With The Bazaar Season 1 closing in, developer Tempo gives us a full look at the first hero to join the deckbuilding card battler’s roster since its open beta launch. Designed by former Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone pro player Andrey ‘Reynad’ Yanyuk and his team, this blend of TFT and Hearthstone Battlegrounds has proven a winner despite some community concerns around its new monetization aspects. With just three characters to choose from so far, the dynamic of matches has been fairly easy to parse – but that’s about to change forever with the launch of its fourth hero, Mak.
Born into a long line of alchemists, the once-carefree Mak’s life was forever changed by a tragic mistake that cost him his family. This led him to swear an oath to pursue alchemy’s most forbidden secret: power over death itself. After centuries of study, his journey now brings him to the streets of The Bazaar, where he joins the ranks of the autobattling card game. A “living library of arcane knowledge,” this ruthless researcher employs methods to sustain his health and cheat death through even the toughest circumstances.
The biggest talking point from Mak’s toolkit is his Bottled Tornado, a small item that causes the sandstorm to begin just seven seconds into a fight, rather than the usual 30. Doing so will obviously rapidly escalate the pace of encounters and trouble builds that need time to escalate. The Laboratory, a large board piece, allows Mak to temporarily enchant items during combat and charge all your enchanted items – it’s on an incredibly fast three-second cooldown initially, but slows down by one second with each use.
To help him cheat death, Staff of the Moose gives Mak a second of invulnerability and 25 regeneration the first time you fall below half health, while also applying your current regen value as bonus damage on your weapons. Going one step further is Memento Mori, which prevents you from dying once per fight to counteract those big one-shot builds. If you like to hit hard yourself, the likes of Runic Blade (doubles its damage when you crit and has lifesteal) and Ice Claw (gains 20 damage when you freeze) might be good picks.
For anyone looking to drag things out, sustain options such as Infinite Potion, Show Globe, and Secret Formula allow you to stack more regeneration, and the latter applies your regen total as burn and poison effects onto the items either side of it. Goop Flail is a weapon that comes with Multicast 3 and causes poison equal to its damage value, while Crocodile Tears gains four extra damage each time your enemy is hurt. If you can use an early sandstorm and ticking effects to scale it up quickly, you might have a real heavy hitter on your hands.
Rounding out Mak’s options are some clever tricks. Mirror transforms into the medium item to its left, allowing you to double up on a powerful pickup, while Quicksilver does the same for a random small item on your board. Hourglass reduces the cooldowns of adjacent items, which could prove crucial given some of the longer start times across Mak’s kit. Finally, Shrinking Potion reduces your opponent’s max health – it starts with just one ammo, but increase that and you could certainly cause some real problems for your foe.
New hero Mak joins The Bazaar in Season 1. While the start date for the new season of the free PC game has yet to be confirmed, Tempo staff have previously stated that it’s planned to arrive with the weekly update on Wednesday April 2. There’s also currently no news on whether there will be any changes to the controversial monetization, with Yanyuk stating that he does not believe the system creates a pay-to-win dynamic.
Looking to prove your skills to the world? Here are the best multiplayer games on PC, along with the best strategy games in 2025 if you’re not worried about others watching.
You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We’ve also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.