Hello again poxers. Last week we discussed making a deck in general, going over the basics of composition and rune choice. This week we’ll cover the general rules for choosing and upgrading the champions you want for a strong deck. Champions are the most important part of any good battle group, as they are the most important of the game, and you can’t win without playing champions. That means it is vital to have a strong group of champions in your deck and to upgrade them properly to make use of their individual strengths.

Of course, to select champions you have to have some idea of a deck’s theme. For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to select champions as if making a Forsaken Wastes Skeleton theme deck, since it provides several interesting champion cases to work with. When selecting champions for a deck, the first thing you want to do after determining your theme is look for “core” champions. Core champions are the champions that you use to win the game - it can be something like a Dwarven King, which gives your army its kick, or something like a Skeezick General, who uses the rest of the army to reach super ass kicking heights. Not every deck has core champions, though most do. It’s hard to identify your core champions without any play experience, so new players shouldn’t worry about them, but more experienced players should strongly consider building decks to take advantage of core champions In the case of skeleton decks, the core is definitely the Tomb Lords, who provide large stat buffs and without which your combat units are not nearly as effective.

Once we have our Tomb Lords, we need to decide how to upgrade them. The first stat you should go for while upgrading any champion is speed, which is the most important stat since it determines your threat range and AP generation. Because odd numbers generate more AP than even numbers and 8 is the minimum AP cap to make two attacks, speed on your champions should almost always be an odd number which is greater than 8. Since speed upgrading caps out at 12, that means that almost all of your champions should have either 9 or 11 speed. Simple enough, on the face of it. However, some things can also raise a unit’s speed after the cap - notable examples are Berserker or the K’thir Forest bonus. Usually you don’t need to spend the nora getting up to that 13 speed with bonus mark, with exceptions for powerful ranged units or rushing units. You are usually better off going for a speed where you will have 9 or 11 speed after the modifier applies, to keep your units cheap.

Tomb Lords are primarily support, although they can hit for very large amounts of damage when your army grows. So they don’t need much speed. They also have the potential to get +1 speed from a fellow Tomb Lord, so we could put their speed to an even number if we wanted. However, since they do need to keep up with the army and summon when possible (which costs 5 ap) and we won’t always have 2 out, the best bet is probably 9 speed.

Now that speed is set, the next two stats to look at are health and damage. These are the next two most important stats, but you will probably upgrade them the same on almost every champion. Damage costs 3 points for the first two upgrades, and will go up by one point for every two thereafter - 4 for the third and fourth, 5 for the fifth and sixth, etc. Because of this escalation, it is almost never worth it to upgrade more than 2 points of damage. The first two points of damage are decent upgrades, but it is better to only upgrade them on cheap combat units, preferably ranged units - putting too much damage investment into a champion is risky. Health is even more simple than damage - it starts at 1 nora per 2 HP and follows the same escalation pattern, except every 3 upgrades instead of 2. Since the first 3 upgrades nets you 6 hp for 3 nora, the only time you should not upgrade those first 3 upgrades is if you don’t intend for the champion to fight. The second set of upgrades costs 6 nora for 6 hp, and so is also a good choice - but best used to round out champion costs or on particularily frail/important champions. General combat units should be fine with the first three upgrades.

Since our Tomb Lords are support and have surge, they definitely don’t need any damage upgrades. However, since they are very important to our deck they can certainly use more hp. In this case I give them 4 hp upgrades for +8 hp (the reason for sticking to only one +2 nora hp upgrade is to keep them at a certain cooldown later).

After the stats are set, we look to abilities. It is very hard to set a rule of thumb for ability upgrades - their power varies wildly depending on the champion. You should play and experience as many champions as you can to get an idea of what works. Generally, however, you should try to stick to things you really need for your theme, and not upgrade extra abilities that may or may not be useful, such as low levels of leap or abilities like unstoppable. Cheap is usually a pretty safe way to run any champion.

The Tomb Lord is a support champion, who is defined based on his abilities more than most others. So we’re going to do some heavy ability upgrading on him. First, we definitely need Boost: Skeleton 3, since this is a skeleton deck and boost is an excellent ability. After that, our options for solid support upgrades are Summon Undead and Inspire. Since the Tomb Lord boosts and surges skeletons, it is definitely a good idea to get Summon Undead, since the summons are skeletons. Any rank would be good as defensive units, but I’ve decided that I want the summons to do damage, so I’m putting it up to Summon Undead 3. That just leaves Inspire as an upgrade possibility. Here it depends what you want to do - if you want to sit back and dedicate your lords entirely to support, inspire is a solid upgrade. However, if you want to make use of their surge and attack, it isn’t worth the nora. I prefer to use my Tomb Lords to attack since they are midranged and have a good attack type, so I will leave Inspire off. So now our final Tomb Lord Build looks as follows:

Tomb Lord x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 45 hp, Summon Undead 3, Boost: Skeleton 3 - 93 Nora

This brings us to the final part of champ upgrading - final nora cost. In general if you follow the above rules of thumb you will have fairly efficient champions. However, there is one other main concern with nora cost - cooldowns. Cooldown is determined by dividing cost by 5 and rounding down. That means that a 90 nora champion will have a 1 round longer cooldown than an 89 nora champion. So in general, you want to stay below a multiple of 5 in upgrading. On super expensive champions this is not a big deal, as the probably won’t cooldown anyway, but on cheap champions it is definitely something you should consider. It is also important for Forsaken Wastes, which has a faction bonus that lowers cooldowns. That is why I chose to upgrade hp only 4 times instead of 6 - the extra 2 hp upgrades might be worth it, but I would prefer to keep them at 93 nora and have less cooldown.

Now that we’ve gone over the general rules of champion upgrading, join us next week when we will move on to creating a fleshed out champion force for our skeleton theme deck.

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Kaervas Assistant Game Designer

Hello, poxers. This week, rather than describing a build I’m going to go into some of the precepts that are a good general guideline to deckbuilding in Poxnora. There is often the perception that building a deck isn’t an important part of the game, whether its openly stated or not. The assumption is that play is the true and only judge of skill and that decks are either copied or obvious to make, and that “everyone” runs certain common runes. In fact, proper deck construction is a big part in allowing a player to excel in actual play. But even at the basic level, following certain precepts and rules will ensure that your deck is more versatile.

The first part of making any deck is deciding what kind of theme it will follow. Every deck has a theme, even if it is as simple as full faction K’thir Forest or split Ironfist/Savage Tundra. How you choose your theme is up to you - you may want it to follow flavor requirements, to play with a fun mechanic, or just to win as much as possible. For the purposes of this example, I’m going to use a full faction Shattered Peaks Voil deck. Voil are not the most powerful of decks currently, but they can hold their own in midranks and have a number of interesting runes.

Since we’re doing full faction SP, the first rune we want to put in, if available, is the warbanner. Warbanners are incredibly powerful relics, and every full faction deck should have one in it if you own it. After the warbanner, the next thing we look for is nora generation - solid nora generation effects are useful in all games, and can really bring a deck together. SP primarily relies on its faction bonus and warbanner to generate nora, with the Deepcave Extractor being the only other option. Since the Deepcave Extractor is a mediocre rune and not a voil, we’ll leave him out for now, and put him in later if we have room. Now that we’ve got our banner and checked our nora generation options, we can move on to the general champions of the deck.

Champions make up the core of the deck and are usually the largest part of it. However, even inside that champion group there are usually some runes which make up the core of your champion base, and this core is what you should look for first while adding champions to a deck. In the case of voil, the core rune is the Voil Sorcerer, the primary ranged voil and main damage dealer of the deck. So we definitely want 2 Voil Sorcerers. Now, looking at runes which amplify the Sorcerer’s effectiveness, we can see a few - Clay Forms allow you to get more on the field, Voil Queens provide more Zealot damage and run melee interference, and Voil Transporters move them around. So into our deck goes 2 Clay Forms, 2 Voil Sorcerers and 2 Voil Transporters and 2 Voil Queens. Now we’ve created a core which is capable of escalating damage to a very high level - however, voil aren’t very tough, and our key sorcerers are quite vulnerable. To mitigate that weakness it’s a good idea to include at least one Crowned Sauropod, which can bodyguard a Sorcerer and is cheap in a voil deck. So now our deck looks like this:

Voil Sorcerer x2
Upgrades: 11 speed, 48 hp, Vulnerability: Fire - 88 Nora

Voil Queen x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 48 hp - 63 Nora

Clay Form x2
Upgrades: None - 85 Nora

Crowned Sauropod x2
Upgrades: 58 hp, Bodyguard, Voil Bound- 61 Nora

Voil Transporter x2
Upgrades: 41 hp - 60 Nora

Tribal Post

The upgrades are fairly minimalistic so our core is easy to get out, however I did go with +12 hp on the sorcerers because we plan on copying them and they are the essential link in the deck. Now that our core is set, we can go about adding champions to fill in roles and make the deck better. One of the most important roles every deck needs is range - in our case we already have the Sorcerers, but it is usually good to have at least 5 “ranged” champions, even if they primarily use an ability like Acid Breath or Flamestrike to attack at range. The other ranged voil are not that good, but SP does have some solid options in the Hyaenid Spearman and the Moga Cannon - for now we’ll add 2 of both. Now we’ve got plenty of ranged units, but its usually a good idea to have at least as many melee champions as ranged to deal with things like arrow eater and evasive - voil have a few solid melee units in the Voil Frenzy and Voil Windstriker, so we’ll add those as well.

At this point our deck is starting to come together. It now looks like this:
Voil Sorcerer x2
Upgrades: 11 speed, 48 hp, Vulnerability: Fire - 88 Nora

Voil Queen x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 48 hp - 63 Nora

Clay Form x2
Upgrades: None - 85 Nora

Crowned Sauropod x2
Upgrades: 58 hp, Bodyguard, Voil Bound- 61 Nora

Voil Transporter x2
Upgrades: 41 hp - 60 Nora

Moga Cannon x2
Upgrades: 50 hp - 69 Nora

Hyeanid Spearman x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 48 hp, Poison 1 - 71 Nora

Voil Frenzy x2
Upgrades: 46 hp - 61 Nora

Voil Windstriker x2
Upgrades: 11 speed, 48 hp - 78 Nora

Tribal Post

Now that we have a good number of combat runes, we should start looking at our spells, relics, equipment and utility champions. One thing you should always look for at this point is a way to do direct damage immediately - this ensures that you can finish off wounded units without having to use another attack. Shattered Peaks has a good number of options in this category - Avalanche, Lightning Storm and Echo Chamber are all solid spot damage options. In this case we’ll include all of them, since they make a solid base for our nonchampion runes and give us some flexibility on what we want to do with our damage spells - Avalanche and Echo Chamber particularily have very useful secondary effects. Looking at the other options for SP, Implant is a good include that lets us get extra use out of our cheaper combat voil and can turn the bats the Queen summons into a real threat. Unstable Ground is also solid for locking the enemy in place and doing more damage with avalanche, and we can ignore it mostly with our flight, so in it goes. Crush is excellent by virtue of being both an antiequipment spell and a bit of damage, so it goes in as well. Equipmentwise, the Slaver’s Whip is an excellent choice that gives tons of flexibility, so every SP deck should use one. Our deck now looks like this:

Voil Sorcerer x2
Upgrades: 11 speed, 48 hp, Vulnerability: Fire - 88 Nora

Voil Queen x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 48 hp - 63 Nora

Clay Form x2
Upgrades: None - 85 Nora

Crowned Sauropod x2
Upgrades: 58 hp, Bodyguard, Voil Bound- 61 Nora

Voil Transporter x2
Upgrades: 41 hp - 60 Nora

Moga Cannon x2
Upgrades: 50 hp - 69 Nora

Hyeanid Spearman x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 48 hp, Poison 1 - 71 Nora

Voil Frenzy x2
Upgrades: 46 hp - 61 Nora

Voil Windstriker x2
Upgrades: 11 speed, 48 hp - 78 Nora

Avalanche x2
Lightning Storm
Implant x2
Crush
Unstable Ground
Echo Chamber x2
Tribal Post
Slaver’s Whip x2

Finally, its a good idea to give a deck a final once over and consider what kind of opponents it might face. In today’s game, you often see large swarms of weeny champions from Moga decks and K’thir Forest snake decks among others. It might be a good idea to include a unit that counters that strategy - and luckily Voil decks have a very solid one in the Bat Swarm. So let’s take out the Voil Frenzies, who are our least important combatant, and replace them with Bat Swarms. You will also encounter a lot of equipment in modern decks, so some more anti-equipment probably would not hurt, especially something that can remove things once they are on the board. Voil do have an antiequip champion in the Voil Bomber, who is pretty decent - perhaps not the best combatant, but worth including as antiequipment and useful as a ranged 7 champion and a combo with unstable ground. So we can switch one of our Hyeanid Spearmen for a Voil Bomber.

Now the deck is complete and ready to play. It has a clear core and a solid mix of champions and spells. If it can get the Sorcerers out with supporting cast it can easily build up a very dangerous offense, and contains enough inexpensive units that it can fight quite solidly in any situation. Not the most powerful deck available, but within a Voil theme it is quite good, and in the hands of a good player can certainly hold its own. Here is the final build:

Voil Sorcerer x2
Upgrades: 11 speed, 48 hp, Vulnerability: Fire - 88 Nora

Voil Queen x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 48 hp - 63 Nora

Clay Form x2
Upgrades: None - 85 Nora

Crowned Sauropod x2
Upgrades: 58 hp, Bodyguard, Voil Bound- 61 Nora

Voil Transporter x2
Upgrades: 41 hp - 60 Nora

Moga Cannon x2
Upgrades: 50 hp - 69 Nora

Bat Swarm x2
Upgrades: 38 hp - 64 Nora

Voil Windstriker x2
Upgrades: 11 speed, 48 hp - 78 Nora

Hyeanid Spearman
Upgrades: 9 speed, 48 hp, Poison 1 - 71 Nora

Voil Bomber
Upgrades: 9 speed, 46 hp, Stone Bomb 3 - 80 Nora

Avalanche x2
Lightning Storm
Implant x2
Crush
Unstable Ground
Echo Chamber x2
Tribal Post
Slaver’s Whip x2

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Kaervas Assistant Game Designer

Hello Poxers! Greenie ASDF(David) reporting!

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME
I recently found out about this new craze sweeping the world and thought I would try my own hand at the blogs…

Anyway! What do I do? It’s so hard to quantify, in short, I am the glue that holds together this company. You guessed it! I work in the QA department, though I also double in the company as a muse to get the creativity sparkin’ for others..

I’ve included the photo of myself for your viewing pleasure so you can all imagine what it would look like if the Predator was gonna try and snipe me. ( oh iMac Photobooth, I love thee so.)

Feel free to Photoshop my image in controversial poses with any assortment of internet or pox characters.

Things are going good so far on the SOE Tucson side, the amount of support we have received from Sony is pretty good and it seems like that will only translate into good things in the future for you, the players!

In summation, did anyone else see Jessica Simpson lately? man she let herself go!

SUPPORT AND CREATING TICKETS
Qwerty and I deal with some of the support side as well. I was asked to mention a few things that might help us, help you! So my Maguiren advice for you all is when submitting a bug/support ticket, make sure that you include step-by-step details!  Even things that may seem trite, actually do help us in diagnosing the problem.  Another thing to remember is if you submit a ticket, and the nature of your dilemma requires a back and forth between us, please respond to the same ticket and do not create a new ticket – to maintain a healthy back and forth. Failing to do this is when bad things happen.

EXAMPLE
Random Awesome Cool Pox Player:
Help me oh glorious greenies! I gots a problem! I got in a game then my screen blew up!

Friendly, wise, Greenie with a Winning Smile:
We’ll get to the bottom of this! Did you check the blah-blah-biddity-boo?

4 days pass until the pox user is able to respond but does so by creating an additional, new ticket. One of the greenies then checks the support box, but has no idea of the players prior ticket and/or issue and is thoroughly confused. This then forces us to go back and try to hunt down the previous ticket, which only adds a delay to your issue!

Another thing to mull over if you are ever struck by a nefarious bug, here’s how we’d prefer you detail your issue. It may sound obvious and you might think, OMG asdf, I’m not 4! I know how to write a simple message but, most people actually don’t get this right on, certain things you may not think of that could hinder a good response time.

Lets say, for the sake of the discussion, that you have an issue in game where all the graphics are seriously distorted or you are seeing weird colors everywhere, then you submit a ticket about the issue. This first ticket is *not* a good way to report your problem!

Entry by: RandomPlayer1
“Hey, i started pox and saw crazy stuff all over my screen!“

From this ticket we honestly can’t tell much, we would need to spend extra time gleaning information from you to assess the problem. This is akin to going to a mechanic with your ride and telling him, its broke. Well, what’s broke? Starting to catch my drift?

Now, the following ticket is a MUCH better way of reporting this same issue and will probably be fixed much faster.  In addition, the player will probably start to notice how the birds are always singing, colors may seem brighter and more vibrant and who knows… may just find himself coming into money! Yes it could happen!

Entry by: RandomPlayer2
“Hey, I launched pox from the downloadable client not webstart, I managed to go through the lobbies without any issue. However, when I entered a game through Drums of War channel I immediately noticed that all the colors on my screen were off, like my shrine was a crazy green color and there were blocks everywhere! I was able to communicate to my opponent alright, would you guys mind making this problem go away?! Oh, and I’m not on a wireless connection, the game played well (I actually won! ;p) just the colors were all off!  I also included for ya in case you need it, my computer specifications, thanks. “

Can you see how RandomPlayer2 included a bunch of details? Even stuff that might seem obvious like, DUH! “when I said I launched the game I meant I was in the game and beating on my opponent shrine when this happened!” Many people, when they say ‘launch the game’, mean they just loaded up the game and made it to the lobby all in one motion, but it greatly helps us if you make it very specific. This is one of the reasons why the more detailed you are, the easier and quicker your issue will probably get fixed even if it feels dumb stating what you feel is the obvious.

Hope you enjoyed a little of what I deal with everyday.

Happy Poxing everyone and hope you had a good Saint Patty’s Day!

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ASDF Intern/QA

Dwarven King x2
Upgrades: 11 speed, 60 hp, Warcry 3, Melee Specialist 2 - 106 Nora

Warcharged Skeezick x2
Upgrades: 9 speed - 54 Nora

Varu Howler x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 45 hp - 53 Nora

Skeezick Cannoneer x2
Upgrades: 9 speed - 64 Nora

Battlemage x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 51 hp - 66 Nora

Acid Elemental x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 53 hp, Acid Bomb 3 - 85 Nora

Deep Miner x2
Upgrades: Nora Miner 3 - 34 Nora

Acid Dragoleech
Upgrades: 9 speed, 36 hp, Regeneration 1, 59 Nora

Flame Dragoleech
Upgrades: 9 speed, 36 hp, Regeneration 1, 59 Nora

Stone Collossus
Upgrades: 9 speed, 56 hp, Vulnerability: Magical - 70 Nora

Dwarven Catapult
Upgrades: 9 speed, hp - 69 Nora

Draconic Benediction x2
Firestorm x2
Glorious Charge
Strip Armor
Hammerstrike x2
Desperate Heal x2
Disarm
Unstable Powersource

The notorious metagame deck. Centers around the combinations of leeches and miners, high defense and the Sundered Lands bonus and cheap champions with the damage jumping capability of Warcry and Draconic Benediction. This deck relies heavily on a buildup phase to be really dominant, and its early game is not as strong as the late game. With leeches/miners out you will inevitably pull ahead in nora, and your alpha strike turn capability is excellent, so in long games you will mostly win. If you are in trouble early game you should try to get your nora miners out and hold the enemy with the cheap champions the deck abounds with - if you can get out a dwarven king with allies you will do very well in an early game skirmish, though it can be hard to do that.

The Dwarven Kings are the linchpin champions in the deck, providing the powerful warcry to enable the rest of your slower champs and having massive defense and toughness - up to 37 when under the benefit of melee specialist. Following him comes a swarm of cheap champions that benefit heavily from the combined IS/SL bonuses and war cry - Battlemages, Varu Howlers, Skeezick Cannoneers, Warcharged Skeezick, Stone Collossus and even the Dragoleeches. The low price and relatively high survivability of this army makes it possible to get a few out with the expensive Dwarven King at the same time. The catapult finds its place mostly in chucking them around, especially the kings when you’ve had some time to build up, where it can easily guarantee the warcry of your choice - it is also often discounted as a source of damage, and while flying from DB can do quite a bit of harm. The Deep Miners and Dragoleeches provide ensured nora dominance, while helping in combat when Draconic Benediction and Warcry are going off (even the humble miner will hit for 7 with both effects).

Draconic Benediction is perhaps the most important spell, giving you the ability to set off massive turns and increasing your Dwarven King’s threat range. Glorious Charge and Strip Armor both work very well with Benediction and increase your options for dangerous turns. Hammerstrike provides you with damage and spot disabling as necessary, and helps quite a bit in the early game. Firestorm’s high cost, high damage works well with your extensive nora generation, and gives you some nuke capacity to help against Moga decks. Desperate Heal is your final mainstay, working excellently with both your massed troops and your relatively high defense. Disarm and Unstable Powersource round out your repertoire, providing antiequipment and antirelic (notably totem of the muses) respectively.

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Kaervas Assistant Game Designer

Elder Garu x2
Upgrades: 11 speed, 16 damage, 66 hp - 91 Nora

Garu Hunter x2
Upgrades: 50 hp, Call:Beast, Nemesis: Enraged Grizzly - 52 Nora

Garu Shaman x2
Upgrades: 7 speed, 52 hp, Poison 2, Heal Champion 3 - 70 Nora

Mountain Garu x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 56 hp, Berserker 3 - 72 Nora

Wilderkin x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 50 hp, Hostile, Berserk Attack 3, Unstoppable - 94 Nora

Enraged Grizzly x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 62 hp - 70 Nora

Elven Prodigy x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 12 damage, 46 hp, Rain of Arrows 3, 91 Nora

Ancestral Avenger
Upgrades: 69 hp - 115 Nora

Elven Bard
Upgrades: 9 speed, 39 hp - 79 Nora

Woodland Ambassador
Upgrades: 11 speed, 48 hp, Nora Miner 2 - 78 Nora

Ancestral Anger x2
Nature’s Wrath x2
Brambles
Swiftwind
Herbal Antidote
Rejuvenation Ring
Crown of K’thir
Elite Blade x2
Oaken Mace
Pride of K’thir

This deck focuses on a Garu/Bear theme. Naturally it isn’t as strong as a mixed K’thir Forest deck would be, due to the lack of range. The elven prodigies are key in that respect in that they can make attacking from range a very risky prospect from your opponent, and deal a very large amount of damage with a crown or blade. Elder Garus are your backbone, the most frightening thing in the army to your opponent, capable of reaching 20 damage, 81 hp and 15 speed easily with anger and an elite blade and carrying a huge threat range on pummel. Garu Hunters are cheap and have good hp, they also give very large discounts on your wilderkin, avenger and grizzlies - nearly 30 nora off on the Ancestral Avenger. The Garu Shamans provide you with a garu ranged option that is very tough and can heal, an excellent soloing champion that is very dangerous. The Mountain Garu provide initiative and, since switfwind is AoE, are great to get as an incidental target if you are applying unstoppable to an Ancestral Angered champion. The Enraged Grizzlies and Wilderkin are primarily there for deploying with the hunters, which makes them incredibly cheap - the wilderkin are very damaging when they want to be and are excellent ancestral anger and elite blades and the enraged grizzlies are detection and cheap for their hp. Finally, the Elven Bard increases the threat range of all your melee units when its out (especially any with berserker).

Ancestral Anger is the spell that ties together the garu theme, potentially making any of your garu very dangerous in melee at any time. Swiftwind allows you to gain a surprise AP and negate the penalty of Ancestral Anger or your Mountain Garu’s berserker. Brambles and Nature’s Wrath gives you some direct damage spells option, you can replace them with Thorn Collection if you have any. Herbal Antidote gives you reactionary ability against status effects. The Rejuvenation Ring goes great on a tanking elder garu and is great to play to try to draw out opposing antiequipment, to make way for the more important stat boosting equipments. The elite blade is the mainstay of your equipment, allowing you to turn your Elder Garu, Elven Prodigies or Wilderkin into monsters if necessary - optimally you will be able to get one on a melee champion and one on a prodigy. The Oaken Mace also gives you an attack for your prodigies, and also provides surprise factor since it isn’t so common these days. Finally, the Crown of K’thir gives you some late game capability.

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Kaervas Assistant Game Designer

Hey everyone thought I’d drop in and share with you all that Ancient Awakenings has been our best expansion to date for PoxNora, it’s also been a pivotal one with the release of Avatars. All of the Greens wanted to express a genuine thank you to all our players for your support of the game, as well as your patience for the bumps, wherever they have been.

We’re really excited about what the future holds for PoxNora. Happy Poxing!

Cheers.

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Hawk Community Relations Manager

Acid Elemental x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 53 hp, Acid Bomb 3 - 85 Nora

Draksar Archer x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 9 damage, 43 hp - 69 Nora

Krikkinwing x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 55 hp, Poison 2 - 87 Nora

Draksar Charger x2
Upgrades: 56 hp - 74 Nora

Dragon Handler x2
Upgrades: 9 speed, 51 hp, Drive - 65 Nora

Varu Howler
Upgrades: 9 speed, 45 hp - 53 Nora

Acid Dragoleech
Upgrades: 9 speed, 36 hp, Regeneration 1, 59 Nora

Flame Dragoleech
Upgrades: 9 speed, 36 hp, Regeneration 1, 59 Nora

Draksar Lord
Upgrades: 11 speed, 61 hp - 85 Nora

Vindrax
Upgrades: 11 speed, 64 hp, Acid Breath 3 - 98 Nora

Locust
Upgrades: 9 damage, 43 hp - 79 Nora

Draksar Consulate
Upgrades: 9 speed, 48 hp, Shatter - 78 Nora

Skeezick Scoundrel
Upgrades: 9 speed, 13 damage, 40 hp, Disarm - 79 Nora

Firestorm x2
Draconic Benediction x2
Fight in Formation
Quickening
Taint
Akakios’ Blade
Dragon Skull
Slum Market
Unstable Powersource
Draksar Warbanner

The central premise of this deck is to magnify the damage of a few key champions. To that end it gives you a wide variety of champions which are potential recipients - Draksar Archers, Krikkinwings, Acid Elementals, and Vindrax are all very dangerous with massive damage at range. Taint, the Akakios’ Blade and the Handlers all give stackable damage bonuses (as does, naturally, Draconic Benediction). A handler out next to a tainted champion is very powerful, giving it +4 damage at range each turn for minimal investment - the handler also serves quite well as a tank for the damage dealer and can attack from range himself. However, the real power comes when you can get multiple effects working in concert - a Vindrax, for example, tainted and wearing the Blade with two Dragon Handlers next to him driving and the Dragon Skull out can drop an AOE for 25~ damage. Naturally that is a lot of nora, but the pieces are all quite functional independently so you can slowly build up to that over time.

Aside from the main premise, the champions chosen have a few special characteristics. The consulate is primarily used for antiequipment and magic damage, though with essence drain and good defense it is a strong recipient of taint. The Scoundrel serves as antiequipment that is a bit more reliable because of stealth, he is also great harassment with assault from the slum market and his high damage. The Locust helps to counter moga decks or any deck that pumps out summons, it is more reliable for a nonskeezick deck than rioters and does not threaten shrine death - the AoE also helps the damage buffing theme. The leeches and howler provide cheap units for surge/draconic force as well as fulfilling their basic functions (the leeches are amplified by the dragon skull as well).

As for nonspells, the spread is fairly normal and covers a good number of contingencies. Firestorm is the core SL damage spell and is amped to 17 damage with the skull, which is nice. Draconic Benediction is a must in SL armies and fits together quite nicely with the overall damage boosting theme. Fight in formation, with the number of draksar available in the deck, is great for kicking off an offense, as the defense boost gives impressive resilience to counter attack and the attack boost can mean a lot with 20+ damage. Quickening serves in the same place as DB, occasionally being better because of the high damage involved. Taint is essential to the deck’s premise - it cools down fast enough that only one is needed, though it can be irksome if you get it too late. The Blade works well boosting damage with 7 natural draksar + taint to kick it into high numbers, as does the dragon skull with a good number of acid/fire damage sources. The slum market’s assault provides great utility, especially with potentially massive damage. Finally, the unstable powersource is a great contester relic and very useful antirelic (best to use it before playing your dragon skull, though the warbanner and market are cheap enough that breaking them isn’t disastrous.

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Kaervas Assistant Game Designer