Competitive Talk - Promotional Locations.... Do you need them to win?
Hello guys welcome to another Competitive Talk article!
Today I thought I'd go a little into a discussion on the promotional cards that have come with every set of Achroma so far and their relevance in the competitive scene and if there’s any alternatives to them in a pinch.
Firstly let's look at the cards themselves
At face value, they already have a lot going for them; they're Locations so they're harder to remove; they have a high Shard Value so it makes them great Trade fodder; the Steal 2 Resolve means they have great applications in both Achrom and Chroma strategies; 4 Shard Value also puts them at a level that means, at the time of writing this, you need multiple cards that inflict shard damage to them to Erase them, unless you use a card that just straight Erases Locations.
As well as this there they have some great syngergies with power cards within their realms, whether they be Actions or other Locations.
The two Salum promo locations have both an Achrom and Chroma shard on them meaning they add to the effects of both Achrom Blast and Arabella's Recipe.
Both of the Draco promos locations have cyan coloured shards on them meaning they strengthen the effects of Chroma Storehouse, Ice Falls and Chroma Overflow.
For Spirata, if you have both promo locations in play, they give you the highest possible resolve from Blueprint Swirl, plus there is a good amount of cards within The Fall of Flutterby that reduce certain shard colour’s costs meaning you can deploy them for cheaper.
Norso, only currently having the one promo location and set for support, has yet to show any big synergies outside of the benefits stated at the beginning so we'll have to wait and see what comes from that in the next set.
But what if you don't have them? Well there are some cards within the realms that are able to make up for if you don't have them, however they are definitely not as versatile or powerful as the promo locations.
In Salum you could use Road to Ludlam and Cove Caves to fill the gap although they cost half as much to deploy they only have half the steal, but still synergise with the aforementioned Achrom Blast and Arabella's Recipe.
In Draco you have a couple of locations similar to the above, although if you're intent on getting that cyan shard synergy going there is Floating Wasteland which, although it only drains 1 and costs 3 to deploy, also has some hand disruption to go along with it.
In Spirata there's a whole host of cards that can make Blueprint Swirl get to it's maximum resolve so, unless you're making a Location-focused Palette, there's no big loss to not having them as long as you have the rest of the set available to you.
So back to the original question; Do you have to use them to win? Honestly, not all the time; you don’t have to use them as there are several strategies that don’t need to use them. However, that being said, there are some competitive Palettes, such as the heavy Location-based Draco control Palette, which won the Spirata Fall GT, that Echo showcases in his article here, that do rely on both the Draco promos quite heavily due their cyan colours synergising well with the several cards in the Palette.
If you ever want to get your hands on these promos they come with the First Edition Collections and are normally given out with each item pre-ordered from a First Edition set, whether you get the Collection or just a single box. There's also the Mystery Bags that come with a couple of location promos in them as well as a guaranteed alt art card too!
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