We are in the most glorious phase of a new set. Players are just getting their hands on the new cards, and excitement about the new strategies is at an all time high.
Players want to Masquerade into Garrl, slam a Round 1 Usane Barge, or play Kujo alongside the new Soul of Fury, but at the same time they know that Manifold Promotional League Season 2 is just around the corner. There simply aren’t enough hours in a day, or Fridays in a week, to try everything; so I am falling back on some classic TCG theory. If the metagame is not established, threats are better than answers. To me, being aggressive is synonymous with playing Chain Plasma Rifle. Eileen showed us how powerful Lucca Alson, of the Staff can be. I previously paired him with Barica Evander as his bodyguard, but we have a new tool that allows us to be aggressive against the hapless new decks, while also being able to absorb pressure in the mirror.
This week, I am talking about Lucca Alson paired with Vince Teem, Chief Executive and his Specialized card, “Armistice”.
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Lucca Alson puts you up stats right out of the gate. Not only do you get to play both Chain Plasma Rifle and Blessing of the Cloth, Lucca will give you an extra red dice the first three times you can play something on him. In exchange for this early power spike, Lucca puts a target on his own head, and you lose all that infrastructure when you lose him. Docide Underworlds shores up this weakness in three ways.
Armistice lets you convert excess stats, of any type, into Sabotage. Sabotage is especially powerful in flagship archetypes, where one more activation of your stacked hero (usually the 3rd activation) can be an insurmountable advantage.
Vince’s ability to activate a structure when you activate him makes your first structure, whether that is Lurelat Satelite, IP Assembly, or Antisilic Transmission, have all the tempo benefits usually only afforded by attachments. This means your tempo stays up in the final rounds, even after Lucca falls.
And the last one, perhaps the most exciting, is the inclusion of Lurelat Deputy. A trigger that allows you to resolve Shield and Physical damage means Blue Dice let you choose between aggression and defense as is necessary for the break point. This might be the best deck in the game at narrowly defeating your opponent’s first hero, while narrowly protecting your own.
I’ve never love the flagship archetype. I’ll typically opt to go wide rather than tall so that I can more easily come back after early misfortune. There is no denying that these attachment strategies are among the most powerful in the game, though. In Docide Underworlds, I get to blue the line between Tall and Wide, and I get to keep my Lucca safe into the late game.
I would definitely choose to be on Vince into the Rylo match up, and I think that Rylo is going nowhere as the premier aggro threat.
What do you think? How do you feel about eschewing Battle Ready because it only has 3 durability? What do you think I should trim to make room for tricks like Ambush, Terror, and Overcharge?
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