Let's Discuss The Enlightened

[randomtango]

Finally won a game on Hard (first game, whoo!) using martial deck. I didn't start snowballing until I grabbed Spirit Walk and upgraded it. That allowed me to enter zen and play Spirit Walk repeatedly until stuff died.

I was using Better Future for vision, and added a black gem. I couldn't really use Better Future until it was upgraded and had that gem. I didn't find concentrate, and I struggled with energy the whole run. Any card with (3) energy cost meant I was choosing between zen and playing 2 cards that turn. I didn't have foresight the whole game. I thought foresight was what I wanted, but having sources of vision, weak and vulnerable was what I actually needed. This allowed me to practically always set up a following turn. If spirit walk was in my hand, I got rid of it. I'd play something with delay rage. I stacked a bit of weak and vulnerability. I forget which card, but having vision meant I only needed one card. Better Future play 1 pulls spirit walk and something useful to the top of my deck (vuln, block or delay rage, typically). Better Future's black void stone recur I used to pull better future and something else into my hand. Another card I really wanted was Mind Shatter. Didn't happen. I made it past the void around turn 11, and another turn or so and I would have been crushed.

A useful synergy was when my single blue void stone (what a lousy run, but I made it!) was in my hand, If there was something I really needed (block... always block) I knew the second better future card would be on the top of my deck.

There aren't any detailed card/synergy guides for this game. I'd do that, if I felt qualified, but I can barely make it to floor 3 on Hard. So if anyone has any good ideas (let's narrow it to general cards and Enlightened) let's break this open!

[Dabor]

One thing I could recommend would be checking out gameplay from https://www.twitch.tv/the_breakshift/videos?filter=archives if you're interested, he's probably the easiest source to go to to see high-level gameplay in action. I know he had some card reviews around, but I sadly couldn't seem to find them. Could poke him on the discord if you're interested, I suppose.

As for my two cents, I think getting your black gems in chain enablers is a big deal. Cards that either cost 0 (like an upgraded Switft Kick/Mind Blast or, effectively, Concentrate (+2 energy (Overcharge if upgraded)) or cards that essentially cost 0 due to replacing themselves by drawing - Maneuver, Stoicism upgraded, Battleplan and such. Spending 1 card and basically 0 energy to get 2 chain (with your first chain hopefully coming from an Opener) can make a turn wildly more efficient. If you get even one black gem over a run, that's easily a third of your turns with a hugely more efficient Zen for it. And if you use Vision to make sure that card leads *most* of your turns... you can imagine.

Something I'll give you a lot of credit on is being willing to use Shii cards with the Future Strike start. Due to Rage being the main damage booster, and working on both damage types, it's much more important to just go after high quality cards for most of the run. Strong synergy cards like Mind Shatter can be clutch later, but for most of a run you just want raw quality attacks, and they don't care which deck you started with.

[randomtango]

Thanks for the ideas. I came in to Hard using the same strategies as Normal (i.e. winging it). There's an actual difficulty curve, and now I know I need to put some effort in. Which is great--so many games only scale between easy and the AI will rubber band or cheat.

I came up with a big plan where I would pull my dream roster - delay rage, future strike a bunch, get vulnerability going, play a mind games to convert future strike to shi followed by a mind shatter for hundreds of damage on floor three. I also thought I would be using foresight to mitigate the costs. Well... That was unrealistic.

I'll test out a few more 2-3 card synergies before I watch the big boys do it. Unlike StS, I don't mind losing this game repeatedly. Every time I get stomped by the final four, I think, "that was preventable" or "I needed scaling on _". It'll click eventually.