A First For Parallel: Play Two Factions At Once

Parallel Studios has officially debuted Draft Mode, a new format for its sci-fi trading card game that lets players mix cards from different Parallels in a single deck. It is the first time in the game's history that cross-faction deckbuilding is an officially supported mode. Until now, players could only build decks using cards from a single faction, outside of a narrow exception inside the Premium Battle Pass.

The new mode lands as Parallel's first proper draft-style format and is built around short, high-stakes runs where players build on the fly rather than bringing in a pre-tuned competitive deck.

How Draft Mode Works

The structure is tight. Players assemble a 30-card deck drawn from up to two of the game's Parallels, then enter a run with the goal of notching 7 wins before losing 3 lives. Wins pile up as the player keeps winning matches. Three losses end the run. The shorter 30-card deck size sets Draft apart from Parallel's standard 40-card constructed format and pushes the focus onto synergy decisions made during drafting rather than long-term metagame planning.

Access is structured around weekly free entries. Each player gets one free Draft Run every week. Additional runs cost 300 Glints, Parallel's in-game non-NFT currency, or 10 Draft tickets for players who have accumulated them through gameplay.

Rewards scale with performance. AP packs, Scrap, and more Draft tickets can be earned both during a run and at its conclusion, giving players an economic reason to grind the mode even after the single free weekly ticket has been used. That same stream of rewards was previously only available through ranked ladder, Parallel League, or the Premium Battle Pass, which placed the studio's existing cross-faction content behind a paid wall.

Why This Is a Meaningful Shift

Cross-faction play is structurally significant for Parallel because of how the game has been built. Until now, the entire design philosophy of a match assumed a deck committed to one of the five Parallels: Augencore, Earthen, Kathari, Marcolian, and The Shroud. Universal cards have always been permitted in any deck, but combining two Parallels in one 30-card pile is new territory. Draft Mode turns that into a first-class format with its own queue, its own rewards track, and its own entry economy.

The move also addresses a long-standing complaint from the community about accessibility. Constructed play rewards players who own or have farmed large card pools and have settled on a preferred faction. Draft pulls the deckbuilding moment inside the run itself, so every entrant starts with a more level playing field and a faster route to a functional deck. Three lives and a target of 7 wins keeps the tension high without dragging a session out.

What Is Parallel

For readers new to the title, Parallel is a science fiction trading card game set in the Echelon Prime universe. The lore revolves around a cataclysm called The Event, which rendered Earth uninhabitable after humanity experimented with anti-matter fission. Five Parallels of surviving humanity split across the solar system and are now fighting for control of the home planet. Each faction has a distinct playstyle. Marcolians favour order and technology from Mars. Kathari are cloned adapters from Europa. Earthen, Augencore, and The Shroud round out the lineup with their own mechanics.

The game is a free-to-play PC title available via the Epic Games Store and mobile clients. A standard deck is 40 cards, limited to 3 copies of a card except for Legendary cards, which are limited to 1. Apparitions are account-bound cards earned in-game, while NFT cards are tradable on Parallel's marketplace.

The Parallel economy has two currencies. Glints are the non-NFT in-game currency purchased with credit cards or with PRIME, the Echelon ecosystem token. PRIME is earned by winning ranked matches and is used to interact with smart contracts across the broader Echelon universe, which also includes other gaming initiatives built on the Echelon Prime Foundation.

A Product of 2025's Direction for Parallel

Draft Mode fits cleanly into the trajectory Parallel has been on over the past year. Throughout 2025, the studio reworked starter progression so new players could unlock Paragons and faction tools through matches alone, without needing NFTs. Parallel League was continuously refined as the core competitive ladder, and the Parallel Prime Championship circuit built out a structured schedule of Opens, Minors, and Majors with escalating prize pools, starting with the championship event in Las Vegas at the top of the year.

Draft Mode extends that philosophy in a different direction. Instead of making constructed easier to approach, the studio has added a whole new axis for play. It gives collectors and NFT whales a level field for at least one format per week, and it gives new players another way to earn apparition cards, Scrap, and Draft tickets without needing to commit to a single faction early on.

The Bigger Context: Parallel's Ecosystem Role

Draft Mode's debut also sits inside a wider Echelon ecosystem push. The Echelon Prime Foundation, which underpins Parallel's PRIME token, has been building out a broader network of gaming experiences with Parallel as the flagship title. The foundation recently announced that Parallel Studios, the developer behind Parallel, is building the first-person shooter Project Tau Ceti and a dedicated B3 gamechain called Primechain focused on PC titles, which will sit alongside other gamechains like Godchain from InfiniGods and SuperGaming's GameChain on the wider B3 Open Gaming ecosystem.

That context matters for Draft Mode because it reinforces a pattern across the entire Echelon footprint. The studio is prioritising accessibility, repeat engagement, and free weekly content over rent-seeking around NFT ownership. The free Draft entry per week is a direct reflection of that stance. The paid path using either Glints or accumulated Draft tickets is optional and only becomes relevant for players who want to grind the mode harder.

What Players Get For Their Runs

Every Draft Run feeds into three parallel reward tracks. AP packs, the game's standard booster drop, provide new Apparition cards to fold into future decks. Scrap is the crafting resource used to target-build specific cards directly. Draft tickets, in turn, reduce the Glint cost of future runs and give habitual drafters a self-sustaining loop once they get a rhythm going.

The 7-win target sets the ceiling for top-end rewards. Players who scrape by at 3 or 4 wins still earn a portion of the rewards pool, but running the table with a full 7-win clear will deliver the biggest AP pack and ticket payouts, matching the structure used by established draft modes in other card games.

Why This Move Matters Now

The timing is worth noting. Parallel has been in open beta for years and is preparing for a push toward a fuller launch alongside the broader Echelon ecosystem rollout. Draft Mode gives the studio a new live mode to stress-test during that window, with a steady source of telemetry on how the community drafts cards, builds hybrid decks, and reacts to cross-faction meta shifts that have been impossible to generate until now.

It also lowers the barrier to meaningful time spent in the game. 3 lives, 7 wins, one free ticket a week. For new players, that is a concrete goal on day one. For established players, it is a fresh lane for rewards and a first look at what the game's meta looks like once two factions can coexist in the same deck.