Competitive Talk - Shard Management

 Hello there Realm Runners!

With me going on holiday this week I thought I’d use my travel time to put some thoughts out there on a general topic that’s geared towards those who think more competitively about the game.

One of the most unique aspects of Achroma is that your resource that you use to play your cards is directly tied to the win condition of the game; your shard bank. This is quite different to most games, like Magic: the Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh!, where your life total is effectively just a number and as long as you have some it makes no real difference to the state of the game as a whole.

With this said, one of the most difficult things to grasp in the game, in a competitive sense, is how to best manage your shard bank to get the most value out of every card you play and get to your victory condition faster. If you’re too cautious you may not have enough gain or drain and your opponent will overtake you. Be too rash and overspend on your cards too soon and you could end up in a similar situation as it may take you longer to recover the shards you spent or your opponent may have answers to your big plays before you get the full value out of them.

Whilst how you build your palette has a big impact on how you plan to manage your shards, there’s a general pattern you should keep in mind when playing a game depending on your goal whether you’re going for a Chroma win or an Achrom win.

Chroma

In an ideal situation, your first turn will pay for itself or more on the resolve without you having to trade to pay for it. So, for example, you’d look to play cards like Ruber Draco and Monastery Nest which literally pay for themselves so that, next turn, you’ll just be gaining more off of them.

You can then put your shards to use, next turn, on cards like Minima Draco to allow you to try and find more cards to play for bigger gains like Chroma Storehouse, Vast Volitarus, or possibly even both!


It’s worth noting that, playing these cards in the correct order (Chroma Storehouse last after you’ve played everything else) and assuming you draw 2 cards off of Minima, will result in you ending your second turn on 25 shards without trading meaning that, if you a 5 shard or higher value card to trade, you could be looking at a turn 2 win! 

This demonstrates how explosive a typical Chroma deck can be, of course there are exceptions like the notoriously powerful Rayder palettes which rely more on trading than their resolve to gain their shards but it’s still worth taking into account playing your cards in the correct order to get the most value out of them. Sometimes this will mean that, even if you draw your legendary or a powerful rare on the first turn, you shouldn’t play it the first chance you get. To relate to the earlier example let’s throw Dexter, Master of Dragons into the equation.


Had we played Dexter in the first turn he would’ve gained us an extra shard from his resolve however he would also have been a big removal target for our opponent. Instead, if we held back playing him until our 2nd turn over the Vast Volitarus, he’d then be netting us an extra 3 shards and allow Ruber to take out an opposing character with a shard value of up to 2 before our opponent could respond meaning we have got more value out of him even if Dexter is then removed on the opponent’s next turn. 

Achrom

Much like in Chroma palettes, you need to be aiming to get good value out of the cards you deploy however this should be measured by how many shards you can remove from your opponent’s bank rather than how many you can put in your own. Whilst it’s important to try and maintain a good amount in your own bank, you’ll often find the biggest hitters you can put down only drain your opponent so you may have to either fall back on trading or finding space for some gain resolves in your palette to compensate for this.

The most powerful resolves in Achrom palettes you’ll often find come from a few key cards that get exponentially stronger the more of something you have out like the cards below.


Much like my advice above, these are cards that if you can afford to play them after you’ve put down more cards of the required type first, will have a larger impact and give you much better value. This is especially true for character-based resolves as they can often be easier to remove thanks to objects buffing things up & poisonous cards.

This more technical requirement of Achrom palettes has lead a lot of them to become more control-focused, making us of removal to stunt the opponent’s shard gains to make their drain and steal effects that much more damaging whilst also forcing them to spend more of their shards, as well as trade their bigger value cards, to stabilise.

Actions

A special mention is needed for the role Actions play in both strategies; some of these cards are able to flip a game to put you ahead or hammer home the win where you would’ve otherwise started to fall behind. The best examples of these are the Runes from the Rise of the Realm Runners expansions.


If you build your palette to take full advantage of it, these can give you potentially huge swings in shards. Currently Peorth is the main one used in this way whereas the others are mainly used to find specific cards rather than for their shard gains but it’s something to bear in mind. These aren’t totally unique though as there’s plenty of actions (and characters with actions on them) that can give you a significant form of instant resolve from every realm, below are a few examples of these.


Trading

Unless your palette is focused on this, this is something of a secondary thought after you’ve got enough cards to drive home your win condition; for Chroma decks its nice to have high value cards to open up trading as a step to winning and for Achrom it’s always good to have them as an option to fuel your plays and put more pressure on your opponent’s shard bank, but it’s best these cards have good synergy with your palette in the first place to make best use of them in the event that you can play them. To the benefit of Achrom decks, there’s also ways to synergise your theme with trading if it has a repeatable dig ability like Occultists’s Den which would then allow you maintain a decent shard bank at the cost of one of your draws per turn.



In summary, you effectively want to be making sure that in the beginning, for every shard you spend you’re gaining just as much back, taking just a much from your opponent or even more so you are able to keep ahead then use following turns to either go for a sudden burst from cards like Chroma Storehouse or any of your actions, or deploy your exponentially increasing speed resolve cards like Dexter Master of Dragons, Countess Issadora Curdle or Spiral Traitorous to seal your victory!



Just a quick reminder for you all - we are currently in Spirata Fall Season! That means any purchase of £30 or more made on the Achroma Store will automatically have the new promo card included with their order!


For anyone that’s going - the Achroma team are also going to be at MCM Comic Con next weekend. Join the discord to find out where they’ll be as well! There’s also some new reveals and showcases coming up very soon so plenty of exciting things to come!



That's all from me for now guys! As I mentioned at the beginning I’m away for the rest of the week however I’ve got plenty of ideas lined up for when I return, including lots of custom palettes to show off and break down for anyone looking for some inspiration to get creative!

If you wish to purchase any product from the Achroma website I’ve set up an affiliate link that will get you 5% off your purchases. Simply follow the link below or use the code ‘antinomy93’ when you checkout.

See ya real soon folks! 





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