The Power of Zakiir

What do we want?  Dragons!  When do we want them?  BURN!

Zakiir is part of a cycle of Hex dragons.  The first set brought the Wild and Blood dragons Jadiim and Uranaaz, and Shattered Destiny looks to complete the cycle with the Diamond, Sapphire, and Ruby dragons.  An early version of the Sapphire dragon Zeedu was previewed over a year ago around the time of the Kickstarter campaign, but little information of the other two had been spoiled until this past Friday's Update, where players got their first look at the red menace.  

Like his cousins, Zakiir is a 5/5 flying troop for six resources.  Fatties like that are generally enough to end a game on their own, but Zakiir's ability allows him to generate at random one of five power cards specific to him at the start of each of your turns (similar to the Hearthstone card Ysera).  This means tricky ways of subduing the beast like Mesmerize or Inner Conflict still won't stop the power generation, which are incredibly powerful and cost efficient.  So what are these powers should you open or have to face one down in a Sealed or Draft Tournament on release weekend?

Flame Breath
Flame Breath is the cheapest of the cards you can generate with Zakiir, but it's still a free Ruby Lance that has the added option of burning your opponent directly.  This power pushes Zakiir players towards a mono-Ruby build to make the most use of this, and will likely be the largest source of raw damage among any of the cards.

Flame Servant
Flame Servant is a 4/1 troop for a single resource with both Speed and Swiftstrike.  While this means he's likely going to win most skirmishes he gets into, if he does manage to kick the bucket, or otherwise leaves play, he deals 4 damage to a champion or troop.  Since this means your opponent will likely take four damage anyways, it can be an equally effective source of damage.

Eye of Zakiir
The Eye is a more control style card that lets you draw three cards and deal 3 damage to a champion or troop.  If you're running burn spells like Ragefire or Crackling Bolt, this card can search them out for you to end the game.  In Counter-Burn decks, which may be an option with the addition of Fish Hands, or any other generic control deck, the card draw will allow you to protect Zakiir more.

Destructive Delirium
Destructive Delirium is kind of an outlier in that it nukes all artifacts, which can be particularly strong against Dwarves or Chimes-Combo (since late in the game is around the time you should be concerned about it), but it also permanently scorches four resources from your opponent, draining them from their available resources to boot.  This will most likely cripple your opponent if it resolves, and when multiplayer games are implemented it will hobble every opponent.

Glimpse of Insanity
Is it just more or is Zakiir slowly growing more insane with every power he gains?  I mean, that might have something to do with the flavor text.  Zakiir looks to be a Wild Dragon initially, before he slowly succumbed to the maddening effects of Ruby gems.  Glimpse of Insanity "purifies" the world, cleansing it of all non-dragon kind.  While Jadiim might be able to hold his own one-on-one against Zakiir, more often than not this will be a complete board wipe, save for your dragon of course.

Zakiir is one of those cards that is just fun to own so you can slam him down and spin the wheel at the start of your turn.  I also think this is a good example of randomness done right.  Most of the Powers are icing on the cake... powerful and late-game relevant cards that you earn just from having recruited a dragon to your cause.  I'm curious just how much Zakiir will open at when the set is released on (hopefully) December 9th, but his addition is one more reason to open any primal packs you manage to snag.

Underground Archetypes

The hype-train was derailed this week as the launch of Shattered Destiny was pushed back another week.  While this is unfortunate, it's also understandable considering just how important the launch of this upcoming patch will be to perceptions about how consistently and effectively Hex can implement new material.  Despite this, Shattered Destiny spoilers have been flowing consistently on the main site, as well as Twitch and Twitter.  The set plays on themes that were established in Shard of Fate, empowering strategies that revolve around the four races: humans, dwarves, orcs, and shin'hare.  But hidden among the tunneling rabbits and noble knights of Entrath are a slew of other cards that are just begging to be built around.

Izydor

If I had to do a list of my favorite cards from Shards of Fate, Zombie Plague would be up there.  I mean, who doesn't dream of overrunning their opponent with an army of slavering, brain-hungry minions?  While zombies are a popular archetype in other games, they are separated from their Necrotic cousins in Hex from being a main race.  But just because they're outside the spotlight doesn't mean you can't win games with them, and Shattered Destiny gives zombie fans some love with Izydor, a Goblin whose affinity for necromancy is deadly!  Well... deadlier than normal.  Any zombies you manage to summon from your Plague, or perhaps from a Corrupted Afterlife gain Lethal, meaning any damage they deal will be enough to take down their opponent with them.  Once per game you can use Izydor's ability to create a couple minions out of dead troops (even your opponents) to bolster your field.  The ability requires 5 resources, which can be a bit restrictive.  Add the fact that this Goblin's four-resource cost has him competing with the likes of Vampire King and Xarlox and you may find yourself omitting Izydor in favor of something else in generic Blood control decks.  But for dedicated Zombie decks, he fits right in the curve.  He's also very strong in draft, where you might actually have a use for those 13th pick Determined Zombies that would otherwise litter your reserves.

Constantina

It didn't take long for people to start crying "power creep" when this card was spoiled.  Her combat stats (3/3) were actually boosted from the version leaked at GenCon, where she had one less point of toughness.  Now for only two resources you get a 3/3 with Steadfast that prevents your troops from being bogged down from exhaust effects like Menacing Gralk and Wind Whisperer.  The double Wild Threshold means you'll likely want to only be running the green shards in your deck, but with all the other aggressive Wild cards, a mono-Wild violent beatdown deck could make a serious impact on the constructed metagame.  Constantina is a Unique troop though, which means that while an army of 3/3s might be something you want, you can never have more than a single copy of her on the field.

Archon of Nulzaan

Archon of Nulzaan is one of those cards you might have to read twice.  A 4/4 for 6 is nothing special, but the tactical use of his search ability combined with a diversity of the Gems in both Major and Minor Sockets can give you an answer for multiple situations.  In Sapphire decks you can set it up so three of the Archon's can fly, while one is equipped with the Quick Gem for a savvy combat trick.  You can also search up versions of the Archon that have effects granted from other cards, like Spirit Dance or Replicator's Gambit, for an even more explosive play.  With all the new threshold fixing Shards in Shattered Destiny, it's no longer as crazy to run three or more thresholds in your deck, increasing your Archon specialization options.  The ability isn't strong in Highlander unfortunately, but that's something I'll forgive in my quest to scoop up four copies of this guy ASAP!

Agent of M.O.L.E.

While this guy is a dwarf, he probably won't be played in your typical Volcannon style Dwarf decks.  Sabotage was a card from Shards with lots of cool design but little support.  Now with a stick that can keep on infiltrating your opponent's deck and loading it with Booby Traps, the chance their draw step will be both dead and deadly increases.  His attacks won't kill your opponent outright, but combined with deck destruction cards like Chronic Madness or gem effects like the Prime Ruby of Intensity and Prime Sapphire of Subterfuge, the traps can flow to the top and accelerate your opponent's demise.

Hope you guys had a happy and safe Thanksgiving!

Snow-vember

For those that don't know, I live in western New York, and we are absolutely buried in snow right now.  Generally speaking this isn't exactly new for the area, but such a concentrated amount of snow so soon and so quickly is kinda crazy.  The bright side is I don't have a car to deal with, just a ten minute walk to work and back.  In between I'm in full hibernation mode, which means Strategy games and the new Hex Novel that was released this week.

I'm only a few chapters in, but the novel is solid so far.  It's got all the makings of the classic fantasy bildungsroman, with some Great Wolves thrown in.  The novel's apparent protagonists don't appear to be depicted on any cards as of yet, but the peripheral characters include well known humans like King Gabriel and Princess Victoria.  Prince Talysen is also name dropped, brother to King Gabriel and lord of Gawaine, an area heretofore known for its snipers and legionnaire.  I got pretty deep into the lore of Magic too, particularly during Kamigawa Block, so it's always fun to see what sort of mechanics get put to the iconic characters.  However Hex will also be releasing lore not just through flavor text and novels, but through the dungeons and overarching campaign, and with the Frost Arena coming mere weeks after the launch of Shattered Destiny (assuming it is relatively bug-free), lore freaks like me will be rejoicing!

In the mean time I've been fooling around with Civ5 Mods and have decided to give Europe Universalis IV another go, having bought it last year and not really picked it back up due to time constraints (college and LSAT prep).  Now that the controls are becoming a little more intuitive and I seem to have a grasp of the mechanics, I'm planning on an Ironman run as Castille soon (though I know they've been done to death a bit).  I'll probably end up streaming that this weekend when I get some time, as well as a weekend of Hex events during launch weekend December 5-7th.  We still only have about 150 cards from Shattered Destiny spoiled so far, and since the set has over 200, there's plenty of room for meta-changing and theorycrafting gems to emerge during the previews next week.  When the official set launches, you can view all the cards in the set in the card manager by selecting "Show All," a neat feature I might utilize to do a set review when it's patched in.

Outside of that it will be a pretty relaxing week.  Next week I will try to pre-build a few decklists I'd like to test for the upcoming Blood Cup Tournament.  Until then, stay warm!

Liberating Eldon

As readers of this blog will know, I love me some transforming cards.  It's a simple mechanic, but a broad one that highlights the benefits of working in a digital design space.  Shards of Fate came packed with cards that transform, including two cycles of transforming cards that spanned across all five shards.  The first cycle, the Incantations, are easy enough to recognize since the name jumps out at you.  The other cycle requires a more discerning eye to catch.  It's comprised of five rares that "level up" twice, similar to how a Charmander would level up into a Charmeleon and eventually a Charizard. 

For each member of this cycle you start with a card that is slightly underwhelming for its cost, but that has the promise to become something amazing.  On one end of the spectrum you have cards that get gradually better over time, like Kindling Skarn or Hop'hiro Samurai.  On the other end you have cards which get a huge dip in power like Giant Caterpillar and Ascetic Aspirant, which require you to wait out the second stage before they reach their ultimate forms.  Then there's Eldon's Distress Signal, the intriguing oddball of the group.  While the others all start off as Troops, EDS starts off as a Constant in its first stage, requiring you to exhaust three troops to transform it to the second stage, which is a troop, but can't engage in combat (though he can cast some limited magic from his prison cell).  This execution makes the "transform" mechanic of EDS feel less like a Pokémon you have to level up and more like a Quest, assembling a team of to find the imprisoned mage and coordinate an attack to free him!  It's also a deceptively difficult quest to pull off in competitive play, since board wipes run rampant in Constructed and alpha strikes can be difficult to coordinate in limited.  The pay off for Liberating Eldon is worth it though, essentially giving all of your troops a Prime Sapphire of Mind.  In the months I have played Hex I've never been able to free the mage outside of random matches against the AI, until he found a spot in a deck I drafted not too long ago...

Liberating Eldon
Champion: Palamedes, The Righteous
Troops [16]
1x Malfunctioning War Bot
1x Phoenix Guard Scout
1x Effigy of Nulzann [Sky]
2x Buccaneer
1x Phoenix Guard Trainer
1x Quick Strider
1x Wind Whisperer
1x Devoted Emissary
1x Archmage Wrenlocke
1x Noble Citizenry
1x Ascetic Aspirant 
1x Stoneclaw Gargoyle
1x Mistborn Wendigo [Duty]
2x Phoenix Guard Aeronaut [Duty]
Other [7]
1x Peek
3x Repel
1x Eldon's Distress Signal
1x Oracle Song
1x Countermagic
Shards [17]
9x Sapphire Shard
8x Diamond Shard

I won't go too much into the actual draft, suffice to say it's always nice to crack an Archmage Wrenlocke in your first pack.  Most removal cards are actions, so prioritizing Repels allowed me to decide fairly early on Diamond-Sapphire, a powerful draft combo featuring the bulkiest flying troops.  Diamond turned out to be a good choice since the Aspriant was waiting for me in my second pack.  EDS came pick 4 or 5 of Pack 2, which is surprising to me since it can be game-breaking if left unchecked.  

Eldon plays a bit clunky and even though his abilities all fit thematically, they're a bit of a mechanical mish-mash when rolled into a card.  As such, he has a habit of being a misplay magnet, where there is some aspect of the card players will forget or overlook.  At one point my opponent had a Feral Ogre on the board to my Eldon the Imprisoned and Phoenix Guard Scout, and an exhausted Quick Strider.  I had no resources available for a trick, so with only a 1/3 there was little reason to hold the Ogre back from attacking, but seeing a 2/4 on my side, he kept his Ogre back, forgetting that Eldon is under Inner Conflict so long as he remains in jail.  There was also a moment in one of my matches where my opponent attacked with a 4/1 Thunderbird into my team of four troops + EDS.  I exhausted three to transform into Eldon the Imprisoned, then gave a Swiftstriking Wendigo Flight to shut down the Thunderbird.  (He later got revenge in another game by playing Crushing Blow on a Thunderbird in a similar exchange).  One of the reasons I think there are so many misplays surrounding Eldon is that he plays much different in all of his forms.  Where card like Kindling Skarn stays relatively consistent and just scales up in power, Eldon goes from being a completely useless Constant, to a Murder-able Flight Machine, to a card draw engine.

There were two moments during the draft where both of my Aspriant and EDS each reached their Ultimate state.  I liberated Eldon against Dwarves, coming through with a Devoted Emissary, Phoenix Guard Aeronaut, and one of the Coyotle.  Eldon's freedom didn't last long though, a Ruby Lance for 4 shot him out of the air the following turn.  It was a tragedy, but at least he died getting to taste one last moment of freedom.  The monk of the cloister got to achieve Transcended status in my first match.  While this alone is generally enough to lock a victory, my deck was made it somehow even more broken with Wrenlocke.  My opponent attacked with two troops to which I responded with Repel, searching up another Repel with Wrenlocke's draw, playing the second Repel, and then searching up the third with the draw from that.  I did not envy my opponent, but it was pretty cool to pull off a Legendary-Rare combo in draft.  He did manage to play Inner Conflict on The Transcended, but that didn't stop his effect of letting me tutor up whatever I needed to put away the game.  

I ended up winning the draft, 6-2 on games.  The overall deck was lacking a lot of the heft you might expect from a Sapphire-Diamond deck. Sky'le Griffin and Mystic of the Tranquil Dream were noticeably absent, as were Inner Conflict and Mesmerize.  The curve and Troop count was solid, and Noble Citizenry & Palamedes was able to push my 3 power Aeronauts to aerial domination strength.  

Evaluating Eldon

Eldon is a fairly strong card in limited for his ability to unclog a board.  Flying-on-Demand can be particularly helpful for getting bulkier troops with no evasion off the ground.  The fact this ability is on Eldon's Imprisoned stage is crucial, since it makes the card good enough to play without you having to worry about it reaching the final form.  For Constructed the ability to give something Flight for 2 is much weaker and does not justify including it in a deck, so you have to look at his final form and how to reach it.  This is what presents the greatest problem: for one of your turns you are essentially skipping your attack phase to get EDS to Eldon Imprisoned, and then the next turn (or one of the turns soon after) you need to deal damage with three troops.  Often times being able to coordinate a safe attack with three troops means you're already in control of the game, so the inclusion of Eldon seems like a way to win-more, a trap new players often fall into when building a deck.  On top of that, Eldon Liberated's card-draw ability only effects your troops that are dealing damage after you've already freed him, meaning the most powerful effect won't become active until you've gone through three entire turns with your army on the field.  The ability to dodge that much removal should itself win you that game, making Eldon an unnecessary addition to most Constructed decks.    

However, looking ahead to Set 2 and beyond, there might be some interesting uses for EDS.  While his effect doesn't fit decks that have average sized troops, it does seem to fit well with swarm decks that generate multiple smaller troops (typically 1/1).  A Shin'hare deck can easily generate enough Battle Hoppers to find Eldon, and later in the game an Evolve or Command Tower would let them actually deal damage.  Getting three of your Hopper militia through shouldn't be too difficult with the numbers they churn out.  Eldon also doesn't specify combat damage has to be dealt to trigger the transformation or card draw on his final form, so a card like Malfunctioning War Bot or a troop with Dwarven Ballistics Training could be a way to subvert the attack phase altogether and play in the reactionary style that Sapphire is so fluent.

Finally, Eldon might find a cozy home in PvE alongside the Mercenary Ashahsa.  The mercenary, which is currently available from the Wheels of Fate, lets you put a Windbourne Acolyte directly into play for three charges.  Her passive lets you draw a card when three or more troops you control with flying attack.  Since triggering this Passive coordinates nicely with liberating Eldon, and both would work well from a deck that ran small, efficient Sapphire Troops with Flight, EDS could find a nice home alongside Ashahsa in the second phase of the Arena, when  mercenaries will first become active.  While this still doesn't fix the weakness that these decks have to mass removal, cards like Countermagic and Fish Hands might be enough for a Sapphire based tempo deck to answer board wipes like Extinction and Heat Wave.  

The most vexing question of all surrounding Eldon might be what exactly his story is.  Was he a fellow scholar of Cerulea who was ambushed by the Underworld and locked away?  Was he an obsessed and manic mage who was banished from human lands to an isolated cell atop a frozen mountain?  Flavor text is noticeably absent from every form of Eldon, begging the questions surrounding the nature of his imprisonment and his plans following his liberation.

Down to Earth with the Anglo-Saxons

  I didn't want to do a review of Beyond Earth until I had a good chunk of time invested in it, since it generally takes a while for the hype to wear off before you can do the review objectively.  Other reviewers have had similar utterances when it comes to games as sprawling and time consuming as the Civilization series.  I played the game for about two weeks solid, roaming through different Affinity paths and victory conditions, collecting achievements along the way, but recently I've been turning back to Civ5 and the extensive mods the game offers.

  My general advice to the perspective Beyond-Earth-buyer is if you haven't purchased BE yet, you're probably best waiting until it goes on sale.  It simply isn't worth the $50 unless you really enjoy strategy games, and even then you shouldn't expect it to be Civ6 or Alpha Centurai 2.  I'd probably go even as far to say it's worse than Brave New World in terms of satisfaction.  BNW seemed to bring so many good things to Civ5 that really made the game shine, where Beyond Earth seems like somewhat of a let down.

  For all the negativity that's been going around about it, Beyond Earth does do some things right.  I'm certainly not alone when I say that the Tech Web and Affinity Systems are excellent additions to the game, and alone make the game worth picking it up.  The ability to choose which path you want to stretch out towards on the Tech Web allows a great imbalance in power spikes.  You might be able to shoot straight for a unit or building you really want that is buried in a tech your opponents won't pick up until many turns later, if at all.  Since techs are how you will pick up most of your affinity points and unique late-game units, spikes in military power will come at different times for everyone.  The affinities change the way your units and cities look, determine what sort of resources you will be hunting, and each unlock a special victory condition tied to that affinity.  The affinities are one of the best executed features of the game.  The philosophies of each of them are very believable, and they emerge through the flavor text that is read when you level rises. They run the gamut from the Harmony players who believe humankind should adapt to this new land and view it as their real home, to the Supremacy players who do not want the existence of their race to be determined by the planet they live on, but rather through technological superiority.

  Aside from these high points, the overall experience seems very shallow.  The lack of polish and character poked sharply out from underneath BE during my sessions, from the leaders, many of whom are more unimaginative than their historical counterparts in a spacesuit, to the quest system, which is more of a glorified buff system for your buildings.  The Wonders are exemplary of this flavor drain.  They've been significantly watered down from its predecessor, both in power and execution.  In Civ5 I will nervously cross my fingers, hoping the AI doesn't beat me to a wonder so that I can hear that satisfactory, the breath of relief when I hear the chime and the beautiful illustration and accompanying flavor text.  In Beyond Earth I will resign myself to a wonder when I'm out of buildings, be unconcerned about finishing it before an AI, and when I do complete it be treated to a picture of an exoskeleton of whatever it was I built accompanied by just plain bizarre flavor text.

  Despite this, I think the changes made to the structure of BE through the tech web, affinities, and virtue system will allow for this to be an excellent multiplayer game once some patches roll in to fix the numerous bugs and address the balancing issues within the game.  Multiplayer is essentially broken for BE, and outside of achievement hunting (all of which are pretty generic), I'd rather play BNW, since it is a much more complete game.  I recently picked it up again using a handful of the hundreds of mods in the Steam Workshop.  Until now I've never really played with mods because I wanted to practice for multiplayer and preserve my ability to get achievements.  But looking through the Workshop for ways to make BE more palatable, I stumbled into the Civ5 mods, and fell in love all over again.

  The main mod I've been using is the More Luxuries Mod, which adds nine new luxuries to the game.  This allows you to expand a little more while keeping your happiness in the green, since you can usually get a couple cities with two new luxury resources in a few of your cities if you plant them well.  Expanding early is usually important for dealing with the forward settling AI, so I definitely appreciate the introduction of some extra early happiness.  Plus the visuals of the luxuries fit in very well, and with the addition of Cocoa and Bison from the recent patch, the map feels a fresh compared to a few months ago.

  I've also been using some of the Alternate Civilizations.  I played an Emperor game as the Safavids and out-space raced the Zulus this past weekend.  For this week I'm rolling another Emperor game with the Anglo-Saxons, who expedite their Golden Ages and get a Social Policy boost while they're in a golden age.  I'm knee deep in the Medieval Era and manged to found my second city on Lake Victoria.  I was even able to snag the Oracle and the Mosque of Djenne, and founded a religion.  Unfortunately my neighbors have strong religions of their own: Boudica & Theodora of the Celts & Byzantines respectively.  I predict some Missionary Wars as we venture into the Renaissance... or possibly the other kind of war.

  I'll probably check back in next week with a game overview.  I'll try to stream the game when I can too, and if you have any Mods you would suggest, share them in the comments.  

Quarterly Infodump

Earlier this week, Hex President and draft aficionado Cory Jones went into the forums for a Q&A regarding the Basically-Open-But-We're-Not-Ready-To-Call-It-Open Beta.  Much speculation has been surrounding the next major features for the game, including larger tournaments; Shattered Destiny, Hex's second PvP set; and the Frost Ring, the introduction to Hex's long awaited PvE content.  The thread quickly ballooned and many questions were fielded, resulting in a veritable info-dump and giving us a good idea about what to expect from the Beta as we approach the end of the year.

The next three major content updates according to the Q&A are Shattered Destiny, which is planned for November; Frost Ring/Arena, planned for December; and to many player's surprise, asynchronous Sealed tournaments, also planned for December.  It's important to note that Hex has been reluctant to release specific dates, as there has been a history of missed deadlines that have caused ripples in the community.  As such, it's not unlikely to realistically expect some of these updates getting pushed to the first quarter of 2015 (Shattered Destiny was originally announced to launch in late August).  But reservations aside, these upcoming content updates are fairly sizable steps towards getting the game to resemble what was presented in the Kickstarter.  

Shattered Destiny

A good chunk of Set 2 has been spoiled, and a lot of the cards look awesome and feature mechanics that will change both draft and constructed.  The Dual-Threshold Shards will be particularly key for making three-shard decks viable in the metagame, as well as smoothing out the draws of dual-shard decks.  Cards from Set 1 (Shards of Fate) will find some love with the addition of Shattered Destiny as new strategies will emerge.  The Darkspire Clan will at least double in size with two new cards added to the mix, including the incredibly potent Darkspire Tyrant.  The other Rare and Legendary cards are equally strong, and many come with the quirky charm that Hex likes to inject into their design, evidenced in cards like the menacing Killipede, which can toxify your opponents before the finishing sting!  

This will be a particularly important addition to Hex for a few reasons.  Primarily, it serves to reinvigorate an increasingly stale metagame.  Many of Hex's most ardent players have been drafting Set 1 for the better part of a year now, and Constructed has been tested and tuned evn before then.  While a good portion of the backers are waiting until PvE is in the game to start actively playing, the ones that are as addicted to draft as I am will be coming back in full force when Set 2 finally drops.  There will also be significantly less Set 2 packs given out from the Kickstarter than of Set 1, meaning we'll probably have a better idea of what the market will look like going forward when pricing singles from Shattered Destiny.

Asynchronous Sealed

If you've played Hearthstone or wanted to draft but couldn't commit the three hours to do so, you'll understand the appeal of this feature and why learning that it's being developed and slated to launch soon excites me.  Normal Single Elimination tournaments can run anywhere from ten minutes if you're eliminated quickly in round one, to near three hours if you grind it out to the finals, and that's not accounting for deck construction!  Asynchronous Sealed allows you to compete in Sealed Deck without as much of a time commitment.  You get build and play the deck at your leisure, facing off against other Sealed players until you hit a certain amount of losses or you max out on wins.  At least, that's a rough overview of how it works in Hearthstone.  It's unclear exactly what Hex's Asynchronous Tournaments will look like, though it's fair to speculate prizes will be based on the number of wins you get and that it will cost packs and platinum to enter.  This format could work with either Constructed or Sealed, though not Booster Draft, since playing against the cards you pass is part of the overall strategy.  Additionally, the ability to play tournament matches at your leisure can only open Hex up to more players, including myself, since I've been resigned to drafting almost exclusively on my days off when I don't already have plans (an increasingly rare occurrence).

Frost Ring/Arena

A majority of the information was unsurprisingly pointed at PvE.  The Frost Ring, sometimes referred to simply as "Arena," is planned to launch in December 2014.  Kickstarter PvE card rewards are planned to be distributed upon launch of The Frost Ring.  PvP Champions will be usable in the Arena until "phase 2" (suggesting gated content), at which point Mercenaries will be introduced.  The Might System and player Champion creation will not be introduced yet.  The most important part is that this will be the first chance players get to use Equipment and PvE Cards and the first opportunity, aside from the Wheels of Fate, for players to earn these items in game.  

The chests which have been collecting dust in your inventory stash throughout the summer will finally be accessible as well.  Available inside booster packs, players can open the chests to acquire loot based on the chest's rarity.  Chest loot will likely take the form of PvE Cards and Equipment, but may not be limited to just those.  Like the Wheels of Fate, players might have the opportunity to earn mercenaries or card sleeves.  Players looking to get a jump on PvE can find three cards exclusive to the Wheels of Fate: Air Elemental, Lightning Elemental, and Water Elemental, as well as equipment (two for each card) which can be equipped to your champion in the Arena to grant powerful buffs to your cards.  Each champion has six slots for equipment, and each item is tailored to a specific slot.  Bubble Mail, which will provide a buff to the Water Elemental, is a chest piece.  Since each champion can only have one item attached to each slot, players will have to think carefully about not only which cards they want in their deck, but how they want to coordinate the equipment.  This adds a whole new level to deck-building similar to the gem slots, and scooping up that last piece of gear you need will provide the impetus for completing Frost Ring dungeon runs, which will have two difficulty modes and which Cory guesses will take roughly twenty hours for a casual player to complete.

The Wheels of Fate Elemental Cycle, as well as the current loot available from the Wheels of Fate, will be available throughout Shattered Destiny's launch, rotating with the launch of Sets 3 & 4 sometime in 2015.  A full list of the information from the Cory Q&A was broken down by Yasi in the Hex subreddit.

Rock League - Season 2

In community news, the second season of the Rock League has begun.  Deck construction is restricted to only commons and four uncommons, making it perfect for new players. Players can earn points for up to three matches every week, with tiebreaker points for additional matches.  Boosters and even Primal Packs have been donated by community members as prizes for the top 32 participants.  Players can even earn bonus prizes for playing different champions through the league.  The Rock League will run for four weeks beginning November 3rd.  Information and sign-ups can be found at the link above.

Next week I will tell you a tale of how an Archmage from the academy at Cerulea and a young monk from an isolated mountain pass teamed up to liberate one of the most powerful mages on all of Entrath.  

Until next time.

Surviving the First Harvest

Your primary goal for the First Harvest should be to acquire four Food.  With the exception of a few Occupations and Improvements, you cannot grow your family before round 5, which means you'll need a total of 4 Food.  Though you start with some food to facilitate spaces like Occupation, one of the decisions you have to make early on is how you plan to make up that deficit over the first four turns.  You have two main options, either gather the food directly from Action Spaces or find a way to generate food.  Finding a way to generate food from baking grain into bread or converting animals into food will make future harvests easier, as you won't be competing for the limited amount of food available on the board.

Food can be acquired directly on two spaces: Day Laborer, which immediately grants you two Food; and Fishing, which accumulates one food on it at the start of every turn until someone uses that space.  In games with four or more players the Traveling Players space becomes available, which acts like Fishing in that it accumulates one food each turn.  Food can also be generated from the Fireplace and Cooking Hearth Improvements, which can be used to convert Sheep, Boar, Cattle, Grain, and Vegetables into multiple food.  These are Major Improvements that can be built using only Major/Minor Improvement during the first four rounds.  The cost for these improvements vary, ranging anywhere from two Clay for the cheapest Fireplace to five Clay for the most expensive Cooking Hearth.  These Improvements are first-come-first-serve, and there are only two of each, which means in a 5-Player Game, one person will be forced to generate food without one (this isn't as bad as it sounds, but the Fireplace/CH are very convenient since they convert just about everything short of your building materials into food).

Your two starting family members mean you will get a total of eight actions, and unless you plan on going Begging after round 4 (something I strongly advise against), these spaces should probably be incorporated into your plan to ensure you survive the first harvest.  Luckily, with your starting food you will likely only have to use one of your eight plays during the first round for this, which gives you some leeway for the other factors you may want to prepare for.  After getting your food on lockdown, there are three secondary goals you should focus on getting by the time the harvest rolls around which will help set you up for the rest of the game.  These goals are:

• Having Grain planted on a field.
• Having two animals in your farm, with room for a third.
• Building an extra room in your house.

The reasons for the first two goals are self-explanatory if you look at the steps involved in a harvest.  The first thing that happens in a harvest is each player receives crops from their planted fields.  Sowing grain on your field before the first harvest will mean you will get your grain back, plus two more grain during the next harvests.  It will also free up your field earlier for you to plant again.  To do this on the first turn normally requires a minimum or three spaces: Plow a Field, Take a Grain, and Sow and/or Bake Bread.  This is generally the safest of the three sub-goals to complete, since the grain that you get from the field counts as a food itself, meaning you only need 3 more food going into the harvest as opposed to four.

The second goal involves the final step of the harvest: breeding animals.  After you have fed your people, this phase grants you a free animal of any type of animal you have at least one pair of, so this would allow you to get a third Sheep if you have two.  Having space for three animals among your farm requires either a 1x1 pasture or two stables, either of which will cost you a total of four Wood.  The pasture provides space for two sheep, and the third can be kept in your house as a pet.  Similarly, the stables provide space for one animal of each type, with the third being in your house.  Obviously the larger the pasture you can make, the more animals you can hold, but wood is such a hotly contested resource in the early game that you may not get the ability to take as much as you would like.  Depending on the number of players you play with, this can require a good bit of timing with the accumulating action spaces, but it can also be done in three spaces: Wood (4+), Build Fences or Build a Room and/or Stables, and Sheep (2).  

This plan is significantly riskier for a few reasons.  The first is that it requires you to time the accumulating action spaces very well.  When any accumulating resource space has four of more on it, it becomes very tempting for the other players.  The Sheep action space can also be hotly contested in the early game since anyone with a Fireplace/CH can take all the sheep and turn them immediately into food, even without room on their farm (Note that this is something you cannot do with newborn animals).  It also carries with it the added risk that the Sheep space has a 25% chance of showing up in Round 4, meaning it won't have a chance to accumulate enough sheep in time for the first harvest.  In a five-player game, there is a space that allows you to Take an Animal on it, either a Sheep & one food, a Wild Boar, or paying one food for a Cattle.  While this means the breeding step prep now requires four actions overall, it allows you to safely acquire two sheep while also effectively netting you two food, which is the same as a Sheep (2) & Day Laborer allocation.  The other complication is that you need a Fireplace/CH to turn the Sheep into food, so if something does go wrong in food calculation you won't have the option of eating the Grain raw as you would in the first option.

The final plan hinges less on the harvest and more on the Stage 2 Family Growth action.  The earliest this space can show up is Round 5, and in a five-player game one space can be used as a Family Growth action beginning in Round 5.  These are hotly contested spaces, though they come with the stipulation of you having room in your home for the newborn in order to go there.  Building the extra room before the first harvest will give you strategic positioning on this space, particularly if you are the only person who has an extra room, as you can use your last person to grow your family while using your first person to take other contested spaces.  This path also can be done in three spaces: Reed (2), Wood (5), and Build a Room and/or Stables.   

While this plan won't net you free animals or grain, having extra people to place will give you extra actions during the game.  Many times you can just use the person to Take a Grain or Sheep during worker placement.  Extra workers do cost more food every harvest, but going to Day Laborer or Fishing, spots that tend to be less contested later in the game, will often just pay for any extra food that person would cost you in the harvest.  Family members are also worth 3VP at the end of the game, so growing your house and family will also net you a good chunk of points at the end of the game, in addition to allowing you to take more actions.

One final goal you may want to shoot for is building a Fireplace/CH before the harvest, which will likely take two spaces: Clay (2+) and Major/Minor Improvement.  This is a decent addition to any starting strategy since Clay tends to be less contested early on than other resources, though getting an early Fireplace will give you a good cushion in the first and subsequent harvest in terms of ways to get food (remember, animal spaces essentially become huge Food spaces).

Lets put it all together to see what your first eight actions might look like focusing on these goals, with a little luck:

1. Wood (3)
2. Take a Grain
3. Reed (2)
4. Plow a Field
5. Wood (3)
6. Day Laborer/Fishing
7. Sow and/or Bake Bread
8. Build Rooms and/or Stables

In this scenario, you'll enter the first harvest with a planted field and a three room wooden house, giving you position to grow your family in round 5 if the Family Growth action space comes up.  This plan is somewhat ambitious as it requires some good timing to snag the Reed space while it has two resources on it, but other scenarios could replace steps 3 & 8 with Clay (2) and Major/Minor for a Fireplace, or Fences and Sheep (2) for a pasture and breeding phase.  This scenario also ignores cards you have in your hand that you may want to play early, which may heavily influence your play.  As such, all of the plays are what I would refer to as "on-board," meaning they are reliant not on your personal collection of cards, but competing "on the board" for community resources, which is something I will go over in my next article.

Hope you enjoyed, and are ready to tackle your first four turns in Agricola!

*Parentheses after an action designates an accumulating resource space that has that many resources.  "Sheep (2)" refers to the accumulating "Sheep" Action Space that has at least 2 Sheep on it.