Codex: Growth spec

Argagarg Garg is the Growth spec hero of the green faction. Outsiders stereotype Argagarg’s fish-like people as being savage and barbaric, but they have it completely backwards; the Merfolk are wise and patient. Just because they look different from humans, doesn’t make them bad!

Here’s Argagarg’s hero card:

He comes with a 0/1 wisp, which gives you an extra defender. His max level ability summons a 3/3 water elemental with anti-air, which is quite a perk. Argagarg himself tends to stay out of combat; he sits back and buffs units while they do most of the work.

Speaking of defense, the green starter deck in general offers good defense. Look at these Treants:

Young Treant basically doesn’t cost a card and Ironbark Treant turns into a 1/4 while patrolling. That’s equivalent to a 1/5 if you make him your Squad Leader. The point is, basic green cards are already good defenders, and Argagarg gets a wisp and a water elemental thrown in without spending any cards at all.

Argagarg himself only gets 1 ATK even at max level, but his spells are very strong. He can grow a unit huge, or shrink it down to nothing:

Dinosize makes one of your units big enough to kill basically anything, and Polymorph Squirrel turns even the most terrifying enemy unit into something you can easily kill. The perk of Dinosize is that even though you can often use it to kill an enemy unit or hero, later in the game it helps you set up for a huge turn where you attack their base for 20+ damage. One perk of Polymorph Squirrel is that it can kill units that are normally unkillable, such as indestructible units—they aren't indestructible when they lose all their abilities! It also lets you get around triggering any "Dies: Do X" abilities the victim unit might have, because those are erased too while it's a squirrel.

Are you looking for awesome art that is too great for this Earth?

There you go. And while you’re at it, have a crazily powerful spell too. Somehow it GAINS gold every turn, and it buffs your guy, and it heals all your guys. That’s a lot of upside. If +2/+2 on one unit isn’t enough for you and you want to straight up win the game by overrunning your opponent, use this:

Even if you weren’t really winning by much on the board, Stampede can give you an explosive 20+ damage turn to win in one shot. You'll have set up for it by having a max level Argagarg already in play when you cast your ultimate spell.

The green faction is also really good at generating gold. Argagarg’s friend Galina Glimmer is able to boost your economy a lot:

I mentioned in the article about the Feral spec that you can use Young Panda and Giant Panda to get more green units to make your Gigadons cheaper, and the same advice applies here to power Galina Glimmer. The Feral spell Murkwood Allies would also be an incredible compliment to her. (Green specs have a lot of synergy with each other!)

At the tech II level, check out Artisan Mantis:

He’s a very proper, fancy Mantis. Rarely seen without his top hat or monocle, he’s a master architect and able to repair structures better than anyone else in the game. If your opponent is blowing up your tech buildings in one hit, or threatening to take down your entire base in one hit, he won’t help. But often there’s a race for damage, especially against the red faction, and he works wonders there. He’s the key to some matchups, so use him wisely.

Blooming Ancient is the kind of guy who grows completely out of control if opponents don’t put a stop to him, fast. Blooming Ancient grows every time you play a unit from your hand, and ALSO grows every time you summon a token unit such as a wisp from one of the pandas or Argagarg, or all those frogs from Murkwood Allies. If you play your cards right, Blooming Ancient will be covered with +1/+1 runes, then you can distribute them as you see fit across your other units.

For those of you who like to lie awake at night, fantasizing about card powers that work out just right, this is for you:

All you have to do is deal combat damage 5 times after you play this, and all your units AND heroes grow ridiculously large. It’s pretty hard to lose if this goes off, but the trouble is getting those 5 growth runes. Might of Leaf and Claw is a tech II upgrade, which means it comes somewhat late in the game, and the upgrade itself can’t attack or patrol. So you’re putting yourself a little behind by playing it, and you’re facing an opponent who probably has access to tech II stuff. Ideally, you have a whole bunch of units laying around who can attack at once and trigger it in a single turn. Then you can live the dream of +5/+5 for everything.

At tech III, you get Guargum, Eternal Sentinel:

Guargum is the heart of the forest, the most powerful watcher over nature’s children. He’s legendary, which means you can’t have two of him, but you shouldn’t need two anyway. As a 10 cost tech III, he’s very, very expensive, but his last ability lets you play Growth spells for free, and without even having a Growth hero. Have a Dinosize and Stampede in your hand? That usually costs a total of 10 to cast, but go ahead and do that for free. And by the way you get a 12/12 with resist 2 and obliterate 4 while we’re at it. Obliterate 4 is totally crazy. Every time you attack, your opponent will lose 4 units, and there’s no way they can keep up with that while a 12/12 is grinding them down and casting free spells at the same time.

The Growth spec starts with a small Merfolk named Argagarg, but it ends with Guargum: Growth’s ultimate incarnation, taller than trees.

Sirlin on Game Design, Ep 14: Codex

We discuss the Codex card game, on Kickstarter at the time of this recording. Codex is a customizable (but not collectible) card game that has way different design goals than other CCGs. It's been in development ridiculously long, over 10 years, and we discuss the various properties it has that makes it so special.

Hosts: David Sirlin, Richard "Leontes" Lopez, and Matt "Aphotix" DeMasi

Also, here a Codex article index. New articles posted there almost every day of Codex's kickstarter.

Here's a link to the Codex kickstarter itself. 

Codex: Feral spec

Introducing the Feral spec hero, Calamandra Moss of the Moss Sentinels. She has a deep connection with the forest. Animals sense this, respect her, and fight for her. She can unleash the full feral force of animals, as well as employ their cunning and stealth abilities. Here's her hero card:

Her first ability is a constant threat to the opponent. Even when a level 1 Calamandra is on the board, the opponent has to factor in that at any moment they could take 4 damage to anything. That’s because the Calamandra player might dump 4 gold into leveling her to max so she can be a 4/5, and discard two cards to give her stealth. That lets her ignore patrollers, so she can attack anything she wants. The cost of discarding two cards is very high, so you won’t want to actually use the ability very much, but the threat of it is a game changer that opponents must do their best to play around. Opponents might consider building a Tower add-on against her to nullify the threat of her stealth.

Her max level ability is also notable in that it can get tech II tigers from your codex and put them into play even if you don’t have a tech II building. That means you can focus a lot on spells yet still access some pretty ferocious 4/4 tigers without sinking 4 gold into making a tech II building.

Let's take a look at her spells.

Ferocity gives its buffs to ALL your units (even untargetable ones, by the way). Armor piercing is most likely to be relevant against an opposing Squad Leader. Usually the Squad Leader slot in the patrol zone gets 1 armor, but that's useless against Ferocious units. Even more terrifying, all your units get swift strike. If you have all units that are the same size as your opponent, it means you get to kill all of theirs without taking any damage to any of yours. Your 3/3 with swift strike remains unharmed when it kills their 3/3, your swift strike 2/2 is unharmed when it kill a 2/2, etc.). You can't always make this line up, but you generally have beefy units with green so it's definitely possible to blow out opponents with this.

Murkwood Allies wins games:

Calling upon her friends from Argagarg’s swampy Murkwood Marsh, she can get four 1/1 frogs or a 4/4 beast...or both! (Is Midori around? His middle ability will give those all +2/+2 because they are units that don’t have abilities).

You can see Calamandra’s cunning in her Behind the Ferns spell:

Small units, such as all the frogs you just got from Murkwood Allies, can sneak past patrollers. That can be dominating because it allows you to take out an opponent’s hero to lock them out of certain spells, or take out a tech building to lock them out of certain units, or just win the game by attacking their base, no matter what they had patrolling. Remember that you’re threatening to attack for an additional 4 damage with stealth from Calamandra herself anytime you’re willing to discard two cards to activate that.

Prefer to win by the tooth and nail of powerful units? Try this:

If you boost it for a total of 8 gold, you can put two units from codex directly into play, without even bothering to wait a couple turns to draw them. If you have a tech II building, those can be tech II units. If you have a tech III building, they can be tech III units, which is just totally crazy overkill at that point.

Back to reality though, the Feral tech I units are notable in what “workhorses” they are, so to speak:

These are some of the most solid tech Is in the game. What I mean by that is they aren’t trickshots, they aren’t reliant on certain combos or anything, they are great, simple units you can count on no matter what happens. For 2 gold, you get a 3/3 with some combat abilities, and for 3 you get a 3/4 with overpower. Centaur is actually one of the focal points of the game. A 3/4 at tech I is so powerful that opponents often have to spend a lot of resources to deal with it. If you patrol it as your Squad Leader, it will get 1 armor, making it effectively a 3/5. That’s pretty hard for early game units to deal with.

Barkcoat Bear is a similarly solid guy at tech II:

A 5/5 for 4 gold is pretty good, especially with a combat ability like overpower. Resist 2 really puts it over the top, because it means spells that might kill it now cost 2 more—quite significant. That encourages opponents to fight in combat instead, but it’s a damn 5/5! Also, look at that art, it’s so great. He is truly a “Barkcoat Bear.”

If you want something more splashy, try Rampaging Elephant:

The 6/7 body is pretty nuts to begin with, but it can attack TWICE?! That’s one deadly elephant—he’s dishing out 12 damage when he attacks, and that's before you even buff him!

Check out Gigadon:

An 8/8 with overpower is so enormous that it’s really difficult to kill. But if they don’t kill him, he’s threatening to wipe out two patrollers at a time because of overpower (if that deals enough damage to kill one patroller, it can send the excess damage to a second patroller, though that doesn't cascade to kill a third). Pretty high cost though, right? In reality, you can play him for a lot less than 9. Maybe even 0 if you’re lucky. Get some frogs in there from Murkwood Allies and make sure to use one of these pandas, too:

They each come with a wisp, and those count as green units that reduce Gigadon’s cost. The Giant Panda is a Growth card rather than a Feral one, but as long as you have the Growth hero on your team, your tech I building can still produce it.

At tech III, you can unleash massive Feral power with...squirrels:

The squirrels he summons have haste (can attack right away) and are invisible. The invisible part means they can ignore patrollers and attack whatever they want, and it also means opponents can’t attack them or even target them on their turn unless they have a detector or a Tower add-on, which they probably don’t.

Let’s do the math with Moss Ancient. Let’s say you want to do all the damage you can to your opponent’s base. The turn he arrives, he can have 3 squirrels attack for a total of 3 damage. On the second turn, he can surely attack *something* and live, which means he’ll summon 3 more squirrels. So the squirrels alone will do 6 damage this turn. Same story on the following turn, except there will be 9 squirrels by then.

The summary is that on turn 1, 2, 3 of having him your squirrels did a total of 3, then 9, then 18 damage. That’s 18 damage that probably can’t be stopped by patrollers, PLUS 16 more damage from Moss Ancient himself attacking on turns 2 and 3 of this sequence. Also factor in that tech III units are generally hard to get rid of with spells, and Moss Ancient is untargetable, making him practically impossible to deal with outside of combat.

From the biggest of creatures to the smallest, the Feral spec commands them all!

Codex: Balance spec

The Moss Sentinels (green faction) are also included in the Codex core set. Lead by Calamandra Moss, they protect the forests and natural resources. They harness the mighty power of nature itself, making them ferocious and threatening in combat. Their attunement with nature also helps them find the richest veins of gold, making them a powerhouse resource-wise as well.

Here are the three green heroes:

Master Midori is the Balance spec hero in the green faction. He’s honorable and fair and strives to keep nature’s balance intact. That said, Midori’s methods of keeping things fair seem to favor him an awful lot!

Here’s his hero card:

At max level, Midori can fly—he can turn into a green dragon! I guess it’s fair because he only does that on your turn? Not really though, he’s special in all the game in that he’s the best hero at being a win condition without any other support. You can use Forest’s Favor from the green starting deck to make him a 5/6 flier:

With 5 ATK, he can destroy any tech building in one shot except for a base. If he goes for their base, that’s a 4 turn clock even without any other support. Midori’s threat of doing this is so powerful that opponents need to think about this possibility if they even see Midori in your command zone.

And all that is before we even get to his middle ability. It makes units with no abilities cost 1 gold less and get +2/+2. Would you like a 1 cost 4/4 in your starting deck? You got it:

Combine Midori with other specs that can generate token cards (usually those don’t have abilities) or otherwise blank cards such as this card in the Growth spec:

Midori also keeps it fair and balanced with Moment’s Peace:

That’s a “fog effect” meaning it basically shuts down combat damage from units for a turn, though it still allows heroes to fight because heroes aren’t classified as units. It’s a pretty fishy effect though. You get to stall, but you’re also the color with the best ability to get gold. You can delay an opponent’s beatdown while you set up really powerful turns later. You can get free gold with these cards in the meantime:

Rich Earth and Merfolk Prospector are both in your starting deck. It usually costs 1 gold to make a worker, so Rich Earth is sort of giving you 1 gold per turn. Merfolk Prospector is doing that too, but it's a lot harder for opponents to get rid of an upgrade than a unit, so Rich Earth is likely to stick around for the whole game. Gemscout Owl helps you rake in even more gold. 

Is your opponent playing cards that stay in play, but that aren't units? That's not really fair and Balanced. They should stick to units. Midori can make sure of that with this:

Nature Reclaims doesn't just discard the thing it destroys—it TRASHES it. Whatever unnatural card they were using goes away for the rest of the game and won't cycle back into their hand. Nature Reclaims itself is also trashed, and that helps you get to your good cards faster after it's done its job.

Midori’s ultimate spell is also very fair. It even says so right on the card:

Midori gets to be a 7/8 flier who draws a card whenever he attacks, who costs 1 gold for opponents to even target him, and who doesn’t exhaust when he attacks. He’s probably 8/9 actually, because he probably has a +1/+1 rune on him from Forest’s Favor. But hey, the opponent gets two 3/3s so it all works out. The 3/3 Hunters have anti-air, so that means they will damage Midori if they are patrolling while he flies over them, but they can’t actually stop his attack. Midori can probably win the game before the Hunters kill him.

Here’s a couple other fair guys for you.

You somehow get a 6/5 with overpower for only 3. Overpower means excess combat damage you’d deal to a patroller hits something else you could attack. The Horselord only follows the strong though, so that keeps it fair. The thing is, when he checks the total ATK on each side of the table, he counts his own 6 ATK in your favor.

Wandering Mimic is another great Balance card. He’s just a 4/4 for 4, which isn’t even that great at tech II. He can get a whole bunch of abilities, but only if other things have those abilities (see how fair that is?). Pair him with Gemscout Owl to give him flying. Would you like to have stealth or be untargetable? No problem, pair him with one of these balance cards:

Wandering Mimic is terrifically versatile and there's so much you can do with him that I think you'll have a lot of fun with him.

And at tech III, you get a ridiculously powerful Tyrannosaurus Rex:

The T-Rex is notable in that it’s one of the few ways in the game you can straight up destroy an opponent’s tech III unit. Doing that while having your own 10/10 with overpower is backbreaking. But hey, that’s the cycle of nature: some things die while others take their place.

If you like to keep things fair for everyone, sort of, then play with Balance!

Codex: Fire spec

Introducing Jaina Stormborne, the Fire hero in Codex. Jaina fights with a magic bow that shoots flame arrows, and she’s reckless and aggressive despite Master Midori trying to teach her some patience. She may have fallen in with the wrong crowd by joining the Blood Anarchs, but she fits in quite well.

A lot of the power in the Fire spec comes from how inherently good direct damage is. While some specs have to play fair and deal their damage through combat, Fire can often point that damage wherever you want. That starts with Jaina Stormborne herself:

When she reaches maximum level, Jaina is extremely dangerous. From that point on, she’s dealing 3 damage every turn, without spending any cards or any gold to do it. She can use that as part of a control-based plan where she tries to kill whichever units you play and destroy whichever tech buildings you have. Or, she can close out the game with this ability because your base is a building too, meaning she can deal 3 damage to it (15% of its max HP) every turn. That adds up fast when you factor in all the other firepower.

The red starting deck comes with a burn spell, Scorch.

That’s a bit expensive, but in the early game it can kill a pesky unit or hero and late game it can deal the last 2 damage you need for a win. Jaina’s own spells in the Fire spec are better versions of that:

Ember Sparks lets you deal 1 extra damage relative to Scorch from your starting deck AND it lets you divide that damage across multiple targets if you want. Meanwhile Flame Arrow deals a whopping 4 damage to any unit or hero. That’s enough to kill most heroes and lots of units. Even though it’s a powerful control spell, it’s also a great finisher to win the game with because it does 3 damage to buildings too.

At tech I, both Lobber and Firebat are solid threats:

Lobber gets to deal 1 damage immediately, while Firebat gets to deal 2 damage each turn if you’re willing to wait for it (he doesn’t have haste) and pay for it. Also, I hope you appreciate that there’s a firebat in this RTS-themed game.

Fire’s tech II cards are all dangerous in different ways. Bamstamper Lizzo is a very solid control card:

He gives you a respectable 5/3 body AND he usually destroys a unit when he arrives. That can help you dominate the board. Meanwhile, Doubleshot Archer gives you some control, but while also damaging your opponent’s base:

She won’t kill anything the turn she arrives like Bamstamper Lizzo can, but when she does attack, she’ll likely kill one thing and not take any damage (because of her long-range ability) and she’ll ALSO deal 3 to your opponent’s base. Those double shots are so efficient that your opponent just can’t let you have her more than 1 turn.

Want to rain down fire on EVERYTHING? You can:

As you think about how devastating it can be to deal 1 damage to everything an opponent has (on a flying unit that’s hard to attack), factor THIS in:

Now each Molting Firebird is dealing *2* damage to everything. Doubleshot Archer deals 4 to their base, Bamstamper Lizzo deals 4 damage when he arrives, even your lowly Scorch now deals 3 damage. And that’s with just one copy of Hotter Fire—remember, upgrades stay in play indefinitely. You can have two of these upgrades in play if you dare to dream!

That brings us to possibly the most dreamy Fire spec card of all: Firehouse.

Got a problem with Fire? Call the Firehouse, except they will just start more fires instead of putting any of them out. Firehouse is one of those cards that seems like it must be a typo or something. It can potentially wipe your opponent’s entire board if you set it up correctly. Everything with 2 HP or less is dead as soon you reach your next ready phase, and you can combine other damage with Firehouse to possibly kill the rest too. In actual practice, it’s not quite so easy to pull off a devastating Firehouse massacre, but hey, we can dream.

In case you want a more reliable win condition, get to tech III and bust out this ridiculous dragon:

Between the damage the dragon himself deals and all the free fire spells he lets you cast every turn, you’ll roast their base in no time.

May your passions burn red with Anarchy, Blood, and Fire!

Codex: Blood spec

Codex's Blood hero, Drakk Ramhorn is new to the Fantasy Strike universe. Here’s his hero card:

Drakk is a little guy who rides a huge beast. He bangs on his war drums to hype up his allies for battle. The Blood spec is very much about running into battle bloodlusted, no matter what happens. Blood has more trouble than just about any other spec keeping units alive on the battlefield, but the tradeoff is that Blood is generally able to do a lot of damage in the process—damage that’s very hard to avoid.

Blood is one of my personal favorite specs in the entire game. It might appear mindlessly aggressive, but it’s actually more difficult to play than it first appears. The hardest part is deciding when to shift all your attention to damaging your opponent's base (that’s how you win the game), versus when to fight for control on the battlefield. You have to be very careful about when you can go “all in”. If you do it right, you barely win right before you run out of gas and have nothing left.

Let’s look at some of Blood’s “unavoidable damage.” First, Drakk himself sneaks in 1 damage to the enemy’s base whenever he dies. That’s 5% of their life total right there. If you aren’t relying on Drakk to cast spells, it’s sometimes ok for him to die two or three times in a single game, which is 2 or 3 damage out of 20.

If you have any red hero on your team (including Drakk Ramhorn), you can use the red starting deck. That’s the small deck of 10 cards you start the game with. The red starting deck is fantastic at supporting Blood’s plan.

As simple as Mad Man is, he lets you be aggressive right from the start, which is exactly what you want. And look at his art: he is truly a mad man.

Then Bombaster is a way to clear out the opponent’s patrollers so you can do more attacking. When Bombaster actually attacks, he’ll have to attack an opposing Squad Leader if there is one—that’s how the patrol zone works. The opponent puts things there to “block” you and their Squad Leader is like the primary blocker, basically. But when Bombaster sacrifices himself to use his ability, he can hit any patroller, not just the Squad Leader. Also, he can do this immediately when he comes into play, whereas he can’t actually attack right away unless something gives him haste.

“Isn’t it bad to sacrifice your own guys?” you ask. Enter, Bloodburn:

That’s another red starting deck card. It’s tricky to afford a 3 cost card in the early game, but the effect is significant: every time ANY unit dies—even an opponent’s—you basically get to do 0.5 damage. This is an upgrade card, so it stays in play until something destroys it (and not many things can). Also, the art for upgrades and spells are icons, as if these are what you'd click in an RTS video game.

This next guy is an all-star in the Bloodburn plan:

He’s a tech I unit, so you need to build your tech I building before you can play him. You can usually start building your tech I building on turn 2, and have it finish on turn 3, so it's reasonable to play him on turn 3.

Anyway, Crash Bomber is a fantastic deal because you get a regular 2/2 AND you get to do 1 extra damage when he dies. Keep in mind that this is stacking with Bloodburn (by giving it a blood rune) so Crash Bomber really does 1.5 damage when he dies in that case.

At the tech II level, you can turn up the damage even more. You then have access to something that triggers even more damage whenever anything dies:

...as well as things that deal a lot of damage and then die:

That’s some serious hurt right there. If you can keep even one Captured Bugblatter on the field along with Bloodburn, that’s now 1.5 damage anytime any unit dies. Your opponent basically MUST kill the Bugblatter. Meanwhile, your Shoddy Gliders have crazy gold efficiency by costing only 1 gold dealing 3 damage...or make that 4.5 damage if you have Bloodburn + a Captured Bugblatter. Crashbarrow doing a ridiculous 6 damage (+ another 1.5?) is just ridiculous.

But you can see the weakness of the plan right there. Bloodburn itself is an upgrade, not a unit that can protect you. Crash Bomber, Shoddy Glider, and Crashbarrow are all things that will die. Captured Bugblatter is amazing, but he needs other things to protect him to survive. You’ll have to string together some kind of minimal defense here or you’ll lose your heroes and your tech buildings to enemy attacks.

As a quick note about the theme of the red faction, look at those last three cards again. So they've captured a bugblatter, apparently? And they have some guys who use gliders, but only poorly constructed ones that crash immediately. They've also built some kind of battering ram with a lot of spikes, but it it only has 2 HP. Maybe not the best workmanship there. Much of the Blood Anarch's technology is hastily cobbled together and they've recruited (kidnapped?) various hooligans and monsters to fight for them too.

Back to gameplay now. When you find yourself desperate for more cards because all your guys died, try casting Desperation:

Or you could use Kidnapping to steal a guy from your opponent:

Ideally you kidnap a unit, then attack some other unit with that unit, and do it in such a way that both units die. Then you're basically using Kidnapping as a way to kill two things. Sometimes offense is the best defense.

Desperation and Kidnapping are both spells. Specifically, they are Blood spells, so you’ll need your Blood hero (Drakk Ramhorn) in play to cast them. If you level your Blood hero to maximum level, you can really rally your troops with War Drums:

Or if you focus on building up your tech, having a tech III building will let you throw down the pain with Pirate-Gang Commander:

He’s basically a fountain of units, damage, and gold all in one. Plus he’s a 6/6. It’s also very unusual that he allows you to continue playing tech I or tech II units even if you lose your tech buildings, which you probably will because you have so little defense.

If all offense all the time is your thing, then Blood is for you!

Puzzle Strike on iOS

Puzzle Strike is now available on iPad and iPhone! It's also on Steam and available in physical form, too.

Puzzle Strike is a deckbuilding puzzle game played amongst Fantasy Strike characters. It's inspired by puzzle games such as Puzzle Fighter. Gems fall into each player's gem pile every turn, and whoever's gem pile fills up first loses. Improve your deck (of chips!) by purchasing new chips as the game unfolds. Will you go heavy on economy, offense, or build an intricate engine? In any case, make sure to adapt to your opponents because Puzzle Strike has a lot more interactivity than most other deckbuilders. And like the other games in the Fantasy Strike universe, Puzzle Strike is designed to hold up to thousands of games at the expert level, and we fully embrace the philosophy of even-playfield competition.

The new iOS version of Puzzle Strike has these features:

• iPad and iPhone versions
• Cross-platform play with players on iOS, Steam and the web version on FantasyStrike.com
• Chips have 4x the resolution as the web version
• Climb the leaderboards in Quick Match and check out replays of top players to improve your game!
• New Puzzle Challenge mode: learn advanced character tactics and think outside the bag! Beat these advanced challenges to become a real Puzzle Striker!
• Complete your Daily Quests to earn Jewels, then spend them to play "Puzzle Smash", a high-powered version of Puzzle Strike
• Contains all 48 Puzzle chips from both Puzzle Strike Third Edition and Puzzle Strike: Shadows, as well as the promo chips, Combinatorics, Dashing Strike and Custom Combo
• Practice offline against AI Puzzlebots for the first time!
• Launching with English and French language support, with German and Japanese localization on the way

The iOS version of Puzzle Strike retails for $3.99 USD and come with the first four characters (Grave, Jaina, Midori, and Setsuki). Additional characters are available as in-app purchases and bundles.

Go check out the game on iOS, here.

Codex: Anarchy spec

Codex’s core set has two factions: the (red) Blood Anarchs and the (green) Moss Sentinels. Each has 3 heroes. There are 4 expansion factions, each with 3 more heroes plus a starter set with 2 heroes. That’s 20 heroes in total across all expansions. Each hero has an associated “spec” with a fun name, meaning the type of stuff they specialize in. We’ll look at all 20 specs in this series of articles and examine how each plays, what the art looks like, and what the philosophy is for each.

Before we go on, let's review some fundamentals about how the game works though.

• When you play the mode of the game used for competitive play, you pick a team of 3 heroes and during the game you'll have access to all the cards of those 3 specs.
• If you want to cast a SPELL, you need a HERO. You specifically need the Anarchy hero to cast an Anarchy spell, etc.
• If you want to make a UNIT (or an upgrade or building), you need a TECH BUILDING. You start with tech 0 cards you can always make because your base produces them. You need a TECH I BUILDING to make a tech I unit though. That's a flexible building because it can produce units of any spec!
• You must specialize at tech II though. When you make a tech II building, it's of a CERTAIN SPEC ONLY. If you pick Anarchy, it can only produce Anarchy tech II stuff. Also, it means your tech III building must be Anarchy tech III once you build that.

What I want you to keep in mind as you read about all the specific specs though, is that you don't have to use ALL of a spec at once. You might have an Anarchy hero (who can cast Anarchy spells), but you're still free to make a Fire tech II building if you want. Think of it as your build order having 9 branches at the start of the game: you rely on 1 of your 3 heroes and 1 of your 3 specs once you make your tech II building, and they don't have to match.

These articles will mostly talk about using both parts of the spec together (the hero+spells part and the everything-else part), but that's just so you get the theme of the spec. You're free to mix it up!

You can brush up on those rules even more with this article.

---

The Blood Anarchs (red faction) are first. Here are the three red heroes:

The Blood Anarchs are a shaky federation of pirates, robbers, brigands, and trouble-makers. Their equipment is sometimes shoddy or stolen. They employ captured monsters and mercenaries of several races. The Blood Anarchs rush down their enemies, and usually don’t bother with defense. They have no single leader, though the unpredictable Captain Zeno Zane (aka “Zane the Insane”) is perhaps the most feared.

Zane would like to see the Flagstone government burn to the ground, so that something else can replace it. He’d also like to see pretty much everything else spiral into chaos too. Zane’s spec is Anarchy, and it’s about disruption, aggressiveness, and surprise. Here’s his hero card:

Zane is the only hero in the game with haste. Heroes wait in your command zone for you to summon them; they aren’t cards you have to draw from your deck. That means if Zane is on your team, you can bring him in at any moment and attack with him right away. The mere threat of that pressures your opponent because they have to keep in mind that Zane could show up and attack at any time (just like in real life).

At levels 4 - 5 he gets to basically hijack the bonuses that some patrollers get. And at max level shove a patroller around and deal 1 damage to it too. It's pretty nice to be able to shove a squad leader out of the way so that you can attack something else. You could even shove it into the scavenger or technician slots to trigger his middle ability. By the way, hero powers are cumulative as they level up, so you don't lose the earlier powers.

Zane’s spells are all over the place because that's how Anarchy works. Your access to spells with such different effects allows you to throw curve balls at your opponent. For example, Surprise Attack summons two sharks out of nowhere. How does that even work?

On the other hand, Detonate is a rather violent way of getting rid of an opponent’s worker:

If this spell seems expensive at cost 3, consider what it has going for it. You can add it to your deck as a counter to certain building cards (because it destroys those too) and even if that ends up not being a factor, you can still use the card to destroy a worker. You’ll be paying 3 to do that, and your opponent will lose 1 gold every turn for the rest of the game. Waiting 3 turns to break even isn’t that great at first glance, but it can disrupt their plans quite a bit. In Codex, you need 6 / 8 / 10 workers to build your tech I / II / III buildings, respectively. Destroying a worker will delay their next tech level by at least a turn, and they’ll also have less gold than they were planning to have. Meanwhile, Detonate itself is trashed on use, not discarded, so it thins out your deck. You’ll be drawing the rest of your good cards faster, while your opponent falls a bit behind in gold and tech in the long run. This longer-term play is for tempo, and it’s the opposite of throwing sharks in their face to get things done immediately.

Stealing gold is another theme of Anarchy, and you can do it with one of the red starting deck cards and with a tech I card:

If you boost Maurader as you play him, he kills a worker. It's basically like he comes with the option to cast Detonate, if you want the tempo gain in addition to a hasty attacker. You might use just one of the above three cards to get a slight boost in tempo, or you might combine all of them to hammer away at your opponent's resources.

Another form of disruption is destroying the opponent’s tech buildings, which locks them out of playing certain cards until they rebuild. Both Disguised Monkey and Chameleon Lizzo have haste AND stealth, letting them sneak past patrollers to attack a building (or anything else) instantly:

I hope you enjoy the monkey dressed up as DeGrey. Notice that he’s only able to fool the other side for one turn though, because it’s not a very good disguise. Also notice that Chameleon Lizzo is slightly invisible in his artwork.

Anarchy tech even has an incredible defender with 6 hit points that can ALSO threaten huge damage to buildings:

That will kill tech buildings other than the opponent’s base in one hit. If it hits the base, that’s a whopping 7 damage (it takes 20 damage to win).

In keeping with Anarchy’s theme of “who knows what’s coming next?!”, check out Sanatorium:

This card is completely nuts. First of all, look at the art! Second, it’s giving you an extra card draw every turn, and third, it lets you play units even if you don’t meet the normal tech requirements for them. Maybe a green Gigadon or a black Demon of some sort will come out of that AND have haste. Opponents must absolutely destroy that building as soon as possible, because you’ll do all sorts of unfair things if you’re allowed to keep it.

At the tech III level, you get the gold standard of power: Pirate Gunship.

See Zane in the ship? Cool! Anyway, Pirate Gunship ends games fast. It only takes 3 attacks on a base to destroy it, and it has haste so really the opponent is on a 2 turn clock. Plus, it’s hard to destroy Pirate Gunship due to its resist and that it’s flying. Also, the obliterate ability means they are going down on units every turn. Tech III units are designed to end games, and Pirate Gunship does not disappoint!

Red's other two specs—Blood and Fire—are a bit more focused than Anarchy. But Anarchy's unusual forms of offense (a hero with haste, gold stealing, everything about Sanatorium, etc.) help red stay resilient to whatever strategies your opponents have planned. Make sure to mix up your build orders so your opponents don't know what's coming. The world can use a little Anarchy from time to time.