Supreme Advantage
Supreme Advantage
|
Starting Hand: Starter Deck Rand Characters: Any-your choice (try 20) Troops: Any-your choice (try 15) Events: Connections x 3 Challenges: Noble Allies x 3 Foundation Cards [Advantages]: Ready Resources x 3 Advantages: Art of Intrigue x 2 Optional Nation Advantages: Andor x 3 Cairhien x 3 Fortress of Light x 3 Tear x 3 Tar Valon x 3 The Horn Option Dragon Banner x 3 Ommitted Advanteges: A Second Chance |
A. The Foundation Cards: Even by themselves Ready Resources and Taking Advantage can be great cards, but together they are a killer combination. First, "Taking Advantage" gives you the option of drawing an extra card EVERY TIME YOU DRAW AN ADVANTAGE. This card is truly the foundation of the Advantage deck. Second, "Ready Resources" allows you to "bank" any advantages in your hand. They sit face down on the table under the card and can be played as if they were in your hand, but they don't count against your 8 card hand-limit. This card is important, but not absolutely critical to your strategy. So if you have both of these Foundation cards in play, you can basically retrieve advantages from your deck in huge bunches at a time-with Taking Advantage you just keep drawing until you don't get an advantage. Then you bank all the advantages you draw into Ready Resources. B. Supreme Advantage: Normally, we avoid filling our decks with Advantages because if you hit a long run of them you are in trouble. Its hard to defend yourself with no troops or characters on the table. But if you have both Foundation cards in play and a deck filled with advantages, you have got it made. You don't have to worry about hitting a run of advantages because you can bank every single one of them under Ready Resources and draw another card with Taking Advantage. Likewise, it doesn't matter if you draw Andor three times in a row. Just bank 'em all under Ready Resources and keep drawing! This deck is truly awesome to behold if everything works right. The advantages just keep pouring out. C. Disadvantages: 1. Start with Taking Advantage: You can't start with both Foundation cards in your hand (they are both Advantages), and you can only have a maximum of three of the same card in your deck. This means you will have to start with one Foundation card in your hand and wait until you draw the other before you can really start rockin'. There is no doubt that you should start with "Taking Advantage" because without it you will be plagued by runs of advantages. You can live without Ready Resources, even if it isn't drawn at all. 2. Watch out for "Search and Destroy": The card "Search and Destroy" can really hurt you! The worst scenario would be for two Forsaken to play Search and Destroy-one on each of your Foundation cards. Unless you are well into the game and have considerable forces on your side, or you have an extra in the bank, defend your "Taking Advantage" at all costs. C. Strategy: 1. Keep Taking Advantage in play: It would not be good to lose Ready Resources and the huge stack of advantages waiting under it, but if you have only just begun to pull advantages out of your huge deck, it would be a nightmare to lose Taking Advantage. Until you get another "Taking Advantage" card into play you could be crippled by the massive number of advantages in your deck. I have included 3 Taking Advantage cards in the deck even though 1 starts in your hand and you can only have 1 in play at a time. A. As long as you have 1 in play you can draw through the
others like they were nothing-even banking them in case you lose
the first one. 2. The Sacrifice: If you have a banked Taking Advantage, use a villain initiated "Search and Destroy" challenge to sacrifice it. Act scared when they target Taking Advantage. Then send a bunch of troops and characters to the battlefield. Let the Forsaken think your are going to send them to "Search and Destroy" but send your forces to the Pattern Challenge, or another challenge that is important to you. If you lose Taking Advantage, just pull another one out of the bank on your next Action turn and play it right away. Back in business, and hey, you won some Pattern. 3. Keep Ready Resources in play and hold on to an extra if you have space: A. If Ready Resources is the target of a "Search and Destroy" you should play as many important advantages as you can that Action round, just in case you lose them all. B. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can return banked cards to your hand. Although the card isn't clear on this point, I'll bet the rule-makers will say you can't. The card says you can play them out from under it, not return them to your hand. If it turns out that you can pull them out into your hand, then keep an extra Ready Resources in the bank until the card is threatened. Then pull out the extra into your hand the action round before the "Search and Destroy" challenge is resolved. If you lose the first one then play the extra next action round. C. Otherwise, keep an extra Ready Resources in your hand if you have space. This isn't critical because you can afford to lose Ready Resources if you hold onto Taking Advantage, but for the cost of one card in your hand you can be assured of having an advantage bank on the table. Sounds like a good trade to me. 4. Stuck with only Taking Advantage: If it takes you a long time to draw Ready Resources, or if you lose Ready Resources to "Search and Destroy" then you may have to discard some cards. Taking Advantage will keep the cards rolling in, but without a bank to stash them in you might get stuck with more than 8 in your hand during the discard round. Oh well, the only reason you've got so many cards is because you loaded your deck with advantages, so go ahead and discard a few. 5. Watch out for Forsaken Decks built around this theme: Unfortunately this deck can easily be modified by the Forsaken to further their ends. Load up on "Seek and Destroy" and do what you can. Hopefully playing this deck will help you defend against it. 6. Some thoughts on Customization: I like to change my decks up a bit now and then. Here are some guidelines for customizing this deck. A. Keep 3 Taking Advantages and at least 2 Ready Resources
cards in this deck. If you lose one to "Search and Destroy"
you will be glad you kept them in. Total: 125 cards (as long as "Taking Advantage" is in play, think of this as 52! :)) Although not truly a part of this deck, I received the below strategy submission at the same time from another WOT player, Troy. Although these two submissions differ in many ways, I thought that Troy's suggestions would mesh well with the optimization and customization built into Supreme Advantage at its heart, and may aid the inexperienced player at filling in some of the gaps and selecting your characters. I hope this helps in your quest to vanquish the Shadow. Being an old-school Magic player, I have tried many times to make a "turbo" deck, one with which you quickly cycle through your deck to get the best cards, and get them into play. I think I have a start: Opening Hand: Turn 1: Into the Fight Loial and reinforce the Pattern Challenge. You would have to have the Dark One's own luck to win it, but the point isn't the pattern, but to negate the lost card from using into the fight. Don't be afraid to convert a pattern to get him out, you'll get it back. Turn 2: Play Political Manuevering and send both Rand and Loial, unless you drew something that you have a VERY good chance of being able to play. At the begining of your third turn, you should have 6 cards in hand, and 3 Pattern. If you are lucky, you found a Personal Growth or Berelain to assist in recruiting. Other cards that would go well in a deck like this would be: Connections (more cards) Anyway, you get the idea. The core of the deck is using Loial to help draw cards as fast as possible, then play out all your cool stuff as fast as you can. After about 6-7 turns your army should outnumber the opponent fairly easily. - Troy Abelseth  |
