Braverse Festival Arena Reprints: What Devsisters Promised

Booster 12 [Festival Arena] went on sale in North America on October 2, 2026. Five days later, Devsisters posted an apology about what was in the packs.

The October 7 notice, titled "Notice Regarding Reprinted Cards in BS12 Festival Arena", is blunt. It says older cards were reprinted into the set, that buyers were not told clearly enough before release, and that standard new boosters will not be built that way again.

What it does not do is say which cards, or how many. So this post sticks to what Devsisters' own data can pin down: what the new rule is, how big the reprint block in Festival Arena is, and where reprints can still turn up.

What the October 7 notice says

The notice is short, and it breaks into six points:

• Why the reprints were there. Devsisters says they were meant to make important cards easier to get, cards that had become hard to find because they were printed inside combined sets. Newer players and people who joined later were the stated audience.
• What went wrong for buyers. Some cards came back with their original artwork. So people who bought the set to find new cards may have opened copies of cards they already owned, or fewer new cards than they expected.
• What went wrong for collectors. Long-time players who already owned the reprints, and their higher-rarity versions, may have found the new set and its playsets harder to complete.
• The communication failure. Devsisters says the reprints, and how they were distributed through the set, were not explained clearly enough before release. It acknowledges this could have changed purchasing decisions and says it takes full responsibility.
• The rule. Devsisters says it "will not use the same type of reprint configuration" from BS12 in standard new booster sets. Separate products built specifically around reprints are exempt.
• What happens if older cards return. Devsisters says it will weigh both the experience of opening new cards and the collectible value of existing ones, and will give clearer information before release.

There is no compensation, exchange or replacement offer anywhere in the notice. It sits on the English (North America) notice board. As of October 10, the Asia board had no matching notice.

How much of Festival Arena is reprints

Devsisters' official product listing gives Festival Arena as 160 regular cards plus 49 Hidden Cards, and breaks the 160 down by rarity. The official English card database holds 112 new Festival Arena cards, numbered BS12-001 to BS12-112 with no gaps. Put the two side by side:

That leaves 48 regular cards, 30% of Festival Arena's regular list, that are not new BS12 cards. Devsisters has not published that number. It is subtraction from two of Devsisters' own sources, not an official count. But inside the 160-card regular list, those 48 slots are all that is left for the reprints the notice describes.

None of the 112 is a reprint. I checked every BS12 card against every non-BS12 entry in the database, all 2,120 of them. Sixty-five BS12 cards share a name with a non-BS12 card, and none of them repeats that card's rules text. They are new cards for familiar Cookies, the same pattern our card numbers guide walks through with GingerBrave.

The reprints are not filed under Festival Arena anywhere. All 148 Festival Arena rows in the card database carry a BS12 number. TCGplayer's Festival Arena set agrees: 151 products, which are those 148 BS12 cards plus three sealed items. If you pull one of the 48, you will not find it in the Festival Arena section of Devsisters' card list or in the marketplace's Festival Arena set.

One detail fits Devsisters' earlier statements. The 48 are spread across all five rarities. Its July 23 Community Letter said it was considering prioritizing frequently used cards across each colour and each rarity for reprints. The rarity half matches. Checking the colour half needs the list, and there is no list yet.

Why every older box adds up

The notice blames "combined sets" for older cards going scarce, and on the English shelf that term has a precise meaning. Before Festival Arena, every English booster packed two or three of Devsisters' card-number waves into one box. Our TCGplayer set-name map has the full prefix-to-box translation. Compare each box's official regular-card count with the distinct card numbers in its waves:

Five boxes land within one card of their waves. Festival Arena is 48 over. It is also the first English booster built from a single wave.

Two data notes, so nobody trips on them. The Dark Enchantress War's listing opens with "399 regular cards", but its own rarity lines add up to 239, which matches the database exactly. And the one number A Game of Truth and Deceit is missing on the database side is BS8-019 Cake Hound, which the database files only as a promo printing.

The scarcity is easy to see in the Common slot. Arena of Glory spread 153 Commons across the same nine-card pack that Festival Arena uses for 62. Hollyberry Cookie above is a BS10 card, and in English its booster printings come in The Dark Enchantress War, a 239-card box built from two waves. That is the access problem the reprints were meant to fix.

Devsisters' September 1 Community Letter says Korean, Asian and North American release schedules will be much more closely aligned from 2027. A single-wave box is consistent with that.

The plan was in the July letter

Laid out in order, the public record on reprints reads like this:

Looking back, the July letter's reprint section describes the kind of product that shipped: older staples and new cards in one box. What it never did was name Festival Arena as that product. Everywhere else the same letter talks about Festival Arena (the release schedule, the booster-direction section, the design notes and the Q&A), it covers idol concepts, signature Hidden Cards, the Arena keyword and a Cake Hound illustration. None of those passages mentions reprints. Our pre-release Festival Arena card list was built from the database alone, so it never saw the extra 48 either.

Our August breakdown of the reprint Q&A covers the curated-pack side of that answer in depth.

What the rule covers, and what it does not

The October notice limits one specific thing. Here is how Devsisters' reprint routes sort against it:

That last product is new on Devsisters' product page. The CookieRun x Heuk Yo Seok Collectible Card Set - Radiant Light is listed for October 2026 at USD 130. It includes a CookieRun: Kingdom coupon for 5,000 Crystals and 3,000 Rainbow Cubes, plus 10 fixed foil cards, every one under an existing booster card number:

In the card database, all five Cookies are Ancient EXTRA Ultra Rares and all five Soul Jams are Super Rare Items. If you play them, our Ancient rankings and Soul Jam rankings cover how they perform. The product page's own promo image shows all 10 with new artwork in a traditional Korean style, not their booster illustrations.

Its contents are fixed and listed before you pay, which is the reverse of the Festival Arena complaint. Our promo cards guide covers the Legacy Packs alongside the rest of the promo sources.

What it means for Legend of the Spirit Weapons

Booster 13 [Legend of the Spirit Weapons] is the next standard new booster. The July letter scheduled it for January 2027 with a martial-arts theme. The product page now lists it at $3.99 a pack and $111.72 a display, with no release date and no card count. Under the October notice, it should not have a Festival Arena-style reprint block.

Read the rule for what it actually says, though. It rules out the same type of configuration and promises clearer information if older cards come back. It does not say no older card will ever appear in a booster again.

The check is the same subtraction this post just did. Festival Arena's 112 new cards were in the database on August 31, a month before release. When Legend of the Spirit Weapons gets a product listing with a regular-card count, compare that count with the BS13 cards in the database. If they match, the regular list has no room for a reprint block. If the listing runs ahead, something else is filling the gap, and you can ask what before you buy.

What Devsisters still has not said

• Which cards the 48 are. There is no list in the notice, the card database or TCGplayer's Festival Arena set.
• Whether a Festival Arena reprint is marked as one. The notice says some of the reprints kept their original artwork. It says nothing else about how they are printed.
• Pull rates. Nothing published says how often a pack contains a reprint rather than a new card.
• Anything for people who already bought. The notice apologizes and sets a rule. It offers no remedy.

The English notice board, where the October 7 notice ran, is the place to watch for any of it. Our buying guide covers the sealed-versus-singles maths in the meantime.

Quick Action Checklist

• Treat about 48 of Festival Arena's 160 regular cards as reprints. That figure is derived from Devsisters' product listing and card database, not announced.
• Do not look for the reprints under Festival Arena. The card database and TCGplayer's Festival Arena set hold only the 148 BS12 entries.
• Opening for new cards? Festival Arena has 112 new numbered cards. The database holds 36 Hidden versions of them, against 49 Hidden Cards on the product listing, so 13 Hidden slots are unaccounted for too.
• Standard boosters change from here. The October 7 rule bars a BS12-style reprint block in standard new boosters, not every older card forever.
• Separate reprint products are exempt. The Legacy Packs are already in the database, and Radiant Light lists 10 fixed cards for October.
• Before buying Legend of the Spirit Weapons, compare counts. If the product listing's regular-card count matches the BS13 cards in the database, its regular list has no room for a reprint block.