The Nature ones are my favorite – especially Root Armor which can be applied the same turn you put the Leech Warrior down. Spells like Massive Growth, Undying Heart or Root Armor are fantastic with them, giving them extra life to exhaust more dice and make use of that excellent 3 Recover. Are you scared that Aradel is going to Gilder (or Small Sacrifice!) + Water Blast your 3 life Unit in Round 1? Try out a Leech Warrior and punish her for that! Beware of the nasty Molten Gold though, which can take out a Leech Warrior without triggering his ability. This fantastic ability also makes it very unattractive for the opponent to use their Frog dice or Gilder pings to whittle this guy down, because he exhausts their dice while doing so. The Illusion Power Die is probably the best die power in the game, but you can get that same ability with a Leech Warrior! When you pair them with Nature dice, now your Frogs can either be damage on the opponent, or can be used like Illusion Power Dice to exhaust dice from the opponent by pinging your own Leech Warrior. Players reading this probably know how powerful Illusion dice are. Reading their ability shows that every time they take damage, you get to exhaust a die of your choice in your opponent’s active dice pool. Plus, that 2 Attack Value packs a bit of a punch, but doesn’t hurt too badly to recur with the Ceremonial Dice Power. For 2 Ceremonial Class and 1 Basic, you get the same 2/3 body as a Frostback Bear gives you, but with a whopping 3 Recover! That Recover value is very important for the Leech Warrior. There’s one of my favorite allies in Ashes, the Leech Warrior.
Next turn, Small Sacrifice to kill the now-exhausted Anchornaut (perhaps triggering Final Cry and/or Chant of Revenge!), do another damage, and then Ceremonial Power Die to get the Anchornaut back to rinse and repeat! And speaking of Ceremonial allies that like to take damage: A Living Doll can take that damage and put it on the opponent, too! Anchornauts are also frequently in Ceremonial decks since they can be recycled for free, and one of my favorite plays with them is to cast one and exhaust it with the Throw ability for a damage. Cards like Final Cry and Chant of Revenge pile on more damage for killing your own guys. Lastly, the Ceremonial class of magic includes a host of benefits you can reap for damaging your own units. Aradel or Brennan can use Small Sacrifice + their Phoenixborn ability to take out 3 Life Units such as Bears or Hammer Knights in one turn.
You can combo this with the aforementioned Nature power die to do 2 damage in one turn, which is enough to take out that peksy Three-Eyed Owl that’s threatening you, or Aradel’s always-annoying Blue Jaguar, along with a host of other 2 life Units. Secondly, there are times when being able to do 1 damage as a main action is just what you need.
Trading your Anchornaut for their Hammer Knight this round sounds good, right? Oh and then next round, you can just do it again! Plus knowing the cards coming down the pipe, exhaustion could become much more important. All you need is an unexhausted unit that you can exhaust, and that will allow you to shut off your opponent’s most powerful unit for a round. Suddenly Small Sacrifice changes from a damage card to an exhaustion card. Well first off, let’s not forget that Focus ability. You can get that for a side action and a Nature power die without eating up a spellboard slot, so why would you ever want to use this card? It sucks up a precious Spellboard slot, and at the cost of a Ceremonial class die, your main action AND a wound on one of your Units, you get 1 wound on an opponent’s Unit. However, I still believe both of them have great potential and could be relevant again very soon! The first of these is Small Sacrifice:Īt first glance, the main ability of this card seems very lackluster. I’m going to go over a couple of Ceremonial cards today that I ran together a lot in my early Ashes days, but seem to have somewhat fallen out of flavor. Hello everyone! This is my first Advanced Ashes article, so hopefully I can keep the standard high!
Visit the Ashes store, as well as the online Ashes deckbuilder. Each week, a different Ashes player will showcase two cards, exploring their strengths and synergies.
Advanced Ashes is a weekly series covering advanced Ashes strategies.