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Walkthrough

by Robvalue

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--------------------Might and Magic: Duel of Champions-------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------Game overview, guide for beginners and strategy tips------------
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V2.00

By Robert Watts (robvalue). Contact me: robvalue (at) yahoo.com
Feel free to send any feedback or corrections, no matter how small. (But please
be specific!)

All advice given about card choices and strategy are based on my own opinion
after a large amount of time playing this game. Your opinion may differ, and
that is fine! This is meant as a guide only.

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----------------------------Using the guide------------------------------------
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This is a very long guide, so I recommend reading it a section
at a time.To jump to a section in this guide, look at the reference number 
beside the part you want to go to (for example #1.62). Press Ctrl+F to bring up
the find function, and type in this reference. Now press the "next" button
twice to get to the section. When I refer to a section during the guide, I
miss out the # sign, so add this at the front to do a search. If you are cross
referencing several sections, I recommend opening the guide in multiple
windows.


I will use the abbrevation DoC for Duel of Champions.

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---------------------------Table of contents-----------------------------------
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#1.00 Introduction

	#1.01 Overview of DoC
	#1.02 What is DoC?
	#1.03 Is it a tradable card game?
	#1.04 is it really free to play?
	#1.05 Is it any good?
	#1.06 How do I get the game and make an account?
	#1.07 Picking a faction

#2.00 The tutorial levels

	#2.01 Boot Camp
	#2.02 Orc Invasion
	#2.03 Wolf Soldiers
	#2.04 Spending your winnings
	
#3.00 Getting around the menus

	#3.01 The main menu
	#3.02 News, notifications and friends
	#3.03 The main menu buttons
	#3.04 Profile / achievements tab
	#3.05 Shop tab
	#3.06 Cards and Decks tab
		#3.06A Viewing your cards and decks
		#3.06B Opening packs
		#3.06C Editing your decks
		#3.06D Deleting decks
		#3.06E Creating new decks
	#3.07 Infernal Pit tab
	#3.08 Leaderboards tab

#4.00 Improving your starter deck
	
	#4.01 Deck building guidelines
	#4.02 Neutral cards
	#4.03 Inferno faction
	#4.04 Necropolis faction
	#4.05 Haven faction
	#4.06 Water spells
	#4.07 Earth spells
	#4.08 Primal spells
	#4.09 Fire spells
	#4.10 Air spells
	#4.11 Light spells
	#4.12 Dark spells
	#4.13 Events

#5.00 Playing online and ELO ratings

	#5.01 Finding an online opponent
	#5.02 The reward system and using boosts
	#5.03 Jackpot tournaments
	#5.04 Swiss tournaments
	#5.05 Practising against friends
	
#6.00 Improving your playing skills

	#6.01 Rules and terminology
	#6.02 Attacking
	#6.03 Life totals, blocking and races to win
	#6.04 Important cards to remember
	#6.05 Order of actions in a turn
	#6.06 When to take a mulligan

#7.00 More on deck building

	#7.01 General considerations
		#7.01A What is my overall strategy?
		#7.01B What Hero is right for my strategy?
		#7.01C How do I deal with my opponent's cards?
		#7.01D What maxout is appropriate for my strategy?
	#7.02 Stronghold
	#7.03 Sanctuary

#8.00 Extras
	
	#8.01 Known bugs
	#8.02 Game Jargon
	#8.03 Version history and credits

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#1.00 Introduction
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This is a guide for the game Might and Magic: Duel of Champions, which is
available on various formats. It is written from the point of view of the PC
version, which is the one I have, but should be equally valid for all versions.
It is aimed mainly at new players, explaining what the game is about and
whether it is right for you. It shows you how to get started, explains the
interface, and shows you how to build a good deck. It also contains
strategy tips which may be useful not just to beginners but for current 
players who may find something they haven't thought about before! If you are
already playing DoC and know all the basics, you may want to skip to the
strategy section right away (6.00 onwards).

I won't go through the very basics of the rules of the game (this guide is long
enough!) I would be mainly duplicating the help file which is already in the
game, and the tutorial does a good job of teaching you how to play. To view
the help file, get to the main menu and click the question mark in the bottom
left corner. I recommend reading this, whether or not you already have. It
will mean a lot more to you once you've started playing.

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#1.01 Overview of DoC
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These sections are for potential new players, giving you an idea of what this
game is like and if it's a game you'd want to play. It hopefully addresses
some of the most common questions about it, and then shows you how to get
the game and start it all up.

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#1.02 What is DoC?
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DoC is a digital collectable card game. It bears some similarity to Magic:
The Gathering, although it plays quite differently. Perhaps the most striking
changes are the absence of any "land" cards to produce "mana", and the fact
that you cannot do anything during your opponent's turn. You choose a Hero
card, and this represents the leader of your army. Each Hero has various
types of cards that they can use, from which you build up a deck. You then use
this deck to battle another Hero, either against the AI or another player
online. You use creatures to attack the opponent, and you win by reducing their
life to zero. You use other cards to assist your creatures, kill the opponent's
creatures, draw cards, and do various other things.

You get given a free starter deck, of which you have a choice of 3. You then
earn in-game currency just by playing, which you can use to buy booster packs
to get more cards for your deck.

You can see a list of all the cards in the game here: (spoilers!)

http://www.mmdoc.net/card_list/

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#1.03 Is it a tradable card game?
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Games like Magic are called trading card games because you can trade cards you
don't want for ones which will improve your deck. Currently there is no way
of trading cards with other players. The reason for this, I believe, is due
to the possibity of creating endless free accounts and giving all the cards
from each account to one of these accounts. This would allow you to get cards
at a much faster and unfair rate. It is possible trading may be introduced
in the future, but it is not certain. There is a way of getting specific cards
you want, called the Infernal Pit, which you can read about later in the 
guide (see section 3.07).

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#1.04 is it really free to play?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Like me, you probably always think there is a catch when you see the word
"free". But it is true, it's perfectly possible to play this game for free.
I haven't spent anything on it, and I have managed to get a big collection
of cards and created competitive decks. You always have the option of paying
money to get more in-game currency, which is then used to buy more boosters.
So by paying you are getting more cards quickly, but it is entirely possible
to play the game, enjoy it, and be able to win without spending anything at
all. It never asks for any payment details when you install or sign up, this
will only happen if you make the decision to pay. I would advise against 
spending anything, at least intially, for a number of reasons:

(a) You may find you don't like the game after a while (unlikely though!)
(b) It removes some of the satisfaction of earning the cards through play
(c) You may win too many games too quickly and get to a high rank, which
    has its disadvantages, causing you to face experienced opponents

It does take a lot of time investment to get a big collection without paying
any money, but you will quickly get an idea by playing the game whether this
is for you. You will always have the option of putting money into it at any
point or continuing to pay for free as I have.

I realized that from a financial standpoint free players are still valuable
to the game company, as they provide opponents for those who are paying!
Without somoene to play the game would crumble.

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#1.05 Is it any good?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes! I love this game. It is relatively easy to learn, but extremely hard to
master. It has a full deck editor, from which you can experiment and build
whatever you want (subject to the restrictions of your Hero.) The game design
is really good, and it plays very well. I've had relatively few problems with
disconnects or game glitches etc. The coding seems solid, and the number
of real bugs in the game is pretty low. I have found just 3 serious card coding
bugs, which I have reported and I am quite confident will be fixed soon.
Other than this I've only found a couple of text errors, which I also reported
but which don't impact gameplay, and a few very minor graphical glitches.
On the whole it is extremely fun (not to mention addictive) and a great
way to spend your time, involving a lot of strategy and decision making. I
have found the community on the forum, and most online players, to be
pleasant.

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#1.06 How do I get the game and make an account?
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Follow this link (cut and paste into your browser):

http://www.duelofchampions.com/en/the-game/register.aspx

You have some useful links at the bottom of this page: How to play,
a link to the forum, and a button for support. 

When you are ready, click on "Download and start playing".

Now on the right hand side of the screen, log in with your U-play account
if you have one already. If not, fill in the form on the right, tick the box
for "I accept the terms of service" and then click "Play for free". 

Don't worry, it won't ask you for any credit card details
before you start playing. This only happens if you later decide to spend money
which you are never obligated to do. 

If it tells you any of the fields are invalid, go back and sort them out.
If it says invalid U-play name, it's probably already taken so pick another
one. Once you've made an account, it will say "Success!" and finally give 
you a "Download" button, click this to get the program.

Run the setup.exe file that you download, clicking OK/accept at all the 
prompts. You don't need to do anything unusual. Then finally run the game
(it should put a shortcut on your desktop.) It brings up a news screen with a
link to the forums (bottom left) and support (?, top left.) When you launch for
the first time, it will take a while for the files to update. Allow the
progress bar at the bottom to reach 100%. This will not happen every time,
just if new patches or content are released. Have a look at the top right of
the window. If it says, "Servers online" then the game is ready to play.
If it says anything else like, "Servers offline for maintenance" then you
won't be able to play. Try again in a few hours!

Now click on "Play" (bottom right.) Enter the U-play name you chose
and your password, then click "Login". You should be ready to go! Now see
the next section for what to do afterwards.

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#1.07 Picking a faction
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When you play an account for the first time and have logged in (see section 
1.06 if you haven't done this already) you will be asked to choose a faction.
For each account, you get to make this choice just once and cannot change it
afterwards. But don't worry, this only affects the free cards you are initially
given. Whatever you choose, you will eventually be able to play any of the
factions, including the ones you didn't choose. But it will mean you are
probably stuck with the faction you choose for a while, until you build up
enough cards to try out other factions.

I'll go into much more detail about these later, but here are your three
choices. None of them are "wrong"!

INFERNO: The easiest deck to play initially, this is my recommended choice.
It uses fire spells to burn away enemy creatures, has ways to directly damage
your opponent, and has efficient, hard-hitting creatures.

NECROPOLIS: Probably slightly harder to play initially. It focuses on death
and decay, it causes the enemy creatures to be crippled or die from poison,
and is good at mass destruction. Also some of its creatures can heal 
themselves by attacking.

HAVEN: I would say this is the hardest faction to play well at first, and
probably the weakest starting deck. It uses a mixture of defensive creatures
to keep the enemy at bay, and powerful spells to wipe out creatures. It
is capable of healing its Hero (although this isn't very important!) It
has lots of ways of generating extra resources quickly.

There are two other factions, stronghold and sanctuary, which are not 
available to choose initially. Don't worry about these for the moment, you 
will be able to use them later when you have more cards. Sanctuary is only
available in the Void Rising expansion.

If you find you dislike your choice of faction, the only current way to 
change it is to make another U-play account and start again. This is a valid
option, and if you're going to do it, do it as soon as possible to avoid
investing time into an account you are going to abandon. Another choice is to
make three accounts, one for each of the three factions, and try them all out.
Then stick with the one you like the most.

Note that there is no way of moving cards from one account to the other, so
apart from casual play just using the starter decks (which is fine with your
friends) stick with one account once you've decided on a faction. Again, you
are not limited to that faction forever, only until you have enough cards to
build other faction decks.

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#2.00 The tutorial levels
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Once you have picked your faction, you will be presented with the tutorial
campaign levels. Although it is possible to skip these and go straight into
fighting people online, I would highly recommend you play through the 
tutorial first. You learn a lot about the game, and you earn a big amount
of currency which you can then use to improve your deck. If you go straight in
to fighting online with your starter deck, you are likely to get crushed by
anyone who has tuned their deck somewhat.

If at any point you are really struggling in the campaign, you can either:

(a) Read the strategy sections of this guide to see if you can improve your 
playing skills (section 6.00 onwards.)

(b) Go to the shop and buy Reinforcement Packs with gold if you can afford
them, and use the cards to improve your deck (see sections 3.01, 3.05, 3.06
and 4.00 to 4.13.)

(c) Send me an email with your specific problems and I'll try to help. Or try
the forum!

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#2.01 Boot Camp
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You get a bunch of story during the training, it's pretty tedious but listen
to it if you want. Keep clicking on the blue arrow to move forward until
things continue. Once the duels start though, don't skip anything without
reading it as it's useful rules information. At the end of each duel there is
some congratulating/moaning, you can safely skip that too.

To begin, click on Boot Camp, then Start Mission. At any point in the campaign,
use the blue back arrow at the top left to move out of missions, and 
eventually to the main menu. To get back to the tutorial from the main menu,
click Play and then select Boot Camp/Campaign on the right hand side.

For this part, the deck you have chosen makes no difference. You are given
set cards in order to learn the mechanics. You should find these levels very
easy, they are just there to help you. It starts off with a smaller playing
field before building up to the full rules. You must complete each mission
before the next unlocks. In case you need some help:

DENSTADT BARRACKS- Just follow the instructions, then afterwards attack with
the Lesser Air Elemental to win.

DENSTADT TRAINING GROUNDS- Follow the instructions, then attack the Ghoul with
your Griffin. Raise your Might to 3, then cast a Radiant Glory anywhere except
opposite the other Ghoul. End your turn, and next turn attack for the kill
with whatever is unopposed.

BORDERKEEP- Follow the instructions, then raise your might to 3 and end the
turn. Next turn attack and kill both his creatures, then cast a Radiant Glory
so it is unopposed if possible. Just keep attacking and casting more Glories if
needed until you win. [By unopposed, I mean in a row containing no enemy
creatures.]

WHISPERING FOREST NORTH- Follow the instructions, raise your might to 2, cast
two Griffins unopposed and end your turn. Next turn attack and kill anything
in front of your Griffins, then attack the opponent when you can. Deploy two
more Griffins, raise your magic to 3 ready for Lightning Bolt next turn, and
end your turn. Next turn, if needed raise your magic to 4 so you can cast
Lightning Bolt to remove a blocker. Attack for the kill.

DENSTADT WEST- Follow the instructions, then attack the Demented with your
Archer. End your turn. Next turn, attack and kill whatever is in front of your
Archer, raise your might to 2 and cast a Griffin in front of your Archer. Cast
the Crossbowman unopposed, and end your turn. [This isn't really necessary but
is good practice anyhow.] Next turn, kill whatever is in front of the Archer,
then raise your magic to 3. Cast Bless on the Griffin and attack for the kill.

ROAD TO FLAMMSCHREIN- Now you finally get your own deck, the faction that you
chose. Follow the instructions, then... just try and win the duel! It should
be fairly easy as the opponent only has 10 life and he sucks too. Raise your
might to 2 and cast your best creature that you can. End your turn, and next
turn raise your might to 3 and again cast your best creature, unopposed. Attack
blockers/the opponent with your other creature. Repeat this next turn with 4
might, and then after that start raising your magic skill and using spells as
well to clear the way. This is a very rough guide to the general strategy of
a duel! For this duel don't oppose the enemy creatures, play recklessly as
you will get his life down from 10 way before he gets yours down from 20. Keep
on attacking, casting creatures and killing his stuff until you win. If it 
goes wrong, just try again and hope for a better deal.

Now a prompt will come up asking you to test your skills in a multiplayer duel.
You need to play a couple of online games at some point before you can finish
the campaign, so it's up to you if you want to play them now. If you accept,
press Fight at the bottom right hand corner of the screen, and wait for an
opponent. After two duels, win or lose, you should have the XP you will need.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#2.02 Orc Invasion
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the Boot Camp screen, click on Orc Invasion and Start Mission. For these
four levels, you use your chosen deck just like in the last level of Boot Camp.
Follow the same guidelines, summon as many creatures as you can and
study the situation to see what best moves you can make. Once your skills
are high enough, start using your Hero ability to draw extra cards. Again if
you are struggling, consider buying Reinforcement Packs or reading the strategy
section of this guide.

VRADEK'S CROSSING- A straight duel, except your opponent has 10 life. Summon
creatures unopposed where possible, and keep up the pressure until you kill
him. 

SERPENTINE RIVER- Crag Hack is cheating by having two crummy Pao Hunter units
already in play. You want to kill these ASAP, either with spells or a creature.
Be careful because he can play another creature in front of his Hunter to
defend it from melee/flyer creatures of yours. So if you're going to put one
in front of a Hunter, make it a fairly large creature if possible. This can get
tough, but with a reasonable deal and solid play you should be able to win.
He doesn't seem to use spells to kill any of your creatures so pile them on.
Give him a kick in the face from me for cheating.

TWIGHLIGHT FALLS- He comes out quite slowly in this duel, so get as many
creature down as quickly as possible and keep the pressure on. Build up to
big creatures, and keep attacking. He uses several spells to mess with you and
your creatures, but given a decent draw you should be able to put too many 
threats down for him to deal with. If he puts Wind Shield on a creature to stop
you killing it with shooters, either take it out with spells or just move your
creatures to another row and ignore it.

DARKWOOD FOREST- This is a straight duel against a haven faction deck. Continue
with what's been working for you up to this point, keep the pressure on until
he crumbles. Watch out for annoying melee guard creatures that reduce your
attack damage from melee creatures; take them out with flyers, shooters or
spells instead. And avoid putting two units in the same row, both
because of charge creatures and his Sunburst spells. Try to kill him as quickly
as possible, as he will build up to putting big units out. If you haven't got
a good hold on the game by that point, you're probably in trouble. If you lose
just try again and hope for a better deal. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#2.03 Wolf Soldiers
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As I mentioned at the end of section 2.01, this third part of the campaign will
not unlock until you get to level 3. And completing parts 1 & 2 will get you
almost to level 3, but not quite. So if you haven't already reached level 3
by this stage, you need to go and play a couple of games online. It doesn't
matter if you win or lose, as long as neither of you quits right away which
results in no XP being awarded. You'll still get the XP you need to level up
whoever wins, and once you get to level 3 it unlocks this  part of the
campaign. Keep clicking the blue arrow in the to left to return
to the main menu, click the left hand tab (Duels) then click "Fight" in the
bottom right hand corner. Once you finish the games, return to the campaign
screen (right most tab) and start these levels. I really recommend finishing
all these, even though some of them can be quite tough. The rewards you get
are well worth it.

FLAMMSCHREIN- You start with a free unit here, and the opponent has 18 life.
But he has annoying creatures which gain life when they attack, making them 
hard to kill. If you can't easily kill them outright, just ignore them and 
move your creatures to open rows. You need a reasonably good deal to win here,
either with spells for dealing with his creatures or just good quality
creatures of your own to out-race his life gainers. Keep trying, or if you get
desperate buy some Reinforcement Packs to improve your creature base.

WHISPERING FOREST- Fleshbane fills the screen with incorporeal creatures, which
take only half damage from non-magic creatures. He doesn't do much else, so all
that really matters is how many magic creatures you draw. If you don't draw
many, you will probably lose. Especially as they get an extra health from the
Hero's ability. Either keep trying until you get enough magic creatures in 
your draw, or buy some Reinforcement Packs and load your deck
with as many magic creatures as possible for this duel. (To tell if your
creature is magic or not, right click on it to zoom in on it, and read the line
just below the picture. It will say creature - melee/flyer/shooter if it is not
magic, or creature - magic melee/flyer/shooter if it is magic.) He also uses
a lot of Wretched Ghouls, which have 2 power for 1 resource. Block these with
units with more than 2 life to keep them at bay. Block the incorporeal creature
with your magic creatures. You have to survive the onslaught of his creatures
to be able to win, then things will open up for you to launch your
offensive. Use your spells to kill the incorporeal creatures as they are harder
to take out in combat.

ALTAR OF THE SPIDER GODDESS- Nergal starts with a 2/0/4 shooter in play, which
is annoying. Ignore it at first, then once you draw a creature big enough to
kill it by trading blows, play it in front of it. Watch out for him playing
another creature in front of it to defend it though. This can be a tricky
encounter, so there is no shame in buying some Reinforcement packs to improve
your deck. You need a pretty good deal with a starter deck to win this. If you
use necropolis, Mass Grave can remove his creature on turn 1 for you
evening things out. With inferno, if you get some impact creatures out like
juggernaut and a good deal, you may be able to totally ignore his creature
and beat him down to zero before he does it to you.

DENSTADT- In this final encounter, the opponent starts off with three units in
play! This makes things very tricky. You want to try and kill them all,
obviously, ASAP. Chase the Maulers around with your creatures until they have
nowhere to hide, by putting a creature on each row. Use any spells you have to
kill their guys and level the playing field. If you manage this, you should be
OK. I find he often doesn't even move his guys out the way when you threaten
them with a unit, letting you walk up and kill them next turn. With a decent
deal, and if you've got your play skills together, you should win.

Congratulations, you've finished the campaign! Yes, that's all there is, unless
they add something more in the future. Now see the next section about spending
what you've earned.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#2.04 Spending your winnings
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once you've finished all 3 parts of the campaign, you should have around 1000
seals and over 60,000 gold (minus any you already spent on boosters.) If you
are playing for free and don't intend to put any more money in at this stage,
this is what I recommend doing: click on the Shop icon at the top of the 
screen, it looks like a stall. Click on "Packs". Scroll down to find "The Box"
and click "Instant Buy". Now scroll down to the bottom, and buy as many
"Reinforcement Pack" as you can with your remaining gold. This will give you
the best chance to get as many good cards as possible to help improve your
deck. Your gold is in yellow text, your seals in blue. They are shown under
your experience bar at the top-left of the main menu.

The next section shows you how to how to get around the menus and explore
all the screens the game has. If you just want to get on with building a good
deck and then playing some games, jump ahead to section 3.06, then onto
section 4.00.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.00 Getting around the menus
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once you have finished the tutorial, this section will guide you around the
menu screens, showing you all the screens that are available.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.01 The main menu
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After finishing the tutorial, this is the screen you will be dealing with most.
Note that this game times out relatively quickly, if you leave it unattended 
it will log you out for safety (to stop some irksome member of your family
messing with your cards.) You can just log in again, this is no problem. If
you are doing the tutorial levels and want to go to the main menu, press
"go back" in the top left corner. At the bottom right of the screen, a message
comes up when you move the mouse over many of the icons on the main menu
telling you what they do.

There is a question mark at the bottom left of the main menu. This is 
a very useful introduction to the game, which teaches you the basics of the
rules and has a handy glossary. It is probably worth skimming
over this before you start playing, but the tutorial will cover most of this
anyhow so don't get dismayed if it seems too much to take in at first. The game
isn't that complex and you'll get the hang of it in no time. I recommend coming
back and reading this help file again at least once. The "card types" section
will mean a lot more to you then especially. Once you bring it up, left click
on one of the example cards to see a breakdown of the important information
on each type of card.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.02 News, notifications and friends
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing you will see is the "News" section. It presents some items of
interest, keep an eye on this for new things. You can find out more about them
on the forums or in this guide. Under the big red "Play" button, you have three
tabs, News, Notifications and Friends. Click on Notifications to see any 
messages you have. This will be things like letting you know you've been sent
friend requests, that you've completed achievements or the results of 
tournaments you've entered. Keep an eye on this from time to time for new 
information.

The Friends tab brings up your friend list, which starts out empty. (Aww...)
If you know another player's U-play name and want to send them a friend
request, type it in at the bottom where it says "Add friends" and then press
the blue arrow to the right. It will send a request, if the name is valid.
You'll get a notification if/when the request is accepted, and then they will
appear on your friends list. If they turn out to be a jerk, you can remove them
by clicking the red button to the right of their name.

You can spy on your friends here to see what they are up to. They have a green
light to the left of their name, if this is turned on then they are online.
It shows you their current banner, level and ELO rating. Don't worry about 
these for now, they will be covered later. 

If you have any friends requests, you can click in the "Requests" box under
the News tab. You can then either accept (blue button) or deny (red button)
these requests. There's an achievement for having 50 friends!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.03 The main menu buttons
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are several things you can do from the main menu. See the following
relevant sections for more information about the screens they take you to. They
contain probably more information than you need intially, so you may want to 
come back to them after getting some experience.

At the top left of the screen you will see your banner, XP and progress to the
next level, your current level, and your amount of gold, seals and tickets.
Gold and seals are in-game currencies, tickets are used to enter Swiss
tournaments. Gold is yellow, seals blue, and tickets brown/grey.

PLAY (Big red button at the top!): Click this to bring up the gaming menu,
where you can do the tutorial, play against the AI or fight others online.
See section 5.00.

MENU (Cogs icon, bottom left): Click on this to bring up "Quit game" (I'll
let you work out what that does for yourself) and "Options". Feel free to
fiddle with the sound and graphics tabs here if you want. More important is 
the gameplay tab. Here (below language selection) you have three useful
tick-boxes. The first two are intially turned off, and the third on. I would
advise leaving them as they are for now, but coming back to review them after
you are comfortable with the game. 

Some cards just require clicking on to play, and there is an automatic "Are
you sure?" prompt each time you use one. This is handy initially, but becomes
tiresome once you are competent. So come back and untick this box when
you've had enough of that message. Similarly, the game will let you know if
you are attempting to finish your turn without using a Hero ability.
Once you don't need this prompt any more, come back and untick this too. 

NEWS: (Scroll icon to the right of the PLAY button): Click here to return to
the news/notification/friend list page from any other page that has come up.

PROFILE: (Red banner icon to the right of the news button): This has two
tabs. It shows you some basic information such as progress towards the next
level, currencies and lists the achievements you can get in the game.

SHOP: (Stall icon, to the right of the red banner): Click here to buy
everything you need: boosters, decks, currency, special items, and to redeem
promotional codes.

CARDS AND DECKS: (White cards icon, to the right of the stall): This is where
you can look at all the cards you have, and edit and create decks to play with.

INFERNAL PIT: (Red cards icon, to the right of the white cards): This is not
initially available, it unlocks at level 5. This is a place you can "burn" your
unwanted cards to get more gold. Be very wary about using this! I recommend
staying firmly away from it for a long, long time, until you've started to
build a big collection and have a feel for the value of the cards. If you burn
a card you can't get it back, and the gold rewards are pretty tiny. There is
however the chance of getting a free card when you burn them.

LEADERBOARDS: (Feathers icon, top right of the screen): This is where you can
see your standing in the world based on your ELO rating and success in 
tournaments.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.04 Profile / achievements tab
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After clicking on this icon from the main menu (red banner icon) you will be
presented with a lot of information. 

Profile tab:

---BANNER: On the left is the flag you will display during the game. It makes
no difference at all to gameplay and is only for show. You can use the blue
left/right arrows to change it any time you want. Some are locked and become
available after completing certain achievements. 

---NAME: Your name, that being your U-play name. You didn't forget what it
was already did you? It's to the right of the banner.

---EXPERIENCE BAR: This shows your XP points, and how many you need to get to
the next level. I'll talk more about what this all means later. Your level
is shown at the right of the bar, you start out at level 1 but you should get
to level 3 after finishing the campaign. Basically gaining levels earns
you more gold and seals (the ingame currencies) to buy more cards with. It
also makes you look good.

---SKILL RATING (ELO): Under the experience bar is your skill rating, given as
a number. It starts off right at the bottom (possibly zero I think!) If you
win games this goes up, if you lose it goes down. Whatever you do, don't worry
about your ELO rating to begin with. it really doesn't matter until you're at
the point where you want to try being hardcore and shoot for the stars. 
Until then, just disregard it, but feel happy if it does happen to go up. You
don't lose anything from your ELO rating going down, it will go up again.
Once it reaches 1000, you become "locked in" to playing other people who are
rated 1000 or more. This also happens at 1500 (you really don't need to worry
about that just yet though, I'm not threatening 1500 yet!) Some people get to
1000 too quickly, mainly I think by buying loads of cards by putting money
into the game, then find themselves brutalized by more experienced players.
Don't be in a rush to try and get to 1000. It cannot go below zero.

---COLLECTION: Under the skill rating it shows you how many cards you have in
your collection (that you have at least one of) out of the maximum amount
possible. Just for information as to your progress as a collector!

---CURRENCIES: To the right of your name is a currencies window. It shows
you how much gold and seals you have, and tempts you to "Get more." This
is what you click on if you do decide to put money into the game, which
rewards you with more gold and seals instantly. You earn gold through playing
anyway, even if you lose, and you get seals every time you level up. You
also get bonuses after you have completed certain achievements. Seals
are the more valuable of the two, each being worth about 100 gold. The more
amazing things tend to be purchasable with seals only, the more mundane things
with gold. It is possible to turn seals into gold, although I woudn't recommend
doing so, ever! The process is not reversable. Read about this in the Shop
section of the guide, 3.05. The "Get more" button will send you to the shop.

---CURRENT MISSION: This shows your progress in the mission you are on during
the campaign. The campaign is relatively short, so this will quickly just
become 0% after you've finished it and stay that way.

Achievements tab:

---ACHIEVEMENTS: To see this, click on the Achievements tab under the Play
button. There is a large number of achievements here, you can browse through
them all any time and it shows you how close you are to getting each one.
It also tells you the rewards you get. You will complete many of these just by
doing the tutorial levels, and will get more as you start to play online. Later
you may come back to look here and decide to work towards specific goals. A lot
really just need you to keep getting more cards, as you can't directly control
what kind of cards you get (except in the Infernal Pit.) Many others reward
skilful play, to the point of magically adept play in some cases! Often the
rewards are in the form of boosters, gold or seals. Occasionally the reward can
be something more unique like a specific Hero card. These should all be pretty
self-explanatory, but feel free to email me any questions you have about them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.05 Shop tab
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is a lot going on here, so don't spend any of your currency without 
first reading the advice in section 2.04. You win a lot from the campaign, and
you only get to spend it once!

To get to the shop, click on the stall icon, to the top-right of the main
menu. To the right of the screen there is your current gold and seals, the
in-game currencies which you spend in the shop. If you want to spend real
money to buy more currency (note that you never have to do this, it's entirely
up to you) then click on the "Need more Wealth" button below. This allows 
you to purchase gold and seals directly, and also to convert seals into
gold. I advice against doing such a conversion, it is one way only and
seals are rarer and can buy a bigger variety of things than gold.

The shop is presented in 5 tabs, which I will detail below:

---FEATURED--------------------------------------------------------------------

This gives you a little more news about the current/upcoming
sets, any special deals or cards you can unlock.

---CONSUMABLES-----------------------------------------------------------------

There are currently three things you can buy from here, all
costing you seals. Tournament tickets are the first one, the amount you
already have is shown under your level at the top of the screen. You get
given 5 for free when you make an account. You use these tickets to enter
Swiss tournaments, at the cost of 1 per tournament. The next two, XP and gold
boost are items you can buy which will increase how much XP/gold you get for 
the next 5 duels, by 100% and 50% respectively. My advice is leave all these
things alone to begin with, you have better things to spend your seals on.
Come back to these later when you are more experienced. If you buy one of the
boosts, it doesn't activate automatically, you need to set it off in the
dueling menu, see section 5.02.

---PACKS-----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is where you will be spending most of your riches, if you are
wise. There is a big variety on offer here. Click on the icon of any of them
to be given details. The contents of all of these packs/boxes are randomly
generated, you won't know what you're going to get until you've bought them
and opened them. Note that the packs do not get added to your collection until
you go to the cards and decks screen, and open them up. See section 3.06B.
Here's my advice on what to go for, and what not to:

TO BEGIN WITH FOCUS ON THESE

The Box: You end up with enough seals from the campaign to buy this, and it's
a good purchase in the future too. You get a lot of cards here, beefing out
your starter deck and even putting you someway towards having enough cards
to make other faction decks. No Heroes available here though, so you would need
to get them elsewhere. But I highly recommend this to be your first purchase.

Reinforcement Pack: The most cost efficient way to spend your gold. It focuses
just on the original 4 factions, giving you more chance to get cards you need
to help your starter deck. You always get 1 rare/epic and 3 uncommons. Once
your collection is big, it's these 4 that you are really paying for, but
it's still worth it. (Epic cards have an orange name and the rarest of the
rare, rares have a blue name, uncommons green and commons white.) If you are
struggling with the campaign, spend whatever gold you have on these packs
and use them to improve your deck (see sections 3.06 and 4.00 to 4.13.)

LATER TRY THESE

Heroic Pack: This is an upgrade of the Reinforcement Pack, although it gives
you less commons. After playing a while this won't bother you though, and
you are also guaranteed a Hero card. It will be random though! Chances are
you won't already have it to begin with as there are many different Heroes
you can get. These will help you start building new faction decks. You still
get your rare/epic and 3 uncommons.

Heroic Box: This is a great purchase, giving you a bunch of Hero cards along
with all the standard cards, but you won't be able to afford it right away.
So if you want it fast, you have to either keep playing until you earn enough
seals (through levelling up) to buy it, or put some real money in to get
more seals. I wouldn't recommend this, I'd go for The Box to begin with. You
can always buy this later once you're more settled and earning lots of seals.

The Serious Box: Very expensive in seals, but you get a lot for it. To get this
initially is realistically going to require putting real money into getting
lots of seals. Later on, if you save up a huge number of seals, this is an
efficient purchase. But no Heroes in this box!

Void Rising Box: I recommend initially staying away from Void Rising
completely. Not because it has bad cards, but because it is mainly focused
on a new 5th faction, Sanctuary. To start with you'll be wanting to get cards
for your starter faction, and you're even less likely than normal to find
ones that you can use in here. But once you have a sound collection from the
base set, this is the place to go to dip into Void Rising in an efficient way.

Emilio's Pack: This is the only way of getting hold of Void Rising cards by
using gold and not seals. It's not very efficient though, so to begin with
avoid this pack as well. It's more useful later on when you want to spread
into Void Rising while saving your seals for boxes.

AVOID THESE

Small Pack: Just don't. It's really tempting at only 2000 gold, but the problem
is that you are not guaranteed any uncommons or rares in your 2 cards. This
means you'll normally get commons. Put your gold into reinforcement packs
instead, this is better long term than wasting money on these.

Void Rising Pack: I would recommend saving lots of seals and buying a box
if you are trying to get into Void Rising, as it's a lot more efficient
than spending them on individual packs. 

Premium Void Rising/Heroic/Reinforcement Pack: You are paying more than you
normally would for the non-premium packs, and all you get is more of the 
premium shiny cards. They hold no extra gameplay value, they just look a bit
sparkly, but in fact they annoy me rather than look good. The only real reason
to try and get premiums is to go for the achievements that involve them, but
this really isn't worth the effort until you've done just about everything
else you possibly could with this game. The rewards for the achievements are
just not worth the extra costs.

---DECKS-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Here you can buy pre-made decks. Instead of being random like the packs
section, these are all standardized decks and you know exactly what you are
going to get. I wouldn't recommend spending anything on these to begin with
as the amount of powerful cards you get for your money is inefficient.
However, if you desperately want to start in a new faction, then you are
guaranteed to get enough cards for a new deck you can play. These are all
generally expensive (some very expensive) so think carefully before spending
a huge chunk on these. Click on an icon to read the deck contents, and compare
it to the card list below (spoilers!):

http://www.mmdoc.net/card_list/

The deck will appear in your Cards and Decks screen as a new seperate deck
(see section 3.06A). If you don't want to play with the deck as it is and just
want to add all the cards to your collection, delete this new decklist (see
section 3.06D). Don't worry, you won't lose the cards, quite the opposite, they
are released into your card pool for use in other decks. While they are still
in this pre-made deck, you can't access them for use in other decks.

---REDEEM CODE-----------------------------------------------------------------

If you are lucky enough to find a promotional code, you enter it
using this tab. If it is correct, you will be rewarded with a gift! Don't even
bother trying to type in some random stuff, it's not going to work. However, 
there are several well-known codes that do work. Copy these, one at a time,
into the redeem code tab and you'll get rewards! Cutting and pasting works, and
avoids accidental typos.

A3D-WER-Q8E-DF2-E4J		3 Premium Reinforcement Packs
M3R1-XMAS-2YOU-FROM-D3VS	A pack containing an alternate art Bonfire
WE-ARE-NO-TROLLS		A Reinforcement Pack and 10,000 gold

If these no longer work, please let me know. I just testing them at time of
writing and they currently work. (I know the third one looks stupid!)

You will then need to open these, see section 3.06B.
	
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.06 Cards and decks tab
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is where you can see all the cards you have, and edit your deck(s). To get
to this screen, select the white cards icon near the top-right of the main
menu.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.06A Viewing your cards and decks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing you will see upon entering this screen is a big window called
"Collection". This contains all the cards that you have. There are two numbers
under each card. The first number shows how many of that card you have
available, which means they are not currently in a deck. The second number
shows the total amount you have of that card, including those currently in a 
deck.

You can filter the cards in your collection in various ways. By selecting any
of the tabs just under the Collection title, you can look just at particular
card types within you collection. Right click on any card to zoom in on it
to be able to read it fully. (Right click again to zoom out.) To the right
of the Collection window title, there is a + and a - icon, shown in magnifiying
glasses. Click these to zoom in or out of your collection. There are three
levels of zoom, the middle one being the default. You can use the up and down
arrows on the right of the window to scroll your cards if they can't all fit
in the window at once.

When you hover over any card, the right hand side of the screen will display
the important features of that card to save you always having to zoom in. On
non-Hero cards, it also displays flavour text here! This text does not even
appear on the cards, so this is the only way to see it. It has no game meaning
but adds some background to the game world.

While not over a card, the right hand side of the screen shows the "Filters"
window. Move to this section to narrow down the selection of cards you want
to look at, within the category tab you have selected. The top part is the
factions filter. This has 6 icons, the 5 factions plus the nuetral cards 
available to every faction. Just like with the main menu, a handy explanation
appears in the bottom right of the screen as you hover the mouse over an icon
here. From left to right they are inferno (ring), haven (plus), stronghold
(hand), nuetral (diamond), necropolis (spider) and sanctuary (corals). Those
descriptions in brackets are what the icons look like to me, I'm sure you have
your own, probably better descriptions! By default all these are lit up, click
on any to turn them off (and again to turn them on again). Then the cards 
displayed in your collection window will only be of the lit up faction(s).
The faction of your deck's Hero determines what faction creatures and fortunes
you can use (plus neutral creatures and fortunes).

Under this are the magic schools. Again they are all on by default, and can
be toggled. From left to right (here we go again) are water (wave), earth
(leaf), primal (infinity), fire (flame), air (cloud), light (explosion), and
dark (half-moon). Note that the schools of magic are not directly linked to
factions, it is the Hero that specifies which schools of magic can be used,
regardless of what faction he is. However, I have noticed some combinations
just don't exist (such as an inferno Hero using water magic.) There are no
neutral spells.

Under this is the expansions filter. These are tickboxes, and there are three
at time of writing. (A new set is due out soon!) They are all on by default and
can be toggled to filter your cards. The first one (dragon) is the basic set,
the cards bought from Reinforcement and Heroic Packs. The second icon (corals?)
is Void Rising, the first expansion set which you get from Void Rising Packs.
The third icon (jewel) is Rewards, very rare cards which are awarded to you
usually through achievements (such as the Hero Kieran).

Lastly is the miscellanious filter, with 8 tickboxes you can toggle. By default
the ones on the left are on and the ones on the right are off. The left hand
ones filter cards by rarity, with Heroic (Hero cards) having its own category.
The colour of the text for each corresponds to the colour of the title of cards
of this rarity. On the right are three more filters. If "New" is ticked, only
cards just obtained from opening packs etc. will be displayed, helping you
to see if there is anything you might want to add to your deck(s). If you
tick the "Unusable" box, then when you are editing your decks (see section
3.06C) cards you cannot put into your deck are still shown, but are faded
into red (such as creatures from a different faction to your Hero). Lastly
"Premium" means that only the special sparkly cards that you have are shown
if you tick this box. They have no extra usefulness as cards, but count towards
some achievements and are worth double towards your % chance of getting the
Infernal Deal card in the Infernal Pit (see section 3.07).

At the bottom left of the Cards and Decks screen are the names of the decks you
have. Initially you will have just one deck, which is automatically named after
the faction you chose, such as "Inferno Deck." The name of decks is only for
your reference, your opponents cannot see them at any point. If you have more
than two decks, there isn't room for them to be displayed (weird huh?) so use
the left and right arrows either side to scroll through them. Click on any
of your decks to open its contents. 

When you do this, the Collection window will get smaller, and there will now
be a second, very similar window under it. The name of this is "Decks" and 
it shows the contents of your deck. Use the tabs on this window just as with
the collection window, in combination with the filters on the right hand 
side of the screen. Use the up and down arrows as before to scroll through 
the cards. To stop looking at your deck, select "Cancel" at the bottom of the
screen. This exits without making any changes, so is useful if you
accidentally moved some cards around, or started doing so and changed your
mind.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.06B Opening packs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You buy packs, and boxes of packs, in the Shop screen (see section 3.05). You
are also awarded them from achievements. When you have bought or are given a
pack, you have to open it before the contents are added to your collection. 
This simulates the experience of opening a real booster. On your Cards and Deck
screen, if you have any packs to open, in the bottom right of the screen it 
will say "Packs N" where N is the number of packs you have. It won't let you
know what packs these are exactly, so if you got several different sorts before
opening them, they are just piled together. You open them one at a time, by 
clicking on this Packs button. The screen then shows the pack being opened,
and the contents revealed. Cards not already in your collection are given a
yellow border to help them stand out. (This counts premium/non premium
versions of cards as seperate, so you may already have the card but not the
premium/non premium version you are now getting). To continue, press "Update"
in the bottom right hand corner. Now the number of packs you have will have
reduced by 1, and you can repeat this process to open them all. Or leave them
to open at a later date, although I don't know why you'd want to do that! Are
you weird or something?

When you are awarded a single specific card, from a promotional code or an
achievement, it will be given to you in a pack. When you open it, it will just
contain that pack. If you are wondering where your ****ing card is that you
just earned, it is in a pack waiting for you to open!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.06C Editing your decks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To make changes to one of your decks, click on it at the bottom of the screen
to open it just as before. If you want to change the name of the deck, click
the "Rename" button below the window. The name has no meaning other than as a
reference to you, and opponents never see it. (This doesn't mean I condone 
rude names!) 

If you want to make changes to the cards in your deck, you do so by using both
the Collection and Decks window. Use the tabs on both windows to help you look
through what you can put in and take out. Drag a card from the top window to
the bottom to add it to your deck, or from the bottom window to the top to
take it out of your deck. Note that the top window now automatically filters
out any cards which cannot be used with the Hero in your deck. So everything
you see in the top window is available for the deck you are working on.

To help you keep track, there is a number on each tab in the Decks window
showing you how many you have of each type. To make a valid deck, you must
have exactly 1 Hero card, exactly 8 Event cards and 50-200 other cards in any
combination of creature/spell/fortune cards. Usually you will have some of each
of these three types, but you don't have to. You could use 50 creatures, or
25 fortunes and 25 spells. I always advise sticking to the minimum of 50,
because by adding more you are only diluting your deck and reducing the amount
of times you will see your strongest cards. Therefore, I suggest each time you
put a new card in, take one out. If you follow this advice, the number on the
"All" tab at the top right of the window will always be 59. See section 4.00
for advice on how to make a good deck. If you haven't yet acquired any new 
cards, you won't be able to change your deck! Come back later when you have
got some.

If you want to change the Hero in the deck, first move your Hero from the
Decks window back to the Collection window. Now all the other Heroes should
become available from your collection, drag the new one down. This may mean
some of your cards now become invalid in your deck because they don't work with
the new Hero. They will be faded into a red colour. You need to remove them,
and replace them with valid cards. If you keep the same faction hero this will
only affect spells, if you are changing faction you may as well just delete the
deck or make a new one, as most of the cards will become invalid.

Note that each card in your collection can only be in one deck at a time. This
is very annoying and I hope they change this soon. To use them in another deck,
you must first remove them from the deck they are in.

Once you have finished making changes, select either "Done" to save what you
have changed, or "Clear" to cancel without accepting any changes. These buttons
appear below the Decks window. If you select Done and your deck is invalid, a
warning message will come up telling you why the deck is invalid. The deck is
still saved in this invalid state, however it won't be possible to pick it for
a duel. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.06D Deleting decks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because, as I mentioned in the previous section, each card you have can only
be in one deck at once, at first it can be easiest to just remove all cards
from your current deck and start a new one. To do this, click on your deck
at the bottom left of the Cards and Decks screen, then press "Delete" at
the bottom. Don't worry, you don't lose any cards by doing this! All you are
doing is moving them from the decklist back to the main card pool so that they
can be put into another deck. You can always make the deck up again exactly as
it was at a later date.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.06E Creating new decks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See section 4.01 for tips on making decks.

To start making a new deck, click on the "Click to create" button at the bottom
of the screen with the book icon. You'll then get an empty Decks window below
your Collection window. First of all, drag down the Hero you want to make the
deck with, then the Collection will automatically be narrowed down to the cards
that work with that Hero. Use the filters in the Collection window to help you
pick out 8 event cards, then go through the creature/spell/fortune tabs,
dragging down each card you want into the bottom window. Your deck will be
valid once it reaches a total of 59 cards. You can go above this if you want
but I don't recommend it. If you are wondering why you can't select certain
cards, even though they work with your chosen Hero, it's probably because they
are already in another deck you have. In this game a card can only be in one
deck at once, so you have to either delete the other deck or remove the card(s)
you want from it first (and then click Done to save changes from it). 

Note that the faction of the Hero you choose (icon at the top-right of the 
Hero card) dictates what creatures and fortunes you can use in the deck. They
must be the same faction, or neutral (pale blue diamond sort of thing in the
top right of the card). You can use whatever event cards you want with any
Hero. But spell cards are a bit different, they vary depending on each
individual Hero and aren't tied in to a particular faction. The icons on the
right of the Hero card, under the faction icon, tell you what schools of Magic
you can use for that Hero. It is normally 2 schools, but it can also be 3 or
even just 1. The icon in the top right of a spell card must match one of the
spell icons on the Hero card for you to be able to use it. See section 3.06A
for how you can view what spells you have of each school using filters.

Along the left hand side of the Hero card are its starting skill levels. The
number inside the fist is might, the bottle is magic and the purple curtain
is destiny. The absence of an icon indicates a starting skill of zero in that
area (it can still be raised above zero as normal.) At the bottom left of the
Hero card is its starting life, this is usually 20 but can be less. All Heroes
have the basic 4 Hero abilities (raise might, raise magic, raise destiny and
spend 1 resource to draw a card). Some also have another ability under these,
which can either be ongoing (applies all the time and doesn't need activating)
or has a cost to activate. In the second case, activating the ability means you
can't use any of the other basic 4 Hero abilities that turn.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.07 Infernal Pit tab
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This screen is locked until you get to level 5. Its icon is three red cards,
near the top-right of the main menu. This icon will be blanked out until level
5. Click on the icon to visit the Infernal Pit.

Be very careful about using this feature! It involves offering some of your
cards as sacrifices, and this process is non-reversable. In return you get
given gold, and the chance to win a specific card. The amount of gold you get
is relatively small, making it only a minor source of income and I would say
generally not worth the loss of the cards you burn in it unless you're totally
sure you will never want them. I would advise staying away from this feature
until you have quite a big collection, as you may deeply regret early visits
to the Pit.

You are presented with a screen similar to that of the Cards and Decks screen.
All your cards will be in the top window, named "collection". You can click on
any of the tabs under the title to just see certain types of cards from your
collection. Unfortunately you cannot use the filters from the Card and Decks
screen to narrow things down further.

Below each card will be two numbers. The first number shows how many of that
card you have available, in other words not currently in one of your decks.
The second number shows the total amount of that card that you have, including
ones already in decks. If all copies of a card are currently in decks, that
card won't appear at all on this screen.

To offer a card as a sacrifice, drag it into the bottom window, marked 
"Infernal Pit". It will put in only one copy at a time, so if
you want to offer multiples you must move the same card several times. You
cannot offer cards that are in one of your decks. If you really want to do so
you must remove them from the deck (see section 3.06C.) Moving a card like
this will not cause it to be sacrificed yet, there are two more steps to take
to give you the chance to change your mind! The amount of gold the Pit offers
you if you decide to follow through with the sacrifice is shown on the right 
of the screen. You can drag cards back from the bottom window to the top too
to cancel them.

At the bottom of the Infernal Pit window are three buttons. The first, which
I recommend staying totally away from, will move all cards currently selected
in the Collection window into the Infernal Pit window. The second button
"Clear" will move all cards currently in the Infernal Pit window back into
your collection. The third button, "Make the Sacrifice" is what you want when
you have decided you really want to sacrifice the cards in the Infernal Pit
window. 

If you do select Make the Sacrifice, it will then give you one more chance to
change your mind. You'll get a warning message telling you that the sacrifice
is permanent. They are not kidding! Think carefully before making your
decision. If you select "decline" then the sacrifice is cancelled. If you
pick "accept" then that's it, your cards are gone, and you get the gold added
to your coffers.

There is another feature to the Infernal Pit, and I consider it the most
important. At the bottom right of the screen, there will be a card displayed.
This "Infernal Card Deal" is a card that you could get as a bonus to your gold
for your sacrifice. To the left of the card is a percentage, which starts at
0%. As you put cards into the Infernal Pit window, this percentage will 
increase. The amount it goes up by depends on the rarity of the card you are
offering. Epics (red name) are worth the most, then Heroes and rares (blue
text), then uncommons (green text) then commons (white text). Also if the card
you are offering is premium (it looks all shiny and is kept in a different
pile to other cards of the same name in your collection) it is worth twice the
usual amount of percentage towards the Infernal Card Deal, although the same
amount of gold. The rarer the card on offer, the less percentage each of your
offerings will be worth. Currently Hero cards do not appear in the Pit, and
epic cards appear only at times specially announced on the forums.

This is a feature to use when you have a pretty big collection, as the amount
of cards you have to put in compared to what you win is about 20:1 in each
rarity. If you do use it, I advise putting in just enough cards to bring the
percentage up to 100, the you are guaranteed to win the card. Anything less
than this is a gamble, and if you're putting a lot of cards in you may not get
another shot to get the card on offer for a long time. It may also ruin your
chances of getting a future card.

Once you make the sacrifice, you'll be told if you were successful or not in
winning the Infernal Deal card. If you are, it will be added to your 
collection. It will also disappear from the Infernal Pit window, and no card
will be available any more. However, every 8 hours, whether you win the card
or not, a new card becomes available in the Infernal Deal. So even if you plan
to sacrifice cards to the Pit to get money, it is best to hold onto them until
you can use them altogether to buy yourself a card you really want at the same
time. You still get the same amount of gold you would get, plus this card for
free. 

When deciding what to sacrifice, the safest thing is copies of cards 
exceeding 4, or exceeding 1 in the case of Heroes and Unique cards. This is 
because any deck you make cannot have more than 4 of any card, and not more
than 1 of a Hero or unique card. It is possible to decide you are only ever
going to play one faction, and that you're going to offer as a sacrifice any
card that doesn't fit that faction. I would advise against this, as you will
probably regret it in the long run. As you buy boosters you will inevitably
get a large amount of cards for other factions, and eventually these will 
piece themselves together into playable decks. The small amount of gold you
get, even coupled with specific cards from the Infernal Deal, is not in my
opinion worth giving up completely on all other factions. But that's up to you
of course! Be aware that even for one faction, there are various Heroes, who 
have access to different spell schools. So even if your starter hero cannot
use a particular spell, another Hero you may get from the same faction might
be able to.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#3.08 Leaderboards tab
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To get to the Leaderboards screen, click the Feathers icon at the top-right of
the main menu screen. This has three tabs. "Skill" shows your position in 
relation to other players based on your ELO rating. This is a number which
starts at 0 when you begin playing, and goes up when you win. It goes down
when you lose, but you can't go below 0. This is used to match opponents of
similar skill when duelling online. Once at an ELO rating of 500, you cannot
drop below 500 again unless you lose 10 duels in a row. Similarly at 1000.
Don't get stressed out about your rating, as you get better cards and gain more
experience with the game, you are bound to have more success. This is a deep
game that cannot be mastered overnight. Both deckbuilding and play skills take
a long time to fully learn.

The next tab is "Jackpot Tournament." If a tournament is currently underway,
this shows you standing within the tournament. See section 5.03. The rating 
shown here is an ELO rating just within the tournament, where everyone begins
again at 0.

The last tab, "Swiss Tournament" shows your general performance in Swiss
tournaments compared to other players. See section 5.04.

The "World" tick box starts off selected, and there are two other boxes,
"Country" and "Friends". I don't know how these boxes work, as I never seem
to be able to tick them! Maybe they are part of future plans, or I am doing
something wrong.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.00 Improving your starter deck
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This section is aimed at improving the card quality in the starter deck you
chose, so it covers the 3 starting factions, as well as neutral cards which can
be put into any of the faction decks. Once you have completed the tutorial
and spent your riches that you have earned (see sections 2.04 and 3.05) these
sections will help you decide how to use the new cards to your best advantage.
It can also be used as reference as you buy more cards to come back and see how
you can continue to improve the decks. 

I advise reading the whole of section 3.06 before using this section, as it
will familiarize you with the deck editor. I will assume here that you already
know how to use it.

The advice given here is very general in nature, and is aimed mainly at
starting players and those with limited experience. As you grow more confident
you can and should decide what works for you. This advice is meant only as a
guideline.

Sections 4.01 and 4.02 will be useful whatever faction you have chosen. You
should then concentrate on the relevant section from 4.03-4.05 for your chosen
faction, but later it is well worth reading the other factions, both for
playing them yourself and knowing what to expect from an opponent of that
faction. The spell sections you should read depend on the Hero you have chosen.
These are not directly linked to the faction of the Hero. You can find these
as icons on the right hand side of your Hero card. For the starter Heroes this
will be:

Inferno- Fire, Primal
Necropolis- Water, Dark
Haven- Light, Air

Also you should look at section 4.13 for every faction, as they all need
event cards.

For each section 4.02-4.12, I will seperate the cards that appear in starter
decks into three categories:

Good- These are the stronger cards which you will want to hang on to, and 
include more copies of when you find them.

OK- These will do to begin with, but are not ideal, and you can look to replace
them when better cards become available.

Poor- These are the cards I consider really cruddy, either just because they
are not very good, or they don't fit into the starter decks well. Replace
these as soon as possible, even with an average card.

Others- These are cards which don't appear in the starter decks, but which you
should look out for as they are good cards to improve your deck with. They are
also cards to get to know as your opponent may have them! I haven't listed
cards which require a very high amount of might or magic, or more than 3
fortune, as they are unlikely to be useful to a starting player. I've included
the best 3 destiny fortunes in case you do decide to go up to that level. For
those cards which are in the Void Rising expansion, I have put [VR] after the
name. These come from Void Rising Packs or Emilio Packs.

I have left out those categories where there are no cards I would put into them
for a given section.

Remember to apply all this advice in
combination with the guidelines in section 4.01 below. A deck full of good
cards may not be a good deck overall.

A card list for the game can be found here (spoilers):

http://www.mmdoc.net/card_list/

Use this to read more about the cards I recommend using.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.01 Deck building guidelines
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The advice I give here will mainly be aimed at using the starter Heroes, but
much of it will still be valid once you start using other Heroes. I am going
to give very general principles with which to start, I believe you will find
them useful. But they should not be regarded as fixed, as you get better at
understanding how to build a good deck you can vary or just ignore parts of 
this advice as you see fit. But to begin with, I think these will steer you
in the right direction.

As I've mentioned several times in this guide, I recommend always using the
minimum number of cards in your deck, 59. This is 1 Hero, 8 events and 50
creature/spell/fortune cards in any mix. This is to help you draw your best
cards most often.

The next important thing to think about is what I will name the "maxout" of
your deck. To find the maxout rating for the cards you have in your deck at
any point, work out how much you have to increase each of the starting skills
of your hero to be able to use every card in your deck. The total of these
three is your maxout.

For example, I am using a standard Hero, which begins with 1 might,
1 magic and 2 destiny. The cards in my deck go as high as 4 might, 4 magic
and 3 destiny. So I need to raise might 3 times, magic 3 times and destiny
once. This is a total of 7 raises needed, so maxout=7.

My advice is to aim for a maxout of no more than 6 to begin with. If you go
beyond that, you will often find yourself too stretched in different
directions. You may well have to choose between using the higher level cards
of one sort, or the high level cards of another. This will leave a group of
cards redundant for possibly the whole of that duel, as you just won't have
the time to get the skills up before your opponent overwhelms you. 

To make this even easier, as a general rule, you can ignore any creature that
requires more than 4 might to cast. They may look great, but the fact is most
of them are not worth the investment, and if you put high level might creatures
in, this will require a reduction in the level of magic/fortune cards you can
use for a given maxout number. You will find initially that magic in particular
is extremely important, and it's better to have access to higher level spells
than to push for the higher level creatures.

On top of this, I would also suggest not worrying about increasing your destiny
level at all to begin with. For starter Heroes, this means forgetting about
anything requiring a destiny of 3 or more. I find fortunes, especially higher
level ones, are the hardest cards to use effectively so I would avoid them
until you really know what you are doing. If you do want to use some
higher fortunes, then I suggest not raising it any more than 1. 

If you follow the advice in both the above paragraphs, this will mean you
only need to raise your might by 3 and your destiny not at all. This leaves
you with being able to raise your magic by 3 points. So in summary, you can
go up to 4 might, 4 magic and 2 destiny for a starter Hero. This gives you a
good range of powerful creatures and spells, backed up by the occasional
fortune. I have found this to be an excellent template for a standard deck.

The next very important thing to consider is the amount of cards you have for
each resource cost. You ideally want to have a nice mix of cheap cards, leading
up gradually to expensive cards. Too many cheap cards can leave you lacking in
power later in the game, and too many expensive ones can cause you to be
overrun before you even get started. Go for a nice curve, that aims to make use
of your available resources every turn for the first few turns. This will
usually be with creatures, so the curve for them is especially important. As
you go up the curve, you want generally less cards at each resources level. 

Event cards are sometimes the trickiest of all. They are interesting because
they can be just as beneficial to your opponent if you are not careful. You
can sometimes make sure a card cannot possibly hurt you and can't help the
opponent (for example, Week of Taxes makes fortunes more expensive to cast,
this works well in a deck with no fortunes). But often it will be a matter
of picking a card which is more likely to help you than your opponent, based
on the rest of your deck.

The last thing to consider is your ratio of melee creature to shooters. You
want to have roughly an equal amount of each. Too many of one may lead to
running out of space on a crowded battlefield to deploy more units, as well
as falling foul of cards which penalize melee/shooter creatures. The more
flyer creatures you have in the deck, the more you can relax this rule, as
they can go in the back or the front line, filling holes as needed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.02 Neutral cards
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are cards with the pale blue diamond icon in the top right corner, they
are creature and fortune cards that can be used in any deck.

----OK----

Angry Wyvern: Quite versatile and tough, he can be handy initially, but as
usual he's not quite worth the stretch to 5 might in your deck. I would suggest
replacing him with a decent 4 might creature when you get one.

Lesser Air Elemental: He is quite versatile being a flyer, and his 2
retaliation becomes relevant given his high 6 health. Unfortunely he does not
quite pack the punch you want for a 4 might creature, these are meant to be
your game closers. But until you find better ones, he will do. He can provide
fairly good offense and defense, especially when backed up by another unit in
the same row.

Lesser Fire Elemental: He is not too bad as a high level shooter to begin with,
you will be glad to see him in your early games. His stats are alright, but 
you can look to replace him when you get better faction creatures.

Rogue Mercenary: 2 power and 4 health for 2 resources is pretty good, but it's
a shame you have to pay to attack with him. Remember to take this into account
when planning your moves each turn. He is alright for attacking and defending
until you find something stronger.

Sea Elf Archer: A pretty decent all round shooter, which can hold its own in
most decks. Its main drawback is just 3 health, but most of the time this
will do alright for a mid range shooter.

---POOR---

Ambush Spot: A fortune that can be handy in certain situations, but I feel is
too narrow in focus to merit keeping. If your deck is running well, you
should be able to cope fine without cheap tricks like this.

Campfire: This is actually a really good card, but I list it as poor here only
because I initially don't recommend using anything that requires increasing
your destiny, to focus more on might and magic. I don't think it's worth 
stretching your maxout just for Campfires, even if you have 4. But if you have
several other good 3 destiny fortunes you are using, then by all means include
this. It is a great way to gain resources and keep your cards flowing.

Dragon Vein: Not really suited to a starter deck, and to be honest I don't 
use these "skill raise" cards hardly at all. The problem is that they can be
almost useless later in the game, and tie up your resources in the early game.
If your maxout skill is not too high, you don't need this.

Lesser Shadow Elemental: Although he is quite hard to kill in combat, he is
too defensive and expensive. You want to be putting pressure on your opponent
with a 3 resource creature, and your opponent can safely ignore this one and
just move creatures out of his way.

Pao Hunter: He is just too weak, 1 power is bad for 2 resources without a good
ability to back it up. All factions can do better than this.

Wild Griffin: Although handy as a flyer, his stats are just too wimpy for a 3
resource creature. He is too easy to kill, and doesn't hit for enough.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Arcane Academy: Very good for decks which rely on getting a particular spell to
deal with situations. Can be a bit slow for aggressive decks.

Broken Bridge: The best affordable neutral card for dealing with creatures.
This has many uses, the most obvious of which is to return one or hopefully
two enemy creatures to the opponent's hand. If you have a creature on that
row you can move it out the way first. But you can use it to your advantage
to also return one of your creatures, moving into that row first if need be.
You may want to do this because your creature has taken a lot of damage, has
a nasty ongoing spell from an opponent on it or has annoying counters on it.
Also to rescue it from being stolen by Puppet Master.

Dark Assassin: If you are lucky enough to get one of these, it is one of the
most amazing 2 resource creature which is brilliant for any aggressive deck.
Dealing 1 damage a turn to you is not a big deal when he is doing 4 to the
opponent, and he is extremely hard to stop with creatures as they need 5
or more life just to survive his attack. He is vulnerable to many cheap spells
like Fire Bolt and Sunburst, but if the opponent doesn't draw one of these
they will probably lose the game in short order. If they do draw one, they
have to pretty much use it right away which can mess with their timing. Note
that the damage to the attacker is dealt first, so if you have 1 life and
attack with Dark Assasin, you will lose the game before he can deal his damage
to the opponent.

Gold Pile: This is the most reliable way for almost any deck to quickly gain
resources. It gives you a free resource, but remember it does actually cost
1 resource to cast, so don't go down to zero counting on your extra resource
first! Watch out for the Week of Taxes event that is popular, which makes this
card temporarily useless by making it 2 to cast. This card helps get out a big
creature/spell quicker, especially if you have gone first so you can raise
your skills above your resource level. Or you can use it to get out several
things at once early on.

Inheritance [VR]: A good way to get resources, but not as reliable as
Gold Pile. Note that even though it is free to use it requires 3 destiny. When
it works it is really good, but it sometimes ends up useless in your hand for
long periods.

Observatory: For any deck with a lot of fortunes that needs to get a particular
one in a hurry, this is useful. But can be too slow for very aggressive decks.

Pao Deathseeker: I call him Deathstreaker (look at the picture!) He is an
extremely versatile creature, acting more like direct damage which can be
aimed at a creature, or the opponent given an open row. You can use him to
deal the final points of damage to win a game, and can even pump him up with
spells first for more damage. You can use him to kill a small creature,
or finish off a bigger one. Be aware of the opponent having these; any time
you are at 3 or less life with an open row, if he has one of these you are
dead. But you won't see too many of them to begin with.

Pillage [VR]: A relatively cheap way of disrupting the opponent, making their 
next turn much less productive. The later on in the game you use it, the more
of a difference it makes, so pick your point carefully. Best used when you have
an advantage on the battleground.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.03 Inferno faction
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are cards with the red/yellow ring icon in the top right corner, they are
creature and fortune cards that can only be used with inferno faction Heroes.

---GOOD---

Cerberus: A bigger Demented, with one more on each stat. Uses all the same
strategies and combos. Although he is very good, I am slightly more drawn
towards taking him out of the deck eventually, but only because the 3 resource
slot is overflowing with amazing creatures for Inferno, and there are just so
many melee creatures that you want to include. But certainly always worth
considering.

Demented: A slightly disappointing 3 health, but other than that this is a 
great creature, highly suited to aggresive play. He combos really well with
Teleport, moving him into position for a big sweep attack, hopefully hitting
3 creatures at once. And also with buffs like Inner Fire, to hit with a huge
sweep attack. Immune to retaliation means he can attack recklessly and is
hard to block effectively.

Juggernaut: One of my favourite creatures in the whole game, he pretty much
nails the damage to resource ratio. He is very hard to block, and to ignore.
When backed by a Fire Bolt, he can take down a 6 life blocker. Your opponent
will fear this creature!

Lilim: An amazing top range shooter, with an unbelievable 8 health making her
stupidly hard to kill. She can even be put in the path of a Juggernaut quite
effectively. One of the best shooters in the game.

Maniac: A must for any aggressive deck, 2 power for 1 resource is 
amazing. Later in the game if you are desperate for a block he can provide
a cheap roadblock. He is hard to block from the outset when backed up by Fire
Bolts and Inner Fire.

Pit Fiend: A nasty piece of work, he can pick off cheap enemy units or finish
off bigger ones. Works well in combination with Hellfire Cerberus. Sadly
the 4 might slot is overpopulated with amazing creatures for inferno, so you
may eventually find yourself replacing him as I did, but I kept him for a very
long time. Great when backed with damage spells and buffs. Remember he does
take retaliation damage if he doesn't finish off a creature completely.

Succubus: Excellent stats for 2 resources, this works in just about
any deck. The best cheap shooter available.

----OK----

Altar of Destruction: This is a powerful card, and one of the few in the whole
game that can easily deal direct damage to the opponent. Use this exclusively
as a finisher card, I forbid you to use it at any other time, unless you are
certain you'll kill the opponent next turn and want to use your last resource
point. The reason for this is you are giving away card advantage, and the 2
damage to the opponent may not be as important as that card loss before the
game is over. I put this as OK rather than good only because of its lack of
versatility; if you are losing, it is totally useless. And sometimes you just
don't need it, as you crush your opponent with your creatures anyway. It's one
that's always floating on the borders of cards to include, you'll come to your
own opinion on it. The more aggressive the deck, the better this is.

Breeder: He only just makes the OK column, because he helps you get your magic
skill up quicker to cast big spells like Fireball while providing a bit of
damage. But I would still replace him fairly quickly, as he doesn't provide
enough early punch for an aggressive deck.

Chaos Rift: A nasty card when it works, but quite risky. The faster your
deck, the more likely this is to work. But if you come out slower than the 
opponent this ends up being just an expensive single card draw. It can work
very well, but be careful about whether your deck really is fast enough to be
likely to benefit. Especially considering there is only one creature
I consider worth using at the 1 resource level, unlike some other factions.

Hell Hound: He looks good, and is alright for a very fast creature, being the
only 1 resource creature besides Maniac for Inferno. But most of the time he
proves a bit too weak and you end up babysitting him to keep him alive if you
can't back him up with spells to force him through. Only keep him in for the
long term if you plan on being super aggressive; even then I have just found
he doesn't quite do what you want him to most of the time.

House of Madness: This is a disruption card, providing an annoyance to the
opponent. It is best played when you are in a strong position, and/or you 
expect the opponent to need to play several cards in their next turn. In those
situations it is very good, making the opponent lose cards for playing them,
and if they cast more than 1 you have gained card advantage. It's not that much
use when you are losing, or in a stalled situation, or early in the game, which
is why I rate it only as OK. Can work very well in some decks though.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Caller of the Void [VR]: Inferno lacks a tough 3 resource shooter, and so
if you are lucky enough to get this, it fits nicely. It works well in any kind
of aggressive deck, especially with direct damage strategies. To keep the
direct damage going you can move her around to get out of danger when she
is threatened.

Chaos Imp: Works well in combination with other discard strategies, but is
pretty annoying on its own. It's a bit of a gamble as some Heroes have
abilities which can kill this guy. But usually at the least your opponent has
to kill it right away and discard a card too, giving you card advantage. 
When they can't kill it, they will probably lose unless you are in a very
bad position.

Garant's Purge: Good against any deck, but can be lethal against certain deck
types that rely on a few cards for victory. By counting up how many copies
there are in the deck of each card, plus those that the opponent has already
used, you can often work out of the opponent has any in their hand. For example
if you find 2 Fire Bolts and the opponent hasn't used any, it's a fair bet they
have another 2 in their hand so using this will knock those two out of their
hand giving immediate card advantage.

Halls of Amnesia [VR]: A cheap and easy way of removing spell threats from the
opponent before they wipe out lots of your creatures. Be warned that not every
deck uses spells, so this is a slight gamble to include.

Hellfire Cerberus [VR]: Although 2 power is low, the attack anywhere ability
makes up for it. Combined with damage spells and boosts, this can take out big
creatures, as well as being useful for finishing things off. As it takes no
retaliation, it can be used to pick away at something too. If you can move it
behind a big melee creature, you can keep it defended. If the opponent can't
kill this, they are in for a rough time.

Hellfire Imp [VR]: Although tricky to use due to the unusual casting 
requirements of 2 might and 2 magic, when he works he is very powerful for his
cost. 3 attack is unusual for 2 resources, and he is one of the few flyer 
creatures inferno has.

Maws of Chaos [VR]: Exactly like Halls of Amnesia, but with fortunes.

Ravager: The bigger brother of Juggernaut, this guy is absolutely lethal if
the opponent can't do anything about him. The only problem is that his health
isn't any bigger, 4 makes him a bit fragile. Once you have 4 Lilim, probably
the best 4 resource creature you can get, 2 of these is probably enough to
complement that. Unless you are going completely creature crazy!

Twist of Fate: This is a great discard spell because it is guaranteed to pull
something out of the opponent's hand without needing it to be of a certain
type. It also gives you important information, knowing what is in the rest
of their hand helps you plan what to do on the next few turns. Have a good
look at the game situation and your opponent's current skill levels before
deciding what to pick. It is tempting to throw out their biggest creature
or spell, but it may be that they won't be able to afford it for several turns
so a more pressing concern should be dealt with instead.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.04 Necropolis faction
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are cards with the green/blue spider icon in the top right corner, they
are creature and fortune cards that can only be used with necropolis faction
Heroes.

---GOOD---

Fate Spinner: An upgraded Plague Zombie, he is extremely hard to kill and
he will wipe out almost anything that blocks him through infect. The only
problem is the relatively low 2 power, meaning the opponent can sometimes just
ignore him. But still a solid creature.

Lamasu: Really good stats at 2/2/6, hard to kill, a great blocker and very
useful being a flyer. Good to provide pressure, or be a stop sign for early
enemy creatures. 

Lingering Ghost: Another flyer, and very cheap, extremely useful. The stats
are not amazing, but being incorporeal makes him surprisingly hard to kill
with creatures, especially early on. They need 4 power to wipe him out in one
go, and you can safely attack non-magic creatures with retaliation of 1
because that will get rounded down to zero. He is a great creature to drop in 
front of an enemy 2/1/2 early creature. They will probably have to just move 
their creature away.

Mass Grave: A very handy fortune, which cheaply disposes of both powerful
early creatures your opponent puts out that you can't handle, or cheap blockers
put in your way when you want to kill your opponent. Putting a card onto your
library from your hand is a serious disadvantage though, essentially handing
card advantage to your opponent. This fits in most decks, but not all.

Neophyte Lich: Excellent stats for 2 resources, this works in just about
any deck. The best cheap shooter available.

Plague Zombie: A nice high 5 health makes him hard to kill, and your opponent
will be worried about blocking him. He will cause most creatures to die
pretty quickly if he can damage them thanks to infect. 

Wretched Ghouls: A must for any aggressive deck, 2 power for 1 resource is 
amazing. Later in the game if you are desperate for a block he can provide
a cheap roadblock.

----OK----

Graveyard: This is a pretty decent fortune, one which can help you
recover from a bad situation by getting back your best dead creature, or can
be used to draw a card later if you don't need it. The problem can be that if
your deck is very fast (like this one is) you may often not be able to use
the first ability. Consider this when deciding whether or not to keep this
card in.

No Rest For The Wicked: A variation on Graveyard, but without the chance to
cycle it for another card. If you are playing a very fast deck, chances are
the opponent will have more cards than you, and it's a cheap way of getting
access to a useful dead creature.

Plague Skeleton: Just 1 power is not good for 2 resources, but his infect
ability coupled with immunity to retaliation means the opponent may leave him
unblocked for most of the game. 

Putrid Lamasu: He looks quite frightening, and he's not bad really. But like
most creatures over 4 might, he's not quite worth it unless you are focusing on
a seriously creature heavy deck. He will kill most things that block him, but
often he will take retaliation damage before the infect finishes off the 
creature, and he can only take so much of that. I suggest pulling him for a 
decent 4 might creature when you get one.

Skeleton Spearman: These are handy just because they are fast, and can pick
away at your opponent if ignored. If blocked by a melee or flyer, you have
the option of dropping your own melee/flyer in front of him to protect him.
You may find him too wimpy once you get more cards, but for a really fast deck
he is good.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Archlich: I rate this as the best necropolis 4 might creature, having good
attack, high health and being very hard to kill due to life drain. Suitable
for virtually any creature strategy.

Asha Uses All: Although it puts you down a card to use this, it is often well
worth it to pull the specific fortune you need from your graveyard. Only 
include this if you are using a large amount of fortunes in your deck. 

Atropos, Weaver of the Dead: Out of all the 5 cost creatures in the game, I
would rate this the best, and most worthy of including in a deck. His ability
to get back creatures is devastating, and he is no slouch in combat either.
You can sometimes even recur his ability by getting him back to your hand,
either from the battleground or from your graveyard and casting him again.

Moonsilk Skeleton [VR]: A handy aggressive 2 resource unit which the opponent
is unlikely to want to block with anything that will take damage from it. Even
if it doesn't kill the creature, the crippling counter will mess it up badly.
These counters are cumulative also.

Moonsilk Spinner [VR]: A possible alternative to Archlich, it is something the
opponent will be unwilling to block as their creature will get seriously
ruined even by just one attack from this. I would probably rate Archlich as 
better overall, but there may be room for both in the right deck, or if you
don't have access to the full amount of Archlichs yet. Note that this is one
of the few shooters that takes retribution damage after its attack.

Shantiri Ruins: Just like Asha Uses All, but with spells. 

Vampire Knight: A great mid range creature, 5 is high health for 3 resources
and it just keeps getting filled up thanks to life drain. Throw in flying and
this is a reliable creature that fits into most decks.

Vengeful Spectre: The big version of Lingering Ghost, and much much harder for
the opponent to deal with. Where possible always put it in front of non-magical
creatures, it will take them an age to kill it and when you hit back you take
half retaliation also. The only problem is 2 power isn't great.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.05 Haven faction
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are cards with the grey/blue plus icon in the top right corner, they
are creature and fortune cards that can only be used with haven faction
Heroes.

---GOOD---

Fortified Outpost: Handy for the starter Hero as he can use this fortune
without having to raise destiny unlike Bonfire / River of Gems. It can help
you catch up from a fast start by the opponent by letting you get out bigger
creatures or more at once. Later in the game you can cycle it for a card if
it's no longer useful. 

Loyal Griffin: Cheap, sturdy and versatile. An excellent 2 resource creature.

Radiant Glory: Yes, yes, yes. This is one of havens best creatures in my
opinion. Very nice stats, the retaliation is relevant with high life, and a
flyer too. Nice for getting in the way of small units, or providing a decent
threat.

Sun Rider: One of the best 3 cost units for haven, having high life, charge 
and being immune to retaliation.I ist able to attack recklessly. When pumped
up with things like Bless, it can skewer things to pieces. Works well with
ways of moving him around, like Lightning Speed.

Tithe Collector: Normally when you go first, you are always behind in the
resources race. You get 1, the opponent gets 2, you get 2... and so on. But
if you can cast this on the first turn, you jump ahead. You'll have 3 available
on your second turn. This is very useful for all sorts of things, the extra
resources make things easier for you. They stack in multiples too. Although
he has no power this doesn't matter, if threatened with a creature just
retreat him to an unopposed row. Only when you run out of places for him to
hide is he in trouble!

Warrior Seraph: Although stat wise this is worse than Radiant Glory, this is
still a solid creature to be your top-end. With 5 life she has a decent chance
of surviving some combats and/or spells, and can stick around to be a real pain
for your opponent. While she is recharging you can move her around to keep
her out of combat. The opponent must commit to killing her off cleanly or else
dealing with her hanging around. Note that she regenerates her health before
taking damage from poison counters, making her even harder to kill. 

----OK----

Imperial Crossbowman: Haven lacks the 1 resource 2 attack creatures that every
other faction has. This and the card below are haven's cheap attackers, and
sadly are never going to be as effective. But this is alright for cheap damage
and to get the pressure on the opponent from the start. You can move him 
around when threatened, and hide him behind your other creatures. Probably 
when you get a sound cast of creatures you'll no longer need this unless you
are concentrating heavily on rushing the opponent from the start.

Imperial Sentinel: This guy's not bad, he provides some decent defense,
especially early on, against a weenie melee rush. By having a creature
above and below him, he can protect 3 creatures including himself. And this
stacks with multiple melee guard creatures, meaning 2 next to each other
will reduce melee damage by 2. A little too easy to kill and a bit wimpy,
but still a fair choice for an "agressive" deck, as far as any haven deck
is ever aggressive!

---POOR---

Devoted Sister: This would be maybe half decent if it healed itself as well.
This really isn't very good, it does nothing on its own, requires a lot of
adjacent positioning to work which sets you up for things like Fireball, and
often your creatures will just be killed outright rather than wounded if the
opponent knows what they are doing.

Fountain of Youth: There are not many Hero-healing cards that are worth it in
this game, it's a facet of many CCGs. The opponent just may not care about
giving you life back, or if they do they have the option to not cast more
than 1-2 cards. Generally this life gain is not worth it. It's more important
to focus on winning rather than not losing.

River of Gems: This is a good card, the only reason I put it in the poor 
category is that I suggest taking out all 3 or more destiny cards to begin
with to help you focus on creatures and spells. But if you do use this, then
it gives you a big resource boost, usable fairly early in the
game. It can help you get more threats on the table, or help you cast one or 
more expensive cards.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Elite Squire: His ability to keep up to 3 of your creatures safe or nearly safe
from shooter damage can be really important. He is very cheap, and 2 retilation
can be relevant when small units want to attack him. Remember his ability also
applies to retaliation damage, so you can safely attack a shooter with 2 or
less retaliation without actually taking any of that retaliation damage, both
with this creature and the adjacent ones. It's a good idea to space out your
melee creatures initially so that he can go inbetween them. Even if you haven't
drawn him yet, you may do soon.

Expert Marksman: A very solid 2 resource shooter, good for most creature
strategies.

Holy Praeotorian: A bigger better version of Imperial Sentinel. His 4 life
make him very sturdy, and he can seriously dampen a melee onslaught. 4 of these
is probably overkill but 2 or 3 are a great addition to most decks.

Wolf Captain: Possibly the most overpowered creature in the game, this is 
ridiculous for just 2 resources. Quickly growing to 2 or 3 attack and with
5 life, this causes chaos for the opponent while being hard to get rid of.
And retribution just adds injury to insult. If you are lucky enough to get one
they are amazing. Play them as soon as you can, then start ganging your
creatures around her.

Wolf Marksman [VR]: Although not fantastic, this provides a good mix of attack
and defense, and is a headache for anything other than enemy shooters.

Wolf Praetorian [VR]: A seriously tough melee unit which has probably the 
scariest retaliation in the game. Anything that is isn't immune to retaliation 
is going to get badly hurt attacking this, even if it manages to kill it. The
biggest  down point here is the low 2 attack, so it leans more towards a
defensive rather than aggressive strategy.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.06 Water spells
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are spell cards with the light blue wave icon in the top right corner.
They can be used by any Hero with a matching icon on the right hand side of
their card. It is used by the starter necropolis Hero.

---GOOD---

Icy Weapon: Very expensive, but it provides a sizeable and permanent attack 
boost. This can be used as a finisher, or more often to help a creature kill
a big blocker and come out keeping the bonus. Don't just randomly throw this
about due to its cost, make it count.

----OK----

Refreshing Spring: This is a handy cheap way to either land an extra point of
damage to finish the opponent, or help your creature kill a blocker slightly
out of its normal range. May prove slightly underwhelming in the long run, so
depending on your strategy you can look to replace this.

---POOR---

Ice Wall: This is handy in some situations, and can help you win a "race"
situation by ignoring some enemy creature for a turn. But given the aggressive
nature of the necropolis starter deck, it's a bit too defensive. Useful in 
decks that don't want to go high into the magic skill as a way of stalling,
but not great for the starting deck particularly.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Blizzard: A fairly cheap way of dealing damage which can end up getting spread
around and weakening several enemy units. Be aware that this can be passed on
to one of your creatures, not just enemy ones. Spaces opposite each other from
the two front lines are considered adjacent. Also note that if Blizzard kills
a creature, it won't get a chance to move on to another creature. 

Geyser: A mini Fireball for water magic, probably its scariest overall spell.
Being so cheap it's easy to include knowing you'll be able to do something with
it, at worst just 3 damage to an enemy creature. But when you can hit multiple
ones, it can be very nasty. Be aware that "adjacent" does not include diagonals
but that it does include your creatures too if you aim it at their front line.
Your front line is considered adjacent to theirs across the centre.

Ice Spikes: Rather expensive, but has the potential to hit up to 4 creatures.
Not normally worth casting until you can hit at least 2 at once. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.07 Earth spells
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are spell cards with the green leaf icon in the top right corner.
They can be used by any Hero with a matching icon on the right hand side of
their card. It is not used by any starter Hero, but you earn an alternate art
Kat stronghold Hero fairly quickly who can use earth.

--CARDS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Earthquake: It's cheap and capable of wiping out an early ground assault very
efficiently. Useful in combination with flyers and life drain/regenerating
creatures. Use more than one at once to take out bigger creatures, or in 
combination with Insect Swarm.

Insect Swarm: One of the best spells in the game, a relatively cheap way of
potentially wiping the board clean. Two cast one after the other will almost
always be enough to kill everything in sight. Save it in your hand for when
things are going badly, either because the opponent has come out faster than
you or has just killed a load of your stuff.

Stone Shield: Obviously this is quite defensive at first glance, but it can
be used aggressively also as a way to ignore the opponent's creatures for a
turn while continuing your own assault on other rows. It will last for the 
whole turn, even when you take damage, so unless the opponent can otherwise
remove this card, they cannot hurt you at all for the whole turn. A great way
to secure your victory as well if you are on low life to defend against a 
surprise Pao.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.08 Primal spells
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are spell cards with the dark blue infinity icon in the top right corner.
They can be used by any Hero with a matching icon on the right hand side of
their card. It is used by the starter inferno Hero.

---GOOD---

Teleport: Great in any aggressive deck, it can help you get the last bit of
damage by moving to an empty row, or to get a surprise attack by moving your
creature into position first. Especially good with sweep attack creatures, if
the enemy isn't expecting it, this can be lethal. 

----OK----

Dispel Magic: When you need it this is really good, but sadly it will often
sit in your hand the whole game and not be used. It's really a gamble putting
it in, it depends how much continuous spells bother you with your deck setup.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Mass Dispel [VR]: A grander version of Dispel Magic, but requries 3 magic skill
instead of 1. It will cripple a deck relying on a lot of ongoing spells at
once, however this is quite uncommon. You will most likely be getting rid of
just 1 spell at any one time with this, and it also kills your own ongoing
spells. It's best used in a deck with no ongoing spells that will hang around
for more than a turn. I think this card is worth mentioning, but I can never
quite justify recommending cards which only work on ongoing spells as there
often just isn't any worth worrying about in your average duel.

Spell Steal [VR]: Like everything that deals with ongoing spells this is hit
and miss, so is a gamble to include. But at least with this one, if you do find
something you not only get rid of it but steal it, which is usually
better. It works great on Stone Shield particularly, or stealing permanent
creature buffs like Bless.

Spell Twister: This is the ultimate way of addressing spells, using them
against the opponent. They don't have to be ongoing, so there's a much better
chance you will find something to use. Also use the information you get, you
will find out what other spells the opponent is holding at the time. Use that
to plan your strategy. This can be devastating when you use your opponent's big
spell against them, not only getting rid of it but making them suffer the
results, often at less cost than it would normally be. If the opponent happens
to have a Spell Twister of their own when you use this, always pick that first.
It will use it up, and then let you pick another spell!

Town Portal: An amazing card which is useful in almost any situation, with the
exception of facing combo decks that don't use a creature until they kill you
with it right away. Its main use is as an aggressive weapon, to clear a blocker
out of the way and make the opponent waste time casting it again. Use it on
the most expensive creature you can, to cause maximum disruption. But be wary
of using it on a creature that does something after being cast, as the opponent
will get that benefit again. You can also use this on your own creatures, to
either cast them again with refreshed health or get rid of an annoying spell
or counter on them. Also to rescue it from being stolen by Puppet Master.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.09 Fire spells
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are spell cards with the red/orange flame icon in the top right corner.
They can be used by any Hero with a matching icon on the right hand side of
their card. It is used by the starter inferno Hero.

---GOOD---

Fireball: A great spell, it's downfall being it is so well known that good 
players know how to avoid it. Sometimes you just can't avoid it though, and
are forced to put creatures close together due to the situation, knowing if
the opponent has a Fireball you are in big trouble. Save it for a situation
where it can cause a lot of casualties. Be careful when using it, it can
also hurt your creatures if you use it on an enemy creature in the front line.
The slot in your front line the other side of the middle is considered
adjacent, so you will hurt a creature you have in that slot. You can always
move them first, or by hitting a back row creature you can't hurt your own.
Due to its noteriety and cost, I wouldn't recommend having more than 2 in a
deck. Be aware that "adjacent" does not include creatures touching by 
diagonals.

Fire Bolt: A must for almost any deck that has access to fire magic. This is
probably the most efficient way of dealing with small creatures, and is also
very useful at softening up a blocker ready for you to finish it off with an
attack. It should be a card that's constantly on your mind when playing against
a fire Hero! Don't waste it on something that isn't bothering you much, it can
be much more devastating to take out something big in combination with an
attack.

----OK----

Fire Trap: A cheap way to stall a fast opponent, but one which they can get 
round by just moving their creatures and can sometimes end up hurting you if
things go badly. Replace it with better spells when you can. It's bets used
when you have a decent shooter out, to make it harder for the opponent to 
attack it while you freely shoot away. The attacker still gets to do their
damage before getting hurt by the Fire Trap.

---POOR---

Fire Shield: Looks good at first, but there are too many ways round it. It is
handy because it makes even shooter creatures take some damage, but if your
creature is killed by a spell or even returned to your hand, you've lost this
spell and it probably didn't achieve much.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Frenzy: This is a bit hit and miss, and to be honest not that great, but it
can be handy at first to fill the gap in the spell scale at 3 resources. It's
at its best when the opponent casts a really big creature, but sadly you can't
make it hit itself. I wouldn't recommend using this long term, but if you get
one early it will suffice.

Inner Fire: A nice cheap way of bumping up a creature, to either kill a big
blocker or do more damage to the opponent. I would only recommend doing the
latter when you can kill them or put them in range of other things you have,
otherwise the difference it makes in combat is usually more important. Great
with the attack anywhere creatures, and with the sweep attack ones.

Mass Inner Fire [VR]: In a creature heavy deck, this can be an amazing
finisher. It's a bit expensive and of course relies on you having a decent
number of creatures in play to work well. Fits in nicely with attack all and
sweep attack creatures.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.10 Air spells
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are spell cards with the light blue cloud icon in the top right corner.
They can be used by any Hero with a matching icon on the right hand side of
their card. It is used by the starter haven Hero.

---GOOD---

Cyclone: Very handy to begin with, and you may like keeping this one in your
deck at least for a while. The 1 damage can be crucial in finishing creatures
off, and if you can stun lots of the opponent's creatures it can seriously
mess up their assault, helping you win the race. Wait until you can land it
on a decent number of creatures.

Lightning Bolt: Expensive, but will take out most creatures in one go. So 
don't waste this on a small creature unless there's a very good reason. It can
even soften up a huge creature with more than 6 health, to be finished off by
your attacker.

---POOR---

Wind Shield: This is too narrow I feel, it doesn't even stop all the damage,
and most players will have melee/flyers which this does nothing to stop.
Too risky for what it does.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Chain Lightning: A card people often forget about because it affects creatures
that aren't adjacent rather than are adjacent. It can hit up to 3 enemy units,
but watch out for it hitting your creatures as well as the front lines are
considered adjacent. Diagonals are not adjacent. Try and hit at least 2
creatures with this, and to try and force the opponent to set themself up for
this with the way you use your creatures.

Lightning Speed: This is like a permanent Teleport, and although expensive I
have found this quite effective. When put on a big creature, you can usually
right away kill something in another row, giving you no loss of card 
advanatage. If the opponent then can't do something to stop your creature,
they are going to have a hard time as you go around picking off anything they
cast. It can also be used to repeatedly find an open row to get damage through.

Storm Wind: Don't get caught out by the 2 resource cost, unusually this needs
3 magic skill. But once you are at 3, this is a cheap way of moving your
opponent's guys around to your advantage. It can be used to move something in
front of your creature so you can kill it, line up two creatures to receive
charge damage, set up a Chain Lightning or Sunburst, or just move something
out the way to get damage through. For a big creature that is in front of one
of your units, you can attack it first, then move it in front of another
creature with Storm Wind, then attack it again.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.11 Light spells
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are spell cards with the yellow explosion icon in the top right corner.
They can be used by any Hero with a matching icon on the right hand side of
their card. It is used by the starter haven Hero.

---GOOD---

Bless: A pretty cheap way to premanently power up your creature. Unless you can
kill the opponent with this extra damage, I would generally only recommend
using this to help your creature win a fight. This means you have swapped one
card for another, and leaves the opponent with a big threat to deal with
afterwards. Especially good on charge creatures.

Sunburst: A devastating cheap damage spell. Remember this hurts your creatures
too in the chosen row, but sometimes this doesn't matter if you're trying to
get the last bits of damage through. As long as your creature survives and 
theirs don't on the row, you will get to attack and win. Otherwise you would
generally be better moving your creature out the way first before using this
on a row. Even doing 3 damage to a single enemy creature is efficient for
2 resources, but try and hit two creatures whenever you can. One of those
key cards you quickly become very aware of when playing against Heroes with
access to light magic. If you can use another card to line up two enemy
creatures first, you can make your own "double hit."

Word of Light: One of the most powerful 4 cost spells in the game in my
opinion. A mass removal spell that doesn't hurt your creatures. With this in
hand you can plan ahead, weakening any creatures the opponent has with more 
than 2 life, ready to wipe out their whole population with this in one go.
Casting one after the other, even in subsequent turns, can be truly
devastating. Don't waste this on just one creature, it is at its best when
the opponent thinks they are doing well with lots of creatures out.

---POOR---

Heal: A lot of the time a good player will be wiping out your creatures in one
turn anyway, in which case this card is useless. Even when you can use it, I
think it is too defensive and inneffective to be worth having. A nearly-dead
creature can still attack, so I would rather just put out more creatures than
waste a card on a one-time heal.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Cleansing Light: The only way for light magic to remove ongoing spells. 
It will cripple a deck relying on a lot of ongoing spells at
once, however this is quite uncommon. You will most likely be getting rid of
just 1 spell at any one time with this, and it also kills your own ongoing
spells. Use it in a deck with no ongoing spells that will hang around
for more than a turn. I think this card is worth mentioning, but I can never
quite justify recommending cards which only work on ongoing spells as there
often just isn't any worth worrying about in your average duel.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.12 Dark spells
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are spell cards with the blue half-moon icon in the top right corner.
They can be used by any Hero with a matching icon on the right hand side of
their card. It is used by the starter necropolis Hero.

----OK----

Agony: This is handy for putting creatures in a bind, especially cheap ones
with only 2 health. Unfortunately they still get to attack and deal their
damage before getting hurt themselves, but this is still often worth it to
limit a fast creature to just one attack, or weaken a big creature ready for
killing in another way. Not quite good enough for the long run, replace this
with more potent spells when you get them.

Death Seal: For a fast. aggressive deck like this, this card can be useful.
It will set up any blocker to die instantly to your attacker, no matter how
small, and without a chance to retaliate. The drawbacks are the fairly high
cost, and when you are on the defensive or the opponent just want to race
you on other rows, this is of little use.

---POOR---

Purge: Although cheap, this is very narrow and may well not be of any use
for the whole of many duels. 

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Moonsilk Fetters [VR]: Note that this requires 3 magic skill even though it
only costs 2 resources to cast. This is a cheap way of making 2 creatures less
scary, either so you can kill them easier or ignore them while attacking with
your own creatures. Although not amazing, I find it can be very useful in most
creature conflict situations. 

Shadow Image: In the right situation, this can be devastating. Ideally you want
the opponent to have just cast a creature that you can kill with the copy,
possibly combining with another spell or another creature attacking. Then it
becomes harder for the opponent to deal damage to your copy without using a
spell, and even if they do they have often lost two cards for one.

Soulreaver: The most efficient single creature kill card in the game. The only
drawback is you will often find yourself spending 4 resources to kill something
that costed your opponent less, so try to focus on expensive creatures. It's
cards like this that make creatures requiring 5+ might seem unappealing.

Weakness: A nice cheap way of shutting down a small creature or severely 
hampering a bigger one. It does suffer from being vulnerable to ongoing spell
destruction though.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#4.13 Events
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----OK----

Celebrations: This is alright, as it can't be easily used by your opponent to
get an advantage so is low risk. But similarly you must be careful about using
it yourself, as you give cards to your opponent. In a desperate situation this
may provide a card you really need, and later in the game where you have a lot
of resources, you will at least be able to use the card you draw before the
opponent gets to use theirs.

Day of Fortune: I quite like this one, it's not very risky as it's expensive
to use for either player. It works well in any deck that has cards which you
may want to get rid of in some situations, like cards which deal with ongoing
spells and none have turned up, or resource gaining cards later in the game.
It can also be used in a tricky way to plant cards in your graveyard for later
use by one of your cards, for example to bring them to the battleground with
Ressurection.

Week of the Weaponsmiths: A pretty safe choice, and one that is alright for
most aggressive decks, especially those favouring cheap creatures. It can give
them a bigger late game punch, and it especially good for decks with "attack
anywhere" creatures. 

---POOR---

Week of Knowledge: This doesn't suit the aggressive nature of the starter
decks, it is much more for slower, card drawing control decks. You may
help out your slow-playing opponent with this card, and you probably won't
activate it much yourself unless you get a really bad initial draw.

--OTHERS TO LOOK OUT FOR--

Mana Storm: Great for decks that use few or no spells.

Market of Shadows: Great for decks that don't care about hurting themselves,
or for encouraging the opponent to hurt themselves. Also great for cheap decks
that quickly have more resources than they can use, to turn this into card
advantage. Or for decks that don't always do much even on their first or second
turn as an alternative/backup to Week of Knowledge.

Market of Wonders: Great for decks that generate a large amount of resources
to help them use this to find specific cards when there's nothing else to do
with the resources, and decks which rely on getting certain card(s) to deal
with some situations.

Month of the Dancing Flames: An alternative to Week of the Mercenaries. It is
better in one way, in that it can never fail. But it is more expensive to use,
and giving your opponent an extra retaliation point can be annoying. In a mega
creature rush deck you can make use of both Week of the Mercenaries and this
card.

Path of the Ancestors [VR]: Great for decks that use few or no targeted cards.

Week of Taxes: Great for decks that use few or no fortunes.

Week of the Mercenaries: Great for decks that use a large amounts of creatures
(as a rough guide, at least 25, preferably 30+.) This can be used effectively
with any method of drawing cards or putting cards on top of your library. Cards
like Altar of Destruction can be used to put a creature on top of your deck if
one isn't already there when you activate this event. You can activate Week
of the Mercenaries, before using any Hero abilities that turn. If the top card
is not a creature, you can use your Hero to draw a card, giving you another
chance to make the top card a creature. You can also use other card drawers
like Bonfire in the same way.

Week of the Tamed Spirits [VR]: Great for decks with few or no magic creatres.

Week of the Wild Spirits [VR]: Great for decks with large numbers of magic
creatures.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#5.00 Playing online and ELO ratings
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This section covers moving on to playing against people online. If you haven't
already, I highly recommend completing all three levels of the tutorial (the
last being Wolf Warriors) and spending your riches to improve your deck. You
will struggle an awful lot initially if you don't do this, as the starter decks
are pretty weak and badly designed. See sections 2.00-2.04. You should also
re-read the help files by clicking the question mark in the bottom left hand
corner of the main menu. If you are looking to improve your playing skills,
see section 6.00 onwards.

Press the big PLAY button to begin looking for games. If you have a campaign
screen up, keep pressing "go back" in the top-left corner first until you
return to the main menu.

Look at the "choose your deck" section at the bottom of the screen. If you 
have more than one deck, use the left and right arrows to pick
the one you want. Only valid decks will be available, if you saved an 
incomplete one, you can't select it here. If this section isn't visible, first
click on the "duels" tab near the top-left of the screen.

When playing online you always have the option of surrendering, click the cogs
icon at the bottom-left of the screen, and select surrender. Be warned, there
is no confirmation message! As soon as you click this, you will lose the duel.

You have something called an ELO rating which measures how successful you are
being in your games against others. It starts out at 0, and goes up every
time you win and down every time you lose. However, it can't go below 0. To
see your current ELO rating, click the red banner icon at the top of the screen
and look for where it says Skill rating (ELO) in the middle of the screen.

You shouldn't be concerned with your ELO rating, don't let it frustrate you.
Concentrate on learning the game. Sometimes you will lose just because the 
opponent has access to much better cards than you currently do. Don't worry
about all of this, just keep playing and earning more riches to buy cards.
Concentrate on building better decks and learning strategies rather than trying
to get a great ELO score. Over time, when you are ready, you will find it 
starts going up as you find your stride anyway. You still get XP and gold even
when you lose.

Once you get to 500 ELO points, you cannot drop below this by losing unless you
lose 10 games in a row. Similarly for 1000 and 1500. Be wary of reaching 
1000 too quickly, as you will find the difficulty of opponents will grow
dramatically once you get above this number. Don't be disheartened if you start
suddenly losing a lot at this stage, you are facing some of the best players
the game has to offer. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#5.01 Finding an online opponent
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Press the PLAY button, and then click the "duels" tab near the top-left if it
isn't already selected.

Once you've chosen your deck (see section 5.00) press the FIGHT button in the
bottom right-hand corner of the screen. A timer will then appear, and the game
will try and find you an opponent. The timer will keep counting until one is
found. Once it gets one for you, the game will start automatically. If you
change your mind, press the button underneath the timer, which will cancel the
game.

During the game the ELO rating of both players is shown under their name. After
the duel is finished you will see some statistics relating to the duel, and
see how much gold and XP you earned. Unlike playing against the AI, you have
a two minute time limit for each of your turns. Once the timer is getting close
to running out, it will count down at the top of the screen. If it runs out
before you end your turn, the turn will be automatically passed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#5.02 The reward system and using boosts
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Each time you finish an online duel, unless someone quit right away, both the
winner and loser are awarded gold and XP. The winner will get more of course.
The amount awarded generally increases the more turns the duel took. This means
that even if you are losing, it is worth defending for as long as you can
rather than surrendering. But of course if someone is about to win and is
clearly deliberately messing about to gloat over it without passing the turn,
you may as well go ahead and surrender instead of waiting for them to finish
being an idiot.

Don't worry about losing, all you actually lose is ELO rating and you really
shouldn't be worrying about this for a long long time. You can relax while
playing knowing that even if you lose, you will still get XP and gold. That's
what is important. XP will cause your level bar to progress, shown at the
top-left corner of the main menu. To the right of the bar is your current
level. When this fills, you level up and your level increases by 1. In
addition to this, you will be awarded 10,000 gold and 100 seals. Gold and
seals are the ingame currency, and are shown just under your level progress
bar. Gold is in yellow, seals are in blue. Once you have at least 12,500 gold
you can buy another booster pack to improve your deck and work towards being
able to use another faction. And once you have 1000 or more seals, you can buy
a box of boosters which will be a tremendous help! I recommend mainly saving
up your seals for boxes rather than spending them on other things, particularly
individual expansion boosters, as this is not an efficient use of seals.
See section 3.05 for how to use the shop.

As you play you will also unlock various achievements, getting a reward each
time you do so. See section 3.04. You will unlock them quite regularly as you
begin playing, this will slow down as you reach higher levels but every so
often you will unlock another one. 

There are boost items which can be used to increase the amount of XP or gold
you get from duels. You can be awarded these from achievements and from 
promotional codes, or by buying them in the shop, under consumables (see 
section 3.05). Once you have pressed PLAY, you will see a "boosts" window in
the bottom-left of the screen. If you have any boosts in your possession, they
won't do anything until you activate them here. Click on "use" for the relevant
boost and it will be activated. If you don't have any of that type, the button
will instead say "get more". Clicking on this will send you to the shop.

Each boost lasts for the next 5 duels after you activate it, then disappears.
The XP boost doubles the amount of XP you receive, and the gold one awards
you an extra 50% of gold. I don't recommend activating either of this when
you are taking part in tournaments, as you may face tougher opponents than
usual, and the gold output in jackpot tournaments is lower than normal.

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#5.03 Jackpot tournaments
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I advise staying away from tournaments until you have been playing for a long
time, and have had a chance to build up your collection and make a really good
deck. You will face players who have honed their deck over time and will be
disappointed if you rush into a tournament as you will most likely just not
have the cards to compete. However, jackpot tournaments are free to enter,
and except for earning less gold than usual during duels, there is nothing to
lose by taking part.

Every other day there is a jackpot tournament. Click the PLAY button and then
the "tournaments" tab underneath. If the "jackpot" tickbox is highlighted just
under this, then it is a jackpot day. Otherwise it is a Swiss day, see section
5.04. 

Click "enter tournament" in the bottom right of the screen. Then this button
will change to "find opponent", click this to start looking for someone to
duel just like a normal online duel. You have a two minute time limit per
turn as normal.

You receive less gold than normal in a jackpot duel, because some of the gold
is being put into a pot. The size of the pot is shown on the left of the
screen. You can continue to play as many duels as you like until the 
tournament finishes. The amount of time left is shown above the "find opponent"
button. You are allowed to pick a different deck or make a new one at any
point in the tournament.

Everyone who enters the jackpot tournament is given a jackpot ELO rating of 0.
So it is like you have started again with the ELO system, but only within
this tournament. It doesn't affect your normal ELO rating at all. By winning
your jackpot ELO will go up, and it will go down when you lose (but again
cannot go below 0). Your tournament rank is shown on the middle-right of the
screen. As your ELO within the tournament goes up, this rank improves (goes
down) as you climb the leaderboard. Click the blue button below to see your
standing. 

Once the timer for the tournament has run out, the tournament closes and the
results will be calculated. If you are close enough to the top of the
leaderboard, you will receive a share of the jackpot. It is split into tiers.
You get a bigger cut the higher tier you are. To stand a chance of getting
a cut, you need to be roughly within the top 500. The exact figure will depend
on how many people have entered. Until you are getting into the tiers, sadly
you will get nothing. However, you lost nothing by trying, apart from earning
less gold during your duels in the tournament. You can always try again in two
days. The results of the tournament will be sent to you as a notification. It
takes a while after the tournament has finished, usually about an hour.

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#5.04 Swiss tournaments
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I advise staying away from tournaments until you have been playing for a long
time, and have had a chance to build up your collection and make a really good
deck. You will face players who have honed their deck over time and will be
disappointed if you rush into a tournament as you will most likely just not
have the cards to compete.

Every other day there is a Swiss tournament. Click the PLAY button and then
the "tournaments" tab underneath. If the "Swiss" tickbox is highlighted just
under this, then it is a Swiss day. Otherwise it is a jackpot day, see section
5.03. Unlike jackpot tournaments, Swiss tournaments are not free to enter. They
require the payment of one ticket for each tournament you enter. The amount of
tickets you have is shown to the right of your seals in the top-left corner
of the main menu, in brown/grey text. You should be given 5 for free when you
create an account. Currently this is the only use for tickets. More tickets
can be purchased in the shop, see the "consumables" part of the shop. See 
section 3.05.

Click the button at the bottom-left of the screen to enter the tournament, it
warns you that a ticket is required. It will then show you how the queue of
players for your tournament. 8 players are required before the tournament can
begin, wait until this has filled up and then the tournament will start
automatically. Note that you cannot change or edit your deck during the 
tournament so make sure you have your best deck in place before starting. Also
you should make sure you have an hour of free time to play, as Swiss tournament
can last up to this long.

Swiss tournaments are run in individual groups of 8 competitors, and consist
of 3 duels. You are randomly paired within the group of 8, and have a standard
duel. The big difference here though is that you have a time limit! At the top
of the screen will be a timer in red for each player. It will begin at seven
minutes, and when it is your turn to act it will count down. Note that while
you are choosing whether or not to take a mulligan, it will not count down, so
you don't need to rush the decision.

Once the game has started, keep an eye on the clock! If this timer runs out,
you will lose the game instantly, regardless of how well you are doing in the
duel. So don't rush too much, but don't take a really long time over any
one decision as you may have got used to in general duels with a 2 minute
timer per turn.

After the duel has finished, you'll be shown the league table of the 8 players
in the tournament. You may need to wait for other players to finish their
duels. Keep on this screen. You are then paired off with another player, who 
is close to you on the league table. Then after this you will play a third and
final game.

If you end up winning the tournament (probably by winning all three duels)
you will win the first prize, currently a Premium Void Rising Pack. If you
come second, you'll get the second prize, currently a Void Rising Pack. If 
you have played all your three games without quitting the tournament, you
may be lucky enough to be awarded an Emilio's Pack, which contains a mix of
base set cards and void rising. It is worth playing all the three games just
for this chance. You will gain XP and gold just as normal anyhow for these
duels. I am not totally sure, but it seems to me that the Emilio's Pack is
awarded randomly to one of the players who did not finish first or second
but played all three games. I have finished third many times and not got the
pack, so it's certainly not just for the third place finisher. And I have only
got one once out of several chances, leading me to believe that only one is
being given out amongst the non-winner players.

Once you have finished the third duel and are returned to the league table,
you will see a message saying you have completed all three duels. At this
point it is fine to leave this screen and start playing other duels or going
to the deck editor etc. It will not boot you from the tournament for doing
this before all players have finished their duels. A little while after the
tournament has finished, you will get a notification telling you how you
ranked in the tournament, and if you won a prize.

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#5.05 Practising against friends
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You will notice that playing duels online involves a random opponent. If you
want to play against a specific person, you need to first send them a friend
request, and have them accept, see section 3.02. 

Press the PLAY button, then click the "practice" tab underneath. Your
available friends are shown in a list at the bottom of the screen. You must
both be on this screen and have "Play versus friend" ticked before you can
send a challenge.

Note that you do not receive XP or gold from practice games, nor does your
ELO rating change. There is an achievement for winning 30 games against friends
though.

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#6.00 Improving your playing skills
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This section is aimed at both new players and current players, giving you ideas
on how you can improve your play. There are many aspects of the game, and I
hope by sharing my experience I can help you think of new things. Very 
experienced players will probably find nothing they do not already know here!

This is a deep game, do not expect to master it overnight. This section
addresses the strategies used during duels. For help with improving and
building decks, which is just as important, see sections 4.00-4.13.

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#6.01 Rules and terminology
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The help file (the question mark at the bottom left of the main menu) gives
an excellent overview and introduction. If you haven't already, read this 
through again as it covers most of the rules you need to know. I won't repeat
them all here, I will just add to them with things I think are either not
stated or less obvious.

(1) There is no maximum hand size. You do not have to discard cards when you
have more than a certain number, like in many card games.

(2) Only one ongoing spell can affect a row or a line at once. If there is
already one affecting a row or line, you cannot cast another one in that
position. 

(3) A creature can have any number of ongoing spells attached to it, and you
can have any number of general ongoing spells and fortunes at once, which
appear above your Hero. 

(4) You get one chance to "mulligan". This means that if you do not like your
starting hand, you may choose to be dealt another one. If you do, you must
stick with your second hand.

(5) You can tell who is going to go first before you decide whether or not to
take a mulligan. Look at your resource circle, just to the left of the 
END TURN button at the top. If the blue number at the bottom of your circle
shows a zero, you will go first. If it shows a one, you will go second. Use
this information when deciding whether or not to mulligan.

(6) By hovering the mouse over your deck or your opponent's, you can see how
many cards remain in the deck by a message that appears in the bottom-right
corner of the screen. Similarly by hovering over your opponent's hand, a
message tells you how many cards they have.

(7) You can right click on your opponent's Hero to zoom in on it. This should
be the first thing you do each duel, to find out what their abilities are and
what schools of magic they have access to.

(8) When you run out of cards from your deck, you don't lose the game. Each
time you are required to draw a card from your deck (the standard draw each
turn, or any other effects that make you draw cards) you take 1 damage. You
are still in the game until you reach zero life, so can in theory continue
with an empty deck for a long time. Of course you will not be getting any
new cards so must rely on what you already have in your hand.

(9) Cards that affect things on the battleground by default can affect both
your cards and your opponent's cards. If it can effect only one or the other, 
this will be noted on the card, using the terms "enemy" or "friendly".

(10) When a card refers to creatures that are "adjacent", this means creatures
directly to their left and right, and those directly above and below them. It
does not include creatures at diagonals. Both player's front lines are 
considered adjacent, as if the centre partition did not exist. This means if
I use a Fireball (4 damage to target creature and each adjacent creature) on
a creature in the opponent's front line, it will also damage a creature that
is in my front line to the left of that creature. When hovering over the 
potential target for the spell, the affected adjacent creatures, including
yours, will be highlighted.

(11) Damage from creatures is not removed at the end of each turn.

(12) To "deploy" and "cast" a creature are two subtly different things. When
you cast a creature, you then deploy it. But there are other ways of deploying
creatures which don't require them being cast, such as bringing them back from
the graveyard by Ressurection. Most of the time this distinction doesn't
matter, but occasionally it does. If a card says you cannot cast creatures, you
can still deploy them with other methods. If it says you can't deploy creatures
then you can't even put them onto the battleground using other methods.

(13) If a creature is "immobilized" this means it can't be moved from where it
is like normal, but it can be moved in other ways such as with Teleport or
Outmanoeuvre abilities. It can still attack.

(14) When you cast a creature with outmanoeuvre (sanctuary faction) you don't
have to move a creature if you don't want to. If you'd rather leave all the
enemies where they are, click the cross to the top-right of your Hero to cancel
the ability. Your creature will then just get deployed without doing anything
else.

(15) You cannot "heal" a creature to above its starting health. You cannot
"heal" your hero to above its starting life total.

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#6.02 Attacking
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You can attack with your available creatures in any order you wish. But the 
order in which you do so can be crucial. In general, you want to attack with
creatures immune to retaliation first. This includes almost every shooter.

For example, I have a 2 power shooter and a 2 power melee creature in the
same line. I want to attack and kill the enemy creature opposite them, which
has 4 life and a retaliation of 2. The correct way to do this is to attack with
the shooter first. Because he is immune to retaliation, he won't lose any life.
Then I attack with the melee creature, finishing off the enemy. Because the
enemy loses his final 2 life from this attack and dies, it won't deal any
retaliation damage to my melee creature (unless it has retribution). If I had
attacked with my melee creature first, he would have taken a needless 2 points
of retaliation damage before the shooter can then finish off the enemy.

Sometimes the order you attack the enemy creatures is important too. Say I have
a 2 power melee creature opposite an enemy creature with 2 life. Directly
below both these creatures is my 2 power flyer, and the enemy's creature with
2 life and melee guard 2 (prevents 2 combat damage from enemy melee creatures
to this and to adjacent friendly creatures). I should attack with my flyer
first, killing the melee guard creature (since flyer doesn't count as melee).
Now I can attack with my melee creature, and kill the other creature. If I did
this the other way round, my melee creature would not even damage the creature
facing it as the melee guard from the creature below would prevent it.

As another example, if the opponent has creatures with enrage you intend to
attack, you generally want to do this first. Otherwise, if you kill another
of their creatures first, the enrage creature will gain a counter and so its
retaliation goes up and you may take more damage than you needed to in return.

If you are going to use a spell in combination with an attack to kill an
enemy creature, do the spell first. This will mean that your attacker won't
receive any retaliation damage, since it will be finishing the creature off.

Be careful about attacking before making your plans with spells. Sometimes
an attack can sabotage the effectiveness of your spells. For example, I have
a creature ready to attack and kill an enemy creature. There are 2 enemy
creatures adjacent to that enemy, above it and below it. If I have something
like a Fireball (deals 4 damage to target creature and all adjacent creatures)
then it is better to use this on the enemy creature, so I can hit all 3 at
once. If I attack first and kill the creature, I will have lost my target in
the middle of all the other creatures. 

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#6.03 Life totals, blocking and races to win
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A common mistake in games such as this is worrying too much about your life
total. Of course it is important, because if it runs out you lose. But what is
more important is that as long as you kill the opponent before they
kill you, you still win. It doesn't matter how much you have left. This means
that if you "trade blows" with them, and you are doing more damage than they
are each turn, you will eventually win.

It often happens that your opponent will leave open one or more of the rows
your occupy and let you attack them, while you similarly leave some rows open
for them. As long as the rows you have free have more potential for damage,
then this is in your favour. Even if they are not, you may still win if your
opponent has already been reduced to a lower life total. Play out a few turns
in your head to see whether a "race" like this is going to work out well for
you or not.

One of the reasons to get into races like this is because blocking a creature
gives the first attack between creatures to your opponent. In the most obvious
case, putting a creature down which can be killed right away by your opponent's
creature has only achieved preventing one attack from that creature and nothing
more. You must consider whether that is worth it in the current situation.
Unless your life is very low and you are in danger of losing soon, this is
usually not worth it. It is better placed somewhere that is can deal damage
back to your opponent, and try to win a race (after fixing the race with
spells at some point as needed!)

Even if your creature cannot be killed right away by the enemy creature, it
may still be a poor tactical decision to block it. Consider how a "back and
forth" between the two creatures would play out, given that the enemy gets to
attack first. For example, I put a 2/0/4 creature in front of my enemy's 2/0/3.
This may seem good at first glance as my creature is stronger. But unless
I am planning to interfere with a spell, the opponent is going to kill my
creature first. He attacks dropping my creature to 2 life, I attack back
dropping him to 1, then he attacks again killing my creature. This is bad for
me, again unless I am desperately low on life and require the defense.

So effective blocking usually means putting a creature in front an enemy one
that will win a "back and forth" with it. However, depending on the magic
schools the enemy is using, even this can be dangerous. It is very important
to familiarize yourself with the magic schools the enemy Hero has at the 
start of the duel to help you make this kind of decision. If the enemy has
access to fire magic, then they will very likely have Fire Bolt. This only
needs 1 resource and 1 magic skill, making it instantly available. This can
interfere with your intended "back and forth" by knocking two life off your
creature. Also Inner Fire only costs 2 resources and 2 magic skill, and boosts
their creature by 2 attack. With both these potential threats, I generally
suggest taking into account 2 damage on your creature before deciding whether
a block is good or not against a fire magic player. 

So for example, to block a creature with 2 power I want to have a creature
with 5 or more life.  Otherwise I risk them using a cheap spell, most 
likely cheaper than my creature, to rig the fight and win right away. I would
usually rather put my creature in an open row and trade blows with their Hero
than take this chance.

Of course this is only a general rule, and is less important the cheaper 
the creature you are using to put in front of the enemy. This rule also
applies when playing against enemies with access to light magic, although
not quite as strictly. Bless is a popular light magic card, and it applies a
permanent 2 attack bonus to a creature. By using this, the opponent can easily
rig a fight just as above, meaning I prefer to make sure my blocker can win
a back and forth even after taking this into account. But since Bless needs
3 resources and 3 magic skill, it won't be available in the first few turns of
the game. Keep an eye on what skills the enemy raises so that you know when to 
start taking this into account.

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#6.04 Important cards to remember
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are several cards which should govern the way you play, so as to avoid
getting exploited by them. They are generally cards which work best when your
creatures are in a certain formation, but I have included some others to be
aware of when planning your strategies. For each card I suggest strategies to
play around it. They are only guidelines, it's not always possible to do
exactly as I suggest here. But when possible, these can save you a lot of
grief. Get familiar with these cards! I put a little diagram underneath some
to demonstrate the formation I suggest. C=creature placed here, *=empty space.
These are just examples, you can use lots of variations of these.

It may be that the specific combination of magic schools the opponent has 
means that preparing for one card leaves you vulnerable to another. It is then
a judgement call as to which you are most worried about given the current
situation and what is in your hand.

The very first thing you should do when you start a duel is to look at the 
opponent's Hero. Right click on it to zoom in. Look at what schools of magic
they have access to, and then the list below will show you what potential
important cards they may have. Neutral cards in the list can be found in any
deck, so you always have to look out for them!

Pay close attention though to the skill requirement for each card. The higher
it is, the less you have to worry about initially. But as you see the opponent
raising their skill near to the required value, you need to start thinking
about what would happen if they do have the card. Also pay attention to how
many of these cards the opponent has already used. If they have played 3
Sunburst already, there is a much lower chance than normal that they have one
still in their hand. Also keep an eye on how many cards are in the opponent's
hand. The more they have, the better chance they have one of these problem
cards. You may wish to gamble on them not having it if they are very low on 
cards.

It is good to become familiar with as many cards as possible eventually, but
I have listed here the ones I think you are most likely to come across
regularly and that you should be initially aware of. These are the cards that
you can do most about by the way you play.

It may be the case that your opponent does not use higher level spells and/or
fortunes at all. You may be able to figure this out after several turns from
the way the opponent raises their skills, and the type of
events they are using. If you see them not raising magic and using the Mana
Storm event, you can be fairly sure they aren't going to have Fireball in their
deck. If they don't raise destiny and use Week of Taxes, you can bet they won't
be using Broken Bridge. You can then adjust your strategy accordingly.

Because of the way some of the spells below work, you are sometimes better not
playing a creature at all, and just holding it back. Some examples:

(a) I have several creatures with 3 or less life out already, and am doing well
in the duel. My opponent is playing with Earth magic. I would decide not to
play any more small creatures as he may play Insect Swarm and kill them all. If
he does eventually play it, I then have backup in my hand to cast
afterwards.

(b) I have 3 creatures out against an opponent using fire magic. This is the
state of play, C being my creatures, E being an opponent's creature and * being
an empty space:


			*C	**	
			C*	**
			*C	**		
			**	EE

I have allowed him to keep attacking unopposed in the bottom row, while I
control the top rows. I have a shooter creature I am considering playing.
I notice his magic skill is at 3. Considering that he will be able to raise
it to 4 next turn and may well have a Fireball, it could be a big mistake to
play my shooter in the first or third row. Even though it would appear to
improve my position, it may give my opponent a better target for Fireball,
being able to hit 3 creatures instead of just 1 as he currently can. So if
I do play the shooter, it should probably be in the bottom row, as a speedbump
to the opponent to help me win the life race (see section 6.03). If my life
total is quite safe, then I may instead choose to just keep it in my hand to
replace my current shooter if he gets killed. 

---Inferno faction----

ALTAR OF DESTRUCTION, destiny=1, deals 2 damage to opponent, put a card from
your hand on top of your library

Be very careful of inferno players when deciding whether or not to race them
to low life totals (see section 6.03). They can finish you off with these, 
even using them in multiples to kill you from higher life values.

-----Water magic------

GEYSER, magic=3, deals 3 damage to target creature and each adjacent creature

Use a zigzag formation, having just one creature per row, and alternating
between front row and back row as you move down the rows.

			*C		C*	
			C*	or	*C
			*C		C*	
			C*		*C	

ICE SPIKES, magic=3, deals 2 damage to all creatures in target line

Spread your creatures out between the front and back lines.

-----Earth magic------

EARTHQUAKE, magic=2, deals 2 damage to all non-flyer creatures

Don't have two many low health ground units at once, especially if the opponent
just has flyers or high health units out.

INSECT SWARM, magic=3, deals 3 damage to all creatures

Don't have more creatures on the battleground than you need, keep some back in
case of a mass kill. Use as many high health creatures as possible.

-----Primal magic-----

None

-----Fire magic-------

FIRE BOLT, magic=1, deals 2 damage to target creature

Avoid blocking a creature unless your blocker has at least 3 more health
than the attack of the enemy creature (so block a 3 attack creature with a
6 health creature).

INNER FIRE, magic=2, increase the attack and retaliation of a creature by 2
until your next turn

Same strategy as for Fire Bolt.

FIREBALL, magic=4, deals 4 damage to target creature and each adjacent
creature

Use a zigzag formation, having just one creature per row, and alternating
between front row and back row as you move down the rows.

			*C		C*	
			C*	or	*C
			*C		C*	
			C*		*C

-----Air magic--------

CHAIN LIGHTNING, magic=4, deals 3 damage to all creature adjacent to target
empty space

Put your creatures in lines, or pack them close together so as not to leave
spaces.

		C*		CC		CC
		C*		CC		**
		C*	or	**	or	**	
		C*		**		CC

CYCLONE, magic=4, deals 1 damage to all creatures in target line and stops
them attacking for a turn

Spread your creatures between the front and back lines (favouring the second
and third formation examples for Chain Lightning above).

-----Light magic------

BLESS, magic=3, increases attack of a creature by 2

Avoid blocking a creature unless your blocker has at least 3 more health
than the attack of the enemy creature (so block a 3 attack creature with a
6 health creature).

SUNBURST, magic=2, deals 2 damage to all creatures in target row

Avoid putting two creatures in the same row.

WORD OF LIGHT, magic=4, deals 2 damage to all enemy creatures

Avoid having too many low health creatures out at once.

-----Dark magic-------

DESPAIR, magic=3, deals 2 damage to all creatures not adjacent to another
creature

Keep creatures adjacent to each other. I haven't seen this an awful lot but
thought it may be worth pointing out.

-----Neutral----------

BROKEN BRIDGE, destiny=3, return all creatures in target row to owners' hands

Avoid putting two creatures in the same row.

PAO DEATHSEEKER, might=3, 3 attack, can attack right away, dies at end of turn,
immune to retaliation

Don't leave any rows unguarded when you are at 3 or less life.

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#6.05 Order of actions in a turn
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You have a lot of choice over what order you do things in a turn, and it can
make a lot of difference what order you choose. Here is a rough gameplan for
each turn that I recommend.

(1) Don't make any hasty clicks. Stop and assess the situation. Take into 
account the new card you have drawn, and the new event card that will have been
turned over. Think about what your opponent is likely to do next turn, based on
the level of his current skills. (Refer to section 6.04.) You usually have two
minutes per turn, and while I'm not suggesting you play like a snail, there is
no need to speed through your turn either.

(2) Develop a plan for your whole turn, deciding what you are going to do with
every creature and every point of resource you have. Don't click on any cards
in your hand before you have thought it through. If you do select a card then
the opponent gets to see what it is, and if you then decide to not play it
you have given away vital information.

(3) Rememeber when creating your plan that the event card currently on the
right of the two will be available to your opponent in their next turn.

(4) If the plan involves anything with an uncertain outcome, you should do 
those first. These are things such as activating Week of the Mercenaries or
casting Monastery of Helexia. If you intend to definitely do them as part of
your plan anyway, it is best to find out the results right away. The outcome
may lead you to alter your plan or come up with a new one. If not, you've lost
nothing by trying.

(5) If your plan involves drawing one or more cards (say you work out you will
have 1 resource left that you will use with your Hero ability to draw a card)
then draw the cards next before you do anything else. Upon seeing this new
card, you may be able to develop a better plan than the one you already had in
mind. If you had drawn it last after doing everything else and using up your
resources, it will be too late to take it back. If no new plan emerges from
drawing the card, you have lost nothing by trying.

(6) Now execute your plan, either your initial one or the new improved plan
based on card draws.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#6.06 When to take a mulligan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You get one chance for a mulligan each duel. It is an important decision, so
don't rush it. You want to consider several factors:

(1) Do I have a decent curve with this hand to play out the first few turns?

(2) Do I have a sensible proportion of creatures/spells/fortunes that I can
survive on?

(3) Am I going first or second? Is this hand good for that? (Look at the 
circle to the left of the PLAY button at the top, where your resources are
shown. If there is a blue zero at the bottom, you are going first. If it is
a one, you are going second.)

(4) What Hero is my opponent using? Is my hand good against it? (Right click on
your right-most card in your hand to zoom in and to allow you to see past it to
the enemy Hero.)

(5) Most importantly, based on the answers to all of the above and your
knowledge of the contents of your deck, how likely is it that I would draw
a better hand if I take a mulligan?

If the answer to question 5 is greater than 50% then mulligan, if less than 50%
then keep your hand. This is all very much a rough guide, but hopefully it
will give you some things to think about. You must know your deck very well
to be able to decide.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#7.00 More on deck building
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This section is for when you have got a good grasp of the basics of the game
and have built up a decent collection of cards.  I advise beginners to 
concentrate on section 4.00-4.13 until they feel ready to take it further than
what is written there. I will cover the two non-starter factions here,
stronghold and sanctuary, giving some basics about them and recommended cards.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#7.01 General considerations
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These are some more things to think about when building any deck.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#7.01A What is my overall strategy?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although every game will play out differently, you should have in mind the kind
of situation you want to achieve with your deck. You should think about how
your deck will win, and how it will deal with whatever the opponent may throw
at you. Try to choose cards which work well together and back each other up
rather than blocking each other's potential. When playing, watch out for cards
which conflict in some way. If this is happening, you should probably remove
one of them. Some examples of simple strategies:

-Casting as many fast creatures as possible to rush the opponent
-Producing fast resources to get out many threats early
-Controlling the game early to build up to big creatures
-Stealing creatures from the opponent
-Gaining time advantage by returning your opponent's creatures to their hand
-Using attack anywhere creatures to try and kill off everything

You can create much more in-depth strategies than these as you get to know the
card pool really well. But the point is to have some sort of plan for the deck
rather than just sticking a load of good cards in it.

Some strategies just won't work as well as you think they would or should. In
those cases you can think about why they aren't working, and to see what changes
you can make to address the problems you are having. Don't give up right away,
every deck gets bad deals. And don't change too many cards at once, as it
becomes harder to see what difference you have made. 

Developing your own interesting strategy can be much more rewarding than going
with a generic deck or copying ideas from others. Even if you don't win as 
much, you will learn a lot and have fun too! Also, using a home-made deck 
rather than a popular deck build gives you a level of advantage against 
experienced players. They will be much less likely to predict what you are 
going to do next, and are more likely to make a mistake.

A deck can have more than one strategy, for example it may focus on fast
creatures and forcing the opponent to discard key cards.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#7.01B What Hero is right for my strategy?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Heroes break up very roughly into four categories. After each category I
list the starting skils for Heroes in that category, for example 2/0/1 shows
a starting might of 2, starting magic of 0 and starting destiny of 1. All 
Heroes except the seekers will also have either an activated or ongoing
ability. Non-sanctuary Heroes come from Heroic Packs (1 guaranteed each pack)
while sanctuary Heroes come from Void Rising Packs (randomly). The special
Heroes (bottom of the list) can only be gained from achievements or from buying
decks with them in.

-----SEEKERS 1/1/2, 20 life, 2 magic schools, no extra ability
 
Cassandra, Seeker of Light (Haven)
Garant, Seeker of Discord (Inferno)
Seria, Seeker of the Lost Souls (Necropolis)
Kat, Seeker of Freedom (Stronghold)
Yukiko, Seeker of Honour (Sanctuary)

These are balanced, with the highest overall skill values. Can work with most
strategies, and finds fortunes easiest to use. These can also be obtained by
buying the approprate deck from the shop.

-----LORDS 1/1/1, 20 life, 2 magic schools, activated ability

Sandalphon, Lord of Power (Haven)
Belias, Lord of the Kennels (Inferno)
Nergal, Lord of Pestilence (Necropolis)
Kelthor, Lord of Fury (Stronghold)
Ishuma, Lord of Dragons (Sanctuary)

Balanced alternatives to seekers, with different magic schools. Trades the
1 point of destiny for an activated ability. Can work with most strategies
and are strong choices.

-----CHAMPIONS 2/0/1 20 life, 1 magic school, activated or ongoing ability

Siegfried, Champion of Faith (Haven) -ongoing
Xorm, Champion of the Abyss (Inferno) -activated
Fleshbane, Champion of the Misshapen (Necropolis) -ongoing
Acamas, Champion of the Bloodhorn (Stronghold) -activated
Takana Osore, Champion of the Tides (Sanctuary) -ongoing

With only 1 magic school and 0 starting magic skill, these Heroes are usually
best in decks with few or no spells. You may not raise magic skill at all,
or perhaps just once for some level 1 spells or to cast magic creatures.
These Heroes work best when focusing on creatures and fortunes. These kinds of
decks are harder to build effectively in my experience than the previous two
groups, so I recommend leaving these for a while. It is possible to use these
Heroes to build a deck using magic, but you're usually better going with
another Hero for that.

-----INVOKERS 0/2/1, 18 life, 3 magic schools, activated ability

Jezziel, Invoker of Hope
Kal-Azaar, Invoker of Agony
Mother Namtaru, Invoker of Death
Shaar, Invoker of the Skies
Kiako, Invoker of the Depths

There are without a doubt the hardest Heroes to use, so I recommend leaving
them alone for a long time. With 0 might they struggle to get creatures out,
especially when going second. These Heroes work best when focusing on magic,
making use of the high 2 starting skill and 3 schools of magic to choose from.
They are then usually backed up by some low requirement creatures and/or
high level fortunes. These are often used in the "one turn kill" (OTK) 
strategies which you will eventually see, they stall the game until they can
pull off some combo and kill you in one go. Apart from this kind of strategy,
playing with low ranking creature or none at all is very difficult. There 
just aren't many cards that allow you to win without creatures. The most 
successful strategy is often stealing your opponent's creatures, relying 
less or not at all on your own.

-----SPECIAL (varies) M=number of magic schools

Kieran, Knight of Negation (Haven) 2/1/0, 20 life, ongoing , M=2
Phrias, Prince of Annihilation (Inferno) 1/1/0, 20 life, activated, M=2
Ariana of the Severed Fates (Necropolis) 1/2/0, 18 life, activated, M=3
Crag Hack (Stronghold) 2/0/0, activated ability, M=1
Akane, Mourner of Lost Memories (Sanctuary) 1/2/0, 20 life, activated, M=2

These Heroes do not appear in any booster packs. All can be awarded for
completing certain achievements, check your list (section 3.04). Ariana
and Crag also appear in pre-made decks in the shop.

These lend themselves to a deck with no fortunes, typically using as many Week
of Taxes events as possible. They then use their good starting skills in
might and magic to concentrate on these areas, finding it easier to reach the
higher level cards in both. They may use occasional 1 destiny fortunes,
especially Ariana. When you get these Heroes, they are strong choices. Such 
decks are relatively easy to build.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#7.01C How do I deal with my opponent's cards?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You will almost always be facing creatures from your opponent. (There is one
deck design that uses very few, but don't worry about that too much. You won't
see it until you get above 1000 ELO most likely.) That means you should have
some ways of dealing with your opponents creatures. As a standard, you should
be able to kill or otherwise stall Dark Assassin. It is so powerful that if 
you can't deal with it, you will probably lose in short order to anyone who
gets one out. You won't see many to begin with, but as your ELO rating goes
up you will encounter them more and more.

Dark Assassin is a neutral creature costing 2 resources, with 4 attack and 2
life. It deals 1 damage to its controller when it attacks. Because it is 
neutral any deck you face can use it, and at 2 resources it comes out fast. And
because dead creatures can't retaliate, it takes something with 5 life to even
survive its attack while trying to block it. Therefore you need something quick
and reliable which can wipe out an Assassin before he rips you into shreds. It
should preferably not cost more than 2 resources. Here are some examples. 
The ones you can use will depend on your Hero. 

Very good (kills Assassin outright):

Fire Bolt (fire magic)
Sunburst (light magic)
Earthquake (earth magic)
Teleport (primal magic) [requires a creature with 2+ attack]
Mass Grave (necropolis fortune)
Sacrifical Altar (stronghold fortune) [requires a creature with 2+ life]

Not quite as good (will allow at least one attack before Assassin dies):

Eternal winter (water magic)
Agony (dark magic)
Holy Praetorian (haven creature)

If you don't have access to any of these, at least make sure you can either
stall the Assassin somehow or deal with him when you have 3 resources. If you
think I am being too paranoid here, wait until you get your first caning at
the hand of this little guy!

On top of these ridiculous considerations is how you're going to deal with
bigger creatures too. Are you going to return them to the opponent's hand?
Or kill them with a big damage spell? Try and ignore them and life rush
your opponent? Steal them?

You should also think about whether ongoing spells are a problem for your deck.
At the moment, I generally do not include cards for dealing with these. Many
duels will end without a single one appearing, or causing any trouble if it
does. But if you can think of particular ones which could ruin your strategy,
then it's probably best to pack some dispels.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#7.01D What maxout is appropriate for my strategy?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See section 4.01 if you haven't already read about maxout. It is the number of
times you need to increase your skills in order to be able to cast anything in
your deck. 

If you are using a basic Hero, you can generally afford to be more leniant with
your maxout. Because you have no alternate ability to activate, it is easier
to focus on raising your skills. The same is true of Heroes with an ongoing 
extra ability, as you won't need to use a turn to activate it. As a rough
guide, 6 is a good starting point.

But if your Hero has an extra activated ability, which you plan to use with any
regularity, you should consider cutting your maxout down somewhat. This allows
you more flexibility to use this ability without slowing down your development
too much. You may want to drop your maxout to 5. The more regularly you plan
to use the Hero ability, the more this is important.

Think about how long you expect the game to last with your deck. If it is
explosive and you intend to win fast or burn out trying, then a lower maxout
makes sense. You probably won't reach your higher cards in time otherwise.
If you intend to drag out the game for some time by stalling and killing things
with mass removal, you will have more time to raise skills so a higher maxout
makes sense.

There's no right or wrong answer, it comes down to personal preference and
experience. If you find you are maxing out too quickly and require more
powerful cards, raise it by 1 and then test it out for several games. If you
find you're not getting time to get to your big cards, try dropping it by 1
and then test it out. Don't alter it by more than 1 at a time, as such a 
drastic change will make it hard to see what effect you are having and you
may lose the focus of your deck.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#7.02 Stronghold
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a faction which appears in both the base set and in Void Rising. Once
you have a stronghold Hero, you can make a deck of this faction if you have
enough cards to match that Hero. To make a good deck though, you need more
than just "enough" cards, you need a good selection of the strong cards. I will
discuss the creatures and fortunes here, for spells refer to the relevant
sections from 4.06-4.12 for the schools of magic your Hero has.

Stronghold has an unusual style of play, in that it benefits from its creatures
getting killed. Usually this is a bad thing, and it still is normally, but
stronghold generates useful side effects from it. These are sometimes so useful
that you actually want to kill your own creature!

It features many creatures with the Enrage ability, this is the core feature of
stronghold and what most of its decks are built around one way or another.
Creatures with Enrage have a number after it, for example Enrage 1. The number
tells you how many Enrage counters the creature gets each time one of your
creatures dies (it must go to the graveyard to count, not returned to your
hand.) One creature getting killed can trigger several Enrage creatures, giving
them all counters according to their Enrage number. A very popular Hero for
this strategy is Kelthor, he is my personal favourite. He has an activated
ability which does damage to an enemy creature based on the number of Enrage
counters on one of your creatures.

Enrage gives the creature an extra point of attack and retaliation per Enrage
counter. This bonus remains until the creature next attacks, after this the
counters are removed. There are other ways of adding counters too other than
your creatures getting killed, certain cards add counters directly to your
creatures.

This gives stronghold a very odd playing strategy, but one which I find very
interesting. You should generally cast any Enrage creatures you have before
doing anything that adds counters, including getting one of your creatures
killed. That way you get the maximum benefit from the death. The creature may
die because you use it for Sacrificial Altar, because you run it into a big
creature and it dies to retaliation, or if you are desperate and you kill it
with a standard spell like Flame Bolt! This last is usually only for setting up
a finishing kill turn. Make sure you attack with any creatures you intend to
kill first, to get the most out of them. 

So in a turn you may attack with a creature, then cast Sacrificial Altar 
killing it, to remove a blocker. This pumps up your Enrage creatures. You may 
then run a small creature into an opponent's big one to soften it up, and it 
dies to retaliation damage, putting more counters on your creatures. Then you
could use Kelthor's abililty to deal damage based on your creature with the
most enrage counters to the softened up enemy to finish it off. Then finally
you attack with all your Enrage creatures for massive damage. As you can see,
the order you do things is more important than normal with stronghold.

Here are a selection of cards to watch out for to build a good first stronghold
deck. I would recommend concentrating on either a creature/magic build or
creature/destiny. Either way, lean towards a high number of creatures.  It is 
possible to just raise might, and only use spells and fortunes needing the base
amount for your Hero. Cards marked as * are what I consider to be especially 
good cards. Cards maked with [VR] are from the Void Rising set.

CREATURES

Blackskull Clan Warlord* [VR]: He is absolutely huge and very hard to stop. He
gives one of the few reasons to ever raise your might above 6! With high life
and retaliation, taking him down is hard. If you're going to raise your might
in a turn, remember to do it before attacking with him to increase his damage.

Blackskull Warchanter* [VR]: An excellent cheap way to get lots of Enrage
counters going. Only use if you are playing with a large amount of Enrage 
units. 3 life is high for a 1 resource creature too. He won't normally be
doing damage but with the backup of spells or events, he may chip in. The
unusual 2 might requirement shouldn't ever be a problem, even when going first
you can raise might to 2 to cast him. This is most likely what you would be 
doing anyway with your skills. Just move him out the way if he is threatened.

Blackskull Vulture Rider* [VR]: He fits in with the "kill your own stuff"
strategy. On a turn when you kill some of your own creatures and/or your 
opponent's, he can be very cheap or even free to cast. There are not too many
flyers in stronghold, so that is a handy addition. And he is still reasonably 
good even for the full cost, although not fantastic.

Centaur Archer*: This has really good stats for a 3 resource shooter, he 
shames the industry standard, Sea Elf Archer. Good for most strategies.

Crusher*: Although his stats are not great, I feel he is a key card because of
his magic resist ability. Most decks rely on spells to control creatures, and
he is very hard to kill with them. So if the opponent manages to kill lots of
your other creatures with spells, they are left with a hugely enraged Crusher
to deal with. He is also great to put in front of a magic creature, because
they won't be able to do him a lot of damage. Keep him out of combat with 
non-magic creatures though, against them he is poor and won't last long unless
he can kill them off cleanly.

Dreamreaver: I don't normally recommend 5 might units, but in stronghold there
is more scope for going up the scale. This is a nice way to get even more
Enrage creatures, and he is very sturdy and reliable. I have found having 2
or 3 of these as your top unit works well in putting real pressure on the
opponent.

Dreamwalker*: This is what I consider to be the key Enrage unit. He is cheap
enough to get out early and cause some trouble while benefiting from any
casualties you pick up. If you already have some Warchanters around, he will
pick up steam fast.

Goblin Scout*: The most efficient and aggressive creature available, he puts
pressure on the opponent right away. Unlike the 2 attack 1 resource creatures
from other factions, he can be defended with a melee/flyer when threatened
by an opponent's melee/flyer. 

Pao Deathseeker*: Although neutral, I had to mention him here as he is even
more ridiculously good than normal. His death at end of turn will give you
Enrage counters, and with Week of the Dead he doesn't even have to wait until
end of turn.

Ranaar Harpy*: The only cheap flyer, it is tough and versatile. Works great
for early pressure or guarding a Goblin Scout.

Ranaar Mauler: The only cheap Enrage creature, sadly he has 0 power when not
pumped up. I feel that if you use these, you must also use Blackskull
Warchanters, or else he just doesn't have enough punch. I also personally
would only use him with the Hero Kelthor. He can benefit from other fast 
creatures you play that get killed, making the opponent think about whether 
to kill this first. If you're using Kelthor, you can leave this to collect 
Enrage counters without attacking, so you can use Kelthor's ability
to kill creatures. Attacking with him will lose all the counters. In
this case it's probably not worth it unless you're desperate for the damage.

Tainted Orc*: An absolute must-have, luckily he is a common. He has huge stats
for his cost, and is really hard for the opponent to get rid of. He can be put
down in front of most creatures and it's fairly safe that they aren't going to
be able to do enough to take him out. Or if you're winning, put him unopposed
and watch the opponent scramble to get something that could stop him.

FORTUNES

Blood Shaman Hut*: This gives you a way of boosting your creatures to get
through big blockers, and also a really cheap way of extending your damage
for a quick kill. You lose card advantage by playing it, but the tempo you
gain is worth it when played at the right time. It's also a way of forcing
Week of the Mercenaries to behave.

Sacrificial Altar*: Gives away card advantage, so make it count. It can deal a
huge amount of damage for one resource, and with multiple Enrage creatures out
the kill on your creature will benefit you. Usually it is best to attack with
the creature you want to sacrifice first, unless it would take retaliation 
damage which would lower the damage this card can do.

Surprise Attack: If you are looking to raise your destiny, this is a great
way of having some creature control. Your creatures are typically huge, so this
will probably wipe out or finish off just about anything. 

EVENTS

Week of the Dead*: Not normally a very useful card, but in stronghold it is
very powerful. The ability to kill your own creature can be crucial in some
situations, and the added resource you get is just a bonus. Use it carefully,
when you can give maximum Enrage tokens by the kill.

Week of the Mercenaries*: You are likely to have a high proportion of creatures
and this combines extremely well with that. It gives you access to more ways
to kill enemy creatures by punching through, and to go for big finishes.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#7.03 Sanctuary
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This faction and its Heroes are only available from Void Rising Packs. It is a
new faction that was created for that expansion. It has two main focuses,
Honour and Outmanoeuvre. 

Honour always has a number associated with it, for example "Honour 2". An 
Honour creature gives a bonus equal to this number to each adjacent creature's
attack and retaliation. Diagonals do not count, and enemy creatures are not 
buffed. To take advantage of this, it is good to set your creatures up around
where you are going to cast the Honour creature. Even if you haven't drawn 
one yet, you may do by the time you've set up. For example, if I put my first 
melee creature in row 1, I would put my next one in row 3. Then I could cast an
Honour creature in row 2 between them, and they would both get boosted. I can 
do the same by casting a shooter in the row above or below my melee creature.
I then cast the Honour creature in front of the shooter buffing both. Be 
careful though, as these setups make a perfect target for a Fireball.

Outmanoeuvre applies only when the creature enters the battleground. This can
either be when you cast it, or put it into play in other ways such as with
Ressurection. You pick one enemy creature, and you can move it to any other
valid position. This means a melee creature must stay on the front line, and
a shooter on the back. If there are no available slots, you cannot move that
creature. You do not have to move any creatures at all, if you would rather
leave them where they are, click the cross to the top-right of your Hero
and the ability will be cancelled. Your creature will just enter play as usual.

Outmanoeuvre plays a huge part in the strategy of sanctuary. The two main uses
are moving creatures out of the way so that you can attack the opponent, and
moving them in front of your creatures so that you can attack and hopefully
kill them. If the opponent casts a creature in front of one of yours, you can
get a double whammy by attacking it, then playing an Outmanoeuvre creature. You
move the enemy in front of another of your creatures, then attack it again.
Generally I would suggest using Outmanoeuvre to kill creatures early in the
game, and using it to get free attacks later when you feel you are close to 
winning.

Some of the sanctuary creatures have the new ability Hypnotize. This stops the
opponent moving any creature that is in the same row as a Hypnotize creature.
They can still use other effects to move them though, such as Teleport. This
makes it harder for them to get around your creatures. My favourite Hero is
Ishuma, as it can make use of the Hypnotize abilities to deal damage to
immobilized creatures. Hypnotize is also useful for trapping small utility
creatures like Tithe Collector, so that they can't do their usual trick of
running away when threatened.

I recommend a creature heavy build, going up to 5 might if you have worthwhile
creatures at that level. This can be backed up by lower level spells and/or
fortunes.

Here is a selection of cards I recommend for building a deck. Ones I mark with
a * are ones I consider particularly good. For spells, see the relevant
sections from 4.06-4.12 for your chosen Hero. Cards maked with [VR] are from
the Void Rising set.

CREATURES

Coral Priestess*: The cheapest Outmanoeuvre creature. She is essential for 
taking out early creatures by moving them in front of the creatures you have
already got out.

Kappa*: This has amazingly high life and retaliation, meaning you can safely
put it in front of small/medium creatures and it's unlikey they can break
through him for several turns. With a melee/flyer they may not even want to
attack him, as the retaliation could put them in a position to die on your
turn from his attack.

Kenshi*: Although he is weak, he makes those around him very strong. This is
the highest cost Honour creature I would generally recommend using. If you
have 3 creatures ready in place, he can immediately offer a 6 damage increase
that turn.

Kirin: On his own he is only OK, but in combination with Outmanoeuvre creatures
he can be nasty. Try and see the best way you can set up a creature so as to 
affect as many creatures as possible with the blast. This may mean moving one 
in front of him to connect with others nearby, or moving one alongside so that
it gets hit as well. Note that changing his attack value in any way does not 
change the damage of the focused blast. Also the blast damage isn't combat 
damage so melee guard won't stop it. Focused blast never hurts your own
creatures.

Naga Tide Master*: A brutally powerful shooter considering she also has the
Outmanoeuvre ability. Well worth the unusual step of raising to 5 might to be
able to use her.

Nyorai Sairensa*: If you are lucky enough to get her, she is the only 4
resource Outmanoeuvre creature, with the added benefit of being harder to
stop thanks to her special ability. The opponent can still move stuff in front
of her, they just can't deploy them. She is also the only melee Outmanoeuvre
creature.

Pearl Priestess: A smaller version of Naga Tide Master, but with the bonus of
Hypnotize. Overall I'd say this is worse than Tide Master, but there is room 
for both in a deck and Ishuma can make good use of the Hypnotize.

Shanriya Guard*: A reasonably good creature on its own, one which the opponent
won't want to block because the blocker will get frozen and hacked up each
turn until it is dead. But you can make the opponent block it by moving their
creatures in front of it with an Outmanoeuvre.

Shark Guard*: Just like inferno and necropolis, this is the most efficient and
fast high damage attacker. Crucial for any Outmanoeuvre strategy, and to set up
quickly for an Honour creature.

Snow Maiden: Not great stats, but at least 4 health is reasonably high, and you
can trap a tricky little creature early on with it. Remember that this isn't
a magic creature, even though the picture looks suspiciously like it is to me!

Spring Spirit*: This is what you always want to get out when you hit 2
resources. Very strong stats, and unusually it is a magic creature. This can
be a good or bad thing, depending on the situation. Great for getting ready for
Outmanoeuvre creatures, to provide a beating.

Yuki-Onna: The 5 might level has a lot of good potential creatures for
sanctuary. This is very tough, and holds creatures still while it shoots them
to pieces. Like Snow Maiden, it's not a magic creature! Tell me that picture
doesn't look magic! I would generally recommend using Pearl Priestess or
Naga Tide Master for the Outmanoeuvre strategy, but until you have access to
enough of them, or if you prefer a different strategy, these will be fine.

Wanizame*: The cheapest Honour creature, and it's a good one. Great stats, and
a nice durable 5 health. He can have a big impact on the game relatively early
on. It is often a good idea to prepare your first creatures in a configuration
that this creature can fit into if/when you can cast him.

FORTUNES

The Frozen Maze: A good way of keeping your creature advantage by stopping the
opponent getting to attack back with 2 of their creatures. Hopefully this
should buy you enough time to hack their creatures up. If they are also
Hypnotized, they can't run away from your creatures either!

Underwater Fortress: I have found this very useful, mainly as a way of getting
out even more Outmanoeuvre creatures. Unless there is something like Week of
Taxes affecting things, this basically lets you cast another copy of a creature
you already have, for the same cost (if that cost is 2 or more). Often getting
another Coral Priestess is good, to keep on killing the opponent's creatures.
If you are on the defensive, you can fetch another Kappa to help hold the fort.
You generally want to cast what you fetch right away to make use of the 
discounted price. But sometimes you may want to use this when you have 2 free
resources in your turn as insurance against your creatures being wiped out.
That is the downside with this card, no creatures to copy (or worth copying)
makes this useless. So getting a spare creature into your hand can be 
worthwhile.

Yukiko's Shrine: A great way of catching up, and since you may well be using
up to 5 resource creatures, you can save an awful lot by using this. For 6
resources you could get out 3 Naga Tide Masters for example, hopefully causing
a lot of kills by all the Outmanoeuvring that this brings. 

Whirlpool: This becomes a free spell, unless it is being weighed down by Week
of Taxes. It can be used to recast a creature to give it back maximum health
or remove spells/counters from it, and/or take advantage of its Outmanoeuvre
ability again. Don't use too many of these, as they are quite situational.

EVENTS

Week of the Mercenaries*: With a deck full of creatures, this is always useful.
In the mid/late game, this helps you take down bigger creatures with your
Outmanoeuvre antics.

Week of the Wild Spirits: This deck will often feature a higher than usual 
amount of magic creatures. So this event can help them deal lethal damage after
moving something in front of them with Outmanoeuvre. 

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#8.00 Extras
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Odds and ends that don't fit into any of the main sections.

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#8.01 Known bugs
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These are the issues in the game which I can personally reproduce, and which I
consider to be flaws. In the end it's up to the developers to have the last
word in what is and isn't correct, as we don't have access to comprehensive
rules. But these are what I feel deserve attention and as far as I know have
not been justified.

(1) I use Puppet Master to take control of an enemy creature. I then use Week
of the Dead to kill it and gain resources. The opponent gains resources even
though it was me who used the event's ability, the "you" in its text must
surely refer to the player who activated the ability. 

(2) Maws of Chaos and Halls of Amnesia are not castable if the opponent has no
fortunes/chaos in their deck, and the "choose from hand" option is greyed out
if they have none in their hand. 

(3) Spell Twister is not castable if the opponent has no spells in hand.

(4) Blood Pool is missing the text which states it only lasts until end of
turn.

(5) Throne of Renewal should state that it returns all *other* cards on the
battleground to owners' hands. Currently the wording suggests it would return
itself as well.

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#8.02 Game Jargon
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These are some abbreviations you might meet when playing or reading forums.

GG: Good game. It is a polite thing to say after a game is finished/about to
finish.

NERF: Make a card worse in some way. This is something that the developers
may do on occasion to balance an overpowered card, or to deal with unforseen
interactions with other cards.

OP: Overpowered. A card that is considered to be too good and requires a nerf.

OTK: One turn kill. It is a type of deck that stalls the opponent for many 
turns until it is able to deliver killing damage in one turn.

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#8.03 Version history and credits
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Version 1.00
-Created guide

Version 1.01
-Added information about immobilized and outmanoeuvre in 6.01
-Added enrage example to 6.02
-Added [VR] to cards from Void Rising in 4.00-4.13, thanks to Arsym for
prompting me to do this
-Added Mass Inner Fire to 4.09

Version 2.00
-Added more tips about Altar of the Spider Goddess in 2.03.
-Added about getting the cards out of premade decks in 3.05
-Added about Moonsilk Spinner taking retribution damage in 4.04
-Added about healing in 6.01
-Added more explanation and examples to 6.04
-Added about considering rotation of events to 6.05
-Moved Version history and credits to become section 8.03 to make room for new
section 7
-Added 8.01, known bugs and 8.02, game jargon

Written in whole by robvalue using notepad.

Thanks to everyone on the DoC forum who have been very welcoming and friendly.
Special thanks to hydramarine for some great advice and testing which has
helped me understand the game much better.