Draco Chapter 2 - New Keywords

Good day to all you Realm Runners out there! 

This is a relatively short one today going over a quick introduction to the new keywords coming up in the next Draco Planum set - The Last Snow Dragons of Altari - along with a snippet of how it might faire vs current keywords we have access to.

Hunt

Once per turn you may select a Character on another player’s Canvas. If, at the start of your next turn, both your Character that started the Hunt & the hunted Character are still on their respective canvas’ then you resolve the Hunt effect.

Whilst this might seem like a slow mechanic at first glance you need to remember this can potentially be done every turn. So if a game happens to draw out a bit more to the point where a quick victory isn’t going to happen then you’ll find that Hunt effects will allow you to keep the advantage going as a lot of their abilities, such as on Ogul above, are ‘free’ advantage over time.

Whilst this does get countered by keywords such as Claim & Restrain (which both end the Hunt as it moves one of the targets) or a pre-emptively set up Divert board, it gets massive support from other keywords from Chapter 1 such as Protection and Defend. Also, whilst not as big of a threat at the moment, the Brisgavi’s signature keyword of Rage gives them some capacity to knock out multiple hunters with a single Character although this is one that will probably be clear to see coming as it is relatively slow to set up and often costly in terms of shards. So although this may not currently seem as strong as you’d like as a mechanic due to the speed at which Palettes such as Fairies and Pixies can really blitz to a Chroma or Achrom win, keep an eye on it because it has a lot of potential.

Freeze

When you Freeze a card it cannot do any of its gain/drain/steal or prevent abilities until the end of the controlling player’s turn.


A simple, yet incredibly powerful, keyword here! There are certain cards in the game that, by themselves, can have huge resolve abilities (Countess Issadora Curdle, Vast Volitarus and Blueprint Swirl all being great examples of this) and Freeze simply turns them off for a turn meaning you could set yourself to drain them next turn knowing they can’t gain as many Shards, protect your Shard Bank from their biggest Steal/Drain on the board at the time or turn off their Prevent ability that could be blocking you from defeating them that turn!  This also hinders cards such as the ever-popular Asa and Apollo for a turn which can completely shut down their win-con for a turn too!

Further to this we have already had cards revealed that Freeze entire boards by themselves which is just monstrous!

In terms of counters, outside of just playing more carefully into a Freeze focused Palette, or saving your big Resolve effects for the game winning play so they’re not as badly affected by Freeze, there really isn’t a lot that can directly combat this keyword once it goes off as it isn’t affected by keywords like Protection at all. For the individual targeting Freeze effects you can try to use Divert to protect you but, from a competitive standpoint, the abilities that Freeze multiple cards at once are going to be much more widely played which means this will be that much harder to counter.


Get your First Edition of The Last Snow Dragons of Altari from the Achroma store website now!

Single box (2 random, pre-built Palettes from different Factions) - https://shop.achroma.cards/products/the-last-snow-dragons-of-altari-pre-order?bg_ref=J7ZPKlNvRK


That’s all from me for now - I’ll post another article soon regarding key cards from the set, particularly related to these new keywords, how best to use them as well as go more into what can help you to counter them.

If you do wish to purchase product from the Achroma website I’ve now 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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