On Tuesday, the Achroma Store in Poole hosted their Showcase Event. I made the 4.5-hour-drive round trip to go, and wow, what an evening!

Upon reaching the store, the unflappable Chris Hillman greeted everyone personally, with a smile and 3 free promo cards just for turning up. I am very pleased to have already slotted the Conjuring at Curdle Cove promo into my occultists deck:

The coffee bar had platters of free bubbly, and the chairs were laid out ready for the keynote by Jack Constantine (Realm Runner CEO), interview with Rachel Constantine (Creative Director), and Q&A with both of them. If you want to watch (and haven’t yet), the link is here.

Charles (aka Viridian) effortlessly cued them up, then Jack laid out the vision for achroma and outlined what’s coming down the road: the RPG, the Conjuring at Curdle Cove expansion, the shard cards, the mobile adventure game, comicon, opening up the American market, and the Indy game rebellion. The aspirations of this small independent outfit are breathtaking.

Rachel followed with an interview, where she went over some of the achroma backstory, the adventure game, and the inspirations the led to the achromaverse. This, combined with the Q&A session, truly highlighted the depth of the world this card game inhabits. The interview touched on topics ranging from profound loss, to neurodiversity, disability, sexuality, gender, and race. When they discussed the diaspora to the four realms, the dragons fleeing to Draco Planum to avoid human oppression, the wielders of magic taking leave to Salum Planum to evade persecution, it’s hard not to feel that Terra Planum has suffered a great loss of wonder, but hearing Rachel and Jack speak, it’s clear that imagination and vision is stronger here than ever.

The talks were concluded with a raffle, and I was very pleased to win a collectors’ edition box of my choice. I went for Chroma Squadron, and managed to get my box signed by the team and artists.

With the formal event done, everyone started mingling, playing cards, and taking in the events that formed the evening. If you want to get a feel for what was going on, Charlie followed the main stream with a Brundle-esque grid walk (F1 reference), wondering around the store and chatting with people. This stream can be found here. In no particular order, this is what was on offer:

A Conjuring at Curdle Cove:
The full aCaCC set was laid out on a table for everyone present to peruse and play some test games. First impressions are that this set is beautiful, as always, and features some new mechanics and interactions that will really give this set its own distinct feel. Sadly I didn’t get a chance to play myself (there was too much to do and the cards were popular) but looking over people’s shoulders it looked like it’s going to be a lot of fun. The set includes sirens, mermaids, selkies, seafarers, and one salty and lovable dog. It also introduces 3 new keywords, and I’ll go into one now, as it was already explained on the stream.

If an opponent chooses to target one of your cards, the DIVERT keyword on a card allows you to retarget that effect to your diverter as a reaction. For instance, you’ve got a character with DIVERT, and an opponent plays Fireball to erase your legendary. You react by DIVERTing that Fireball, saving your legendary from erasure. This is a really interesting mechanic and I can’t wait to try it out.

I was lucky enough to get a chance to preorder on the night, but if you weren’t there, you can pre-order a complete set here from Friday.

One thing I discovered about this set was that Curdle Cove is heavily inspired by Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door, on the Dorset Coast, with Rachel having grown up around there. When the set was teased I made a little graphic comparing the coves and arches:

The arch itself is a card in the upcoming set.

Shard Cards:
3 new realmless cards were unveiled at the event (though the first one was already spoiled in a previous stream). The shard cards are a new way of buying Shards to use in the app. Instead of buying shards on the app for unlocking new features or avatars, you can purchase one of these cards and scan the code on them to add shards to your account. This gives you an extra bonus for purchasing shards, and the cards themselves are well worth a look.

Loose Shards is a simple 1Δ card that gives you +2. I don’t think this will really see much play, but being realmless, it can go in any deck. Pouch of Shards however is highly playable. For 3Δ you get +5, which is a net +2. Sure, it’s not as good as Abundance of Quintessence, but it’s available to any realm.

The scary new card though is HAIM Shard Cache. For 5Δ you get an immediate steal 3. This may initally seem like poor value compared to something like Salum Spring (2Δ for steal 2) or Arabella’s Recipe (2Δ for minimum steal 1, but often 3 or 4). However, it opens up some interesting possibilities.

First of all, if you’re playing against an unknown deck, and there’s nothing on the opponent’s canvas, you could normally leave yourself on 7Δ and be pretty safe. There are combos to drain/steal 7 or more with 3 cards, but they normally required a bit of luck (though Cintimani Stone does make it a lot easier than before). The only card with a natural steal or drain 3 so far was Tenebris. Now, any achrom deck can include 2 of these and hit that magic number 7 in their first turn with relative ease. These Caches only cost a net of 2Δ to reduce the opponent’s reserves by 3Δ, giving all achrom decks a valuable tool.

Secondly, it’s a playable 5Δ uncommon, so can be a two-of and used for trading. This is a massive boon to Draco Planum, which maxes out at 4Δ for uncommons, and especially for Wishwell Traders, not to mention just any achrom deck that wants a bit of extra trade fodder. I’ve already included two of these in my pixies burst deck, and it’s scary.

The scariest combo I can see with this is to deploy HAIM Shard Cache, follow it with Cintimani Stone, then DIG and play the HAIM Shard Cache. You’ve spent a net 2Δ to drain the opponent 8Δ, and you can still deploy 1 more card that turn.

The Achroma Role Playing Game
I have a confession to make: I have never played an RPG in my life. Not deliberately; it’s just never come up. The hard working Hen, primary creative force behind the project, hosted the RPG table for most of the evening under the bright lights. It was great to see such enthusiasm for the game, especially as it seems to be appealing to the younger and older members of the community alike. I’m really looking forward to trying it out one day soon.

Hen runs the Hidden Gem Gaming Cafe in Poole, and they’re hosting an Achroma tournament on 10 June at 12:30. Details are on his Facebook page.

Meet the artists
Matt Vince and Marco Blanco, artists for achroma, were there and signing cards and boxes. These are two very nice guys, and incredibly talented artists, and it was great to have a brief chat with them about their work. They kindly both signed my Chroma Squadron box.

Challenge the Team
I was pretty keen to test out a couple of my decks against the team, and some fast paced 1v1’s ensued. I also got a chance to play against Charles and Hen, as well as a few other community members. It would have felt weird to go all the way to the Achroma store and not play a few rounds of the card game.

Wrapping up
The store was due to shut at 10:30, but 10:30 rolled around and people were still chatting, playing games, and generally having a nice evening. Around 10:45 there was a group photo for those left in the store, and then we made our way to our respective homes (Chris looked ready for action in his bike gear).

It was such a great evening. Thank you to the whole team for the effort in organising it (not least of all for the drinks, sandwiches, delectable sausage rolls, and cake). The next event in the Achroma Store is a Grand Tournament on 24 June. Hopefully see you there.

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