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!

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.

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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.