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Eisen Full Strategic Breakdown

Now that I have played significantly more games of 7th Sea : City of Five Sails, I can say for sure that I love the game. Briefly, I love the distribution model (expandable, not-CCG letting me experiment with everything easily), love how every card is playable turn 1, and love how the city deck randomizes each game in an interesting, not feels bad way (with the rare exception). In addition, I have a much better understanding of how the game plays now (or at the very least, how I play it, which is almost never the same as the accepted meta). So, here is exactly how I play the Eisen deck I plan on running in the online Salon from 9/20 – 11/1 (https://pineboxentertainment.com/2023/09/12/new-in-town-a-five-sails-online-league/).

Feel free to reach out through discord if you would like to set up either a teaching game or an official game (or an unofficial game). I would love to have you play, I am happy to answer as many questions as you have, and I can give you as much or as little strategy advice as we play that you want. Discord: tomsepicgaming (the Eisen District Captain)

Eisen is the most straight-forward/honest faction. They want to recruit Mercenaries, reduce their opponent’s numbers through efficient combat/finish them off with ranged weapons, and utilize strategic movement (at least this deck does). Eisen has no ability to move around Renown on locations during High Drama, they can’t claim a location without initiating an Influence challenge, and none of their characters (including Kaspar) have a base Influence above 2. (Edeline Trinken can get above 2.)

Approach

Faction

Attachments (18)

Non-Attachments (22)

General Strategy

Generally speaking, your primary win condition is creating an extreme character advantage by prioritizing recruiting the best/all the Mercenaries and killing your opponent’s characters. From there, you can win with whatever method your opponent presents: Assassination, Renown (Economic), Domination, or the loss of the will to continue fighting (Concession/Surrender?).

City Deck Rankings For Eisen

Eisen wants Mercenaries, both in lore and in game (good stuff). In general, dueling Mercenaries are your preferred choice to help with creating that character advantage, but most mercenaries are valuable to you, sometimes just to prevent your opponent from getting them.

#1: Maryam Benu Pleroma

5 Resolve, 4 Combat, at least 1 finesse (3!), in addition to a Risk canceling Forced effect (which will cancel your own risk if you target her with it first), and a Technique that can be played first round (no thank you Veronica’s Guile). 6 Cost is less damaging to Kaspar as well with his 4 Influence on Parley.

#2: Angeline Demone

Leader level stats (aside from Resolve) with a 3 Combat. Her ability to move without engaging is also great, as is her Technique. There are not a lot of characters that she doesn’t have at least equivalent Combat and Influence to, but watch out for attachments that can push those characters out of range. While she is incredible in her own right as a card, she also has the best artwork in the game which absolutely influences her ranking. I would love a signed, full-size print of this artwork to frame…I’ll also be at Gamehole Con and likely Pax Unplugged…just saying.

#Sigurd: Sigurd Ulfsen

Against Ussura, Sigurd is the 3rd best city card for you. Not better than Maryam because Maryam can help you hunt the boar, and not better than Angeline because we don’t tolerate that kind of slander. Sigurd walks into Yevgeni‘s location, says “Sup” and stands there as your other fighters pile in behind to initiate the duels without being initiated on. Strong against Montaigne and other Eisen players as well, but almost meaningless against pacifist Vodacce/Castille (unless they get him which is annoying for you). Also, the fact that duels can’t be initiated against other characters means you’re guarded against unintervenable challenges as well.

#3-7 (these are similar in ranking):

Adelheide Schmidt is great because she is a reasonable fighter at 2 Com, 2 Finesse, 4 Resolve, but she can also turn your abundance of attachments into unpreventable damage (many of the attachments included purely to be grabbed by Otto anyway).

Carmella Vanessa Salvaggi is great because of her ability to challenge/intervene twice a day with 3 Combat (and 2 Finesse). She even has an influence if she needs to claim a location.

Kalla Forsberg is great because Eisen has so many attachments they want to attach, even from the City Deck. Reasonable offensive stats too, since Eisen frequently wants the first combat card played from hand and the 2nd as a gamble that hopefully reduces damage taken from the opponent’s final strike.

Ravenna Destine is great because card draw. She can also claim a location.

#Reasonable Mercs (similar in ranking):

Leja Juska is the best of these but not quite as good as the 4 above. Reasonable offensive stats, but not great. No other power, but the 1 influence is relevant.

Eko Sorridi 3 resolve is so low and easy to kill. If it weren’t for that, he would be great with his combat stats and City Reaction. Don’t forget it can hit a character fleeing with Not Today.

Vladislav Novikoff isn’t as good as Sigurd, but a reasonable card against Ussura/Montaigne/Eisen. Very weak against Vodacce/Castille, but annoying for us to play against.

#Valuable City Attachments

Syrneth Hand, Eager Blade, Burnished Cuirass, Sorte Deck

Fairly unimpressive Day 1 unless you can get them on a fighting Merc you recruited. Not bad on Kaspar to enable him to do some fighting, but he would much rather be recruiting Mercs. Day 2 onwards these are great on your fighting characters to either make them hit harder or stay alive longer. +1 combat is a big deal because it makes your 3 Com characters send 4 threat/Restricted Hostilities on challenge which is usually enough to outright kill a character, preventing them from just refusing. These attachments also enable effects that rely on having an attachment.

#Lower Tier Mercs (for Eisen)

Non-fighting, mostly 3-Resolve, mostly 0-Combat mercs. They can definitely help prevent us from losing to opponents taking control of locations though as they all have 2 Influence.

Claude De La Roche: is a solid Merc that can certainly help not lose against Renown/Domination decks. But, at 6 cost, we would much rather have an opponent pay 6 for him and then kill him.

Giacinto: 3 health is easy for us to kill and, while his effect isn’t weak, we are much more interested in fighting than engaging/moving a character for the turn, generally speaking. Wins games though.

Gustavo (Luis de Martinez de Ladera): 3 Resolve, so easy for us to kill. At 18 attachments in our deck, it isn’t as unlikely as I would like that we whiff and don’t get a card draw from his effect.

Kaj Kousei: Syrneth Hand is the only artifact we actively care about in the city deck.

Takama Siad: Has been better for me than I anticipated when I begrudgingly recruited her, but she can’t protect herself, has to be in the same location of the duel, and the dueler has to still be alive.

#Everything Else

Most of these are fairly unimpactful to our gameplan.

Captain’s Coat scares me with its ability to help enable an early Domination victory against us before we overwhelm the city.

Duckfoot Pistol is another way to finish off a non-Leader, but we have a bunch.

Crystal Eye, Object of Wonder, Smuggled Item‘s +1 influence is nice, especially for recruiting 5 cost characters but mostly a luxury for us.

Penya Shows the Way, Point of Opportunity, Risky Undertaking, Siren’s Song, and So It Begins all have noticeable effects which can be huge but aren’t usually.

Guild Triskelion is scary for some opposing characters to get, and to be fair, it is pretty great on Daniella and even reasonable on Otto.

Efficient Eisen Combat

Background (Knowledge Gained)

When I first started playing 7th Sea : City of Five Sails, I was enthralled by 3 defense (Riposte+Parry) cards as a way to keep my characters alive in duels, in addition to pure-parry or “parry-out” combat cards which are fairly rare for the factions I was looking at first. My thought was that as long as my character survives, I can eventually win the duel. That approach did not work for me, at all.

The biggest demonstration of that for me was when my high defense Ussura deck went against the strong overall RPT cards of Montaigne. Yevgeni challenged Odette and left the duel having taken 3 wounds and inflicting none (to be fair, I think I forgot to add the +1 Thrust to Yevgeni combat cards). I was very confused. It seemed like combat wasn’t very effective, Finesse was everything, and luck played a large role. So I built my Gen Con Eisen list with Unsavory Salve and other ways to get out of combat while still mitigating damage.

It wasn’t until playing with the eventual Ussuran District Captain and my life-changing friend/Epic Card Game pro Tom Dixon, that we came up with a different approach. My Ussura deck at the time was focused on churning through my deck with Vedma + Matsushka’s Sight, Devotion, A New Strategy, etc. to find Grandfather’s Hammer. The idea was that initiating a challenge with +2 thrust for 6 outbound thrust was really strong because even if a 4-Resolve character played a 2-defense card like a parry-out, that 4-Resolve character still instantly dies. In addition, with Yevgeni‘s base 4 Combat, they also can’t just refuse the duel, because death. That being said, I thought after that initial challenge, the longer the duel goes, the worse it is for Yevgeni as he will wrack up wounds since Ussura doesn’t have a ton of 3-defense cards. Tom Dixon wanted to duel though and didn’t want to just focus on big initial challenges. (I also had Boon‘s to try to make my challenges more scary. I have since come to view Boon as rather mediocre, as most people seem to).

Eventually, after we slept on it, we both came to the conclusion of: bring more combat cards that send more threat! If it is strong to send 6 threat on a challenge because it overwhelms defenses: 2 being common, 3 not-uncommon, 4 rare (Not Today being effectively 4 since it causes you to take a wound), or ultra-rare 5+ with stacked effects, why not try focusing on using Matchlock Musket, or other 4 offense (Riposte + Thrust) cards [in combination with Yevgeni‘s bonus +1 thrust] to consistently send 5+ threat to practically guarantee inflicting wounds early?! Even if these cards have little to no defense, it is much better to take the Restricted Hostilities 2 or 3 wounds on your 12 health character and then follow up by inflicting 3 or 4 wounds on their 4 health character. By making this change, we still want to minimize the amount of wounds we take, but we do that not by defending, but by killing our opponent as quickly as possible.

Strategy

Eisen follows this same idea as well, overwhelming Threat. Langschwert is one of the best cards in our deck. It lets us send 4 threat on the initial challenge which still enables us to push maximum Restricted Hostilities damage of 3 against a 1-parry parry-out. We can then follow up with a gun or Bleed Out to kill the opposing 4-Resolve character with only needing to initiate that single challenge (engage).

Further, if our opponent doesn’t parry-out or refuse, Langschwert gives us another bonus Thrust for our first combat card, which will ideally be a Fight Through the Pain or Matchwork Musket from hand, resulting in 6 threat, which our opponent is likely only able to block 3 of. Sure we took 2 or 3 damage to do it, but our opponent is probably dead, and our 5 Resolve character can probably defend enough of their Final Strike to not die. Also, sure we played a card from hand instead of a free one from Gambling, but that card effectively read 0-cost inflict 3 wounds (incredible).

Simple as that.

Fight Through the Pain is another of Eisen’s best cards for this reason, especially since (as long as your character isn’t dead), it shaves off 1 damage from your opponent’s Restricted Hostilities damage (no matter how much Threat they sent). You can effectively ignore the Action on Fight Through the Pain unless you are desperate.

Day 1

Goal

Day 1 our goal is to not lose to Domination (or Assassination for all you Yevgeni‘s out there), recruit a (good) Merc, and start growing an advantage to go into Day 2.

Muster

Otto is always our Muster day 1 to start (hopefully) drawing extra cards.

Scheme

Midnight Shipment or Let’s Haggle are basically always our scheme. If there is an incredible Merc we definitely want, Midnight Shipment to guarantee we go first (since I don’t think I have ever seen anyone else run this scheme). If there is nothing we want, still Midnight Shipment to try to get a Merc from the extra city card. Let’s Haggle can be used if there is a strong attachment on the Grand Bazaar we want for cheap or to scam.

To scam with Let’s Haggle, send Kaspar to the non-Grand Bazaar location with a Merc you want to Recruit. After your opponent moves into the Bazaar to take the Attachment, activate the City Action on Let’s Haggle. Kaspar gets to equip the Attachment from his location, since only the discount requires you to be at the Bazaar.

Action Order

1st action (assuming you won the initiative) is always to send Kaspar to location of the Merc you want to recruit.

2nd action could be the Let’s Haggle scam.
Or, if your opponent didn’t move into your location and you are not doing the Let’s Haggle scam, it could be equipping an Uppman’s Jacket in preparation for recruiting a 5+ cost Merc. Otherwise, it is probably just Recruit.

If your opponent is planning on doing some fighting, especially with Yevgeni, you probably wait until they move out of home before bringing Otto out as far away as possible to draw you a card. This can include passing if both characters are still at Home. If lucky, maybe Otto claims you a location for a Renown or 2, likely not though.

If your opponent is not fighting or is Vodacce/Castille with the potential of turn 1 Domination Victory, Otto‘s 2 influence can make that harder for them to achieve. Against Vodacce, you probably want to get Otto to an unclaimed location to contest the claim as reclaiming a location might fail due to Objection. Against Castille, it maybe is better to wait until they burn through their shenanigans? Thankfully, since we will almost always be going first in the first couple days, we have to worry less about Adaptable stealing a location where we have an Influence-advantage with only engaged characters.

Most of your cards in hand are not worth playing Day 1, unless you need to prevent yourself from losing to Domination Victory. If you get Syrneth Hand on Kaspar and no other Mercs, you could equip him with a Langschert and start challenging characters, even using Well-Equipped to go again. Day 1 Assassination Victories are possible against unsuspecting opponents. Otherwise, playing 1 equipment to get under 6 handsize is all you really want to do. Playing the guns to start pushing that damage is tempting, especially if sitting on a Last Word, but usually better to save it if under handsize. If you’ve got an Opulence to get it out, maybe, but your cards in hand are very valuable. Going into day 2 with a 12 card hand is quite nice for executing tactics, especially since there is likely more Renown in play.

Kaspar’s Panzerhand should never be played as it is too important of a combat card for later Days, and it is very expensive.

Also, do not forget the City Action on Midnight Shipment because clearing the location of City cards is pretty easy for Eisen, the non-engaging movement action is incredible, and your opponent might forget about it enabling big plays.

Day 2

Goal

Start whittling down your opponent’s characters, don’t lose to Domination/Assassination, and ideally don’t let your opponent get to 5+ Renown.

Muster

Now we have diverging paths dependent on what we have leftover in our hand from day 1, who (if anyone) we recruited, and which faction our opponent is playing.

The highest power-level-ceiling character in our deck is Terrell Brandt, and ideally we want to get him out as soon as possible. However, his power comes from being able to play ridiculously strong RPT attachments every single combat (since they return to hand if he doesn’t die regardless of if played from hand or gambled into). If you drew into Kaspar’s Panzerhand, you should muster Terrell. If you also drew into a Matchlock Musket, you should absolutely muster Terrell. With both of these cards you can issue a challenge with his +1 Thrust technique to send 4 Threat, follow up with Matchlock Musket to take the opponent’s Restricted Hostilities (1 to 3) and send 5 threat, and finish off with Kaspar’s Panzerhand to block 4 of the likely final strike. Rinse and repeat. If you haven’t drawn Kaspar’s Panzerhand yet, hold off on mustering him. If it entered your discard pile somehow, you could muster him with Armed and Marshaled to get it back for him, unless there is a high priority Merc to recruit (requiring a higher initiative scheme).

On the off-chance that you got to Recruit Maryam and/or you will have 2 fighting Mercs, Daniella Dietrich is a strong Muster choice. Being able to throw a Langschwert on Maryam and let her attack twice (or intervene + attack) is huge. Having 2 fighters gives you more flexibility since it takes multiple actions to get into position for her to use her City Action. You could use Stratege to move both Daniella and a fighting Merc into place with one action (since Stratege doesn’t target the performing characters), but I have not done it yet. If you don’t have reliable access to fighting Mercs, don’t recruit Daniella. Her technique is fantastic for protecting her as well, almost effectively turning any card into a defense-out.

If you are going up against Vodacce or Castille, Phillip Hase‘s 2 influence and movement City Reaction are both excellent for blocking/punishing tricksy Domination/Renown gathering shenanigans (with his 3 Combat too of course).

Otherwise, if you have a Langschwert in hand Rena Klingenhalter is a solid choice. If against Montaigne and their plethora of challenges she might be even better, as long as you have at least a Throwing Knife to get her powered up. Be Aware: if her weapon gets Sundered or Robbed in a duel (or if you throw your knife), she will immediately go back down to 2 Com/2 Restricted Hostilities for the threat currently sent at your opponent (likely not the end of the world though as it is terribly common to be able to push more than 2 damage, although we definitely try to).

Scheme

If there is a high-value Merc in the city, use whichever of Let’s Haggle/Midnight Shipment you have left to maximize your chance of getting it.

On the off chance there is a strong Merc in the city discard pile (possibly because your opponent used Shifting Tides to justifiably fear-discard Maryam), you can use The Song of Eisen to put that Merc on top of the City Deck. Then, you can use Kaspar‘s City Action to recruit the Merc off the top of the deck.

If Kaspar’s Panzerhand is in your discard pile, you can use Armed and Marshaled to get it back to enable you to Muster Terrell.

Otherwise, now that we will have at minimum a strong Mustered fighting character, Let the Sword Decide is an excellent card likely to draw a card and can cancel a nasty Manuever/Technique YOU JUST HAVE TO REMEMBER TO USE IT TOM!!! (Cancelling Broken Time is so cruel…so deliciously cruel.)

Action Order

Once again, assuming you go first and there is a Merc you want, immediately send Kaspar there. (I frequently forget to even draw my new cards before doing so.)

Otherwise, if there is high-value fighting attachment, send one of your fighters there.

Don’t forget about the Let’s Haggle scam as an option as well, nor the actual discount if Syrneth Hand or something drops on the Grand Bazaar.

If there are no City Cards you care about, you might have selected a lower initiative scheme, therefore not be going first, so you react to your opponent.

Day 2 is when we start primarily hunting characters. The juiciest targets are ones that die instantly to a single challenge. 3 Resolve characters are prime targets and 4 Resolve characters are reasonable as well (since we are packing ways to push that last point of damage outside of combat). We can push some wounds to our opponent’s leader if that is the best challenge we get, but ultimately our goal is to eliminate entire characters first and foremost. We can always Assassinate an unguarded leader on a future day, and we aren’t able to necessarily initiate enough bonus challenges to kill off a leader outright early.

Sequencing of actions at this point becomes incredibly important and is incredibly tactical. I think this skill is largely gained by playing the game, but here are a few good examples:

  • Opponent played Marooned while you have a strong fighting Merc in play. If you send your fighting Merc to a location that has an opposing character, they get to act next and engage down (or finish off) your Merc, not good. However, if you send your Merc to an unopposed location that you expect your opponent will want to go to, if they move there, you get the first action and can challenge that character before getting engaged. They could counter this by sending a character they don’t care as much about getting challenged. If they do, you get the choice of either challenging or letting them spend cards to trigger Marooned. If they don’t go to that location, that is likely good for you too, as you can probably collect its Renown.
  • Opponent is Yevgeni and you have Sigurd. Wait until Yevgeni moves out. Move Sigurd on top of him. Then move your challengers in afterwards, protected.
  • When hunting characters, wait until your prey moves out, then move on top of them. However, if they move to a location that doesn’t make a ton of sense for them to be at, they might be planning on using an effect to move to where they actually want to go, after you commit your free move to get on top of them. Phillip and Angeline can punish that nonsense.
  • Terrell equipped with a Langschwert is going up against an Ussuran/Castillian controlled character, activate your Langschwert technique before your Terrell technique in case your weapon gets removed.
  • Wait to bring out your vulnerable characters until the scarier opposing characters are Engaged.
  • Wait to initiate claims until your opponent isn’t likely to reclaim it from you
  • Immediately initiate claims if you think your character is likely to die soon if you think your opponent isn’t likely to reclaim it from you
  • Equip weapons at home so there is only a 1-action gap between moving an issuing a challenge
  • Equip a weapon, at a location, that your opponent wasn’t counting on, after their character engaged

If your opponent is playing very cautiously and avoiding your challenges that could whittle their characters down, you can always win with Renown. If you send a strong fighter with at least 1 influence to an outer location with 2+ renown, and then they don’t send anyone to contest while engaging all of their characters elsewhere, just claim your location. You don’t have to force a challenge. Basically, if they are too worried about losing to actually advance their win condition, you can shift into it yourself.

Don’t forget about Otto either. He isn’t a fighter, so he is a great follow up character to reclaim a location, possibly after you killed the high influence character that was originally there for instance. There is generally little rush to get that card draw because it is frequently just discard fodder for your other effects like Well-Equipped, Move Along, etc. Maybe you could have drawn into a Langschwert, but the reserve-claimer/reclaimer is solid.

Day 3+

At this point, you are mostly just iterating on your Day 2 options. You likely won’t have your high initiative schemes to snipe Mercs anymore, but you have 3 high-effect schemes to convert into kills/strength.

Usually, the longer the game goes, the more favored Eisen seems to become, as long as Otto is actually staying alive and drawing cards, and as long as Eisen isn’t spending cards unnecessarily for minimally impactful effects. In earlier Days, you can definitely let your opponent pick up some uncontested Renown if it means you kill or heavily injure a character. At this point though, you have to be careful that they can’t convert the board into a win before they are crushed beneath you.

Miscellaneous Eisen Points

Kaspar‘s greatest strengths as a leader are his 4 Influence on Parley and his big butt (9 Resolve). His 9 Resolve lets him Refuse early challenges if he wants, effectively wasting a 3 or less Combat character’s engage. You don’t want to refuse a Yevgeni challenge, but aside from that, Kaspar doesn’t need to get his hands dirty. He absolutely can though, leveraging his 9 health to take out a character, but you need to be careful of Lethal and unintervenable challenges after that point. Getting within a few wounds of death could also prevent Kaspar from leaving home, which is a big loss for you; however, if your opponent poured tons of resources into that, we can likely finish up the game with our other accumulated resources.

Kaspar‘s City action is unreliable. I generally avoid using it unless in combination with The Song of Eisen. The main reason is I scarred myself in my loss in Gen Con top 8 where I activated his ability to greed out an additional Merc instead of claiming my location, knowing it could potentially lose me the game. I got the no-Influence, worthless-against-pacifist-Castille Vladislav and lost the game (of course there were a lot of factors to the games conclusion, but that one left a mark). That being said, I just played a game where my opponent hit Angeline into Maryam, so it certainly can be ridiculously powerful. Primarily though, I would much rather take the Merc my opponent has the option of recruiting than rolling the dice on a random Merc.

Last Word is incredible. A 0-cost (after the initial investment of playing a ranged weapon which can include Throwing Knives) move your opponent’s character is incredible for messing with their Influence math on claims, getting potential interveners out of the way, moving an engaged character into a location with your fighters, etc. It theoretically could be used in a duel to finish off a character preventing them from sending a final round of threat, but my fighters usually aren’t equipped with Ranged Weapons (possibly Throwing Knives though).

Unsavory Salve, Breastplate, Corpse Speak, and Uppman’s Jacket are included almost exclusively for Otto to fetch with his City Action, so you can discard them to pay for your better cards. It is hard to imagine a scenario where you actively want to play Unsavory Salve, especially since getting your weapon destroyed also destroys the Salve. Breastplate is overkill for your 5 Resolve characters in addition to being too expensive; its 3 parry is reasonable as your protection from your opponent’s Final Strike. Corpse Speak can be used by Daniella, and you do have some strong targets for it, but it is a lot of setup. Uppman’s Jacket could be played turn 1 to pay for itself over 2 Recruits, or it could be used to break a claiming stalemate, but I usually just discard it when recruiting as opposed to spending an extra card to Equip it.

Press the Advantage is great if you have plenty of cards in hand for its City Action at a critical moment; its Maneuver feels too expensive though. Well-Equipped City action is incredible, as is the Maneuver if you gamble into it while equipped with a Weapon. Dark Gift does work, primarily with its movement ability, but it can keep your fighters away from the dangerous 1 Resolve remaining state (Bleed Out, Razrushitel, etc.).

For some highlights from games at Gen Con with a similar list, check out my initial Gen Con tournament report/deck tech.

Conclusion

I want to play more 7th Sea, and I am happy to keep repping the honest Eisen! Now that you know my decklist and strategy, come at me. Let’s see if you can surpass my tactics.

If I get the motivation, I’m hoping to get a similar article out for Ussura, probably my favorite faction currently (because they are much less honest and I utilize a more balanced playstyle instead of ultra heavy combat). I do not have a strong enough understanding of Castille yet, and I don’t like Montaigne as much so I will likely do a much less detailed post on my decks I have ready for each. I will not defile my hands with the villainous treachery of Vodacce. (I actually just don’t want to disrupt the communities “The Family doesn’t fight [itself]” since I actively want to play as many games as possible while not taking away from others’ enjoyment.)

7th Sea – Gen Con 2023 – Top Eisen Retrospective/Deck Tech

My most anticipated event at Gen Con 2023 was the 7th Sea : City of Five Sails World Championship. I heard about the game while looking through the Gen Con event list for tournaments, and I had managed to get about 10 games in before Gen Con and another 3 Friday night. Posted a bit about the game here.

I went into the tournament wanting to play a Castille/Soline deck because it seemed like the weakest faction so I felt challenged to make it work. Played some games against my good friend Tom Dixon the night before the event, and it just felt frustratingly underpowered. So, I switched to Eisen/Kaspar because I was super excited about exploiting Unsavory Salve, and Eisen seemed reasonably powerful overall. Was a bit worried that everyone was going to be playing Eisen, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it was tied for the least represented faction (with Vodacce/The Don) for my hipster self. I was also very surprised with how underwhelming Unsavory Salve turned out to be.

Gen Con 2023 Top Eisen Decklist

This is the list I ran for the tournament. (There are 6 changes I made after the event):

Kaspar Dietrich (Gen Con 2023) [Chip Damage]

Approach

Faction

Attachments (15)

Non-Attachments (25)

Initial Deck Idea

Generally speaking, I intended this to be a midrange deck that could win with any of the three victory conditions. The major idea I wanted to experiment with was shrugging off challenges while pushing through small amounts of damage at a time, not necessarily focusing on initiating challenges myself. I wanted only-parry cards (ex. Regroup) to end duels (if you send no threat back, the duel ends), and I wanted to use the guns (ex. Polished Flintlock) to whittle down characters.

Unsavory Salve’s ability to erase a threat and turn it into a wound had me salivating over the idea of achieving both of those goals at the same time. Specifically, it could turn Appealing to the People, Breastplate, and Kaspar’s Panzerhand into 3 or 4 parry cards, that inflicted an unblockable wound and ended the duel, effectively erasing the value of my opponent’s Engage Action (challenge). Even getting an unlucky Opulence Gamble could at least end the duel and deal a wound. Important remainder though, you can only trigger one Technique per combat round, so you can’t use 2 Unsavory Salves to cancel 2 Thrust (ex. Tending the Wounded). In addition, if your weapon is destroyed or stolen, you lose the Salve.

Lastly, we packed 15 attachments into the deck to have an attachment density greater than 1/3 to make Otto likely to draw a card off his ability. Throwing Knives were primarily included to hit that threshold and to help enable Last Word.

World Championship Games

A brief account of each of the games (as well as I can remember). Putting these in show/hide blocks to artificially deflate the length of the post.

Game 1: Eisen vs Vodacce

Game 2: Eisen vs Castille (On Stream)

Game 3: Eisen vs Vodacce

Game 4: Eisen vs Vodacce

Game 5: Eisen vs Ussura

Game 6 (Top 16): Opponent Didn’t Show

Unfortunate as I would rather play than get a free win, but it happens. Got some sweet promos.

Interesting to note the top 5 was all Vodacce (with only 9 Vodacce players) except for me as Eisen in 3rd. I was also the only Eisen in top 16 (only 9 Eisen players as well). Overall a very balanced distribution of factions which surprised me.

Disqualification “Win” 5*-1

Game 7 (Top 8): Eisen vs Castille

Post-Tournament Deck Thoughts/Card Analysis

Major takeaways from the event were

  1. Always going first with Midnight Shipment and Let’s Haggle in addition to occasionally the others was incredibly powerful for getting to all of the Mercs/attachments from the City Deck I wanted
  2. The City Action on each of those and Armed and Marshalled were all incredible/unexpected by my opponents
  3. Turn 1 Domination is real and scary especially as I’m a value deck
  4. Whiffed 8 times trying for an attachment with Otto, want more attachments
  5. Rena did work, although Langshwert was the true hero
  6. Fight Through the Pain is one of the best cards in the game, supports overwhelming-force combat ideaology (briefly send as much threat as possible, ideally 2 or 3 above your restricted hostilities)

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the game, and the distribution model lets me mess around with whatever deck I feel like without having to chase down cards etc. Really enjoying the game, the festival/judges were great, story is a definite plus with a cool writer, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the overwhelming force doctrine maps onto the other factions.

7th Sea : City of Five Sails

or My New Epic-Replacing Obsession (hopefully)

Overview

7th Sea : City of Five Sails is a 2-player, expandable (non-collectible) dueling card game with Pirates, Musketeers, and Sorcerers (with multiplayer formats).
Your goal is either

  • Assassination: Kill your opponent’s Leader
  • Domination: Control all 3 core locations in the city at the end of the day
  • Renown: Control locations in the city over 5 days to collect 7 (or the most) Renown

To accomplish this, each Day you choose 1 of your 5 pre-selected Characters to add to the fray and 1 of your 5 pre-selected Schemes to shape it. These are supported by your randomized 40-card Faction deck. However, before you make your choices, a neutral card is added to each location that players can race to Recruit, Equip, or exploit that Day from a randomized 30-card City deck. (This City deck is defined by Pine Box Entertainment, and they plan to rotate it, in part based on the actions taken in Organized Play events/tournaments).

Cards in your Faction deck can be

  • Played for their primary effect (equipping characters or performing one-time effects)
  • Played for their combat values in a duel (regardless of their primary effect)
  • Discarded to pay the cost of other powerful Faction and/or City cards
    (Race for the Galaxy style [one of my favorite game mechanisms])

Players alternate taking a single action until all players pass consecutively.

Initiating back and forth Duels and Claiming a Location are the primary two actions the game is built around (in addition to playing cards, character movement, and Passing).

Current Thoughts

As of this point, I have played about 10 games, half of which with decks I’ve built. I am still in the exploration phase as I feel out everything this game has to offer, but so far, I have been enjoying it and actively want to continue experimenting.

During the third game, the flow of play clicked and now actions can go pretty snappy back and forth, especially since you’ll want to be thinking multiple moves into the future. I actively enjoy the combination of City cards coming out, and then deciding which Scheme card to respond with, to determine where Renown gets put, what bonus effect to gain, your likelihood of going first each day, and whether you’ll draw more of less cards than normal. That feels great, especially since you can only use each of your 5 schemes once for the up to 5 days.

Card management also feels good. As mentioned above, I love the discard cards from hand to pay for other cards mechanism. It also synergizes well with deckbuilding enabling you to include situational cards, cards you actively want to play, and cards you actively want for dueling (especially if flipped in gambling). The tension between Gambling in duels and playing from hand is also a satisfying choice; Gambling has certainly screwed me, but not in a way that turns me off from the game, since “Gambling” is a very apt name for the mechanism.

My one disappointment so far is that deck building feels very limited at this point, with seemingly only one way to take each faction, for now. As additional expansions come out with new cards and characters for each faction, I expect/hope this will improve. For now, it mostly feels like optimization as opposed to exploration.

**As of 4/4/2026, with 2 expansions released and a 3rd finalized and on Table Top Simulator, each faction has two leaders to choose from and plenty of Faction cards to allow for unique builds for each leader. (I’m also the two-time World/Gen Con champion, excellent game.) There is also a solo-mode releasing with the newest expansion.

Faction Overview

Each of the 5 factions feel different and interesting to play. Currently, my vague feeling for each is

  • Castille: Try to deprive your opponent of as many actions and choices as possible, weak dueling, Renown primary win condition
  • Eisen: Bruteforce overwhelm your opponents by ending duels (refusing or returning no threat) and pushing unpreventable damage, Any win condition
  • Montaigne: Best duelists, force your opponents into duels and extend them, Any win condition
  • Ussura: Combo deck, find the hammer and/or buff Yevgeni to issue one-shot challenges, kill opponent in a duel as soon as possible, Domination/Assassination win conditions
  • Vodacce: Take as many actions as possible, everyone outside The Family is expendable towards your Renown win condition (or surprise Assassination)

I plan to do individual write ups on the deck I built for each of these factions.

Theme/Art/Lore

If I can buy this playmat at GenCon, I will, love it. Would buy a framed print of it too.

I’ve recently discovered that good Theming/Art/Lore can really draw me into a game (much more than I expected), and I have been drawn in to 7th Sea : City of Five Sails.

I learned about the game while looking for tournaments in the Gen Con 2023 event catalogue, and as a non-collectible, 2-player card game, I was obviously immediately intrigued. There is a World Championship Festival Saturday starting at 10am, and it will have a story-based game augmentation in 3 of the rounds (28 open spots remaining as of today).

So I looked into it further and saw they had Chanteys with lore on their website and in their rulebook. All of the stories have been interesting and have actively made me want to explore the world. Apparently, the setting is based off a 7th Sea Role Playing Game and there was a previous collectible version of the game in the late 90s.

Going in to the World Championship, for gameplay reasons I think I am leaning towards playing Eisen, but for thematic reasons, I will likely pick a different faction so I can usurp them. That being said, I see that Ussura won the 6-week salon (and Eisen won the initial 2022 Gen Con tournament), so my personality is pushing me away from those. Ahhh, so many fun considerations to agonize over for what I want to play! Ultimately, I need (and want) to get more games in to feel out the factions more, and I need (and want) to pour through all of the lore to come to a compromise of the two.

Closing

For anyone looking to play, there is an official Tabletop Simulator mod and Pinebox Entertainment discord. I am looking to get as many games in as possible, so if interested you can reach out through discord, username: tomsepicgaming

**Edit: I have really been enjoying this game. Here is a link to my tournament report from Gen Con 2023, my more in depth Eisen Deck Tech, and my tournament report from Gamehole con 2023.

In addition, my Ussuran Deck tech from Gen Con 2024, and the start of my match reports from that tournament in addition to first streaming announcement 8/25/24.

I have embarked on a multi-article series. Included will be a breakdown of each card, some of the packages they belong to, and at least one deck per leader: https://www.tomsepicgaming.com/the-everything-you-need-to-know-to-beat-the-current-two-time-7th-sea-city-of-five-sails-champion-series/

Mindbug Beyond Evolution Review

Base Game

Mindbug is a 2-player card game where you play creatures to attack your opponent. You only get 10 creatures, but the deliciously intriguing part is you also get 2 mindbugs which let you steal an opponent’s creature as if you had played it.

Elegant and beautiful.

Trying to figure out how to sequence your plays to navigate your opponent’s mindbugs, while agonizing over when to use yours is just so good. So, so good.

Beyond Evolution

Mindbug Beyond Evolution is the first stand-alone expansion and second expansion overall for Mindbug. It contains 44 new playable cards (16 unique and 14 with two copies). Beyond Evolution also introduces two new keywords: Action and Evolve.

Action is an effect you can trigger on a creature that started your turn in play, instead of Attacking or Playing a card for your turn. For example, if you start your turn with Infernostrich in play, you can use its action to Defeat an enemy creature with power 7 or more, and then your opponent takes their turn.

Evolve lets you upgrade a creature to a stronger version of itself going from stage I to stage II to finally stage III.

Beyond Evolution Review

I actively do not recommend this new stand alone product as a starting point into Mindbug, one of my favorite games literally included in a tattoo on my arm.

As is frequently the case with expansions, this adds a level of complexity and nebulousness Beyond what you find in the base game. If you already love Mindbug and both you and your opponents want an added challenge, this expansion definitely delivers that. There are interesting new cards that lead to significantly more complicated board states and “discovered” attacks as the board states shift due to dying creatures (love you Coach Panda), but the counter play is much less obvious, less forgiving, and feels worse/more unfair than the base game (even though the balance seems on point when you adjust to it).

One of the major culprits for this is the increased amount of Tough, especially on creatures with incredibly powerful effects like difficult to prevent damage. Robopup is the prime example, a 1 power Sneaky, Tough. If you play a Robopup on an empty board, whoever gets it is likely to be able to make at least one and likely two unblocked attacks before it can either be destroyed twice, or a hunter can be played to attack it twice. (In this stand alone expansion, there are only 2 copies of a sneaky card bigger than this, and two copies of a card that stops sneakies from attacking.) Knowing this, you do not want to play a Robopup unless you already have a hunter in play or one of the few immediate answers to it available, or conversely you want to mindbug it if your opponent plays it. However, if you do not know this and you let it resolve for your opponent, or they mindbug the one you played, you are going to have a serious problem. Even playing against better than average strategic-gamers, they repeatedly made the mistake of playing this and other similar cards only for me to mindbug it and make them feel helpless. Other culprits include Dragon Inn, Mole Machine, and the frog and penguin levelers. (To be fair, The Experiment and Octocopter are two additional answers to these powerful Tough creatures.)

In addition to these, cards like Dr. Orange U. Tan (which lets you lose a life to return all opposing creatures to hand) and Westside Monster feel oppressive while Chuckling Chimporg feels too narrow.

All that being said, when I got a chance to play against one of the best Mindbug players in the world, everything felt reasonable and interesting; however, even I still made an objective misplay into a board state that my opponent insisted we rewind (allowing reasonable rewinding being my preferred way to play for all games).

Conclusion

Overall, I would be legitimately thrilled to play in a Mindbug tournament with this set included or even by itself, but I can’t see myself ever breaking it out outside of that, unless I run into another voracious Mindbug fanatic like myself who craves more content.

Board Game Strategy Book?!

I have been wanting to write a book for a long time. I want a book to introduce anyone to board game strategy to exist. And, I enjoy talking about board games and strategy. So let’s do it, finally! (This is where I would insert a picture of my Gillian tattoo, but I have to wait until 5/17/23 before I’ll actually have it.)

So, there is content out there that talks about board games from a design perspective and plenty of content with game specific strategy, but what I want to create is a book that draws upon my moderate array of board gaming experience, to define the overarching strategy concepts that I bring to any game I play. As I have done with Epic, I want to level the playing field as much as I can to enable other people to actually compete with me (not that I’m overconfident or anything and don’t frequently lament my downfall at the hands of my own hubris).

My favorite part of board/card gaming is the face to face social interaction between two+ people actively competing to win (without being jerks about it) and having a great time while doing it. Gen Con 2022 I competed in (and won) both a Jaipur tournament and a sealed SolForge Fusion tournament, and while both were fun, the Jaipur tournament with the casual, banter-filled atmosphere, subjected to my aggressive heavy camel-taking strategy that caught everyone by surprise, was far superior. Having opponents who actively knew how to play at the highest level forced me to see new devious tactics (such as heavily manipulating the market by taking a bunch of leather with camels to fill my hand to 7, triggering my opponent to think it was safe to take all of the camels, only for them to pop up 3 luxury goods to the table with a smirk on their face, for me to counter-smirk by dropping my leather right back to the table to take the luxury, *sigh* so beautiful *sigh*)…where was I again?

Right, I want MORE. More gamers who see the beauty in high level competitive play for its own sake (without feeling the need to cheat or maliciously angle-shoot etc.). I want to provide a groundwork for the average person to truly experience what I believe to be the heights of strategic gaming, ideally in an amusing to consume format without needing to devote the thousands of hours I’ve accumulated (which still is not where near enough).

Call for Assistance

In order to actually progress towards this goal of a board game strategy book, I need motivation, more gaming experience, and the collective knowledge of all of you to challenge my ideas (so they can grow) and to inform me of similar content I can standardize against. My plan is to complete a first draft without looking around too much to lower the possibility of accidental plagiarism, but after that, if there are established terms already in use, I might adopt those while also providing references/links to other high caliber content.

Roadmap

First, I want to develop a list strategic concepts that are present across a wide range of games. In order to do that, I am creating quick summaries of the games I know well including Goal of the Game, Game-specific Tactics to achieve that goal, and strategic concepts that inform why those tactics are valuable. So, when I have the motivation to work on this, I plan on filling out this summary for at least one more game.

Once I have filled out most of the games below, I want to identify the strategic concepts I want to talk about the most. (In addition, I plan on seeing if any of those are concepts you all want to see explored first.)

Then, when I have the motivation, I will try to go one concept at a time. First a definition of the concept. Followed by an in-depth explanation, likely ending with examples from the list of games below. In addition, to providing references/links to others who have discussed this topic, such as the “Who’s the Beatdown” article by Mike Flores … although reading this article, it seems incredibly unapproachable to anyone without a background in Magic which I actively will want to avoid to keep this book more generically approachable. (I’m also not entirely sure how I’ll have these transfer over into the book.)

Progress So Far (as of 4/29/23)

I took a week off of work to begin working on this book which I’ve had the idea to work on for a long time. This is as far I’ve gotten so far. I am hoping blogging my progress going forward will be able to help maintain my motivation to keep going (since I haven’t worked on it since 3/19/23). But phew, I’m beat, will come back to later.

Book Goal

Casually explain high-level board game strategy so readers can develop their own game-specific tactics.

Jaipur

Goals of the game is to get the most victory points

  • Early discs for the low value
  • Big as possible sets
  • As much luxury as possible

Tactics

  • Turn in your non-luxury goods if you see your opponent take them at start of game
  • Turn in non-luxury so as not to flip more cards
  • Avoiding taking camels to avoid flipping luxury cards for opponent
  • Taking camels to gain handsize advantage
  • Swapping out non-luxury goods for luxury to also stifle market
  • Taking a bunch of camels when your opponent has none or a nearly full hand
  • Turn in cards to clear up space in your hand for more cards

Strategy

  • Pay attention to what opponent has and minimize their potential points
  • Limit opponents’ potential plays
  • Focus on maximizing assets for self in comparison to opponent (opportunity cost)
    • Taking the Ruby instead of your 5th Leather
  • Card Advantage
  • Risk Management

Mindbug 

Goal of the game is to reduce your opponent to 0 life

  • Have an uncontested attacker
  • Finish off opponent
  • Get your opponent to only Mindbug cards you can deal with

Tactics

  • Offer a card you have a counter to in hand
  • Mindbug a card you don’t have a counter to in hand
  • Attack when your opponent can’t stop it, otherwise don’t without reason
  • Only play as many cards as are needed (advance towards goal)
  • Don’t chumpblock unless necessary
  • Know the possible cards, especially finishers
  • Play cards that are great for you that are actively mediocre for your opponent to steal
  • Play support cards before their value is apparent
  • Learn your opponent’s playstyle and card preferences to counter them
    • Bluff and/or change it up once your opponent learns yours
    • Read body language
  • Card economy have your cards gain more value than the cards needed to stop them
    • Kangasaurus Rex multiple creatures, Plated Scorpion kills two, Strage Barrel
  • Know when to break your own rules
  • Tempo
    • Know what needs to be answered immediately and what can wait
  • Mindbug decision depends on
    • Board state
    • Both Players’ health totals
    • Cards in both players hands
    • Potentially cards in both players’ discard piles
    • Remaining Mindbugs
  • Playing cards you don’t need to buy time/chump blocking

Strategy 

  • Read your opponent react to body language and anticipate plays
  • Think multiple moves in advance
  • Preserve resources/timing
  • Card Economy
  • Tempo
  • Stay Focused

Arkham Horror LCG

Goal of the game is ultimately to win the final scenario

Each individual scenario progress the Act Deck usually by getting clues and surviving

Make your character stronger by maximizing victory points and avoiding trauma

Tactics

  • Maximize action economy by getting multiple clues/doing multiple damage in one action
    • Kill vs evade
  • Card efficiency (how much value per card per resource)
  • Specializing vs Generalizing (Clue vs Kill), evade/will
  • Teamwork (countering their weaknesses and relying on their strengths)
  • Getting permanent buffs out as early as possible to maximize use
  • Maximizing character powers
  • Risk management (token bag)
  • Split or stay together
  • Search effects especially for finding experience cards
  • Clearing off more clues than needed to get VP, Hunting down VP enemies
  • Negating doom to give extra actions
  • Prepare for known treachery cards (blind vs returning)
  • Cycling skills

Strategy

  • Action and Card Economy
  • Teamwork (countering weaknesses and relying on strengths)
  • Maximizing buffs (value) as early as possible
  • Anticipate Treachery
  • Risk Management
  • Card Advantage
  • Card Quality (experience cards, getting out key pieces, cycling)

Dominion

Goal of the game is to have the most VP in deck at end of the game

Usually by getting more provinces (or colonies) faster than your opponent(s)

Exploiting other VP gaining strategies to subvert province rush

Tactics

  • Thinning deck to improve card quality (trashing cards)
  • Get card draw to gain access to more and better cards sooner
  • Buy high value cards
  • Disrupt opponents strategy (buy their cards, play targeted attacks)
  • Maximizing the value of your cards/turns
    • Spending all of your money
    • Playing towards the strengths of your cards, away from their weaknesses
    • Prioritize synergy though
  • Plan strategy ahead of time
  • Adapt as your plan sputters
  • Don’t buy non-synergistic cards just because you can (curses, moat)
  • Don’t buy more actions than you can play (Card Quality)
  • Be careful about buying VP before your deck is ready (Provinces/Gardens)
  • Pay attention to remaining VP and have a general idea what opponent’s have
  • Watch out for inadvertently helping opponents (Trade Route, Council Room)

Strategy

  • Plan your strategy at the start of the game
  • Card Quality
  • Maximize card value
  • Adapt (Anticipate Treachery)
  • Tempo
  • Stay Focused
  • Card Advantage

Star Realms

Goal of the game is to reduce your opponent to 0 health

Tactics

  • Buy cards of the same faction to trigger ally effects
  • Thin your deck to get to your better cards sooner
  • Add card draw to get to your better cards sooner
  • Counter what your opponent is doing by buying cards that are incredible for them, but still reasonable for you
  • Buy counter cards (destroy target base if base heavy)
  • Gain cards that give more money early, more damage late
  • Discard is decent early game to disrupt buying
  • Discard is good late game if opponent’s deck is thinned or you have a lot
  • Health Gain is good if your deck is bigger (costs) more than your opponent’s and/or your deck is more thinned than theirs
  • Damage is more important early if your opponent gets bases (bases are better if your opponent doesn’t have/can’t get damage)
  • Explorers are good early to help get more expensive cards, and should be scrapped to thin deck later
  • Everything is better with a thinned deck, but prioritizing a thinned deck without the ability to survive opponent’s aggression or get high value/synergistic cards isn’t good
  • Scrap your economy and Scrapping cards late game if they don’t provide efficient additional effects
  • Rush to get highest value cards (Brainworld) before your opponent can
  • Adapt based on trade row (if it shows a lot of efficient, inexpensive damage, maybe don’t go minor economy + scrap)
  • Card Quality (some cards are just better than others for the same purchase cost)
  • Kill bases unless you can win, best bases first
  • Buying cards that are less than you can afford that you know your opponent will want and can afford

Strategy

  • Card Quality
  • Maximize card value (ally triggers)
  • Anticipate and Perform Treachery
  • Tempo
  • Card Advantage
  • Maximizing value as soon as possible (bigger ships earlier give more chance for value)

Widget Ridge

Goal of the game is to generate the most spark

Tactics

  • Prioritize money cards early to get high value cards (card quality)
  • Pay attention to connections (maximizing value of cards)
  • Focus on getting a great full-construct and/or reusing connect abilities 
  • Draw cards and thin deck good (Card quality)
  • Timing/sequencing of effects, play cards that want you to have less spark first
  • Keeping cards in your workshop vs letting them hit discard pile
  • Buying cards that are less than you can afford that you know your opponent will want and can afford
  • Buy Accessory/Augments with the only connection(s) opponent’s devices can use

Strategy

  • Card Quality
  • Maximizing value of cards
  • Minor Anticipate/Perform Treachery
  • Timing/Sequencing of effects

Radlands

Goal of the game is to destroy all of your opponent’s bases

Tactics

  • Develop efficient ways to deal damage, ideal 1 water for 1 damage
  • Avoid relying on 2 water for 1 damage as it is less efficient
  • Protect your key cards with characters in front of them
  • Protect your damaged bases
  • Target the most disruptive cards of your opponent
  • Draw cards to have more option for both junk effects and play effects
  • Choose synergistic bases with a reasonable starting hand size (Don’t pick all 0 starting hand bases)
  • Spend all of your water every turn
  • Don’t underestimate spending 2 water to draw a card
  • Take your time
  • Time your effects for the biggest impact (events as 0, get a bunch of punks then return everything to hand, etc.)
  • Muse is bonus water every turn
  • It is largely an efficiency puzzle
  • Play to your bases/cards strengths/synergies

Axis and Allies (2nd edition 1940)

Goal of the game is to get your opponent to surrender by making it practically impossible to achieve their win condition

Tactics

  • As the axis, be aggressive, plan your first 3 turns thoroughly
  • As allies, react to what your opponent does, but don’t let them bait you too hard
  • As the soviets, planes are great at disrupting a fragmented advance
  • Overwhelming force to preserve your units
  • Infantry to take hits protecting your higher value units that deal hits
  • Can opening with other nations to make way for haymakers (Italy for Germany, Britain for US)
  • Income taken from opponents compound for you, but stretching yourself too thin leaves you open to counter attack
  • Every turn you spend building up is a turn your opponent’s spend building up
  • Tempo is incredibly important for Axis while Allies largely have to delay to give time for their economy to crush
  • Generally don’t leave territories with units outside of the borders
  • Don’t free France, use their production instead?
  • Axis need to focus on taking as much territory as possible so needs units that can
  • Don’t let highly valuable units and or territory be taken for little cost

Strategy

  • Maximize economy while minimizing opponent’s economy
  • Axis need to win as quickly as possible

Great Western Trail 2nd Edition

Goal

Epic Card Game

Goal of the game is to either reduce your opponent to 0 hit points or draw from an empty deck

Tactics

  • Play burn to finish off opponent, if they spend their gold on their turn, you get 2 gold in a row before they can spend another
  • Combine 0s with specific ones to do all of the damage at once and force a response
  • Pace your 0’s to stay ahead and make your opponent’s removal inefficient
  • Play the most powerful cards
  • Play cards your opponents aren’t expecting in powerful ways
  • Include enough cards to reliably hit loyalty effects
  • Provide continual pressure that your opponent can’t keep up with
  • Heal to get out of range of your opponent finishing you off with burn
  • Pay attention to your opponent’s likely drafted cards or common included cards in deck archetypes to either counter them in draft/deck building or play around the most devastating blowouts
  • Play to your outs, play to win, not to just not lose, unless that is how you win (delaying your loss for a couple turns if you that makes it so you can’t win is guaranteed to lose)
  • Take your time to think through all of your lines
  • Card advantage, have more cards in hand to have more options and to get to your best options faster
  • Card filtering to find your best cards (MGH, Zannos)
  • Maximize the value of your cards by including cards that support them
  • Preserve your gold until after your opponent spends theirs, bait/force opponent to spend first
  • Know when to cycle vs hold onto a card for value
  • Ideally never have a turn where your opponent spends their gold and you do not
  • High risk plays can win games, but can also lose them
  • Overload your opponent’s answers
  • Mindgames are a thing
  • Attack alone and early if your opponent has no good answers in play
  • Have a plan to beat the most common cards/decks/strategies
  • Don’t reveal new cards to loyalty if you don’t have to/don’t always reveal all cards you can
  • Practice/test
  • Match threats to answers
  • Hold off on your free mass discard pile removal to bait opponent into making bad plays, prioritize getting one otherwise have an aggressive enough deck to not need one
  • Recycle your best cards first/strategically to get to what you expect you will need in order
  • Play to your strengths playstyle wise

Strategy

Magic: The Gathering

Goal

Netrunner LCG

Goal

Rise of Augustus

Goal

Battlestar Galactica

Goal

Agricola (Worker Placement)

Goal

Hanamikoji

Goal

Ticket to Ride

Goal

Catan

Goal

7 Wonders Duel

Goal

Wingspan

Goal

Race for the Galaxy

Goal

Trekking Games

Goal

Alchemists

Goal

Splendor

Goal

Carcassonne

Goal

Under Falling Skies

Goal

Sushi Go

Goal

Camel Up

Goal

Dixit

Goal

Specter Ops

Goal

Tikal

Goal

Ninjato

Goal

Acquire

Goal

Takenoko

Goal

Mandala

Goal

Thurn and Taxis

Goal

Paperback

Goal of the game is to have the most victory points in your deck by game end

Tactics

  • Prioritize cards that have more value to you
    • If you can come up with long words to snag the common letters, emphasize card draw and multi-character cards
    • If you struggle to think of long words, emphasize high buying power individual letters
  • Generally avoid wilds/VP early, unless you can get card draw and big words, as they can dilute your buying power
  • Minor filtering
  • Have a large vocabulary (outside knowledge)
  • Get the double/triple word scores to get the highest value VP cards
  • Focus on using your most powerful effects to get even more powerful effects

Strategy

  • Play to your strengths
  • Maximize value

Smash Up

Goal

7 Wonders Architects

Goal

Kahuna

Goal of the game is to have the most victory points by controlling islands at 3 points

Tactics

  • Build up cards in hand to make a devastating sequence of plays
  • Hold onto or play island cards to manipulate what gets shuffled
  • Place bridges on opponent’s controlled islands that they can’t kick off
  • Solidify your own islands to protect against losing pieces
  • Secure key connections before your opponent can, if you see them take dangerous cards
  • Start by making a safe foothold to build off from
  • Knowing when not to take a card, manipulate turn order at cost of a card
  • Drawing from deck to hide your information, especially if nothing valuable on display, likely to get you garbage though so usually better to take a tangentially valuable face up card
  • Make big plays right before the end of a round to score that round’s points
  • Only use 2 cards to remove a bridge as a last resort or in a combo play to remove multiple bridges (card advantage)
  • Focus on protecting your bridges and slowly expanding
  • Losing a lot of in play bridges is the main way to lose the game

Strategy

  • Sequencing/Timing
  • Card advantage (not spending two cards removing bridges often, almost always taking cards, using fewer cards to knock out/negate more cards played by opponent)
  • Anticipate and Initiate Treachery
  • Pay attention to what opponent takes and how eager they are to take it
  • Maximize value of cards

Push Fight

Goal of the game is to push one of your opponent’s pieces off of the board

Tactics

  • Trap and isolate a circle on board edge
  • Maneuver pieces to form a wall to obstruct opponent’s movement
  • Constrict opponent’s space to maneuver
  • Force opponent to make specific moves and/or pushes
  • Keep circles centralized
  • Get a square into opponent’s back line
  • Push just own pieces
  • Use pieces to form pushable lines
  • Look into opponent’s potential plays/responses
  • Exploit anchor for positional plays, protects whole line from being pushed back
  • Pay attention to what board state will look like after push

Strategy

  • Limit opponent’s potential plays
  • Exploit weaknesses
  • Maximize value of anchor
  • Maneuver board into favorable end state

Medieval Academy

Goal

Princess Jing

Goal

Firefly The Game

Goal

Mindbug Beyond Evolution Spoiler!

When I was sent this card to spoil for the upcoming kickstarter expansion Mindbug Beyond, I saw the Play effect and my mind focused entirely on that, forgetting everything else since that aspect is so powerful. Looking back and seeing it has Hunter and Tough too, I am shook.

For those of you who do not know, Mindbug is a two-player card game where you play cards to attack your opponent from 3 life to 0. There are only creatures, but you both get exactly 2 Mindbugs that can be used to permanently steal a creature when your opponent plays it, gaining all of the effects as if you had played it. I love this game so much it made it into my (still healing) tattoo from two weeks ago.

(That is Rhino Turtle on the end there. The full hand being Arkham Horror LCG, Dixit, Epic, Dominion, Jaipur, Radlands, Widget Ridge, Rhino Turtle [Mindbug].)

The card is Swiss Army Bug. It is a 4-power creature with Hunter, Tough, and Play: You may copy the Play effect of another creature. I confirmed that the Play effect can copy any Play effect of any creature in play by either player. As of now the Play effects are:

Core Set: Compost Dragon, Grave Robber, Giraffodile, Ferret Bomber, Brain Fly, Tiger Squirrel, Kangasaurus Rex, Mysterious Mermaid, Axolotl Healer, and Killer Bee

New Creations: Hungry Hungry Hamster, Ratomancer, Goreagle Alpha

The effect that immediately came to mind was copying Killer Bee. Due to the nature of Killer Bee’s unpreventable life loss if your opponent is out of Mindbugs, this can be the extra copy you follow up with after your actual copy of Killer Bee draws out your opponent’s last Mindbug. Having this can also allow you to play Killer Bee early to get that 5-power Hunter into play before your opponent can get any value from Sneaky characters.

As someone who is personally a big fan of having multiple of the same effect in hand, so I can double Ferret Bomber you (or now quadruple), this is a card I am definitely looking forward to. It can also give you extra copies of the one-ofs Giraffodile, Brain Fly, Mysterious Mermaid, and Ratomancer (or let you borrow the effect of those played by your opponent).

That being said, as is the case with Compost Dragon and Grave Robber, any play of Swiss Army Bug while your opponent has a Mindbug requires you to analyze just how powerful any of the in-play Play-effects would be against you. This also means sequencing your Play-effects becomes more important because if you do have a Killer Bee in play, you are at 1 life, and your opponent has a Mindbug left, you can’t play Swiss Army Bug, no matter how tempting the Kangasaurus Rex trigger undoubtedly is.

Finally, even just a 4-power Hunter, Tough is a card I would frequently be happy to have online early. This can be especially true if your hand is nothing but low power creatures (and/or you can exploit its 4 or less power). Playing this out early when the Play-effect is inactive will likely get your opponent to let you have it, since not triggering the strong play effect makes it appear to be a throwaway. Then, any 4 or less power creature you get Mindbugged becomes hunter fodder for your Swiss Army Bug. Of course, after the first time you do this to your opponent, they might get wise and realize they need to Mindbug this early, until you follow it up with all of the Rhino Turtles (*deviously contented sigh* good ol’ Rhino Turtle).

My only complaint about this card is that it is a “may” effect. It doesn’t force the controller to trigger a play effect such as Goreagle Alpha’s You lose 1 life point (like Mysterious Mermaid does). While I haven’t been able to think of a situation where I could force my opponent into both needing to Mindbug this and immediately losing if they do (if it wasn’t a “may” effect), my sadistic side is disappointed that I never will be able to. Sadness.

Anyways, I know I will be buying multiple copies of the Beyond expansion when it goes live on Kickstarter soon, so I can distribute them to all of the people I have hooked. Great game, and if you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it.  (Here’s the dice tower review by Tom Vasel on it as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-9G24mEsgw)

HatMania Stream 1/22/23

This Sunday 1/22/23 at 10am CST I will be streaming the new video game HatMania, by the creator of one of my favorite card games Mindbug, on my twitch channel: twitch.tv/tomsepicgaming

“HatMania is a retro top down multitasking platformer with a twist. To successfully guide two companions through a treacherous dungeon, you must split your attention and navigate both their fates at the same time.” This will be my first time playing it. (I might go into it early to make sure I know the controls ahead of time though, haven’t decided.)

Mindbug is a 2-player card game where each player has the opportunity to steal exactly 2 of their opponent’s 10 cards throughout the course of a game.

On your turn, you either attack with a creature you have in play or play a creature from your hand. When you play a creature, your opponent has a chance to use one of their two mindbugs to steal that creature and treat it as if they played it themself. Mindbugs do not replenish so figuring out what to play when and when to mindbug your opponent is incredibly interesting. I highly recommend the game. (I just bought enough base sets and expansions to have 5 full sets to gift to people.) [Review by Tom Vasel from the Dice Tower]

 

April 2022 Dark Draft Monthly Vods

We had a bunch of good games this Dark Draft monthly, so I put them on Youtube. First video is out now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z94XJ9ZeWC0. The remainder of the videos are scheduled to come out at 9am for the next few days until we either get knocked out or win the tournament. They can be found on my channel in my April 2022 Dark Draft Monthly Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z94XJ9ZeWC0&list=PLsAW_960yJBFrVH6Sfnf7YxFC06P8Gjzu

All Day Epic Kickstarter Stream

According to FedEx, my Epic Guardians of Gowana (Jungle) kickstarter is set to arrive by end of day tonight. Assuming they don’t lose it (again), I am planning on going through all of the new cards and giving my initial impressions on them Sunday May 23rd. I have seen some spoilers, and there are a few spicy ones already. After that, I’ll spend a ton of time deck building. I’ll also be more than happy to work out any suggested ideas from chat and/or give feedback on any decks. HOWEVER, I make no guarantees that my suggestions will be worthwhile because I already know I have no idea how to effectively play some of the new cards (which excites me greatly).

I’ll probably start around 8am CDT with breaks to eat some ramen and play in the Dark Draft weekly at 11am CDT.

March 2021 Constructed Monthly

I said I would put this tournament up on Youtube because there were some great games, and I have finally started doing so. The first game is up now, and I’ll post the next game at 7pm Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday until I get knocked out, followed by a deck explanation video. The deck is midrange (obviously) but also combo, built around Mist Guide Herald and a card I considered trash tier for a long time (until Duels).

Game 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN0angM1RVw

Infest (Epic Duels Rating)

Images used with permission from White Wizard Games. These are not the final card files and are subject to change.

Draft

Spreadsheet: Card Draw
Category: Tech [Gold-Punisher and combo] A-Tier
Internal Category Tier:

Constructed

Tier 6

I want to like this card because this plus Little Devil is a two-card combo that threatens 14 damage, but I just don’t think it’s viable. (Secret Legion + Revolt is 21.) I brought it to the No Core Constructed Monthly to help support Demonic Rising as a combo kill against Kark, got crushed by a more controlling Evil token deck without it (no one brought Kark). Overall, I was never in a position where I could play it when my opponent’s gold was down and they had no blockers, which admittedly could have been due to me building the deck sub-optimally.

As an “Or Draw 2” it’s never bad in limited, and it can always just be a blitzing 7/7 on-turn gold-punisher. Even with just two zombies that can attack, it adds 13/13 in stats to the board for a single turn. One thing I realized at the end of that tournament and nearly forgot now is that it is actually decent off-turn no stop your opponent’s onslaught. Much worse than off-turn Justice Prevails, Battle Cry, or Demonic Rising if you have a board, but okay, and it comes with a 7/7 blocker.

Maybe you want this in a deck that’s running both Little Devil and Guilt Demon (and maybe future blitzing 0-cost Evil champions)? Overall though, it is difficult to fit 1-cost cards that primarily just buff your champions in play for attacks, and Demonic Rising will almost always be significantly better and Justice Prevails isn’t that far behind it…However, this in a Krieg deck seems like it could be terrifying. Krieg in play assuming its initial 2 zombies are gone, play Eager Necromancer into this for 3 6/6 blitzing zombies, a 3/3 blitzing zombie, a 7/7 blitzing demon and an 11/11 Krieg. This provides 19/19 worth of blitzing stats, still not great but maybe the rest of the Evil token/combo package rounds it out. (I’m really looking forward to Krieg.)

[Unfortunately this is the last rating I have written up for now. On the plus side, I am in the process of getting pre-approved for my home loan and will be interviewing real estate agents immediately afterwards, so progress on that front.]