Banishing cards is so important. Gary beat me in the tournament with a deck of 10 cards....which I got to see over and over every turn. Totally smushed me.
That's pretty amazing. If true then that means he basically took all of the monster honour in game, and then also had some big honor deck cards within that 10, like mechana. I won't say I don't believe this, but it is incredible. Good experiment to see if anyone else can get this strategy rolling.
I sure do banish cards. Particularly Militia, and Apprentices sooner than later. I generally work around card draw, banish, and rely (a little too) heavily on constructs that benefit me card draw (Like the All Seeing Eye) or additional Runes to get what I need quicker. Like I said before though, I still am just having this trouble finding a clean and perfect balance between in-game honour and after game honour. I think I have only played one game online that I had, quite literally, the perfect draw of cards, and the perfect cards I needed in the middle row, every single round. It was like the game was working with my mind. But that's not how it works, I understand in the game that the tides of your strategy can DRASTICALLY change at any given turn, be it your opponents round, or your own turn itself. I get the fundamentals, but obviously I don't as I still lose quite a bit more than I would like to. Don't get me wrong, I am having loads of fun, and am never a sore loser, I just take what is given to me and roll with it. The problem with this game I have is that (and this is rare for me for a card game) is just finding that key balance to everything, and the balance of victory, because it changes game by game (for the most part). I am more of a TCG brainiac, and I am used to having a certain strategy or two, or a few types of strategies, that deliver together end game to finish off the opponent. That's why I am so fascinated with this game, is because I've never really dealt with this kind of strategy. So that's why I am trying to inquire any secrets ahhahaha that's pretty god damn epic.
Yeah, it was really amazing. He said he'd never played a game like that. I haven't since, and I don't know what I'd have to do to set that up. He did win all the monster honor. He had several Heavy Infantry, and some cards that facilitated drawing more cards. My biggest flaw is I wind up with a split of money and power, and each hand doesn't give me enough of either to be truly effective. Still practicing though.
Btw, if anyone is interested in playing a game with me, or want to invite me to a game group, I'd be more than happy to play. GC name is Booch138. Keep the async timer a little higher though if you can, as I work a lot, and at home I don't have my own wireless internet atm, so I may not take my turn for a few hours at a time. Btw, did I mention you're almost guaranteed to win!? hahaahahahaha
I shuffled a deck of 20 one turn. Went all the way around. Remember, constructs in the deck don't need to be shuffled if they're on your rack already.
Interesting. The key I find is to get balance. If you overload on constructs, you move too slowly. If you focus too much on card draw, you get low honor cards, if you focus only on attack, you lack end-game power. You need to do a bit of everything. It also helps to survey the opening board. If it's monster heavy, adjust accordingly. If it's construct heavy, get constructs. I find it very important to have board control. That means getting Seer of the Forked Path, having attack units to banish Mephit and Mistake of Creation, or some other way. Deck shuffling is very important, it's not just card draw, it's the ability to move your hand fast. My favorite opening cards are Arbiter of the Precipice and Temple Librarian. It means your hand moves quickly and smoothly. Temple Librarian in particular becomes better and better late game.
Reading the current posts makes me squeeze up some time from my busy-but-boring life to talk about: 1. For your kings-of-the-hill list (this is a generalized term, my apologies to the queens), don't leave out Dukester aka ItsTDukester... He/she can crush you when you are careless. 2. Speaking of which, I think we really need a strategy thread some where. I (currymutton aka griffin611) is a pretty (pun intended, sorry) harmless player and lose far more than win, find some of the tactics generally employed by those kings: a) Vampirism -- by draining out the honours/points from the pool as fast as possible. There are many ways to achieve this: the most direct way is by defeat monster and I find Monster Row is more common after the expansion. Another way is to acquire and play cards that gives you instant points. Some life-bound heroes have this property -- one even gives you an obscene amount of 5 points each time at a cost of 6. Of course you can mix these 2 ways b) Construct Collection -- Most constructs, especially the notorious Mechna one, usually give you a run for your runes. They have high honour values. So, don't get too happy even when you have 30+ points lead on the table, cause, in the endgame count, a construct collector can beat you. There are more than once I get close call even I maintain a 30+ points lead till the end. c) Life-bound -- I find this one lately, and it seems that it is the only class of card you can form a coherent strategy, other than monster of course. Some life-bound cards give you additional benefits like extra powers and so on, only if you have played another life-bound hero before. It can be quite powerful if those cards show up. The effect may not be immediate at first but from my little experience, they can actually make your life quite difficult. d) Mixing (a) & (b), most of my worst defeats and amazing wins (by 30+ points) are a mixture of both. It normally starts with a Monster Row and then some how, the winning side manages to switch to collecting constructs in the mid-game when the Monster Row runs out. I guess counting the probability of monster appearance to know when to switch is the key. e) Card Drawing -- many cards allow you to draw extra cards out of the standard 5-card-hand. How this works for you really depends on your card make-up. But nothing makes life difficult when you can put 10 runes and 11 powers on the table in one single round (which I manage to do that once) f) Banish -- As the above is on card cycling (which is an important concept one need to grasp for this game), banishing your cards fast enough is another way to cycle your cards. You have 10 card which worth nothing and if they are not gotten rid fast enough, they clot the flow of your more powerful cards. It is not hard to imagine what would life be when one side is able to play Master Dhartha or Nairi every other turn... The above is open for debate and correction and I am sure I am not the best person to annotate it. Further edit: I agree with Camzee above that there is not a single "strategy" to win. Your views are welcome.
That was very unique game. I haven't seen anything like it since. Still have the result stored here. Final Score was 61 (43 tokens & 18 cards) to 51 (26 tokens & 25 cards). My final deck was 3 Arha Initiate, 2 Burrower Mark III, Kor the Ferromancer, Spike Vixen, 2 Shade of the Black Watch, 4 Heavy Infantry, 1 Apprentice. Her deck was heavy Lifebound with some Mechana. If I remember correctly, I took Shade of the Black Watch on the first turn and there were enough monsters in the center row to justify going heavy power. I picked up a second Shade on the 3rd or 4th turn and whittled my deck down from there. The center was filled with high cost cards, so I stuck to bashing the Cultist and building power. The second half of the game I would draw my entire deck each turn to kill the cultist 6 or 7 times. Her deck never reached the point where she could cycle new cards in the center row, so it seemed like a good idea to avoid helping her with that. I still wasn't sure I had won until the final score came up, though. Jen, if you're still having issues with your Game List, please send an email to [email protected] describing the issue. I'm out of the office after Friday, but I'd like to take a look and see if I can figure out what's going on before then. Thanks.
from observation it seemed to me that if the other party declined an invitation for a game invite, then you got paired up with random people.... I kinda took that for granted, i actually dont know why that happens. But I've had a few instances when I invite someone to a match, only to come back and find that I'm playing someone completely random
Can't answer that for you. I don't think a sale is likely even though I don't mind... I only want the promo cards...
Definitely the way to go. What I like doing is getting cards that give honor while also accumulating runes. Lifebound is the way to do this. Snap Dragon and Raven/Shaman keeps you getting honor while you stock up on runes to get constructs. Works a tee most games. Runic Lycanthrope is amazing with the right lifebound hand.
This only works so far when only one side is playing in this manner, otherwise, it degenerates into a lucky draw of who-get-what-first. In one game with FPE, we both did this and me end up on the losing side as he got all the better cards. (blame-biased) I think some mentioned earlier here that field-control is the key but I have no idea how this works. Edit: Oh, please don't forget Yggdrasil Staff works great to get honours without changing your card flow and disturbing the Central Row. It is cunning when used right.
I used to get my ass kicked in vanilla ascension by Camzeee, so when the expansion was released, I started paying close attention to how he played and that's how I've made improvements to my game. I still lose a lot of games to tecwrtr though. Some of the things i try to do: 1. Keep the deck optimised - aim for card banishing, card drawing, rune/power card swapping (sensei/scribe) 2. Build card combos - stone circle construct/hero + ravens - no guessing/counting needed - dhartha's retreat + lifebound + heavy infantry + eternal askara - 7 cards every turn - snapdragon/dandelion witch + lifebound - get lots of honor every time you play lifebound cards - various constructs + avatar golem - the mechanar equivalent of snapdragon/lifebound 3. Disrupt opponent's card combos - if he's rune heavy, keep monsters and low rune/honor cards in the centre row and banish high-rune cost cards. - if he's power heavy, keep high-rune cost cards in the centre row, banish strong monsters. - if he's stocking constructs, make sure to have enough power to kill monsters that will force the opponent to discard the constructs - if he's stocking lifebound cards, make sure to deny snapdragons/dandelion witches Keep the games coming!
There are no fixed way for a certain win, but sure way to loose. I see may people mention ways for which the a also counters, when well seen in advance. I think it is best to experiment with them all, or at least this is what I am doing nw event means I loose more than I should. Camzy, I just took dharta ... This means I am going to experiment and probably loose, but i will be one step closer to understand its use.
