[Strategy] General strategy questions for Purple

Codex
21

Come on, it is Garbageman, Pastasnack and Max.

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22

:laughing: I’m dying over here!

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23

I thought it was pronounced “Weird Garbanzobean.”

Also, “Mac ‘n’ Gruyer.” (He’s like a Pastasnack, but dressed up fancy.)

24

It’s definitely Garbagean.

25

So, P2T2 can potentially play 2 Knights of the Conclave in Turn 2.

P2T1:
Get 5 gold (5)
Worker (4)
Tech 1 (3)
Unit on Scavanger if not Mox for 2 gold (1)
Float 1 gold

Discard is now 3 from starting hand

Tech 2 KotC

Discard is now 3 from starting hand + 2 KotC

P2T2
Possible Scavanger bonus (2) Discard is now either 5 or 6
Get 6 gold (7/8)
Play Pastasnack (5/6)
Play Temporal Distortion (3/4)

2/6 or 2/5 chance of drawing a KotC, followed by a 1/5 or 1/4 chance of the second KotC.

And you still have 3/4 gold left.

But even in the dream scenario: Is Knight of the Conclave just … too slow? They still need 3 turns to come out, but then again, comboing them with Temporal Distortion lets you not loose out on potential tempo because you aren’t going down on cards while playing them in this way.

Can you argue that it isn’t too slow because your next tech choices are Seers and since you now have effectively 2 cards “out of your deck” for a few turns, you will go through your deck a lot quicker to get to the Seers.

But then again, why not just play Plasmodium turn 1 as player one, tech in 2 Seers, temporal distortion to get one or two of them out in the same fashion? You get a 4/4 with haste out a lot faster that way.

26

I assume when you talk about Temporal Distortion in your post you mean Temporal Research?

Yeah, if you don’t do anything to speed up Knights they are too slow. If you go for them you should also have played Tinkerer and/or tech Seers. In any case you’re trading short-term tempo for gold, which you can then use on heroes or buildings. One possible line of play is t1 mox t2 hero tinkerer t3 knight (tap tinkerer) t4 (tap tinkerer). Another one is just teching 2 Knight 2 Seer as your first 4 cards, in which case you’re only paying 2 gold for all of those and possibly enabling a Research for three cards.

(assuming you’re player 1 for both of those, as player 2 you’re unlikely to get away with sacrificing immediate board presence around turns 2-3 like that)

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27

I think any KotC line must include “play two knights then temporal research.” Ideally you would have something else with two time runes on it to get the maximum recovery draw. That’s probably still to slow, so you’re going to need to either accelerate them, or use Past’s Ult the turn before they arrive.

…but there are just easier ways to get board Present(s). :wink:

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28

Like perhaps 2 of the 4 that comes with Pastasnack :wink:

But yeah, I feel KotC is very fringe and needs to be played with TR in some way to make up for the card deficiency they come with. But if you can do that, and I admit that this is a big if, then they are worth while.

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29

I remember working out that it was technically possible to get two knights out by turn 3 I think. By out I mean fully arrived with no time runes.

I abandoned it because it required a lot of luck, a passive opponent, and had very tight resource schedule including the opponent helpfully killing a resource spot and not your hero.

Using a modified version to real effect in a real game has been a personal goal ever since. I think I actually tried it vs mysticjuicer at FSX and it went exactly as one might expect: I didn’t get lucky and everything went wrong.

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30

I’m not sure I am comfortable calling Knights fringe. Codex is sort of like a puzzle that adds an execution component. Depending on the combination of the 5 cards in your starting hand and the opponent specs you are facing off against, there are gambits that will make things easier for you and gambits that will be harder to pull off. Monocolor builds give you some confidence that there is at least one build order that will make it easier to face down an opponent’s strategy (modulo fog of war). So every tech 1 card in your codex has a purpose you need to discern and match up to opposing gambits.

For example, if your opponent’s got a lot of unit removal or debuffs, maybe a combination of forecast units and Gilded glaxx is going to give you more control over your situation (and the timing of your unit arrivals) than spamming Stewardess and/or Argonaut. Knights work best when you can both use Seers to speed up their arrival and keep battlesuits on the table to make the Seers really problematic for your opponent all the while, powering up Temporal Research. And once you’ve gotten that far, it all combos well with Omegacrons.

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31

yoooooo it didn’t occur to me until now that that was the point of Gilded Glaxx

I’d always been a little confused by its ability, to be honest

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32

You need to have your board cleared by your opponent more often :wink:

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33

I’m a little surprised nobody is talking about mixing Forecast units with a board wipe ult like Rewind or Judgement Day. Third turn couple of Knights into Temporal Research into a 4th or 5th turn board wipe seems pretty strong. Prynn can keep another unit safe from the wipe with her maxband, or Glaxx can be immune to it. It’s particularly hard to counterplay if you float the gold to cast the ult on arrival, because your opponent literally can’t target any of the components. The tradeoff is that you probably will give up board control for a turn before executing it (in exchange for having board control the turn after), so you might lose a tech building and/or take some base damage. But there are ways to be okay with that.

Has anyone tried this and found a reason why it doesn’t work?

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34

I have yet to do this, but it is on my list of things to experiment with.

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35

In some cases, “some” base damage is lethal (or close enough). Also, you have to be able to beat the opponent’s Tech 3, which any spec can do in reaction to Knights coming out.

36

After some tinkering with a Knight of the Conclave opening ideas, I feel that if you are going to go for KotC at all, this is the way to do it. It requires more setup than I expected, so I don’t know how much I can recommend this at all, but this is the most efficient way of playing with Knight of the Conclave as your first tech choices.

But I guess, for posterity, I did this so that other people don’t need to. And for those figuring out purple and thinks: “there has to be a way to get those KotC out there 0 gold 4/4 VALUE!”? This is for you.

I guess this “guide” is called “How to draw 3 cards from Temporal Research in turn 3”.

First check of the setup: The setup requires that you do have Temporal Distortion in your hand, and that you have a unit that can die in technician in your opening hand. You should also probably be second player, because you need to reshuffle your deck from a technician draw before your Knights of the Conclave get into your discard pile.

So already you need 3 cards to be right from the get go. Not pretty. Haven’t done the math on this one, but I assume this is

Player 2 Turn 1
Unit in Technician, worker.
Discard 3, draw 5
Your Temporal Research is now in your discard.
Float 2 gold
End turn

In your opponents turn, your technician needs to die, triggering a reshuffle of your discard, you draw up to 6 cards, there are now only 3 cards in your drawpile. 0 cards in discard.

Second check of the setup: If this card you end up drawing is Temporal Research, you should probably not tech in the KotC. This is a 1/4 chance alone that will stop your plans.

Third check of the setup: You need to have a unit that can die in technician during your opponents turn and either Mox or Battle Suits.

Your turn 2 starts, where you put the KotC in your empty discard.

8 Gold
6 cards in hand, 3 in draw, 2 in discard

1 unit that can die in Technician, 1 worker, tech 1 building. With 4 gold left, playing either Battle Suits or Mox (not in technician) would be fine, so it doesn’t fill the discard.

3 in hand, 3 in draw, 2 in discard.

Discard/Draw step.

Float either 1 or 2 gold.

You know have about 60% chance of drawing one of the Knights of the Conclave. Getting the Technician bonus will bump this to 90%. But still, drawing both of them is somewhere around 33%.

The key to this combo is that you are now ensured of drawing Temporal Research. If you get “the dream” of drawing 2 KotC, you get to draw 3 cards from Temporal Research, making sure that you are able to patrol again, so that you arent falling to far behind.

If you only drew 1 KotC, you might still also get Fading Argonaut to help you out getting the 3 card value from Temporal Research, at which point you also get to Draw your second KotC and play it the same turn.

So, turn 3, you either have 7 or 8 gold.
Pastasnack 2
KotC 0
KotC/Fading Argonaut 0/2
Temporal Research 2
KotC/2 gold unit 0/2
With 7 gold
Worker 1
With 8 gold either play a 2 gold unit or worker + time spiral for 2

So, this is the way to play KotC without missing a 2 gold patroller each turn and not going down on cards in the early game. How useful it is, I’d say not very. But there it is :stuck_out_tongue:

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37

Tomorrow I will be looking at options for playing Plasmodium, Fading Argonaut and Pastasnack in turn 3 to see if that works any differently. Maybe that is easier to set up with Garbagean and stuff.

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38

If you board wipe as P2 on your 4th turn, it’s literally impossible for P1 to have started their Tech 3 already. They could start it the turn after you board wipe, but then they’re not spending that 5 gold on rebuilding their board.

Obviously this isn’t a strategy you’d pursue against everything (like hero-based plans), but it should work fine against plans that aim to establish dominant board presence at tech 2.

I was looking at the Undo combo as an answer to certain black and green strategies that use a lot of tokens, for instance.

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39

This was a right before I fell asleep thought, Plasmodium and Fading Argonaut with Pastasnack gives 10 Time runes! THERE MUST BE SOMETHING THERE!

But there isn’t. It is an 8 gold combo with 3 cards that needs to be drawn at the same time.

But for the sake of completing the thought.

You need to have Plasmodium, Fading Argonaut, Temporal Research AND either Tinkerer or Neo Plexus in your opening hand.

Get a worker, then put Tinkerer/Neo Plexus in Technician. Your discard is now Plasmodium, Fading Argonaut, Temporal Research.

Technician must die, so that your discard gets reshuffled before your tech choices come into your discard.

And this is where your combo stops 3 out of 4 times, if you draw any of the combo pieces. You have to draw the technician that just died for this combo to work.

If that happens, this makes your drawpile the three cards you need for your combo.

If you at this point have floated some gold, which isn’t unlikely, you might even tech in 2 seers, since you want that Plasmodium out asap.

On your next turn you have 6 cards in hand, 3 in drawpile and 2 Seers in the discard.

Play your hand so that you discard 3, and draw the 3 combo pieces in addition to 2 random cards.

Now you can play Pastasnack, Plasmodium and Fading Argonaut to get a draw 3 bonus from Temporal Research. Depending on how much gold you have been able to float, you might be able to play 2 Seers as well, making Plasmodium haste out of there on your next turn.

This might not actually be as risky as the KotC play, but it requires a much more specific opening hand of 3 exact cards, and a unit that can die in technician (Tinkerer or Neo Plexus).

40

It really bothers me that purple starter doesn’t have a 1-drop unit. Sometimes all you want is a dinky body. It makes going as T1P1 a little rough, as you can’t ever summon hero, unit, and worker.

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