Crystal Clans: Bringing it Home
Replenishing, invading, and reshuffling
It's week 3 of our Crystal Clans previews! The past couple weeks, we've investigated zones, initiative and scoring, and also summoning, activating and battling. Be sure to check out those previews if you haven't yet! This week is our last week of going over the basics of Crystal Clan's ruleset. Next week, we bring you the clans! But because Crystal Clans is such a fresh and stand-out game, we wanted to first teach you about the system.
The mechanics we're bringing you this week are not what happens every turn, but they are the parts of the game whose key moments can really help swing things toward victory or defeat.
Replenishing
With all that summoning and scoring and battling, you're going to be out of cards in hand quick. There are some disadvantages to this. You need units in hand to summon, and if your hand is empty, you'll have to play a random card from your draw pile for battles.
So our fourth action, after scoring, summoning, activating, and battling, is replenishing. To take a replenish action, spend 3 initiative. Then you may discard any cards you wish and you may draw cards until you have 5 cards in hand. It's tough to choose the right moment to replenish. Stretch what you have? Or give up the initiative and give yourself plenty of options?
Gain the Soren's Bounty crystal at just the right time, and you can replenish for free one time.
Invading
You want to control the crystal zones in order to score, and your home zone is important to you for summoning. But what about your opponent's home zone? Any reason to go there?
Invading is an action a player can take if she controls her opponent's home zone. She pays 3 initiative, and discards cards from her opponent's draw pile equal to her invading squad's total attack value.
Why care about your opponent's draw pile? Because when your opponent's draw pile runs out, he reshuffles his discard pile, but YOU then get to take a free score action, choosing and keeping a crystal without having to pay initiative. The player who performs a key invade action at the right moment can often be the difference in the game.
If you found the Song of Plagues, that can help you get there too.
So those are all the basics of Crystal Clans! A ton of the game is also in the cards, so I'm excited to introduce you to the clans starting next week. Vote in the poll below and let us know which clan you want to hear about first.
Past Crystal Clans Previews
Game Page, Announcement Article
Game Basics: The Battlefield, Initiative and Scoring, Squads, Summoning and Activating
Art Previews: Blood Clan, Flower Clan, Meteor Clan, Skull Clan, Stone Clan, Water Clan
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Posted by Joe Ellis |
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