Today I like to take a closer look at one of starter decks, Lokmar Kingdom’s, Prime Legion deck. This is not a strategy guide but instead this is my first impression about the deck and how I think the deck can be played. Hopefully, this series, if I can continue, gives some sense of play style variation in Drakerion to those who are wondering about.
Deck Components
First, let’s take a look at specific game mechanics that developers have decided to put into this deck.
Discard mechanics
When you look at the Prime Legion starter deck, the first thing you would notice is many cards have “discard” in their text ability. This is indeed the core mechanics in this deck.
There are 3 categories of “discard” usage in this deck.
- Recipient bonus – A card gains bonus when another card is discarded
- Donor bonus – Ability trigger when discarded
- Discard generator – A card to discard
Recipient bonus
The first category is those cards that gain bonus if another card was discarded during this turn.
Although this seems a simple mechanics, there is only one card takes this advantage.
Donor bonus
The most represented category is cards that gain bonus when they are discarded.
For example, convinced fanatic can deal 1 damage to a target opposing character on the melee line when it is discarded.
1 damage seem not significant, but in Drakerion, these direct, non-combat damages are quite a strong analogous to burn damage spells in games like Magic.
Hellhound is an example where its cost is reduced when deployed through discard method.
Offering in the Name of Lilith is an event type card that gives you 1 gold when it is discarded.
I counted 7 total unique cards, or 28 cards, which is nearly a half of the deck falling under this category.
Discard generator
The third category is those that allow you to discard a card. Obviously, you need these to get cards into discard pile.
In this category, we have five unique cards for total of 20 cards.
Some can be a one time trigger and others may have multiple use during the game.
I really appreciate the fact they all have draw a card text with it. So discarding does not shrink your hand size.
Maneuver cards are resource cards in Drakerion, and very interesting. Personally, I’ve never played a TCG that felt playing a resource card has so much tactical impact. Unlike other TCGs I’ve played, developers here decided not to tease tactical resource cards until later expansion and rather just give us the system’s power from the very beginning. No single maneuver card included in starter deck has a blank text and all seem to have tactical impact.
So looking at maneuver cards are important aspect of deck’s strategy. Each starter deck has 3 affiliation specific maneuver cards. For prime legion, all 3 cards have “discard a prime legion” in their ability.
Non-combat damage
In Drakerion, each players are given opportunity to use combat abilities before the final combat damage calculation and the resolution take place. This is analogous to other TCG with interactive combat tricks like instant or reaction cards seen in other games.
Additionally, melee attack combat has riposte. Given character’s damage in Drakerion do not reset after each turn, riposte damage is essentially reducing controller’s total board state presence.
On the contrary, each action resolves instantly and does not incite reposte. So action based damage, or non-combat damage can be quite effective and powerful in a right situation.
In this deck, there are 4 unique, or 16 total main deck cards can inflict non-combat damage to the target opponent character.
Amongst currently revealed cards from four starter decks, I believe there is only one another main deck card that can deal non-combat damage outside of the Lokmar Kingdom deck.
In fact, Prime Legion’s city card, which starts the game from the beginning has default ability of dealing 1 non-combat damage when its counters are charged.
One of the three prime legion specific maneuver card also has currently the highest non-combat damage possible from a single card. Again, this seems to confirm dealing non-combat damage is an important part of this deck strategy.
Other
In this game who goes first on the first turn is determined by initiative value specified in the banner.
Lokmar deck has the highest initiative amongst all 4 starter decks revealed so far. This simply indicates this deck really wants to go first.
For the city ability use, you need 6 of your own characters be destroyed.
This allows me to infer that the deck is anticipating high character turn around.
Playstyle Determination
Now let’s put all together and deduce how this deck can be played. I like to emphasize once again, this is purely my personal first impression. If anyone who is watching this and knows a better way to play this deck, please comment and kindly share with us the correct way.
Deck play style or archetype is conceptual, but I think it guides players how one should be playing the deck, and help making in game decision when multiple choices are presented.
There are various ways to classify deck archetypes in TCG, and some may be assigning arbitrary. I personally like either “aspect” or “axes” analysis written on Magic the Gathering wikipedia site.
These system are relatively systematic and generic so they can be applied to pretty much any other TCG with minor self-interpretation/translation.
I normally use aspect analysis, but I do not have enough experience with Drakerion to know what’s the fairness trade definition in this game yet. So I have decided to go with axes analysis today.
Threat vs. Answers
A Threat is a card that can win the game if left unchecked, sometimes it includes the idea of smaller threats that combine to form a bigger threat. An Answer is a card that deals with or removes a threat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_deck_types
Even with discard engine, their primary goal remains to directly damage opponent characters. So this is a threat oriented deck.
As a side, I think examples of answer in Drakerion are ability such as interceptor where you redirect attack or shield to reduce damage. These ability do not win a game by themselves no matter how many you can stack them. However, they are there to keep target character on the board longer.
Tempo vs. Inevitability
Does your deck have to win fast, or does it have to survive the game long enough to stabilize and close out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_deck_types
Without adding any heal or health buff effects, the average HP of Prime Legion starter deck characters is 4.1. This is the lowest amongst all 4 starter decks revealed so far. Thus, I believe this is good indication that this deck wants to win as fast as possible, especially given all decks have the same number of characters. So this is tempo oriented.
Redundant vs Essential
Does your deck have a lot of cards that basically do the same thing, or does it rely on a few important key pieces to function?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_deck_types
All starter decks have 10 characters. Two of which are named characters.
These are thematic and more powerful characters; however, neither are considered essential. As expected in starter deck, all cards are replaceable and therefore, they are redundant.
So three axes for this deck are threat, tempo and redundant. This is indeed Aggro archetype.
First Impression
Prior to playing this deck for the first time, I had only played couple other games using the Wasteland deck. Both times I played against Tyraslin deck and never even watched Lokmar being played.
On my first two games I was focusing on learning the game rule and flow. Although I pondered even during those two games, I had no master game plan.
However, my first time game with Prime Legion deck was the first game I had strategy set for the game, which was Aggro archetype strategy. The master plan was to deal the highest damage in the fastest pace. The damages dealt on my characters were irrelevant unless it loses me the game.
My imaginary ideal game flow was my troops continue destroying opponent’s fast enough so that they must keep spending their action and/or golds to either play a new character, heal or shield to protect their existing characters. These threats prevent my opponent from initiating combat attack.
Since most character’s riposte value is lower than the attack value, this embodies ” “.
For instance, I attacked with Pernicious Vanguard immediately following its deployment on my very next action even though that results it to go into discard pile.
For selection of maneuvers, I tried to choose those that dealt damage from the first turn until I run out of them.
Having a master plan, especially Aggro one, I have quickly realized the tactical advantage of being the first player in this game. Initially, this felt artificially less relevant than the other TCGs I’ve played.
The first player priority determines two important orders at the beginning turn. The deployment ability resolution of the maneuver and who take the very first action.
As a simple example, imagine following a situation. My opponent has one last character with 3 health at the beginning of new turn.
I chose Grow in their suffering so I can close the game. My opponent chose Host of Aeriell’s guide to heal 3 health of the character. Depending on who has the first player priority, the result is win vs. game continue.
This makes sound the retreat far more important action than I had originally thought.
In general, I felt Aggro deck should try holding the first player priority to keep playing the beatdown role. This required a tactical decision when to stop attacking so I can retain the first player priority next turn. Its something I never had to think about in other TCG’s I’ve played.
I may be slightly biased at the moment due to honeymoon phase of new game hype, but I could have just had the best Aggro deck experience. Despite feeling full traditional Aggro archetype game play, I was surprised how much decision making I could do. In summary, I had a blast with Prime Legion deck, playing as pure Aggro Archetype strategy.
Thank you for watching. If you find this helpful and want to see another starter deck coverage like this, please comment, hit like and/or subscribe. Most importantly, if you haven’t played this game, go check it out yourself and let me know what you think.
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