Deep Benders! Boosting Units
Benders change how Deep Dwarf units pay for their magic
Happy Labor Day to our US fans. Happy Preview Day to all our fans!
Today we start unveiling the Deep Benders, the Summoner Wars Alliances faction resulting from the Benders and the Deep Dwarves.
The Benders use psychomancy to mess with their opponents' abilities, draw pile, movement, and even their control; the Deep Dwarves use gem magic to increase their stats, move units around, and manipulate magic piles. I was curious: how would these abilities combine?
The answer is in the magic cost. The DD magic is costly: most of their units need to pay a Magic Point to use their ability, every turn they use it. But the Deep Bender Summoner Endrich has found a way to make that cost happen just once, and last permanently, for his units. This is called Boosting. Here is how it works:
Essentially, you decide whether to boost a unit when it is summoned. If you do, you pay the extra Boost Cost and place a Boost Marker on the card. Without the marker, the unit has no ability; with the marker, the ability is permanent, unaffected by opponents' cards. There is more to learn later, but let's see the units that are boosted:
A boosted Geopath becomes an impressive ranged unit: Attack Value 2, range 5.
A boosted Gem Priestess is a powerful healer, removing 1 wound from every friendly adjacent Common and Champion for just 1 MP total! With 4 Life Point, to boot.
A boosted Deep Dragon is tougher and faster.
Of course, other Deep Dwarf and Bender Summoners can use these boosted units. But Endrich is not content with simply boosting them. There are several other things he does -- which we will see next week.
