Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn

Other Games
41

theres an ashes swiss tomorrow near me, and apprently the meta decided jessa is top tier out of core set.

I’ve played probably 25 games total, and the matchups felt very paper-rock-scissors to me, Maeoni and Jessa being two standouts.

Also there was a gilder ruling that you can fire gilder even with a full board, which seemed absolutely insane to me.

So I’m going to try to play Maeoni and see how it goes, I’ve primarily played mist spirit chant aggro decks until now. No TTS, no practice, gonna have to do it live.

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I’ve been hearing rumblings about Jessa all over. Some places it’s Jessa/Maeoni, others it’s Jessa/Aradel, but there’s always Jessa. I’d imagine Blood Puppets would mess Maeoni up but I don’t know the game well enough to say. Good luck charming those snakes.

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I can’t speak to summoner wars, but: way lower barrier to entry than mage wars, and imo generally more fun because of this. It has a quick and interesting pace that makes for fun gameplay and decent deckbuilding. Don’t be fooled by the dice or the non-random starting hand; they actually remove much of the RNG that plagues card games (you can very easily manage your dice rolls to be what you’d like 99% of the time) without introducing the analysis paralysis that so often goes along with mage wars’ “spellbook” concept.

additional note: All three are worse than netrunner (as are, of course, all games that are not netrunner), but what are you gonna do.

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44

Jessa is so strong because the summons and allies in the core with a couple of exceptions are crushed by fear and those that aren’t have their damage redirected. This lets Jessa stall until her unavoidable damage is lethal. People gravitate towards Maeoni because her snakes are hands down the best creature threat any of the PB have and they only need to sneak by a couple times to put most PB in range of being burned down with molten gold. Imo this game needs a big box expansion that could open up some branching play styles for each PB for it to really shine. Right now I’d don’t like custom deck building because every card feels thematically tied to the PB default decks. Enchanted violinist and anchornauts are staples but for me it just weird putting them with other pbs because the art doesn’t line up.

45

So the jessa deck that is strong, is strong because of direct damage there is so much removal that 3 pb damage for two dice is good value. Jessa gets extra damage off of all the high value removal is all.

Maeonis snake cant be dealt with for less dice than it costs to make except fear. Snake is like the only value engine in the game. Mist spirits a distant second.

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This is very true. Card synergies are very prepackaged and the small card pool doesn’t help.

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Fear is such a bonkers thing to be attached to a character. Granted all of the PB-exclusive cards are neat, but free removal is insaaaaaane.

Regarding upcoming stuff, Brennan and Rin both seem pretty neat. Rin is more my kind of character (get big bodies, swing for face) but Brennan seems better and potentially super strong. It seems like he could snowball really fast if you don’t keep his board in check.

Also I really want to build a Hypno deck around this guy:
http://www.plaidhatgames.com/images/u/dread_wraith_preview.jpg

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all the high defense cards are interesting I think because it offers some new value options. The 2 unit dread wrath limit is a problem, and I think its 3 dice to summon?

The focus abil is nice because exhaust tokens are the easy answer to high life that isn’t fear.

Rin himself seems terrible to me, while bren is crazy. There is probably a deck out there where Bren uses polar bears that get thrown for 2 face after opponent commits dice and damage to it.

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Yeah, being able to spend 3 ceremonial to get another huge body and wake up one you’ve already got is strong. Especially nice since it’s just a main action to focus, no dice required. Rin’s not great, but if you’re going to stick Ice Buff on anything it should be a Wraith I guess.

Bears having Spite makes me happy and I want to combo them with Massive Growth/Hypno. There’s probably a better way.

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50

I haven’t played a hypno deck, tonight will be my first time playing maeoni. I think i put x1 or 2 in, shifting mists snakes strat.

I’ve only played reg-ass aradel, and Chant of Revenge Mist Spirits aggro noah.

3 dice is a lot for a summon, but dreads better than birds by a mile and no focus cost is great. Stuff like dread make dimonoa pretty laughable too - really stepping on her toes with a great 3 drop and refresh effect.

so wraith situation is you have 1 out at start of turn because 1/6 is pretty sticky afaik, if your opponent swings at you, you can threaten to block or redirect to threaten to make 2 swings with a buffed wraith - so

you can’t swing with it and you can’t drop the next wraith, so anything you can fill in with that window seems good.

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51

Snakes/Gilders/Mists seems really good. Constant pings lead to snakes getting fed, fat snakes win games. Plus Maeoni cares the least about Jessa’s ability. Good luck in the swiss.

Because I have a one-track mind some more dumb wraith stuff: dropping a 1/6 with rage turn 1 means no one is swinging for a bit. Crystal Shield is fairly cheap and lets you give a wraith 2 more life and Unit Guard. Now early game is an angry staring contest and no one is happy.

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52

early game has been that way a lot, no one wants to trade unfavorably, so its a big stall war more often than not it seems. Thats why those spells that cost dice to put down have to be nuts good (chant tier)

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53

yeah ashes sometimes reminds me of warhammer conquest where everyone tries to be the last to commit significant resources.

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54

I’m finding I don’t mind the cold war dynamic much. I like it in other games and I like it here. Ashes somehow manages to simultaneously have that and still play quickly.

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55

Tournament report would be sweet chill. I’m curious to see what competitive ashes is like. All this ashes talk inspired me to pre-order the new decks from plaid hat lol just now.

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56

Took third. 8 players total, friends Jessa deck went 3-0, 2nd place went 2-1 with Jessa, and I went 2-1 with Maeoni.

I beat a noah rd1, and a heavy exhaust coal rd2. Both of those matches were relatively easy to control, my dice pool is 4-4-2 nat/charm/illus and I packed hidden power so it’s positioned well to beat illusion decks I think.

Oh and before the tournament the TO and I played, he was using “damage drop” noah and got me pretty low but I still closed him by making him choose to ignore my snakes and racing him - I had to wolf die one of his toads to deny molten gold, and he failed to draw sympathy pain in time.

The Match I lost was to the Jessa with owls, I haven’t played vs jessa that much, I usually see them running butterfly monks, but the premise is the same (run some little value creatures and try to control the board long enough to draw all of their direct damage.

On paper maeoni is vulnerable to getting her board filled with puppets, but I think in practice I handled them pretty well, keep them at 1 life so you can remove them with a side action and replace them with a snake in the same turn. -

  • Apparently if you cast sympathy pain while receiving lethal damage and kill your opponent, it’s a win for the person using sympathy pain. This was something I’d just learned a few minutes before the tournament, and I ended up losing the game because I went to 3 life and couldn’t deny sympathy pain. I had a wolf for one of the charm dice, but he was able to expand energy and meditate it off by trashing from his spell board, he was able to close by suicide anchornauting, chatning himself to trigger sympathy pain.

I made plenty of mistakes that fight, one was being concerned about leech warrior’s denial ability, if I had molten golded jessa instead of a LW I would have won, as I was 1 point off lethal at start of last turn. Another was setting myself back two dice and 1 life by not summoning a gilder after a snake got feared and turned into a blood puppet the next action.

Overall, I’m pleased with maeoni, if I had gone with noah I don’t think I would have beaten HE coal, and im pretty sure I would have still gotten out-traded by jessa with her 3 expand energies. I have some tech slots I assigned for a other matchups that could become slots to help beat jessa.

IMO sympathy pain and molten gold are bullshit, and there is so much removal that contrary to MTG strategies, it’s basically always bad to assign your 3dmg nuke anywhere other than the opposing PB.

Consequently, HP is ridiculously important. Snake value is reason 1 to play maeoni, and closely after that is her deep 22 HP pool. It’s crazy how that stat is so much more relevant than the spell board or battlefield limit.

Coal would be great if he had a little more HP, his ability is strictly worse than Jessa’s, his special card is good but not over powered, But his HP pool means he is essentially on a 2-3 turn clock every game. Since im often over my damage quota when I kill a coal player, I’m extremely disappointed in Rin’s 17 hp. The god damn giant has 17 life.

Oh apparently Brennan is a girl too. The TO was name dropping plaid hat guys like crazy, and the guys from the ashes podcast left and right – I wasn’t paying much attention, but I thought that was mildly interesting.

idk when this turned into a rant. but had fun would recommend, while we were learning the game a lot of matches seemed paper rock scissors but I actually felt like the game I lost today was winnable, which gives me alot of hope for the game.

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57

Clever play!

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Those decks run final cry too, so anchornaut is an mvp when you run chant.

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Thanks for the report!

That Sympathy Pain ruling is so weird. I really don’t understand why SP just trumps the fact that you dropped to 0 first. Bizarre, but whatever. I gotta remember that Anchornaut trick.

Regarding Coal…yeah, he’s a bit shit. I like him but he doesn’t live long enough to support his gameplan as it stands right now. Any cards they print that’ll work for him will probably just be better in some other PB like Maeoni.

EDIT: Forgot that Lulu is coming out as well and she reads like she’ll just do Coal things but more focused and better. Also 21 health!

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60

Oh the TO had unspoiled decks too. One was a new charm guy who has creatures that make you pay a basic to use attack actions and effects surrounding that and a music theme. His abil is side action summon it.

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