Chapter Analysis - Rise of the Realm Runners

 Welcome to you all guys to the next chapter analysis, rounding off the first chapter we have the numerous expansions I've touched on; Rise of the Realm Runners.


Due to this being a collection of expansions for each realm I'll be structuring this slightly differently; I'll go through the new realmless cards and then the key cards from each realm and what they add to the original sets.

Here we also got the introduction of Dispose as a keyword which gives you the limited ability of reacting on your opponent's turn as well as Reveal which gave us a more randomised version of Find that also could be influenced to work as well as the latter depending on your palette list.  

Realmless Cards

This wave of support introduced a whole new type of card, dubbed Realmless, which could be used in any palette at all. These cards are currently among some of the most powerful due to their wide flexibility. Starting off let's look into the rifts & runes that come with each colour.

The realm rifts are all locations that gain, or drain in Achrom Breach's case, an amount of shards equal to the number of cards you control with that particular colour shard on your canvas and also allow you to Reveal a card with that colour shard once per turn; while the coloured variations have not seen a huge amount of use, Achrom Breach has become the main legendary card used in a lot of achrom palettes due to the combination of huge drain potential as well as card advantage you can gain off it, or alternatively allowing you to trade once per turn without giving up a draw for it.


The realm runes are actions that serve a similar purpose to the rifts; they reveal a card with a particular colour shard whilst also gaining you, or draining your opponent in Peorth's case, equal to the number of cards you control of that colour. Whilst the gain or drain potential might seem the most obvious use of these cards, they are also often used as psuedo-Find abilities for the key card of your palette if it contains a shard that no other cards in your palette have.


When it comes to the realm runners themselves and their realm relics I could easily be here for an entire article just on them so, to keep things a little simpler, I will highlight the main ones that see more use.


Ray is easily one of the most infamous legendaries in all of Achroma at this time; with a whole custom palette named after that has continually sparked much debate within the community and become the benchmark of 'top tier'. Phisto & Yana are the next biggest names from the realm runners with the former having great synergy with the Secret and Sacrifice keywords, whilst the latter is often used to head palettes designed around a single shard colour as she has the potential to be a large gain resolve.

With regards to the relics you'll find arguably the most potentially powerful card in the game with Cintimani Stone; as a 5 strength object it can turn even your smallest characters into heavy hitters that can take down legendaries whilst also giving you access to some recurrsion, including form your opponent's dregs, and a solid resolve of 2 steal and then, to top it all off, if needed you can then trade it for 5 as well so it can always fuel other plays in a desperate situation. The other notable relics are Jamshid Orb, which provides you with some powerful protection for key characters, and Dyrnwyn and Club of Dagda which both give you great ways of increase your combat strength and using it a source of shard gain to help fuel further plays.

From here let's look at the main cards to come out for each realm, and how much they changed the original sets.

Salum

Easily the biggest impact out of the expansions, for Salum, was Corrupted Muon Trap; giving you the ability to outright steal an opponent's key character and basically have it with an increased strength until the object was destroyed, potentially draining your opponent of resources they could use to answer your other cards or taking the win for yourself that turn.
Achrom Blast and Arrabella's Recipe come not far behind for me; before the world of the seasonal promos that allowed you to effectively drain 2 from your opponent for free, these cards gave you some big impact drain or steal that you could deploy at any point during your turn and made any real setup a threat if they couldn't reduce how many cards you hand on the canvas overall.


Hex Clunker Parts, alongside the above mentioned Corrupted Muon Trap and other objects already in the original Curse of Curdle Hill set, meant we saw the rise of Hex Clunker as a powerful control-based palette that used runes to find the legendary asap and then keep recycling objects to boost their own resolve or interrupt their opponents setup.

Draco

Sacrifice saw a big boost in support with this expansion with several cards being released to help you get the best benefit from the extra cost behind the cards as well as Phisto coming into the game as mentioned earlier.


Impundulu Feather and Crucial Discovery are also very noteworthy cards to come out of this set, providing excellent Protection and search abilities to your palettes if needed.

Lastly there is also a personal favourite control card of mine, Claw Slash, which gives you the ability to erase any card that has 3 or less shards or weakening a character enough that one of your smaller characters can erase it in combat.

Spirata

This saw the introduction of several Reveal cards which could support a variety of strategies.

Along with Ray being brought into the game this set also introduced a real underdog in Dr Hue's Lab Coat which was quite a big enabler for the infamous Rayders palette; providing it with a strong object for combat, high cost for trading, all colours to maximise Blueprint Swirl's resolve and blocking of steal and drain resolves for a turn.

  Norso

For Norso these expansions leaned further into the object focus of the original whilst also weaving in some decent Reveal cards that had more of a focus on the factions' cards.


Most notable out of this was Orium Diamond which provided Norso palettes with a card that could net them a decent amount of gems.

It should also be mentioned that some decent character control options were added to the realm’s arsenal as well.




That's all from me for now guys!

If you wish to purchase any product from the Achroma website use my 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! 


Achroma online store - https://achroma.games/all-products

Achroma site - https://achroma.games/


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