Today’s weekly stream included some nice new spoilers from the upcoming A Conjuring at Curdle Cove expansion. I will of course be reviewing those very soon, but before I do, I thought I’d go over an important rules update that some people may have missed.

Up until the end of May, the rules on attacking read as follows:

On multiple occassions, people have asked whether this applies to characters that have been CLAIMed, Role Reversaled, or Unrestrained this turn, and the answer was always the same: these cards have entered your canvas this turn, so can’t attack. This was how it was ruled at the Grand Tournament on 4 March.

However, the rules have been updated. It’s a subtle change, but has a big impact:

This was described in the stream as a clarification rather than a update, as this way of playing was always the intention of the creators. However, it is an actual update to the rules, and has the potential to have a pretty significant impact on the game.

For an example, imagine you’ve just played Detectives Huxon and Vraxea. You’re feeling pretty good about your opening boardstate because if I Fireball Huxon you get him back into your hand thanks to Vraxea, and if I Fireball Vraxea you still have Huxon on your canvas.

I open by playing Conjurer Otrix. Prior to this rules update, I could have CLAIMed one or the other character, resolve, but not attack. This meant you could have played a strong object on your surviving character, and attacked and erased one of my characters next turn. Or worst case scenario, you’d at least get an extra turn to resolve Detective Huxon. However, thanks to this update, I CLAIM Detective Vraxea and attack your Huxon. Now you’ve got nothing, and I’ve got Vraxea and Otrix.

This update also makes Corrupted Muon Trap much better, as so long as the shards add up, you can use this object as a de facto “erase 2”. For example, claim a Huxon with a Trap and attack the opponent’s 6Δ Countess Issadora, erasing the lot. That’s a bargain for 3Δ. Or you can attack a 2 or less strength character and keep your CLAIMed character.

Similar plays are easy to imagine with Role Reversal. Simply swap a low strength character for a high strength character and immediately attack and erase the character you swapped away.

I think this update makes Salum decks significantly stronger, and gives Spirata decks a little boost (thanks to Role Reversal). Any deck that can easily find and play Corrupted Muon Traps just got a lot better. The only effect that got worse is RESTRAIN as now when the opponent gets their RESTRAINed cards back, they can immediately attack with them.

I honestly think that Revolt could be a genuinely good meta call in a competetive game.

I’d love to review the spoilers now, but it’d make this article a bit of a long read, especially with the new keywords, so I’ll save it for another day.

---

Next time you’re ordering achroma products, please use the exclusive discount code dracotemple at checkout on the achroma webstore for 10% off all orders, including pre-orders.
To activate this discount, enter the code at checkout, or go to shop.achroma.cards/dracotemple to automatically apply the code.