Embergard Rivals & Nemesis Review: Reckless Fury & Wrack and Ruin

 Welcome to our Rivals Review for the Embergard decks: Reckless Fury & Wrack and Ruin. We'll start by picking out the 3 Objectives, Ploys, and Upgrades you want to see early in the game. We'll finish each section by recommending additional cards to build up half a Nemesis deck (6 Objectives, 5 Ploys, and 5 Upgrades). From there, you can pair it with another Rivals deck and adjust your play style.

Check out our podcast here: https://podcast.battle-mallet.com/e/episode-75-hex-ed-reckless-fury-and-wrack-ruin-review

Reckless Fury

Reckless Fury is a Strike deck that's all about using the Charge ability and manipulating Charge tokens. You'll see that theme in the cards we think you want to see early and even more so when we get to our Nemesis extended picks.

Rivals Picks

Key Objectives

  
  • Best Foot Forward (Surge): The most difficult part of this objective is the required successful Attack, but you'll want to be charging anyway.
  • Bloody Momentum: You want to be charging, but the Bounty requirement on this one starts to push you towards warbands with 4 or fewer fighters.
  • Frenzied Rush (Surge): You can score this in one activation with a 3 Bounty fighter!

Key Ploys

  
  • Braced: This allows you to meet the requirements of Bloody Momentum and Frenzied Rush without actually using the Charge action. It also allows you to make it so all of your fighters have charge tokens earlier than expected.
  • Diving In: We love pushes! Two hexes is great and could let you pull a fighter up to another friendly fighter or even up to an enemy fighter.
  • Reckless Attitudes: This is a great example of a control-style card and limiting your opponent's options can make a huge impact on the game.

Key Upgrades

  
  • Bladecatcher: Stopping your opponent from using any weapon abilities is very strong!
  • Headlong Charge: Say hello to Great Speed 2.0! Another free upgrade - it can only be used with the Charge ability but gives +2 Move.
  • Utter Ignorance: Preventing a fighter from being slain is amazingly strong!

Nemesis Additions

By adding these cards, you will have half of a Nemesis deck (6 Objectives, 5 Ploys, 5 Upgrades) to get started in your own deck building.

Objectives

  
  • Bloodbathed Rampager: This deck's ability to hand out additional tokens makes this almost automatically score.
  • Living Bludgeon: While this one is more difficult, it's a better surge than most others in the deck.
  • Red Aftermath: This is one of the best end phases since this is a full on Strike deck.

Ploys & Upgrades

   
  • (Ploy) Catch Weapon: Giving yourself an extra Charge token helps with this deck, but you could possibly give your opponent a Charge token. 
  • (Ploy) Get It Done: Swapping Charge tokens is a big way to manipulate the game state in general, but really helps to set this deck's scoring up.
  • (Upgrade) Blades of Wrath: Being able to inflict damage when being removed could be game-changing, but it might be just enough of a deterrent to keep you alive.
  • (Upgrade) Keen Eye: Additional accuracy will almost always be helpful in a Strike deck.

Wrack & Ruin

Wrack and Ruin is a Mastery deck built around damaging fighters, both yours and your opponent's. Again, these first picks are cards we think you want to see early in a Rivals game, where the Nemesis additions are cards we'd recommend you add  

Rivals Picks

Key Objectives

  
  • Bloody and Bruised (Surge): You'll probably be damaging your own fighters to score this, or relying on a lot of damage in the Power step through Ploys.
  • Ploymaster: You want the ploys from this deck anyway, so you should redraw or Focus to get them!
  • Unsafe Ground (Surge): Getting this early gives you the best chance to score this and hopefully you can be the underdog to make it easier.

Key Ploys

  
  • Damned if you Do: A nice control ploy, forcing your opponent to choose between two bad options.
  • Deadly Traps: Free damage on a drawn attack? Nice!
  • Vicious Intent: Extra dice is great. Two extra dice is twice as good (at least).

Key Upgrades

  
  • Desperate Defense: An upgrade that reduces damage? Seems good to us.
  • Fiery Temper: This free upgrade lets you trade damage for positioning (staying in place and taking 1 damage instead of being pushed).
  • Rock-splitting Tread: You want this early to get the most use out of it!

Nemesis Additions

By adding these cards, you will have half of a Nemesis deck (6 Objectives, 5 Ploys, 5 Upgrades) to get started in your own deck building.

Objectives

  
  • Living on the Edge: This is a solid 2-glory end phase, especially given the options you have for potentially damaging your own fighters.
  • Low on Options: You definitely don't want this early, but this card scores just by you playing the game.
  • Predictable End: Not necessarily the easiest to score, but one of the better surges for this deck.

Ploys & Upgrades

   
  • (Ploy) Confusion: One of the best cards for completely altering the game state.
  • (Ploy) Fireproof: Reducing all damage to 1 is pretty amazing!
  • (Upgrade) Misfortune: Super easy way to inflict damage on your own fighters.
  • (Upgrade) Unstoppable: Prevents your vulnerable fighter (remember Living on the Edge?) from being "pinged" to death.