I’m approaching half a dozen games of Codex now, and I just feel like there’s something I’m missing about how to play this game. I seem to find myself way behind on board position over and over and over, and I can’t seem to track back and figure out where I’m going wrong.
I’m playing a forum game now (http://forums.sirlingames.com/t/casual-fineredmist-monowhite-vs-jeff-monogreen/1028) and while I have a mess of cash in hand, I’m already down a card and after three turns each (I went first), my board is empty except for Safe Attacking, while my opponent has an 0/2 Young Treant at Squad Leader, a 3/4 Centaur at Scavenger, and a 1/3 Argagarg and 0/1 Wisp chilling in the backfield. With his ample access to silly buffs, and my inability this turn to even clear away his patrollers, I feel like I’m in a very, very tough spot again.
Is there anyone out there who would be willing to follow along with this forum game (and/or play other forum games with me) and talk me through the decision making process via PM and help me understand fundamentally how to get ahead in this game?
@legion overstates my abilities and knowledge of this game, but I am willing to sit shotgun on your game: send me a pm whenever you want to discuss your turn @FineRedMist!
I skimmed that game you linked, and the thing that jumped out at me most was that you played your first hero really late. Here are some example alternatives:
T1: Play Aged Sensei and a hero instead of Fox Primus. If you play Rook or Grave, you have the same threat of 3 attack power next turn, but your board is in better shape.
T2: Instead of Smoker, play a hero. Then on your third turn you can sink a bunch of gold into that hero to get some stuff done.
Having a hero on the board also lets you play spells! The white starter has some pretty strong spells, and most of the white heroes do, too.
I also think you probably made suboptimal worker decisions, but that’s a little bit trickier. And discussion like that should probably wait until after the game has ended.
The strongest possible opening is usually going to be a hero that can get 4/5 at level 5 plus a 1cc unit plus a worker. That gives you the most offensive options.
P1T2 people usually look to kill something with their hero and then pay a few gold to level it and if the opponent played a hero it would be good if they could somehow kill that. You want P2 to be really afraid of having a hero they cast on turn 1 get killed on your turn 2. That forces them to play sub-optimal lines, to do what they don’t really want to do.
The dream as P1 is to wipe their board every turn while still having stuff in play on your own side. Finding out how to make that happen is the hard part.