Quince Strategy Guide

Puzzle Strike
1

[B]Overview:[/B]
Sirus Quince is a duplicitous politician. He beleives in keeping his opponent down and using cunning and treachery to win. He has no interest in a fair fight, only in a fight he is assured to win.

Triangle
On defense/econ edge, closer to econ.

Strengths:

  • Flagstone Tax makes Quince likely to win any econ race
  • Persistant fork means that Quince gets more actions than his opponent does

Weaknesses:

  • No innate rushdown or pile control.
  • Character chips are only situationally useful and opponent can manipulate situations.

[B]Quince’s general game plan:[/B]

Quince wants to slow his opponent down and make it into lategame and then win based on having more of the high end cards in his deck, as well as an innate fork and the ability to play the 2nd best chip in his discard again

[B]Puzzle Chips[/B]

[B]Chips Quince Loves[/B]

  • Chips which draw: [I]Draw Three, Gems to Gemonade, Now or Later, Chips for Free, Axe Kick, Roundhouse[/I] and [I]It’s Combo Time[/I] can nicely leverage Quince’s persistent Patriot Mirror arrow into better econ and engine-building.

  • Powerful attack enders: [I]Ouch![/I], [I]Mixmaster[/I] and [I]Stolen Purples[/I] are chips that are a big deal when Quince can combo them with a Crash off of his Patriot Mirror Arrow and a serious threat when an opponent is picking from Two Truths. But even [I]Really Annoying[/I] and [I]Just a Scratch[/I] can be helpful - a number of Quince’s tough matchups are vulnerable to wounding.

  • Expensive chips: If Quince can keep Flagstone Tax up, that can make it very hard for an opponent to buy 3-gems, cantrips and chips which can get them to a [I]Double Crash Gem[/I], [I]It’s Combo Time[/I], [I]Degenerate Trasher[/I] or [I]Master Puzzler[/I], while Quince has no such limitations

  • Defensive Chips: In addition to defensive reds, Quince can use [I]One True Style[/I], [I]Iron Defense[/I], [I]Dashing Strike[/I], [I]Safe Keeping[/I], [I]Ebb or Flow[/I], [I]Gems to Gemonade[/I] and sometimes [I]Hundred Fist Frenzy[/I] to help control his pile while keeping Flagstone Tax in play.

  • Chips with non-obvious uses: Chips where the opponent can’t tell what Quince can do with it make great threats for Two Truths. [I]Improvisation[/I], [I]Option Select[/I] [I]X-Copy[/I], [I]Training Day[/I] allow plays that the opponent might underestimate

[B]Chips Quince Fears:[/B]

  • Chips that let the opponent upgrade chips without needing to buy. [I]Training Day[/I] and [I]Chips for Free[/I] are loopholes in the Flagstone Tax code.
  • Chips that let the opponent build their own pile. [I]Risky Move[/I], [I]Ebb or Flow[/I] and [I]Risk to Riskonade[/I] reduce the usefulness of Flagstone Tax and threaten rushdown.
  • Cheap Forks: If an opponent can get [I]Gem Essence[/I], [I]One True Style[/I], or use [I]Bang Then Fizzle[/I] or [I]Button Mashing[/I], that negates Patriot Mirror’s action advantage .

[B]General Tips[/B]

What to do with Quince

  • Play Flagstone Tax early. Unless you are buying a purple orb this turn getting it in play gets it out of your bag and lets you cycle faster.
  • Track what your pile height will be at the start of your next action phase - you want to keep Patriot Mirror in play as much as possible.
  • Use Two Truths to recover and replay Patriot Mirror as much as possible.
  • Use countercrashing to maintain a desirable pile height.
  • Remember that even if Patriot Mirror is discarded at the start of Quince’s action phase, the arrow and pig count still even on turns when it gets discarded. In most games, Quince can use counting, countercrashing, reactions and Two Truths to keep Patriot Mirror in play for the majority of the game and play an additional ender most turns.
  • Remember that Patriot Mirror has a pig. Two Truths requires Quince to have at least 2 different chips in his discard and he often wants to be able to countercrash to keep his pile height even.
  • Use Two Truths to boost your econ. If you pick a [1] gem and anything else, most opponents will give you the [1], increasing your buy. Sometimes you can make an opponent choose between giving you a bigger gem and a chip the opponent doesn’t want you playing now.
  • Use Two Truths as washer. The obvious play here is that if Quince plays Two Truths off of a brown arrow and picks Patriot Mirror and some other washer such as It’s a Trap, whichever one the opponent give him washes the brown arrow back to black. The less obvious play is that Quince can use Two Truths to wash brown to other colors via puzzle chips. For example with an attack heavy bank, and a red ender in hand, Quince can Two Truths for Patriot Mirror and an attack chip with a red arrow - whichever the opponent picks he still gets a red arrow to play an additional attack from hand.

What not to do as Quince

  • Don’t Crash on the first few turns unless you really need that +$1. Trapping the opponent with buys of $2 or less in the early turns can really hurt their long game.
  • Don’t fear buying orbs just because doing so will discard your Flagstone Tax. Once the opponent is at a pile height of at least 4-5 the effect of Tax is minimal.

IV. Matchups:

Matchups Quince Loves:

Valerie: While Val can put together a rush that Quince can’t handle, Flagstone Tax can make early Chromatic Orbs lead to a Lehman-Brothers type economic collapse for Val.

Matchups Quince Fears:

Midori, Rook, Troq, Jaina: These characters all have decent rushdown options that involve building their own pile height, which make Flagstone Tax nearly meaningless and require Quince to buy purple orbs to survive.

[I]This guide was written by rabid_schnauzer in 2012. It has been reproduced here by permission.[/I]

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Quince has one of the only degenerate defensive strategies in the game, the Ebb lock.

To set up an Ebb lock, Quince needs the following conditions:

  • The opponent has an empty gem pile
  • Quince has a :ps3gem: in his gem pile
  • Quince has 3+ copies of Ebb and Flow, to his opponent’s 0
  • Quince has Flagstone Tax active
  • Panic Time has not triggered.

Quince maintains the lock by playing Ebb and Flow every turn to undo the turn’s ante, using the pig on Patriot Mirror to space them out. This causes many of the opponent’s chips to be irrelevant or counterproductive:

  • Tax means their money doesn’t matter; they can’t buy anything more useful than a :ps1gem:.
  • They only have a single gem in their gem pile and therefore cannot combine.
  • Drawing chips doesn’t matter if the drawn chips are useless. Similarly, the benefits of arrows and pigs are also limited by the other chips’ uselessness.
  • Crashes aren’t entirely useless but are punished by forcing them to buy a wound. Meanwhile, extra Ebbs undo the crash’s effect, assuming no countercrashing.
  • :psfist:s can be reacted to, again forcing a wound buy.
  • The game cannot end because there aren’t enough gems in piles.

As the lock progresses, Quince gains a snowballing deck quality advantage over his opponent; he can stock up on money or whatever :pspuzzle:s he wants while the opponent chokes on :ps1gem:s and wounds and becomes dependent on Quince’s Ebbs for survival. Eventually, Quince decides to win the game; he drops Flagstone Tax to buy :pscrash:s. Timed correctly, he has almost a full cycle of his opponent’s bloated deck where he has pile control and his opponent doesn’t, which he uses to Flow out some :ps2gem:s and send them over.

The main weakness of the Ebb lock is that a :ps2gem: in the opponent’s gem pile cannot be removed; if they can buy their own Ebb or Flow, they can ante their way out of the lock.

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Although the guide says Quince fears Chips for Free because it allows tax evasion, in practice it’s fine for him because cheating Flagstone Tax’s orb-buying restriction is just as important as evading the maximum-cost restriction. On top of that, it’s good with both Patriot Mirror (as an engine piece) and Two Truths (which can immediately access the upgraded chip).

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Thanks a ton for bringing these guides over @Bucky and then even updating them. You’re a great member of the PS community. :smile:

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