Today on Draco Temple, we’re doing a bit of a dive into how you can change your fortunes in Achroma, through some clever deck building, and use of the FIND and REVEAL keywords.

While there is certainly skill in a game of Achroma that can steer you towards victory, if you don’t draw the cards you need, you’re probably going to lose. The best Vast Volitarus deck in the world will struggle to pull off a win if Vast Volitarus is sitting at the bottom of the deck.

FIND has long been part of the game, but it’s a rare keyword with very specific targets. It’s found mostly in the Warriors of Wishwell chapter, and Siege of Draco Temple had none (but had a lot of draw mechanics to make up for it). The only universal tutor in the game was Murky Manor, but it was so good it had to be errata’d. Brisgavi Cave Dwelling and Lacringi Cliff Dwelling are probably the most versatile left in the game, but Eirik of Lacringi, Lacringi Forge, Firetender, Lost Property, Magus Elite Inspector and the wonderful Hex Clunker have their place in the right decks.

[side note: the word tutor is used in many card games to mean “a card that lets you search your deck for another card”. It comes, as many such terms do, from Magic: The Gathering, and the famous card Demonic Tutor, which allowed you to search your library (palette) for any card]

Today though, I want to look into how to use the REVEAL keyword as an effective tutor in the right deck. As a reminder, this keyword works as follows:
REVEAL | Turn over the top card(s) of your Palette one at a time, face up. Once you have revealed a card that meets the criteria specified by the ability/action, put that card into your hand. Put the overturned cards back into your Palette and shuffle.

The only card with this keyword so far is the aforementioned Murky Manor. Below are the two versions of this card side by side:

The replacement of the FIND keyword with REVEAL was certainly a blow to the power of this card, but already players are using this new version to great effect. One such player is sarajane, who I reached out to and who kindly shared her decklist:

This is a straight-up chroma deck, but with 3 achrom cards: Countess Issadora Curdle, Occultist Den, and Murky Manor. Unless you draw Murky Manor last out of these 3, playing this card post-errata in this deck carries essentially no risk, as you’ll get either Occultist Den or Issadora with your Manor, which is a bargain for 1 card from hand and 6Δ. Obviously the ideal play is to trade Issadora, then pull the Den with the Manor, though the chance of pulling this off turn 1 is just over 1 in 50. This kind of build gives the REVEAL keyword almost the consistency of FIND, making this a formidable deck to face, but it does carry with it the serious penalty of not being able to include Hostile Takeover in your deck.

Rise of the Realm Runners includes a huge number of REVEAL cards. The big cards with REVEAL, are the rifts and runes, which all follow the same formula:
Rune: 4Δ Action, “REVEAL a card with [the right Δ colour] and play it for free. +1 for each card with [the right Δ colour] on your canvas”,
Rift: 5Δ Location, +X (or -X for the achrom version), “Once during your turn, REVEAL a card with [the right Δ colour]. X = the number of cards with [the right Δ colour] on your canvas”.

The runes come in yellow, red, light blue, and achrom flavours, while the rifts come in green, pink, and dark blue, and achrom. Obviously these cards are extremely strong in decks that simply have a lot of the specified colour. My mind initially goes to painters who already have mechanics for supporting strongly monochromatic (single colour) builds. However, I’m focusing today on using restrictive deck building to use them as reliable tutors.

Cards that you might want to go digging for include:
Vast Volitarus: it includes red, light blue, and dark blue Δ. These are the exact colours on Monastery Nest and Chroma Storehouse, while Restless Research is light and dark blue, Great Cloister is red and dark blue, Draco Planum Library is dark blue, Mirror Sanctum is light blue, and Rummage is red. The upshot is: tutoring Vast Volitarus is basically impossible to guarantee tutoring, but the dark blue (aqueous) rift would make a solid include to feed your hand with good cards.
Dexter/Materno: ok, Materno is light and dark blue, so you can’t tutor for this one, but Dexter is yellow Δ, a rare colour in Draco Planum. So you could easily include the yellow rune to give yourself an effective second copy of Dexter. However, Materno’s Egg can REVEAL a dragon with Δ value of 3 or less. Sure, it’s not super-likely to hit Materno herself, but it does get there much quicker. And this card has a yelow Δ too. Lots of options here.
Dr Cornelius Hue: as he carries all the hues, pick a colour out of light blue, red or yellow to exclude from your deck otherwise, put in the relevant rune, and you can give yourself effectively a second copy of him.
Hex Clunker: more on this later.

In addition to the runes and rifts, there’s REVEAL effects that target specific subtypes, a big mechanic push in Rise of the Realm Runners. Here’s some cards I especially like the look of:

Cave Expedition (review article here) allows you to REVEAL any Wishwell Quarry Location. I reached out to Darth Clisto, and he reiterated the point that this will be formidable in a traders deck. In his words: “In a single turn, you can play Expedition to play a free Traders Pass or Wishwell Barrens, then play a Traders Lifeline. Ensue typical traders bullsh*t for lots of gain“. Build right, and this card is a tutor for the precise engine cards of this deck.

Occultist’s Stang lets you DISPOSE it to REVEAL a ritual or spell with achrom. These were non-existent subtypes in the first edition, but it now includes Selective Diminish, Drain the Woods, and, crucially, my favourite ritual, Hostile Takeover (possibly the strongest non-rare/legendary card in Salum Planum). I’d definitely be including this 2Δ -1 object in a deck with Hostile Takeover and no other spells or rituals just to give myself a better chance of pulling Hostile Takeover.

Von Ruthro Teapot is a 1Δ +1 card that lets you DISPOSE it to REVEAL a resource. Given that Abundance of Quintessence(!) and Restock are resources, this is another extremely solid card. Play it in a deck with no Restock, and it’s essentially a second copy of Quintessence, as you DISPOSE after resolving, to net you +3. In a pinch you can also hit someone over the head with it.

Squad Formation is a 3 cost action that REVEALS a painter then REVEALS a fairy. I could see this being effective with an achrom deck that has only 2 fairies: Dove Tail and Spiral. This is especially so as the order (painter than fairy) means you are gauranteed to get both cards so long as you haven’t drawn either yet. The big problem with this card is it costs 3Δ, so maybe the inconsistency of that play wouldn’t make it worth including in anything other than a painter deck and hoping for the best.

My personal favourite subtype-target REVEAL card though is Alchemist’s Tincture. A 2Δ object with +1 and the DISPOSE ability to REVEAL and play for free an object means that in a build with a highly restricted number of objects, you can really improve consistency and Δ advantage, especially as we’re getting high cost objects in RotRR. While it will likely change when new cards get revealed, here’s what I’ve been working on:

This deck may look like a mess of different cards, but I’ve given the cards in this deck a lot of thought, and designed it as a Rube Goldberg machine of triggers.

Kaunan and Isaz are there to tutor Hex Clunker, so are ideal early (thanks to lewymd for pointing out the absurdity of missing Isaz in an earlier build). There’s no other red (fire) or light blue (ice) Δ cards, so I’ve lost Fireball, but I accept that price. Note that Isaz is a solid option whether you’re playing Hex Clunker as above, or playing a Cara Curdle chroma deck, as so few cards in Salum Planum have the ice Δ (I can live without Magus Elite Protector in my decks). I did not include Peorth (achrom rune) as it’s just too inconsistent for this build.

The core of the deck, aside from the Hex Clunker being absolutely mega, is Corrupted Muon Trap and Hex Clunker Engineer, combined with Alchemist’s Tincture and Cintimani Stone. Recycling Cintimani Stone with the Engineer is massive, so long as the opponent erases the Stone, or there’s a character you can attack to get the Stone into your dregs. A large number of cheap characters means I should always have a character to hand for the objects, even if I know they’ll likely only last a turn.

Here’s the sort of play you can expect to pull off:
Play Alchemist’s Tincture for 2Δ.
Resolve it for 1Δ.
DISPOSE it to REVEAL an object. It will either be:
Alchemist’s Tincture, in which case resolve for +1 and DISPOSE again,
Corrupted Muon Trap, in which case CLAIM an opponent’s character,
Cintimani Stone, in which case DIG the Tincture back and DISPOSE again,
Achrom Converter, in which case play it and erase an opponent’s card.

This deck obviously has the weakness that you essentially always have to have a location and a character on the board to avoid REVEALing dead cards, which is why there’s a nice balance of 8 cheap characters, and 8 locations. It will also struggle against swarm decks, as it thrives on claiming the opponent’s big characters, which doesn’t work if they don’t play any.

My favourite play is using Isaz/Kaunan to play Hex Clunker for net 3Δ, FIND Cintimani Stone and play it for free, DIG Achrom Converter and play it for free, resolve for +2 and ±3, and start belching out achrom from the Clunker every turn.

Hopefully this deck provides a demonstration for the versatility of REVEAL, and the many shenanigans and deck building options this new keyword is going to open up.

Have fun.