☀️ Summer Breeze + new ship: Loyal Defender
Ahoy, Captains! ☀️ Pull up a beach chair — Summer Breeze has rolled in, and it's bringing a brand-new ship with it.
☀️ Summer Breeze — new season
The new research season is live and runs through 31 August 2026. Theme is bright beach / seaside — sun, sand, snorkels, and a magic reef portal for some reason. The premium track headline rewards:
Loyal Defender ship blueprint (more on this in a sec 👇)
16 new avatar parts — 7 hats (bucket, flower crown, fruit, lifeguard, sailor, snorkel, straw), 4 clothing (aloha shirt, lifeguard tank, sailor stripes, sun dress), 5 sunglasses
4 themed ship skins — Summer Nessie, Holiday Beach Cove, Pool Party Coracle, Beach Picnic Raft
7 new emotes — Pineapples and flamingoes make the best combo!
Free track has the usual mix of gold, gems, emotes, and chests. Premium pass is 145 gems (unchanged) and pass holders still get the 50% RP bonus.
🧲 New ship: Loyal Defender ("Big Magnet")
Epic, passive (no cooldown). The ability is simple but spicy: any damage that would hit a friendly ship is taken by the Defender instead. A proper sponge / protector. Pairs nicely with anything fragile you want to keep alive a turn longer.
If you were in Battle Club Early Access in May, you've already had some time with Big Magnet — Summer Breeze is the first time it lands as a full research-tree reward for everyone.
📺 Other bits worth knowing
"Tap to reload" escape hatch — if loading hasn't progressed for 30 seconds, you now get a button to manually reload. Catches the rare cases that slip past the existing retry
Expedition fleet/inventory fix — ships you picked for your starting fleet were showing up duplicated in the reserve inventory after the first round. Sorted
Research tree — ship/blueprint nodes now show the ship's ability and cooldown in a polished About card, so you actually know what you're researching before you tap unlock
Avatar designer — new Glasses layer; spyglass and red nose moved into the Extras tab as their own section to keep the row tidy
Tournament UI — tournament cards jump to the top of the queue, and long lists collapse so you can scan them properly
Battles modal — new info buttons on each mode + the Draft Mode toggle explaining what each one is
Steam — first-launch account linking now mirrors the iOS flow; autologin + sign-in fixes for desktop builds
🔧 Smaller fixes
Fixed crash when multiple Loyal Defenders were on the board (mentioned above but worth its own line)
Fixed Enter-key crash when confirming an ability
Fixed win-streak medals not showing immediately after the streak stat updated
Big thanks to the Battle Club early-access folks who helped me catch Defender bugs over the last few weeks 🫡
Thanks for playing 🌊