The second community bank deck in Puzzle Strike 2 is Birthday Bash (the first is Grand Melee).
Presents
The main mechanic of this deck is opening birthday presents. It gets pretty crazy, but let’s start with the basics. Here are some cards that give “presents”:
As you can see from the help text at the bottom of the cards, getting a present means you draw a card and play it for free.
The first layer of taking advantage of this is simply having strong cards that you get to play for free.
Decadent Cake as a present lets you crash twice for 0 actions (amazing!). Fireworks Accident lets you crash once, and gives you an action. Normally a crash costs 2 actions but in this case it’s costing -1 actions if you happen to open it. Do you like getting extra actions? Shakin’ Dance gives you a ridiculous 3 actions and 3 cards if for nothing if you happen to open it as a present.
Perhaps the ultimate is Happy Birthday though:
Deep crashes (which let you crash any gem in your gem pile, rather than just the top one) are incredibly powerful, and getting two of them is nuts. If you manage to open that present and play it for free, that’s “happy birthday” indeed.
“Open Me” and “Open Anything” Cards
The next thing to consider is that there are cards that give extra bonuses if you open them as presents:
Opening presents is inherently strong (playing a card for free), and getting a free crash in addition to that—every time you open a present—would be back-breaking for you opponents. That’s the madness that Crashing Rhino brings to the table. This guy is brutal:
Choosing Your Own Present
The next layer of playing this deck is understanding that you can manipulate your own deck to ensure which cards end up as your presents.
Two of the above cards let you put a card from your hand on top of your deck (so that the next present you open will be that card), and the other two have the “top” icon. That lets you put a card from the bank on top of your deck, again letting you control which present you’ll open next.
Recursion
The last level of wrapping your mind around this deck involves something you might have been wondering about while reading all this. What happens if you open a present (play the top card of your deck for free) and that card itself lets you open more presents? Welcome to the recursive madness of Birthday Bash.
As an example, suppose you play The Big Gift, which gives you a crash gem and two presents. First, you do the crash (left to right order). Next, you open the first of the two presents by playing the top card for free. Suppose that top card is The Small Gift (shown at the top of this article). It gives you up to 3 swaps (swaps are optional so you can skip any of them if you want) so perform any of those you want, then you get two more presents. So you then open the first of the two presents in The Small Gift (which might contain even more sub-presents…but let’s say it doesn’t). Then you open the second of the two presents for The Small Gift (which also might contain sub-presents, but we’ll move on and say it doesn’t). Phew! You aren’t done yet though. Remember that all this is “inside” the first of two presents from The Big Gift. Now that you have finally finished fully resolving everything about the first present from The Big Gift, you then open the second present from The Big Gift. Here’s that order, visually:
The point is, presents inside presents (inside presents…), can get pretty bonkers.
Now that you’ve wrapped your mind around all that (or maybe you haven’t!), you can see the point of Last Gifts.
You get two presents for just 1 action, which is crazy, but you don’t get to do anything recursive with them. If either of your two presents from Last Gifts would themselves give more presents, instead they don’t.
There’s More Than Just Presents
This deck is quite a ride to play. While the birthday present mechanic is the main theme, there are some other spices in the mix as well.
This may not look like much, but remember that you have four super meters, each of which activate a super move when they get 4 gems in them. So you’re filling all four meters 25% every time you play that. That’s in addition to filling those meters the usual ways of crashing gems and holding the scepter. It can get pretty wild with super moves.
Speaking of The Scepter of Power, check out this unique card:
A card that does nothing unless you’re bold enough to hold the scepter! And if you are, a free crash gem! That adds an interesting shift in incentives for holding the scepter as well as an interesting choice to buy this card just to deny other players from having it (there’s only one copy in the deck).
That’s the shape of Birthday Bash. It’s a combo explosion just waiting to happen and if does happen, you might experience quite a “happy birthday” moment.