Advanced Ashes: The Flip Side of Illusions

Advanced Ashes is a weekly series covering advanced Ashes strategies. Each week, a different Ashes player will showcase two cards, exploring their strengths and synergies. Visit the PlaidHatGames.com Ashes store, as well as the online Ashes deckbuilder.

I love destroying my opponent’s units. It’s probably my 2^nd favorite thing to do in Ashes (aside from winning of course). At times, I’ll just kill a unit for fun, just because I can. When Victoria’s cards came out and I looked through them, it was obvious that there would be 2 cards that would make my dreams of destroying units a reality in Illusion, in new and creative ways! So join me in mercilessly destroying your opponent’s units.

The first card I fell in love with is To Shadows. Giving up a spellboard slot is a pretty major concession. I get it. You can slot a Chant or a Summon or a nice utility card like Empower. I’m telling you, though, To Shadows is worth putting in because it makes attacking your opponent so much more effective! As a side action, you can make one of their units an Illusion. If they let the unit take a hit of even one damage, it’s dead. D. e. a. d. dead. Try doing this on an exhausted unit, so they only get to choose to lose the unit or take the damage with their Phoenixborn (and your unit is still alive). It’s a great way to get rid of a unit with high recover value that you wouldn’t have the Attack value to take out this round.

Inherently, To Shadows is a nice card, but let’s start talking about our other card and how it makes it absolutely amazing.

Body Inversion is not a cheap card. It’s 2 Illusion Class cost is pretty spendy. However, being able to switch the attack value and life value of one of your units is pretty incredible. Turning that hound into a 5 attack value beast is really awesome! It also has the added value of being able to take those 2 dice you just spent and get them back as Power symbols. Essentially, this makes Body Inversion a free card with a double meditate for a main action when you play it on a unit that has the Illusion ability.

Now let’s have some fun.

You can use To Shadows on any unit, yours or an opponent’s. Once you use it, that unit has the illusion ability. So you can now get 2 dice back through Body Inversion for the cost of just 1 die to make a unit all shadowy. Are you concerned about the low life value of your Flash Archers? Use To Shadows on them, add in a Body Inversion, and suddenly they are so much harder to get rid of.

But you can also use Body Inversion on any unit, including your opponent’s. If they want to run Living Dolls, you can smile as you invert them into a 0 life unit, destroying them without dealing any damage. Are they running Dread Wraith and already have 1 damage on it? Throw a Body Inversion on them and watch that wraith disappear. The unexpected death of a unit your opponent was relying on can cause a momentum swing in your direction. Oh and that glow finch? Consider it dead.

There are a few other tricks you can leverage with these cards, but I’ll leave those to you to discover. What I would say is take some time to see what you can craft and build around with the core mechanics of these cards; I think you’ll be happy you did.

Possible Deck List:
Jessa
10 Illusion
Fear 3x
Body Inversion 3x
To Shadows 2x
Fade Away 3x
Shadow Hound 3x
Shadow Spirit 3x
Flash Archer 3x
Hidden power 3x
Steady Gaze 2x
Particle Shield 3x
False Demon 2x

Next week: Some alterations that aren't nice...

Visit the PlaidHatGames.com Ashes store, as well as the online Ashes deckbuilder.

Previous Advanced Ashes Articles
Week 1: Blood Chains and Butterfly Monk
Week 2: Frost Bite and Ice Trap
Week 3: Anchornaut and Summon Sleeping Widows