Apologies for keeping you waiting - my boss has made it very clear that I can no longer get away with reading this forum while in work, which limits me to just a few hours each evening to play. And (quite apart from not being able to think about Codex for the whole evening either) I’ve had to give a fair bit of thought to how best to patrol here.
Of course, you’ll probably just drop a MoLaC next turn, in which case it’s almost certainly GG from me 
P2T6
Tech StartingHand Workers
TECH
Oathkeeper of Kor Mountain
Oathkeeper of Kor Mountain
STARTING HAND
Playful Panda
Free Speech
Forest’s Favor
Whitestar Grappler
WORKERS
Rich Earth
Tiger Cub
Ironbark Treant
Spore Shambler
Playful Panda
NextHand
Free Speech
Jefferson DeGrey, Ghostly Diplomat
Free Speech
Tech 2 card(s)
Get Paid + float - ($10)
the 2 birds are reborn
draw from Technician
Quince arrives with his mirror illusion - ($8)
Quince casts Free Speech - your heroes lose abilities and can’t play spells for your upcoming turn - ($6)
Whitestar Grappler - ($3)
worker - ($2)
Float ($2)
Discard 1, draw 1, reshuffle, draw 2
[B]Board Info:[/B]
[B]In Patrol:[/B]
-
[I]Squad Leader[/I]: Whitestar Grappler (3/5+A)
-
[I]Elite[/I]: lvl 1 Quince (1+1/3)
-
[I]Scavenger[/I]: lvl 1 Rook (2/4)
-
[I]Technician[/I]: Mirror Illusion (0/1)
-
[I]Lookout[/I]:
[B]In Play:[/B]
- Verdant Tree (3, Healing 1)
- Bird’s Nest (channeled by Rook)
- bird A (1/1, flying)
- bird B (1/1, flying)
[B]Buildings:[/B]
-
Base HP: 20
-
Tech I HP: 5
-
Tech II HP: 5 (Strength)
[B]Economy Info:[/B]
[B]Cards:[/B]
- Hand: 3
- Deck: 9
- Disc: 0
[B]Gold:[/B]
- Gold: 2
- Workers: 10
Thoughts
Welp, he had both Blooming Ancient (together with a bunch of stuff to come into play) AND Bloodlust. I’m probably well and truly hosed here.
BUT, thanks to the 50/50 of my drawing Whitestar Grappler from my Technician, I’m still in with some kind of fighting chance. Much comes down to his draw. The obvious threat is of course MoLaC. He has 5 things to attack with already, and there was really nothing I could do to prevent that (other than max Rook and kill Drakk with him, but that costs a ton of gold while doing virtually nothing for my defence). He will get another rune on BA for certain by attacking with Bone Collector, if he wants to, and will doubtless be able to drop at least one unit from his hand.
The key here is really Free Speech, which I teched two of but managed to send both to the near-bottom of the deck. I could really have done with it last turn to stop the Bloodlust, but even now it’s amazingly useful. It stops him getting haste or frenzy from Drakk, and most importantly it stops him playing any of the spells he might have teched. (If I’m incredibly lucky, his current hand is something like Stampede/Dinosize/Kidnapping…) And I have another one coming next turn, if Quince survives. Sadly I need just about everything I have to block with, to protect my Tech buildings and Verdant Tree. The only reason I haven’t spent my last 2 on a second mirror illusion is that I need 12 gold on hand in case I draw Oathkeeper. That’s almost the only way I can win now, if I get lucky and draw it - a 7/8 swiftstrike in Squad Leader is almost guaranteed to survive unless he gets MoLaC going (or gets a load of runes on BA and keeps them there), and then can do great work for me. I’m sad that I teched 2 Earthquakes and still haven’t found a good time to level Rook past L1 - and now I’m hanging him out to dry if my opponent choose to kill him. But I don’t see that I have a better alternative - I certainly don’t have nearly enough gold to level him up to max while staying (relatively) safe.
The nice thing about having a 5HP unit in SQL - even though he’s almost sure to die without getting to use his great ability - is that it forces him to waste a bunch of resources, in some way or another, to get past him. Just one more rune on BA allows BA to kill him, but then it’s reduced to 1HP and he can only transfer a single rune. He could move runes to (eg.) Bone Collector first, but again that should kill off BA. And he needs some runes from BA in order for anything else to make a non-suicidal attack against WG. In short, I prevent him from getting a profitable attack with a runed-up BA and then transfer those runes elsewhere for something else to use. In combination with shutting off his hero and spell-based plans for a turn, it’s the best I’ve got.
But I’m not kidding myself. If he plays MoLaC before I draw Oathkeeper - or if he does more or less anything while I fail to draw my Oathkeepers for a couple of turns - then I’m going to have to concede defeat. Oh, and there are other ways too - like Blooming Elm. (Although again, the high HP of WG should lessen the pain that would otherwise cause. And at least I have enough weak units that a boosted HE isn’t a great threat.)
Very final thought: what’s he been teching? He’s teched 10 cards by now, and I’ve only seen 5 (both BCs, SotP, Bloodlust and Blooming Ancient). If I’m very lucky, most of the rest were spells, but I can’t be too hopeful.
[After that truly sucky draw, I’m not very hopeful whatever he does. I might have an Oathkeeper on top of my deck though, please kill that Mirror just in case!]
[I]Squad Leader[/I]: Jandra, the Negator (3/3+A, Overpower)
[I]Elite[/I]:
[I]Scavenger[/I]:
[I]Technician[/I]:
[I]Lookout[/I]:
Base HP: 20
(I usually hurt more for gold than cards in the early game, but I do wonder if Technician would have been better given that he has access to the Imp.)
