Puzzle Strike 2’s expansion, called Bold Adventures, has four new community bank decks as well as 10 more characters. Each character has three cards and you start with those in your deck. Each character has different strengths, so they push you in different directions when building the rest of your deck.
To give you a taste of these characters, here’s just one card from each of them.
Quince, Flagstone Chief Magistrate
Quince, as the rightful ruler of Flagstone, can claim the scepter at any time! The player with the scepter has the bonus that they fill their super meters up automatically as each player takes their turn, but the drawback is that everyone attacks the scepter holder and the scepter holder cannot block incoming gems. This card lets Quince steal the scepter at opportune times, which is not something any other character in the game can do.
General Onimaru, Wartime Strategist
Wartime Tactics is possibly the most versatile card in the game. Onimaru is able to play a card from the bank without having to add that card to his deck first, then wait to draw it. This gives him access to powerful effects before anyone else, and it also lets him rearrange the drop pattern colors in the bank a little as a side effect.
Bigby, Flagstone Judge
Bigby’s Sovereign Immunity is an incredible way to avoid losing. You have to have 10 or fewer gems when you end your action phase to avoid losing…unless you’re Bigby. This card will destroy all your blue gems, while probably puts you under the limit. Surviving just one more turn than usual in Puzzle Strike 2 is a big deal and can put you in a position to win soon after.
Bal-Bas-Beta, Clockwork Guardian
Cog Engine lets you play a powerful card two turns in a row. It costs 1 extra action to do that…unless it’s a pink card, then it’s free! Pink cards are often suited to engine-building (allowing you to draw a lot, play a lot, do big combos somehow), and that’s BBB’s strong suit. He even has another character card that can put two pink cards from the bank on top of his deck which helps Cog Engine be even stronger.
Menelker, Deathstrike Dragon
Who needs swaps? Even if your purple gems aren’t all in a row, you can crash ALL of them at once with this. That’s powerful itself, but consider that doing this probably results in the rest of your gems having more same-color runs, allowing your next crashes to be more potent.
M.Persephone, Nox Oracle
Nothing in the game can directly mess with an opponent’s gem pile except for this. Persephone’s ability to control others extends right into their gem piles.
Gloria, Hopeful Healer
Gloria can affect other players too, but not by screwing up their gem pile. Quite the opposite! She destroys all 0-cost cards from everyone’s discard piles. This has the effect “healing all wounds” because wound cards (useless, blank cards) are 0-cost. But there are lots of non-wound cards that are also 0-cost, so she counters strategies that rely on those cards. She also gets the perk of retrieving one of her own cards from her discard pile. That lets her play a powerful card sooner than usual, or pick just the right kind of card (a block for example) if she needs defense to survive.
Gwen, Doomed Wanderer
Shadow Plague is unique in that its the only card in the entire game (other than wounds) that is a color other than the four main colors. It’s red! It’s doubly unique in that it’s the only purely negative card to have. It fills your OWN deck up with wounds unless you waste an action on stopping it from giving you a wound. Why would you want this card, you ask? You don’t. It’s purely negative and represents Gwen’s descent into becoming undead. To make up for it, her other cards are very strong and offer more card draw and actions than a character would normally be allowed.
Vendetta, Undead Assassin
Deep crashes are in short supply in Puzzle Strike 2. (Those let you crash any gem in your gem pile, not just the top one.) This simple and powerful card is just the kind of thing Vendetta patiently waits for until he has an opportunity to strike.
Zane, Bloodguard Anarchist
Zane has some wacky things going on. This isn’t his strongest card, but it gives you an idea of his pranks. For 0 actions, he gets a random card from the bank (which are better than starting deck cards, so it probably helps him) but the opponent gets some bad card. It’s hard to say exactly what type of card, if any, will be in the trash pile, because there are a lot of different effects that put cards there. Chances are it will be a wound or a starting deck card. Something bad. While this effect is minor, it’s annoying that Zane can do this every few turns at basically no cost to him. That said…what you should really be worried about are his other cards, which you can look up on your own.
There’s more to all these characters, but that should give you a good idea of their variety and how they all push you to play in different ways.