Custom Palette Showcase - Secrets; Keep 'em or Reveal 'em?

Hello to you all realmrunners and welcome to another Custom Palette Showcase!

Today I though I'd take a slightly different approach as I thought I'd share my Secret palette based around Lord Eldrich Willard however, given the different ways you can approach utilising Secret as a strategy, which I discussed in my Keyword Highlight article here, I thought I'd present show the slight differences in each approach that you can take with it. So without further ado let's start with my personal favourite and the original plan for this article; stealing your opponent's resources with Lord Eldrich Willard.

As stated earlier, this Palette aims to take advantage of stealing your opponent's resources before they even get to see them and control those they are able to deploy. It has a mixed win condition; although the resolves generally point to a Chroma focus, if you manage to build up enough Secrets on your canvas you'll find Lord Eldrich Willard's resolve is sometimes able to steal you the win, literally. Let's go over the cards.

Lord Eldrich Willard - Quite a big focus of the palette; the longer he sticks the more he steals, both in terms of resolve and physical cards from your opponent's Palette.

Soloman Rift - Another card that can repeatedly steal your opponent's cards from their Palette, also has an impressive 5 strength & shard value and can swap out cards that you think would be dead for something potentially stronger.

Murky Manor & Peorth - Both in here to Reveal Lord Eldrich Willard as soon as possible; both cards form a chain with each other and, with no other Achrom cards in the Palette, they're guaranteed to find him.

Summon the Harvest - Ideal situation you deploy this to effectively spend 3 shards to boost Lord Eldrich Willard's resolve by 5 to finish off your opponent or, worst case, you get to rearrange your next 5 cards and turn bad ones into Secrets to benefit off of them.

Ludlam City Guard & Ludlam City Gate - Work as a combo to act as removal at the right time, Ludlam City Gate also makes decent trade fodder when you need to boost your shards to play other cards.

Luxmorn Fisherman, Luxmorn Villager & Luxmorn Market - Standard Secret cards; Luxmourn Villager also has the ability to pull out surprisingly large bursts of Gain if you've put a lot of Secrets on your Canvas.

Serpent's Stow Tavern - Enables you to move all of your Secrets onto a location which, in turn, makes them harder to remove. Also makes it so that, if you feel the need to reveal them all, it's only costing you a single card to do it. Another card that can be traded for 4 as well.

Bothy - Allows you to give Lord Eldrich Willard, or any character that's particularly key in that moment, Protection.

Curdle Woods, Fireball & Riptide - Standard control cards; note the lack of Achrom cards to prevent missing on Murky Manor & Peorth.

Luxmorn Main Street - Gives you the ability to deploy a Secret without losing the keeper; especially useful if you see a powerful card because of Soloman Rift's ability.

Muon Sphere - Allows you to shut down powerful Characters and gets around Protection.

Elixir - Enables temporary Protection if you can't get to Bothy quick enough.

Some cards you can consider putting into this build.

Achrom Converter - If you want to forgo the more consistent method of getting to Lord Eldrich Willard as soon as possible, given the decent amount of locations, this gives you some powerful control that's hard to remove.

Green Raven - Allows you to see what you're potentially going to steal as a Secret before you do, if you wait till your opponent goes to end their turn. This can potentially interrupt the Murky Manor & Peorth combo as it's an Achrom card

Apprehend - If you've put Protection on a Character this almost perfectly traps the opponent's Character under it, however requires setup to pull off or relies on your Characters always being stronger than your opponent's.

Restock & Rune Stones - Draw power to help you dig further into your Palette.

Now let's take a look at the other direction you can take Secrets; utilising the free Deploy rather than keeping them hidden. Here's a list more geared towards that.

A lot of the abilities in this Palette are focused on getting as much value as you can out of Erasing your Keepers. What you'll notice almost straight away if this build is definitely more Chroma focused with Achrom resolves being sprinkled in mainly as a coincidence as the cards they're attached to act as a great benefit to you. I won't repeat myself on the cards already discussed above so let's look at the others.

Phisto - With the aim of getting value out or Erasing the Keepers, what better way than a Legendary that regains you the shards you spent AND draws you a card on top whenever a card is Erased on your Canvas.

Detective Vraxea - Effectively allows you a free reveal of a Secret per turn and her resolve will usually give you enough shards to redeploy the Character.

Luxmorn Lighthouse - A once per turn Secret ability that allows you a free reveal per turn which, considering it and Soloman Rift are both able to take a Secret every turn, can result in you quite heavily outpacing your opponent if you can keep it around.

Cintimani Stone - With you Erasing a lot of your own cards this allows you to grab something key back if needed.

Green Raven - As discussed in the alternate options above; this allows you to see what's coming which is more key to this build as it's aiming to get the best cards possible to reveal as Secrets

Galley's Arch - Without the Ludlam City Guard & Ludlam City Gate combo this just gives you a location with strong Gain.

Willard Family Crypt - Allows you to re-use a Keeper when necessary, especially useful if it has a powerful action like Serpent's Stow Tavern & Luxmorn Villager have the potential to do.

Corrupted Muon Trap & Hostile Takeover - Staple control cards for Salum Palettes.

Haim Shard Cache - Being able to run Achrom cards in this build, due to not relying on the Murky Manor & Peorth combo, this provides a good trade value as well as the ability to surprise anyone leaving themselves low on shards with an Achrom win.

Revival - Gets your Characters back if they were Erased in combat or needed to be Erased to reveal a Secret.

Some alternative options for this style of palette.

Achrom Converter - As above; with a decent Location count, excellent control piece if you think it would serve you better than one of the other Rares.

Kaunan - If you removed Fireball, this will hit either Phisto or Soloman Rift who are both powerful pieces in this Palette.

Rabid Dog - If you can set this up alongside Detective Vraxea you can effectively freely erase Characters through combat

Otrix's Conjuring - If you choose to include Rabid Dog this enables you to Dig for it or Phisto give you greater resilience without relying on the Protection of Bothy.

Arabella's Recipe - With quite a few of the cards in the Palette having both Achrom and Chroma colours on them this can be a surprise hit to your opponent's shard bank when they're not expecting it.

That's all from me for now guys - do let me know if you found this way of approaching custom Palette building more interesting or helpful!

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