Tonight, Achroma made a huge announcement. The full announcement is on their website, but here’s the summary: when you’re playing a game of Achroma, there will be positive and negative effects which will affect you based on the Realm you choose to play. These modifiers are in effect immediately, and will be enforced during tournaments. For reference, here are the modifiers:

It was no secret that something was going to be done about Rayders to reduce it’s power level, but these modifiers have the potential to have a huge effect on competitive play. Let’s go through each of them in turn:

Salum Planum:
Gaining 1 for each PREVENT is no small effect. Here’s some cards that will be the big winners here:

Cara Curdle has always seemed quite weak as a legendary, but now she gives you essentially +2 for each other card on your canvas (+1 with an extra +1 from the PREVENT), which is suddenly looking pretty nice. Similarly, Cronas’ Staff is +1 for each Magus Elite. Other winners are the long popular Hex Clunker Engineer and already amazing value Luxmorn Villager, each of whom gain a +1, and Serpent’s Stow Tavern and Watchmen of the Veil who each now have +2. Can we just take a moment to look at Luxmorn Villager again: 1 shard cost, +1 on play as a minimum, +1 on resolve, prevent 1, and SECRET!

Another noteworthy point to make is that since the gain comes from the Realm Modifier, these characters’ gains are essentially immune to FREEZE. Freeze the Watchmen of the Veil and they can’t use them to prevent, but you still get +2 from having the card on your canvas.

However, the biggest effect of this I believe is that it really hurts achrom. You can now afford to pack your deck with PREVENT effects as they will give you GAIN anyway, even if the opponent isn’t playing achrom. The benefit of preventing drain or steal is just a great little upside. I could see this being strong, especially in multiplayer, where PREVENT is strong anyway.

The negative modifier for Salum is that CLAIM effects now cost 1 extra shard. Poor Otrix. Here’s some key cards affected by this change:

Yes, there are other cards, like Jarvis and Bribe, but these are my favourites. Hostile Takeover is in essentially all my Salum decks, and Corrupted Muon Trap is also in many. Having to pay 4 shards for these cards is going to hurt. However, I feel that this kind of brings them up to a fair cost. CLAIM has always been a very strong effect, and I think that on balance Salum has come out fairly well here, even if it has massively favoured chroma over achrom. That being said, my favourite achrom Salum deck at the moment has only Hostile Takeover as a CLAIM card, so will soldier on regardless. I just might be slotting in a couple of Villagers.

Draco Planum:
On the flip side here, Draco achrom decks get the better side of the deal. SACRIFICE effects have always been overcosted, but now you gain 1 shard every time you SACRIFICE:

Ancient Rituals has been played more lately, and effectively costing 2 shards is a welcome change. Ritualistic Notion also seems somewhat better value. Scorch is still bad value given that Draco Summer is a card, but costing 1 shard and combined with cards like Stolen Dragon Egg or Bathed in Achrom could almost make it worth it. I had hoped you might get +2 with Sacrificial Ovoo, but since you’re actually only Sacrificing once, you only gain 1. All this being said, I personally still don’t think SACRIFICE is worth it most of the time. 2 cards and shards for so-so effects is a steep cost, even with this sweetener.

The negative effect for Draco is that if you have 6 or more cards in your hand at the end of your turn you have to discard down to 6. Clearly this is aiming to hit blowout Vast Volitarus plays, but honestly, I think this negative effect was designed to just barely hit Draco at all. If you’re holding more than 6 cards in your hand you should probably be playing more cards or trading anyway.

On balance, this is a welcome bonus for SACRIFICE, and a very minimal hit to what is already a very powerful realm.

Spirata Planum:
The one we’ve all been waiting for. First up, the positive effect: when cards with Shard Reduction are deployed onto your canvas, GAIN 1 shard. This I like. I’ve long been critical of Shard Reduction; it’s rarely worth it, as you generally help out your opponent, and it cost you a card and shards for the privilege. However, an instant +1 for these cards is a nice benefit. Key cards affected are:

Of these cards, I think the big winners are Lava Fountain and Water Fountain. These now cost net 1 shard the round they’re played, and if you completely build your deck around them, this might just give you a little bit more momentum early game.

Now, onto the big downside: you cannot trade more than once in a turn. This is not at all a surprise. Now Rayders (or any Spirata deck) cannot double trade. However, Rayders is still a very strong deck. It might not win turn 2 in about half of all games any more, but it will still be very good. The lack of double trading will just give the opponent a bit of breathing room to react, and that will help a lot in curbing this deck’s power.

Additionally, it has been confirmed that this only applies to your trade/draw step. Therefore, you can still play Advance Scouting Party and trade with it, even if you want to also trade in a trade/draw step.

Norso Planum:
Much like Draco, Norso modifiers favour achrom over chroma decks. The positive modifier is to gain 1 shard whenever you erase a character with an attack. The Brisgavi love attacking, and this little shard engine will really help this modus operandi, as well as favouring attack effects like Enslave the Thrall and Club of Dagda. I’m slightly sad it doesn’t say “card you erase” (rather than “character you erase”) so it would benefit attacking locations, but you can’t have everything.

The negative modifier is that cards with TRADE cost 1 more shard to deploy. This I did not expect. Hitting Traders isn’t the surprise, but the size of this hit shocked me. It’s true that this was the other palette that could regularly sneak a turn 2 chroma win, taking a Top 4 at Patriot Games on Sunday, but probably cannot now. The main cards hit be this modifier are as follows:

That’s a lot of cards. Traders often win by taking a big turn, deploying maybe a couple of trade related cards to set up in turn 1, then playing 2-3 trade related cards in turn 2. This modifier means they’ll be around -5 compared to where they would have been pre-modifier. This is huge. I don’t think it kills the deck, but it most certainly is no longer going to be top tier. Given how non-interactive the archetype is though, I don’t think many players will mind.

Where to next?
The losers: these modifiers have seriously hit Spirata decks that lean heavily on trading (Rayders) and Norso traders decks. Occultists have take a small hit, but really the number of claim effects are small and were great value anyway: they still have an amazing suite of characters and abilities so are still a force to be reckoned with. Draco has been left relatively unscathed.

The winners: Brisgavi have a small win. I already have a Samr deck I like, so will keep on playing it. Spirata Shard Reduction palettes get a boost. I don’t love playing the mechanic personally, but I really like the idea of it, and I think giving it a leg up is a welcome change. Sacrifice gets a boost, but probably still not enough for me. I will however be attempting a competitive Salum chroma deck, a feat which has until now been extremely hard to achieve, but thanks to extra gain and playable prevent, is now eminently possible.

Thoughts and opinions
This approach is not universally popular. While I think the effects of these changes can be overstated, they nevertheless have created quite a significant reshuffle of what’s might be powerful and what isn’t at the very top end of competitive play. I love deck crafting, and have no issue with rebuilding decks frequently. However, some players would rather a more static format.

I am surprised that these modifiers are so significant; I definitely expected a much lighter touch to deal with Rayders. I’ve experienced other card games rebalancing the game on this scale before and didn’t see it create any problems, but it was still a surprise. Time will tell how significant these changes are, and I do hope that we get some clarity on how often these modifiers may be likely to change.

I personally like these changes. In previous card games, the most exciting time was when significant errata and rebalancing of cards was made, as it made the game feel much fresher. This won’t have any affect on precon games, as those decks were built without these modifiers in mind, so there wouldn’t be any reason to enforce them. But I look forward to seeing what palettes rise to the top in the Grand Tournament next month.

And finally…
Here’s a new palette taking advantage of these changes:

This palette uses Magus Elite characters, like Chief Detective Cronas, Magus Elite Inspector, Magus Elite Detective, Protector, Veil Chaser Engineer, Hex Clunker Engineer, Watchmen of the Veil, Cook, Kelby, and of course Huxon, combined with Cronas’ Staff to up your prevent and help generate a large gain. I’ve included Alchemist’s Tincture to pull either the Staff or Cintimani Stone. Note that I have included Hostile Takeover as this is still a great card despite the +1 shard cost. Finally, I’ve included Luxmorn Villager, because why not?

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