Noob's Corner – Buying Recommendations

by Johan “Bizze” Bisenius

Hi everybody! This is your friendly neighborhood Bizze, bringing you some newbie tips once again in Noob's Corner.

What do I have in store for you today? Well, I was thinking we would look into the best ways to go about buying boosters and getting some good value for your money. I’ll also help with some fundamental deck ideas or combos that you can build on to create a deck that suits your style of play.

Seed Two: Gloamspike's Revenge

The Seed 2 set has some really strong cards and not all of them are rare. In fact, as a beginner of this game, buying Seed 2 will give you the best value for your money hands down.

There are many common cards that are so powerful that they just replace cards from previous sets in terms of power and/or utility.

Gilded Yurt
Gilded Yurt is a fantastic card that will teach you and your opponents the beautiful combat system of the Spoils. There are primarily two uses of the Yurt:

1) Abuse cards with “come into play” or “leaves play” effects that trigger each time they return/leave from the Yurt’s Chillax ability.

2) Use it during combat after the character you are about to Chillax has assigned its damage (but before damage is inflicted). This essentially means you can block one attack each turn without your character dying, but it can also mean you can kill off your opponent’s characters without risking your own.

So the Yurt can be used as a general combat control card but also as a looping engine for a deck centered on “come into play” and “leaves play” cards. Dwarvish Grimalkin is another common card that tends to work great with Gilded Yurt as it enables you to draw a lot of cards.

Inadequate Wand
This item is the equivalent of Gilded Yurt for Arcanist. While it will cost resources to use and you’ll have to pay again to put your character into play, it can be used in the same ways as the Yurt above. It also fetches a tactic to your hand, creating a very powerful toolbox engine if you set up your deck to have several answers to problems in terms of tactics.

Plunging Shriever
Got problems with items? Not anymore. Plunging Shriever is the bane of most item-based decks and, as with the cards above, you can use his Fly Away ability during combat to let the Shriever survive to fight another day. If you have two resources unattached during the end of opponent’s turn, you can also Fly Away to net you that third resource and allow you to draw an extra card before it is your turn. It’s not always worth it, but it’s some great utility if you ask me.

G14n7 5p0rk D3f3n53
Playing Gearsmith? Gearsmith formally had a hard time dealing with characters but not anymore. G14n7 5p0rk D3f3n53 effectively replaces the older Jacque’s Trap, mainly by having Flip Up. Flip Up allows you to save it for the right moment but also hide it from view until your opponent has already attacked and it’s too late to stop it. Even using item destruction will not help them save their character from the 5p0rks if it’s flipped up in response to an attack.

Roundalicious Breasticles
Lastly, we have Rogue. While I’m tempted to mention Drygulch or even Fired Hand, I’ll settle for a card that can be included in any Rogue build sporting two Deception threshold (see picture right of here).

This pair of… cakes… functions as a cheaper and more reactive form of Rapine, effectively replacing Rapine as a trademark card for Rogue. The Breasticles are usually never a bad call. Put them into play early to handle your opponent’s cheap characters such as Gideon, Erotic Assassin, or Spry Archer. You can also let the Breasticles amass tokens over the early turns to handle any character threat your opponent can muster.

In the end game, you probably have enough resources to add tokens quickly, making it easy to take over even the more costly of opponent’s characters. You simply cannot go wrong with a pair of these.

Rares

When adding rares to the cache of cards Seed Two provides, I’d like to touch on some of them.

Ass
The Rogue Ass card is something you can build your whole deck strategy around, but I wouldn’t look past just adding one of these babies to your deck. If you do, you can look forward to the shocking look on your opponent’s face when you play it. Ass is also a great stall card if you decide to play it early. The opponent will focus his item destruction on it and probably not play any characters while it is around. You can use this to your own benefit.

Athalamund Mangod, The Iron Fist
This Warlord card will make your enemies weep. He’s cheap and his ability will allow you to control the field. He will soak up removal as your opponent cannot handle him staying on the field for too long. He’s an auto-include in most Warlord decks sporting three or more Rage threshold.

Cock Block
At first sight, this card may not look that great, but I have first hand experience of it being used against me and effectively blocking everything I could do for a turn (including drawing cards with my Faction ability).

Imagine the look on your opponent’s face when you play Cock Block in response to their Yurt or Inadequate want being used. It’s even more effective if used on a card the opponent has to destroy, such as Breasticles. It can also be used to put something in your discard pile, for instance if you want to focus on the Luteoderm Goliath/Tri-Pole Magnet combo. As a Flip Up card, it can rest among your resources until needed.

If you’re not interested in complex combos or if your opponents don'’t include many abilities, check out the Cantankerous Claywork that works wonders in Micromajig-based decks.

Delectable Boon
This card is very, very good. It allows you to redirect damage to a target of your choice, making it easy to manipulate combat and also pushing damage through if your opponent has low influence left and continues to block your big dude.

Desolate
Mass removal for Arcanist? Yes please! This card requires no further explanation. If you run Arcanist, get it and be sure to play it, but watch out for your own characters’ strength when you do! Even if you only run one threshold of Obsession, it can be used to wipe out Micromajigs.

The Arcane Research Engine
The Arcane Research engine consists of Arcane Research (a Seed: Children of the Lingamoprh rare card) as well as any of the following cards: Accidental Invention, Burly Assailment, Manifest, or Hidden Ruins. It allows for crazy early game resource acceleration and is included in most top-tier decks that can add a starting Obsession (to play Arcane Research during the opponent’s first turn).

These pieces of the Arcane Research engine may be sought after by more experienced players in your area, so you can always trade them if you're looking to build something else. If not, hang on to them and try to get four copies of Arcane Research from the Seed set to abuse them yourself!

Crests
The rare crest cards will help in most decks, but I would say the most playable ones are the Warlord and Arcanist ones, purely based on their effects. Crests are usually good trading material too.

Next Steps

Okay, so you’ve bought enough Seed Two boosters to have commons sprouting through your ears? What should you do next?

Seed

You should probably invest in Seed: Children of the Lingamorph. Here is a quick list of reasons why:

• Dual threshold resources!
• Gideon, Adriel, and Noble Sacrifice, all of which are great material for a mono Warlord deck.
• Affectionate Dollkeeper: fast instant death.
• Balking Foecrusher: an easily overlooked but effective field wiper that will instantly kill off one life characters without your opponent being able to respond. Bye-bye Micromajigs!
• Chain Reaction: your one-stop Yurt countermeasure.
• Cowering Golem: go big early.
• Extravagant Contusion: cost-based removal.
• H07 P3pp3r: great finisher card.
• Karmic Cake: for creating multi-trade builds.
• Montgomery Blatherscythe: great as a deck engine.
• Mysterious Invasion: for all you Micromajig lovers.
• Trebuchet Officer: another answer to Yurt.
• Walk the Plank: kill everything.
• Wanton Wizard: perfect with Yurt and/or Wand.
• Watchtower: can completely destroy certain deck types.
• Wrinkly Rabbit: Inflatable fun!

Second Edition

Lastly, you should go for 2nd Edition. There are some combos that you are missing out on if you’re not buying boosters from this set, but in my opinion it can wait until you have checked out Seed and Seed Two.

Since there is always a power creep in any TCG (to warrant people investing in new sets), the later sets usually have better individual cards than older ones.

However, the Spoils still has so few expansions that there is still good reason to pick up on older cards, especially if you go for combos.

Conclusion

In general, card games are about strategy, tactics, wits, deck building skills, combos, and individual card strength. If you’re new to the game and attend a play group with more experienced players, you need as much power as possible as fast as possible. If you follow my buying recommendations you will get that power fast, ready to combat the more experienced players, at least on a card-for-card basis.

Until next time, play hard, play fair and join the talks in the chatroom for more discussions and online play!

Sincerely,
Johan “Bizze” Bisenius