Mythereum — Changing Perspectives, Part 2

MYTHEREUM

Welcome to the second piece on building your Meta in Mythereum, a TCG CCG on the Ethereum Blockchain. In this article, we will cover additional meta-concepts to expand your mind and help you be more competitive in Mythereum. If you have not, please do read our first article located {HERE}. As this article will build on the concepts generated in this previous article.

Chess, or Checkers? You decide!

Today we will focus on concepts learned in some of the oldest and most classic games that exist, chess and checkers. When you are sitting on your cards, with the deck builder open, what goes through your mind when you contemplate which cards to put into a deck? (If you have not played either, I suggest doing so! it will help immensely). (These lessons can also apply to life itself, so hope you get something out of it!)

First off, determine what type of player are you:

1. Beginner: I’ve bought a couple of cards, and maybe even traded for some on the market. I focused on the most apparently powerful, but have not done much research, but I love the game and can’t wait to play!
2. Intermediate: I’ve done some research, asked for some advice and played a bunch of matches. I have a good understanding of how the game plays, but do not have a large collection to chose from, so my options are still limited to my original purchases.
3. Advanced: I’ve won some tournaments, and developed some strategies. Although I do not sit and contemplate for hours on end of who and what Ill be up against, my strategies have a fairly good chance of winning, if not by sheer strength alone.
4. Master: I can reasonably expect to win just about any match up that does not pit me against someone with a similar skill level. I have several pre-made decks ready for tournaments, did my research and can recite most abilities and classes per set. I know who my regular opponents are, and what kind of cards they have and how their strategies generally play out. Luck is the deciding factor, in that Magick determines generally if I win or lose. I’m really looking forward to Alchemists being released.

Overall, these are the four skill levels that currently exist in Mythereum. Hopefully, just by reading them, you may have already skilled up, but remember: there is no rush. Everyone starts somewhere, and at some point we were all “Beginners” in one way or another. This guide will generally benefit advanced and master players, but all skill levels will come away with something here!

Mythereum aside, let’s talk Chess and Checkers for a moment. Chess first — when you sit down to play a game of chess, do you already have a preset determination of what moves work and when, or do you play solely as a “reactionary”, i.e. moving your pieces in reaction to your opponents moves?(Article on how to play chess HERE).

In the game of chess, there are near limitless options of moves and a series of strategies that can be associated with any given move. Ever play against a pre-programmed Chess bot? it’s insane, as they can predict and apply which programmed strategy applies based on your first three or so moves to guarantee a high chance of winning. Robots aside, Chess is simpler because the pieces are always the same, meaning the moves are always the same, of course depending on the moves your opponent has made as well.

So each chess team consists of 8 pawns, 2 rooks, knights, bishops, a king and a queen. The non-pawn pieces are your key players, while the pawns are used for strategic placement. It is the same with Mythereum, now and in the future. When building your deck, you have your Key component cards, which your deck strategy is built around. Next you have your pawns, the support cards, or bulk of your deck, designed to get you to the end game of any specific match.

You may recall in some of my other articles, I identified the most effective deck breakdowns by card types. These card types, in case you missed it are generally for a five card, seven card and ten card breakdown. It goes as follows:

5 Cards: 2x Attack, 2x Defender and a Hybrid/Support

7 Cards: 3x Attack, 2x Defender and 2x Hybrid/Support

10 Cards: 3x Attack, 3x Defense, 3x Support, 1x Hybrid

An attacker card is generally a card with very high attack power combined with a good ability attack boost.

Defenders generally have high defense, high ability defense boost or both.

Support currently is cards that provide major magick boosting

Hybrid is a card that has ability boosting to both attack and defense.

Good, with that being said, you can now begin to contemplate from a Chess Style point of view on how to build your deck. When building a deck, you will want to build it around 1, maybe 2 cards at most. The card you designate as your prime card is your “King”. Luckily, unlike Chess, in Mythereum you can technically have multiple Kings, but for the sake of this guide lets stick to a single King.

King

Kings in chess are generally not an offensive piece, and as such, lets focus on building around a defender. Defender type cards will generally give you card advantage as well, so this is a good place to start.

Generally speaking, the King is the key component of your deck, and all effort should be expended to avoid losing this piece. In most advanced and master level battles we all know who each other’s “King” is and we go for it as hard as we can.

Queen

After the King, we want to highlight our Queen. A queen is quite versatile and as such, lets designate a Hybrid as our Queen. We want to use AND protect our Queen at the same time, so keep that in mind when playing. Hybrids are usually great cards to lead with, if they have enough defense to start a match, and can come out later on and block or attack as needed.

Rook

Next up, our additional defender would be a Rook. The Rook generally team’s up with our King in chess, and so it should be here as well. Wise Mythereum players will take note of what their Magick cost is for their King to activate it’s defense, and pick a second defender that uses a different type of Magick, so as to not step on each other’s toes, and not to get in a bind.

Bishop

Next up — our “attackers”. generally you will want 2–3 of these to take out your opponent’s defenders. So take into consideration which set(s) your coming battles will allow, and pick your attackers based on the highest possible defense provided by those set(s) defenders.

Knight

These can generally be classified as the Bishop and the Knight. Knights fight with strategy, and Bishops use angles to control the board, make sure your choices can do the same, don’t just pick the best, but also the most effective.

For example, if you can only produce say 3 magick per turn, consider not using a 4 or 5 magick ability on your attacker, but rather a 2 or 3 magick power. This will allow it to proc sooner, and more often. (Protip: try to avoid using similar magick types to your defenders).

Pawns

Pawns. This is where it gets fun, but also tricky. Pawns can be ANY card, but they are CANNON FODDER. They are their either to eat an attack, or to swap out for a better card, and to set the table up for you. Also, every so often, your opponent may slip up (in Chess and Mythereum) and a pawn can take an active role card. This is great, generally pawns will be additional support cards, and may be hybrids as well.

Slotting in at least 2 magick producing pawns is ideal in most decks, just make sure you have enough cards in your starting deck to swap these pawns out, unless you intend to play them (remember you can only have five cards out at a time- King, Queen, Bishop, Knight and Rook ideally).

Your Deck

So, each deck will have its FIVE main cards, and the rest, regardless of stature, will be your pawns. Keep this in mind at all times, because every matchup battle consists of three stages:

1. Early Game
2. Mid Game
3. End Game

With those three stages in mind, you want to focus on setting yourself up for the “End Game” or late game stage as quickly as possible. To do so, you have to have enough Magicks on hand, to ensure your A-Team of five primaries can utilize their abilities. Remember it is unlikely that each team will still have all 5 “pieces” by late game.

Let’s use an example, my personal Raid Defense Team:

Raid Defense — Chess Board Style

Now, with this setup in mind, who do you think my “King” would be?

If you answered “Neidulus” you would be half correct, but then, why Neidulus, and more importantly, which one? The Neidulus that is lv6, with 26/51 stats on top would be the correct choice. Additionally, since my Deck is a non-traditional style as mentioned above, my Lv5 Neidulus is the Queen, and the Lv4 Neidulus is the Rook.

That makes Vrugbod and Morgaine my attackers. So which is the Bishop, and which is the Knight? Well a Knight should be able to attack and defend, and as such that makes Morgaine more likely, leaving Vrugbod, our blaster type to be Bishop which makes sense.

With that being said, you can likely see that Neidulus is both my early and mid game, while Morgaine is mid to late game, and Vrugbod is the finisher for endgame generally. Conceptually, since this is designed as an AI controlled deck, you will generally block and destroy opposing cards until you’ve stored up enough Black Magick to blast their best defender with Vrugbod.

Due to the low cost, high value for Force Field special ability, that makes this defense setup very effective, especially when coupled on how AI determines which cards to pick in a fight.

Offensive Formation — Chess Style

Conversely, let’s examine one of my offensive decks. Can you pick out each role? This deck is unique in that it has 4 high power offensive cards and a very well geared defender. Each card was hand picked, and generally I would replace Ponk with Vrugbod, but alas, Vrugbod is in my defenders deck for the moment.

Ok! So here is the breakdown, let’s see how you did:

1. King: Navbot is our King! yes, that is right, our very own steampunk navigational robo is the King in this setup. He is a Defender, Attacker and Ultimate Defender, all bound up in one card! (with massive MX invested).
2. Queen: Now this one is tougher, a Queen is generally good as both offense and defense, but here we are left with four defenders. Hence, as funny as it may sound, Arathorn is our Queen! Both Ponk and Dazael will be offensive, which leaves Arathorn and Castien, and with Arathorn pumped higher, he gets the Queen spot.
3. Rook: Well these are now easier to determine, Castien makes a great rook. Able to both defend and attack, his ability comes up just as fast as Arathorn, meaning he will likely attack, and die first, keeping the queen (and king) safe.
4. Bishop: Bishop’s are generally softer and squishier than Knights, therefor Dazael gets the Bishop role this time around! With a defense much lower than Ponk/Vrugbod, Dazael will get that one key hit in, then likely take the hit every glass cannon eventually gets.
5. Knight: Well with the rest identified, Ponk/Vrugbod get the Knight role, having a good defense on an offensive card. In this scenario, both the Bishop and Knight have to wait for their respective Magick color to be prepared before launching an all out attack, but having 2 defender killers is a wonderful feeling to have.

(Protip: When making these kind of high power decks, PLEASE keep an eye on your total health. This deck has a measly 140 health points, so could potentially be one-shotted by a card like Dazael or Tiger.)

Here is an example of a slightly balanced deck, utilizing the above parameters:

Balanced Awakening

Feel free to guess the Chess Style Breakdown of the deck above. items of note: Additional support cards have been included to push the deck above 4 Magick per turn, which is a key integer for Awakening Battles. Additionally, Awakening traditionally has a higher max attack than max defense, so this deck has a preponderance of assault style cards.

With that being said, let’s move on to the breakdown!

1. KING: Kagrosh! Kagrosh is King of Defending in Awakening, and can prove to be very useful. A duplicate Kagrosh, and possibly even a third is key for survival in Awa style tourneys.
2. Queen: Vovalon. With the second highest damage out put, only off by 1, makes her a prime suspect for being Queen, Bishop AND Knight, all tied up in one. That’s right, this deck has no official Knight or Bishop, just triplicate Queens (OUCH!).
3. Rook: Ubri. Contested as the BEST card in Awakening, Ubri is very versatile. His key position is held as Rook due to his unique Magick cost for a high level assault ability, Given then highest natural viable defense card in the set is Kagrosh with just 74 defense, Ubri’s 95 offense more than makes up for it. I call him the mini-Arathorn of the card sets.
4. Bishop: Vovalon takes the cake here, and leaves no room for subordination! The Bishop Queen can be designated as first sacrifice to burn opposing cards.
5. Knight: Once again, our mighty Queen Vovalon takes the cake and is our Knight Queen. Usually saved for mid game, the Knight Queen can be very detrimental to your opponent, and has a high chance for victory in mid game with this many copies.
6. The Pawn: Finally! A deck with more than 5 cards! As you can see, we have 2 very supportive identical cards — Jarfick. While he is less useful on the battlefield (56/63 max), he is here for one reason only, boosting Magick. That sweet 4 spot is what makes decks like these shine. Clutch moments, you may even find Jarfick useful at opening hand, as a 30 natural attack is generally able to kill of almost any non-enhanced Awakening card. Ideally though, you can swap Jarfick on a key turn to gain card advantage.

So, as you can see, taking the game to the next level and utilizing game overlays such as chess-mythereum strategies can very well pay off in it’s current form. Identifying your strategy ahead of time, and developing a process of play from early to late game is key to figuring out how exactly to win at Mythereum and get all that yummy loot!

You almost forgot didn’t you? We didn’t just mention chess, but we also brought checkers to the table! How many of you are experienced checkers players I wonder (comment below and let us know!)

Checkers Strategy Overlay

Checkers is an interesting (and generally boring game). however, there are three takeaways that we can get from it to benefit our play styles here in Mythereum. Guide (HERE) to play checkers.

1. A hop, skip and a jump.
2. Stacking.
3. Holding the line.

These three key components of checkers directly correlates over to Mythereum. Allow me to explain:

1. A hop, skip and a jump. This is important in that, you need to look AHEAD once you enter a game, and play your “pieces” strategically based on how your opponent is playing. Since we are looking “ahead” in time, that means we also need to look off-board for Mythereum, as everything that happens is technically part of the “Board” re:Mythereum.
2. Stacking: In checkers the prime goal is to reach the opponents side of the board, (so you can “King” your pieces). This allows them to move forward AND backwards. In Mythereum, stacking correlates to “upgrading”. When an upgraded card is in a battle, it can play multiple turns if played properly. Say you know generally your opponents cards in a tournament (multiple players) will have maximum base attack of 34. So, you upgrade your card(s) to have all 35 or higher defense.
   This then allows you to play a card in early game, and generally conclude that it will not die first turn. Now stacking translates to the other features of Mythereum as well. Generally in a game, the first two turns are down plays (cards with their natural stats only) as we need to build magicks.

This usually means turns three and four will be game on turns, where abilities play out. if the game continues from here, turns five and maybe six, will generally be down turns with natural stats only, as the players wait on magick regeneration and so on.

Mid Game Win

As you can see in the above photo, we can in fact strategize for mid game wins, and happens very often. Regardless, Magick production at this point in time is still a key component and is generally randomized until Alchemists are released.

Continuing the thought on “stacking” its very important in both early game and mid game to have enhanced (stacked) cards. These down turns can sway card advantage in your favor. With a well stacked deck, even a support or hybrid can sway a game in your favor that you may have logically lost otherwise without stacks.

Card Upgrade Screen

In the above example, my Navbot has been upgraded 18 times, and I am still pushing it forth. Why? So I can have card advantage. in its current form, it can survive a first turn hit, return to my hand, come out mid to late game and absorb a high power hit, hit back, ultimately giving me 2–3 card advantages just from one card.

So, this is where things get a bit tricky, not in the upgrading, BUT rather in the acquisition of resources to upgrade with. Every card can have a maximum of 60 upgrades, 30 points in each side, and each upgrade on each side increments by 32 MX more than the last upgrade, as seen in this chart:

MX Upgrades / Level

As we can see in the chart to the left, each level incrementally gets more expensive, and that is designed to help us take longer and longer to achieve true card advantages. Each side takes approximately 15k MX, totaling 30k MX for a single maxed out card.

With that being said, generally 1–3 upgrades is generally best for the general populace, its only when master vs master face off against each other, that master stack levels are key to seeing who will win (other than random magick).

Now, to continue on the concept of “the board” for stacking (number two remember, still on #2), one of the easiest and also most effective ways to earn MX is raiding other players every 10 minutes. You drain their MX, preventing them from upgrading cards and from upgrading their mines. As a double benefit, you kill two birds with one stone, because as you drain other players, and enhance your own cards, you also gain a better defense (ideally) by having upgraded defenders, and thus ensuring that you will be able to continue to upgrade your cards in the future.

(Protip: This is also why upgrading your fortifications and belonging to a helpful, populated and healthy alliance will bolster your defenses, further ensuring your ability to upgrade, aka Stack).

Now, just for a fun mental image, remember, checkers that are stacked can move both forward and backwards. Mythereum cards act this way as well. Take my Navbot above for example, it can go offensive, defensive, and move in and out of the hand with little worry of defeat, just like a stacked “King’d” checker!

Holding the Line (in Chess)

3. Holding the Line. Much of what was said above also applies to “Holding the Line”. While recently we had overall peace in Mythereum from raiding, very little of peace was actually beneficial to most. This is why Cashwell said everyone should be at each other’s throats, because those who were not assailed for various reasoning, were able to gather enough resources to build their Warlord city up, and begin acquiring upgrades and cards for MX exchanges.

The very design of Mythereum needs players to keep each other down. Once a player reaches the magical number of 132 MX ingame, they can start on-chaining their MX which is a requirement prior to upgrading. So all in all, players should be working hard to prevent new threats from ever reaching that 132 MX threshold (100 honestly is the danger zone). By not doing this (peace) everyone collaborates and works together, bringing everyone upwards to a more sustainable position, which is great, except that we are Warlords with alliances.

What happens when one alliance has more players than another with exceptional setups, they can now dominate that player or players without much fear of remorse, requiring now exceptional politics to cover their arses). On a positive note, the current open beta player base, will one day likely all be united as one front, when the game goes live. many more players will arrive and the current separations will become united fronts unless extensive grudges or hate persist.

So #3 directly affects the success rate of #2. #2 determines the final outcome of #1. its a viscous, yet effective cycle. They synergestical appeal to one another, and if run without resistance, can lead to massive success rates. The only other step then becomes gathering and growing your collection, and if left unchecked, a properly Stacked series of cards will win tournament after tournament, providing the resources to acquire more, and harder to acquire cards.

In a nutshell, that is the chess & checkers effect in Mythereum. One contributes to the other, and vice versa. Changing your vision window, and metagame perspective will enhance your gameplay and reward you with a better, deeper experience of Mythereum.

To conclude, let’s have a recap as this was a long, challenging article. In Chess, its important t identify and know what each of your pieces role is in your deck. The key 5 cards are the main pieces, rest are pawns.

In checkers, understanding how everything affects everything is key, and stacking (upgrading your key cards with MX) is key to obtaining card advantage. Knowing how to process of MX acquisition works, and putting a cog in that wheel of others players acquisition directly impacts your chances of success. However aggressive strategies do not always work. So play smart, and politic smart.

The End. Well I hope you enjoyed yet another addition to our perceptions series on Mythereum, and how to become a better player! Keep your eyes and ears peeled out for more of these in the coming weeks and months! Till then, game on!