I just got the game on Friday, haven't played before that or watched any videos. We have played with 4 decks up to now. The 2 that my wife played had house sanctum in it, the 1s that I played didn't. I have to say, I don't know how to deal with those knights when all I have are 1 or 2 power creatures from Shadow, and Logos. The games start to be pretty boring when all my wife as to do is play sanctum every turn, wipe my board and reap with any knights that are not needed to attack. Heal all of the damaged knights and repeat next turn.
It gets to a point where she evens find the game boring. There's no point playing any other house. She might have 4 Dis cards in hand, but there is no way she'll ever achieve the level of efficiency of those 3-4 knights.
Am I missing something obvious to deal with those annoying knights? Or are they just pretty tough to deal with unless you get board wipes etc.?
(To make matters worst, I just opened my second deck with Sanctum and no less than 11 creatures in Sanctum. That will be a fun deck to play against... I'm thinking it will need something like 10 chains to even make sense. It will be a unstoppable when it gets rolling though.)
House Sanctum
Armour gets reduced by every attack, and is restored at the end of the turn. So if you attack an Armour 2 creature with a Power 2 creature, you deal no damage but reduce the armour. You can then follow up with a second attack (in that same turn) with a Power 2 creature and deal 2 damage.
Edited by Ghost DancerPost your deck list. I dont tend to find many problems fighting sanctum, they’re creatures are tough but there are cards that board wipe, others that stun, and others that just give/steal lots of aember. Typically if you have shadows this is easy, most have elusive meaning she’d need to attack twice to even hurt one creature, second if she’s attacking twice she’s not reaping and if you’re stealing what amber she does get as many shadow cards do she won’t be able to forge keys as quickly as you, etc.
Aside from perhaps Bronbar you’re rarely going to win a straight up brawl fest with them but if they’re focused on fighting and not reaping that’s not really a big deal as they’re making no real progress to win.
Edited by TwitchyBait
I played the armor properly. So that's not the problem.
TwitchyBait, maybe it's just the decklist than. I can try to post it later (Deck is Mouseboy, the curator of conversation and is on the app). Feel free to look. It has maybe 3 shadow creatures with elusive, so that doesn't help me much.
I don't really understand your comment though: If you can't win a straight up fight against the knights, how do you ever win? If she has board control (0 creatures of mine and 3-4 creatures of hers) at the beginning of the turn, how do I maintain board presence enough to steal/forge keys? I either need a board wipe to move forward, or I'm stuck playing the 2-3 creatures in my hand that will get wiped that turn anyways.
14 minutes ago, Seawhale said:I played the armor properly. So that's not the problem.
TwitchyBait, maybe it's just the decklist than. I can try to post it later (Deck is Mouseboy, the curator of conversation and is on the app). Feel free to look. It has maybe 3 shadow creatures with elusive, so that doesn't help me much.
I don't really understand your comment though: If you can't win a straight up fight against the knights, how do you ever win? If she has board control (0 creatures of mine and 3-4 creatures of hers) at the beginning of the turn, how do I maintain board presence enough to steal/forge keys? I either need a board wipe to move forward, or I'm stuck playing the 2-3 creatures in my hand that will get wiped that turn anyways.
Stuns, things like speed Sigil that let you ready instantly, things with elusive to stay alive longer, cards like hard bargain, cards that steal, cards that just generate aember when played. There’s a lot of ways really but depends on what’s in there. I’m closing at work right now but I’ll be sure to look over your deck as soon as I can and give whatever advice I can
Ok let’s start with your logos, you’ve got quit a lot that lets you draw or archive. Use that to your advantage to build a good hand. Opening with library access means every card you play will let you draw another card, potentially something good to archive or simply more logos.
Similary mother is great that’s +1 hand size and since you draw at the end of your turn even if she dies to attacks you’ll still get that extra card. Plus she’s a 5 most knights are going to suffer a little punishment hitting her and with anomaly explorer that’s all it takes to knock out one of her knights.
Youve thus got enough archive and draw power there that you should be able to withstand an attack from all four knights, especially if you just get your stuff out first meaning dimensional door can really hurt.
Next Mars is your other potential counter. One card, sample collection. 4 knights giving your trouble? Play a couple Mars creatures and that card then never draw your archive. Bam they don’t bother you again.
Squaker similarly can buy you time, stun is always mean against attackers.
As for Shadows Urchin will get you amber for relatively nothing and poison wave should wipe out most the knights armor for the turn. If you have other creatures that can survive the hit they can dink one to take it out, better yet if you can get shadow self and both noddy in play you can steal two aember each turn slowing her and speeding your gain.
35 minutes ago, Seawhale said:I played the armor properly. So that's not the problem.
TwitchyBait, maybe it's just the decklist than. I can try to post it later (Deck is Mouseboy, the curator of conversation and is on the app). Feel free to look. It has maybe 3 shadow creatures with elusive, so that doesn't help me much.
I don't really understand your comment though: If you can't win a straight up fight against the knights, how do you ever win? If she has board control (0 creatures of mine and 3-4 creatures of hers) at the beginning of the turn, how do I maintain board presence enough to steal/forge keys? I either need a board wipe to move forward, or I'm stuck playing the 2-3 creatures in my hand that will get wiped that turn anyways.
Had a quick look at your deck and have to agree, that you have very little means against strong board presence: no Board wipes, very little disruption and weak creatures. You have some archive methods, so I would try to archive some cards and then come out with one strong turn and try to follow up. Still tough game. Unfortunately not every deck is equally strong in keyforge, so I see two options: use chains as a means for balancing (I like the best of three modes where you swap the deck and bet for chains in the third round) or buy a few more decks and use 2 deck which feel equally strong. That is in fact the business model of the game and also part of the fun for me to try out new decks once in a while.
Every house has big creatures that can potentially trade favourable with them. If you don't have big creatures, board wipes and removal are pretty good against them, because they generally generate advantages through board presence. Furthermore being able to generate aember without board presence can twart their strategy.
You have a ton of shadow creatures with elusive, tons with actions that can steal aember, and multiple cards that can push damage past their armor. Mooncurser has that fun skirmish poison ability which can help if Bad Penny can get you past the armor. Shadow Self is your tank and tool to help keep creatures alive past one turn.
I don’t think you have a weaker deck, I think you have a deck that requires more finesse. A deck that knows how to archive cards to get to the ones it wants (or archives cards for the perfect play). A deck that knows when to stun a knight and when to squawker Zyzzix the Many to buff him up (put the logos rocket boots on him!)
Hard to make these strategies work if you can’t get creatures on the board though. The finesse and timing is important. There’s a way to do this though, just gotta learn the deck and figure it out.
What deck is this running against? It might help to see that deck and we can try to give you some speculative strategy against specific cards.
9 hours ago, Seawhale said:I played the armor properly. So that's not the problem.
TwitchyBait, maybe it's just the decklist than. I can try to post it later (Deck is Mouseboy, the curator of conversation and is on the app). Feel free to look. It has maybe 3 shadow creatures with elusive, so that doesn't help me much.
I don't really understand your comment though: If you can't win a straight up fight against the knights, how do you ever win? If she has board control (0 creatures of mine and 3-4 creatures of hers) at the beginning of the turn, how do I maintain board presence enough to steal/forge keys? I either need a board wipe to move forward, or I'm stuck playing the 2-3 creatures in my hand that will get wiped that turn anyways.
Your tools for dealing with knights are the direct damage cards and your Mars house: Positron Bolt + Anomaly Exploiter to gib one of their big knights, for example.
Mars has your biggest threats to other creatures: Ammonia Clouds softens, Yxilo Bolter + Squawker or Brain Stem Antenna ensures you can start removing enemies from the game. Once Zyzzix gets going he can rapidly become the biggest creature on the board (which can be helped along using Squawker and/or Brain Stem Antenna)
The Shadow creatures have low power, but they don’t need it, the value they bring is in being obnoxious: Stealing, Hard to remove, also Shadow Self is strong enough that it should ensure you have board presence over a turn. MoonCurser pairs up really well with Shadow self. If you lead with Poison wave (4 damage going to the self, and it wipes Knight armor) you can drop your choice of target. Bad Penny is meant to just be obnoxious, either they waste a creature action killing her (only for her to come back), or they leave a possible reap on the board. Urchin’s can be used to slow your opponents game down, ideally preventing them from forging a key.
We use chains to keep it balanced. -2 or more cards can be a big deal.
My wife deck's also includes 2 poison wave and 1 longfused mine. So that might be why my deck is struggling. Elusive is useless when she can get easy board wipes.
4 minutes ago, Seawhale said:My wife deck's also includes 2 poison wave and 1 longfused mine. So that might be why my deck is struggling. Elusive is useless when she can get easy board wipes.
Perhaps but you can easily remove all 4 of those knights from the game with sample collection, just rush it out by archiving everything else with logos and mulligan for it if possible
On 11/19/2018 at 12:47 AM, Ghost Dancer said:Armour gets reduced by every attack, and is restored at the end of the turn. So if you attack an Armour 2 creature with a Power 2 creature, you deal no damage but reduce the armour. You can then follow up with a second attack (in that same turn) with a Power 2 creature and deal 2 damage.
So I re-read the Glossary for Armor, and it doesn't specifically say that it restores at the end of the turn. This is what it says:
ARMOR
Some creatures have an armor value to the right of the card title. Armor prevents an amount of damage equal to the armor value that the creature would take each turn. For example, if a creature has two armor and is dealt one damage, that damage is absorbed by the armor, leaving the creature with one armor for the rest of the turn. If the creature is later dealt three more damage during that turn, one damage is absorbed and the other two damage are dealt to that creature.
If a creature gains armor, the gains are additive and accumulate on top of the creature’s printed armor value.
If a creature gains armor during a turn, the gained armor does not absorb damage already dealt that turn. If a creature loses armor during a turn, it is not retroactively dealt damage that was already absorbed by the armor.
If a creature has a “~” symbol in its armor field, the creature has no armor. Such creatures may gain armor through card effects.
Do I assume that "... would take each turn" and "... for the rest of the turn" means that it refreshes after that turn? I understood it as once you lose the Armor, you lose the Armor for the rest of that card's existence in play.
2 minutes ago, Berethrof said:ARMOR
Some creatures have an armor value to the right of the card title. Armor prevents an amount of damage equal to the armor value that the creature would take each turn .
... each turn .
Don't think of it as restoring each turn. It always exists, never goes away. Its function is to prevent a certain amount of damage each turn.
If the pair of you beleive the decks to be that imbalanced then chain the other deck until you get a more even home game. Remember though that should you take the decks to a comp then your deck might do better than the Sanctum one as most decks can handle them..
Have you tried swapping decks and playing that way? I havent lost a game yet, in response to players who went "My deck sucks" I swapped with them and then beat them with their "crappy deck"
37 minutes ago, tsuruki said:Have you tried swapping decks and playing that way? I havent lost a game yet, in response to players who went "My deck sucks" I swapped with them and then beat them with their "crappy deck"
I've done this, too. Thankfully, that made my opponent less discouraged, not more.