The latest release for achroma, Secrets of Spirata, has now officially been released. As such, I thought I’d have a look at the new keywords and a couple of the already spoiled cards from the set. I’ll do a more full set review once I’ve had a chance to properly digest the new cards and once everyone who preordered has received their cards.

First up, probably the most interesting and perplexing new keyword, INFEST:

INFEST | When you play a Character with INFEST, you may choose to either pay the full Shard Value to play it as a Character on your own Canvas, or only pay 1 Shard to INFEST another Character on any Canvas; attaching the INFEST Character to another Character. Upon doing so, the INFESTED Character will lose all of its abilities and resolve effects which are replaced by that of the INFEST card. Cards with INFEST may only INFEST other Characters. If a Character INFESTS another Character, the INFEST Character does not take part in combat. Should you play an INFEST Character onto your Canvas without attaching it to another Character, you will not gain its INFEST ability.

Curiously, the two spoiled parasites are positive parasites (symbionts maybe is a better term here), in that you’re likely to play them on your own characters. As an example, let’s say you deploy Diurno (for 1 shard) to infest an Imp on your canvas. The Imp loses its natural -1 resolve, and instead you get the +2 infest ability from Diurno and 2 prevent as well, so you have essentially +2 and 2 prevent for 2Δ, which is a good deal. However all that is tied up in the fate of a 1Δ character who is pretty is to erase, taking the parasite with it. You could just deploy Diurno to your canvas separately, but then you don’t get the +2 INFEST ability, plus it costs you 3Δ.

This ability is backed up by a couple of powerful effects already spoiled, and I’m sure there’ll be more to come:

Unfathomable Hunger is already a great include for the control poor Spirata Planum, representing a 3Δ “erase a card”, a significant step up up from the 4Δ Cutting Cocoons. As a bonus, you get to deploy a Parasite onto the same canvas for free. You could either use this to get rid of a pesky parasite or negative object the opponent has played on your canvas, and follow it up with a free The Fallen as a character on your canvas. Much more likely though is that you’ll use it to erase an opponent’s card and then could go on to save yourself 1Δ (and a card from your 3-per-turn limit) and infest an opponent’s character with a negative parasite from the set.

Scrapyard Barrens is our first non-promo 4Δ steal 2 heroic location, with the added bonus that “Infested Characters cannot attack”. Assuming there’s a good range of small and annoying parasites to cripple the opponent’s characters with, this will be the icing on the cake, but you wouldn’t want to play it if you were infesting any of your own characters.

Two more of the spoiled legendaries show some of the lore going on in the background here:

I find these characters wonderul mirrors of each other, as they were both once wingless pixies, but have since returned the skies. Sorrono has apparently been grafted mechanical wings in a dark cyberpunk-esque aberration, while Nella has been “cured” of her affliction, even if her lore feels like it’s loaded with class prejudice.

Sorrono is a solid 2 steal for 6Δ, with a strong Action to drain 1 for each pixie (including himself). Being able to trigger this again once per turn for playing an object hints at the theme of the mechanical pixie faction, and could result in a significant drain in the right deck, even if it does mean you have to pass on the strongest combo in Spirata Planum: Factory Production Line and Cintimani Stone.

Nella on the other hand has a rather mediocre +2 for 6Δ, but a very nice draw bonus. However, her ability introduces the second keyword:

MENAGERIE | If you have 3 or more Character Types present on your Canvas at the same time, you are able to use MENAGERIE abilities once at any point during turn. The MENAGERIE effect on cards with ‘ACTION: MENAGERIE:’ may only trigger once as soon as the card is Deployed.

Assuming you pull this off, which is going to be pretty easy given how many characters there are with multiple character types already (Fairy Painter, Fairy Teacher), she’ll likely be a +5 character, so Ray but for 5 more Δ. Honestly, I don’t think she’ll be strong in competitive play, but I’m sure you’ll want to see her in a precon game.

And finally, we’ve got a couple of Scrapyard locations:

Our Spirata Scrapyard legendary is a generically useful 6Δ, which for an additional 1Δ per turn gives you access to steal 2. Otherwise, the draw and control abilities are nice, but probably won’t see as much use. This isn’t a build-around, but will always be a nice card to see, so is likely to be a fun card to build with.

The Scrapyard Fountain rare is an expensive draw engine. You’re spending 2 more Δ than you’d expect for a +3 and it’s taking up a rare slot, to have an on tap pay 1Δ to draw a card, and then if you want 2 more Δ to draw another card. In reality, Spirata is probably the only realm that could support this card, since there’s so many high value cards that you could then trade to offset the cost of drawing them.

Overall, these teasers are setting up for a very nice scrapyard triptych of object based mechanical pixies facing off against revived pixies, while parasites roam around infesting hosts. Sounds like fun.

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