Temporal Mastery (Mono purple primer)

I plan for this to be an indetail guide to mono purple. This is not meant to be a my first purple game guide, see Hobusu’s New Player Reference sheets for that, but a way of understanding/improving your game once you’ve played a few and have a basic understanding of the specs. This is also not intended to be a guide to multi colour codex’s involving purple, and all my ratings affect this.

NOTE: This is under construction and will take me while to complete.
EDIT: note to self, write sections in a seperate file and copy pasta to here, losing 30mins of writing when the page crashes is not fun.

EDIT: I moved the guide to a google doc to make it easier for me to edit/maintain, and to allow other people to easily comment / add feedback. it can now be found here:

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You forgot Ardra’s Boulder

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To forgotten fighter that boulder is still a bad idea, unless they have played mythmaking (which you should be assimilating asap, -4/-4 swing to their game plan sounds great), you should be quite happy teching up, knowing they aren’t playing units that can’t apply any pressure. Plus, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone actually play boulder, let alone against purple.

played it in the tournament, and it would have worked, too, had I not faltered later on.

and assimilate would be a -3 swing.

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Interesting game, I would be curious to your game plan with the boulder, as you did just let him build his tech 2 first, unopposed. And since MoLaC is not great against assimilate (and with peace tech 2, its relatively easy for him to draw into it the turn after you drop MoLaC), your tech 2 growth plan doesn’t seem as strong as tech 2 Peace, so forcing the game to that state seems ill advised? Against Mono purple though, I would be much happier just spending the gold on Tech 2, rather then spending gold + card bouncing a unit that will die for free anyway.

EDIT: @zhavier I wouldn’t mind doing some science on it though? if you want we can have a couple of friendly Purple v Anarchy/Strength/Growth and see if just build tech 2 is better/worse than FF boulders??

Yes, but the only reason you tech and play mythmaking is that you are playing legendary units (taking a Jandra from 5/5 to a 1/1 seems okay to me, seems better than most 3 cost spells). Agreed that many upgrades/building can be a trap to assimilate, due to the tech costs, and gold swing, but generally tech 1/2 buildings/upgrades are worth it I find, starter deck ones, not so much)

Battle Suits and Graveyard are worth it, but yes, I agree. and Jandra would become a 2/2, not a 1/1.

Blooming ancients are slightly better than the peace engine, because they are faster to get on the board and easier to generate runes with. If i had played my turns differently, respecting the threat of Vir, I would have won I think. I could also have played double ancient when I had both in hand, instead of playing out a bunch of cards, and been reasonably confident one would survive.

Against monopurple, I would respect the forgotten fighter a bit more. I played boulder specifically to counter mox and provide space for me to build tech 2, knowing that the peace engine needed to dump spells quickly, so FF was very likely gone on t1 or t2. against monopurple, there is not quite as much stress to dump forgotten fighter. But if you did dump it, then having to break boulder before getting to anything important is a pretty decent stall, especially if there are good attackers still around from t1/t2, and maybe birds to help pester you.

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Forgotten Fighter actually hits a whole host of things, like Tax Collector, Scribe, Overeager Cadet, Fuzz Cuddles, etc.
Maybe you misread the card? You can return units that have 2 or less attack. Any 2 attack Tech 1 can be bounced, which is surprisingly useful in a lot of cases, especially to get to backline heroes. I think you’re undervaluing it greatly.

Yes, but none of those card pose a significant threat enough to spend 4 gold + a card bouncing their unit (you are unlikely to have been able to keep a hero around as purple, without spending far too many resources on it). At the tech 1 stage of the game, you are trying to keep the opponents board bare of dangerous units, of which none of the 2 attack or less units mentioned are. The dangerous units in my mind that fit this are Tiny Basilisk (mentioned), Sparing Partner (unlikely to be patrolling, and only costs 1 gold, so massive gold loss), Lobber/Crasbbomber (see Sparing Partner), Galina Glimmer (see S.P), Gaint Panda (enters tapped, so might actually be a good target, but so slow you should really just go tech 2), Overeager cadet (it costs 0, there is no way its not being replayed next turn, this is literally just throwing gold away). Given all the ones you have suggested units can be dealt with by your 2 cost tech 0 units/Mox, you are unlikely to be able to break their tech 1 by bouncing them at this stage (and people who are pushing aggressive hero stats are porbs playing their 3/3 for 2’s, so you can’t use them for key hero snipes). Given you are not advantaged keeping the game at tech 1 stage, you would rather use the gold to build your tech 2, and most of the targets just leave you further behind in resources, it can quite easily put you in a losing position without you understanding why. The vast majority of the time it is a trap. The fact that it can only be a tech 0 or 1 unit (would love it to hit porcupines etc), which must be patrolling (otherwise might be useful against difficult to kill support units like merfolk prospector, sensei, sparing partner, Galina etc), and only have 2 or less attack (so painful threats like Bone Collectors, Taxmen, Water ele etc get skipped) reduces the potential targets to mostly those which it is worth very little to bounce, and the fact that Stewardess of the undone can hit most of the big targets, for 1 gold less, and a bigger body, is really what puts the nail in the coffin. With out stewardess, it may see play, but this is a mono purple primer, not multi-colour.

TLDR: It has too many restrictions, with few good targets, all of which still leave you behind in resources, and Stewardess hits more key units, for cheaper + a bigger body then your hero’s.

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That’s mostly correct, and those are pretty solid points though.
One thing to note is that Forgotten Fighter only costs 3, the same as Stewardess.

It costs 2, but it requires a hero play, which purple can struggle to protect, so generally I think of early game spells costing that 2 more, because I don’t expect to have a hero ready to use.

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Update: Added Future spells, and Tech 1 units.

TODO: Win Conditions, Matchup specific notes against other mono colours, example tech paths.

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Mono-Purple is my favorite of the mono-color options in Codex right now, so thanks for writing this up, @Shadow_Night_Black! I’ll check it out!! :smiley_cat:

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Hey @Shadow_Night_Black, I did some proofreading and edit suggestions, lmk what you think and feel free to incorporate them as you see fit!

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Thanks a lot :slight_smile: I’m putting a replies I have on the individual comments (if not just accepting them :slight_smile: )
The proof reading is very helpful! :slight_smile:

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