at every unit tier: how do you arm each Disciple, and what does your Adept's role look like this mission? The answers shape a squad that feels like a deliberate construction rather than a fixed template.
Despoilers
The Despoilers want to close distance, stay in your face, and make you regret every trade. Pain Is Strength is the engine: the more damage they absorb, the harder they hit back. The update doesn't change that, it adds more ways to express it.
Bloodlust is the most aggressive addition. Each time this unit Takes Out an enemy in melee, including on Executions, Attacks of Opportunity, and Retaliations, it may immediately perform a free melee attack. A Blooded with Bloodlust and a high-ATT weapon that finds a cluster of weakened enemies can chain attacks in ways the opponent didn't plan for. This stacks with Pain Is Strength - NOT subtle, pure brute force and overwhelming violence.
Gorebound is quieter but consistently useful. Adjacent enemies don't benefit from Support in melee. The Despoilers want to isolate and destroy. Gorebound makes that isolation mechanically punishing rather than just tactically desirable.
Grizzly Trophy is available as a Unique option on Ravager, Desecrator, and Blooded. Any enemy that finishes a Move or Dash adjacent to this unit immediately takes 2 melee damage. Combined with Meat Hook (which fires on enemies leaving adjacency), a unit with both becomes a zone of sustained punishment. Moving into it costs you. Moving out costs you.
The Despoilers still win by getting close and staying close. These options give you more ways to build that threat and more ways to punish opponents who don't respect it.
These updates are live now in the app and on the faction pages. As always, the rules are free, the squads are yours to build, and any feedback helps.
The galaxy is dying. Fight how you want.