This is of a series of throwback articles. These were originally posted to Deciphers Page and Forums. Credits will be given when I can locate them.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Wars—a game of Poise, Patience, and Planning. A game that, strategically, many Wars players liken to chess! The similarities are not ill founded. Furthermore, those similarities make Wars simultaneously the most fun AND most frustrating card game on the market! The best strategic games are made excellent in their simplicity.
In Chess, you have 1 board, 64 squares, and 16 pieces. The only difficult piece to understand is the pawn because of its 3 exceptions (i.e., first move, promotion, and en passant). However, you take the 13 different types of pieces and start applying them in many different ways and you create a boundless realm of strategic possibilities. For all of its simplicity, Chess is the most difficult strategic game in the world to master.
Similarly, in Wars, each player has 60 Energy! 1 Card represents 1 unit of Energy! The only difficult pieces (i.e., game concepts) to understand are the Battle Phase, because of its many sub-phases, and timing, because of the intangible nature of the stack. However, both of these pieces are simple…if you let them be. The breakdown of battle sub-phases might have made battles more difficult to explain, but it also made battling simpler to understand. Timing is similar. Thus, like chess, it is the interaction of simple
pieces that make the game difficult. Like Chess, Wars is made complex in simplicity.
Yet, most players choose to ignore Wars' simplicity. They choose, instead, to focus on game-texts and powers…combos and beatdowns. These players may win games. They might even become incredibly successful. But these players will never realize their true potential until they understand how their cards and their choices interact with the fabric that exists at the very heart of Wars…
- Energy!
- Balance!
- Control!
If you understand and adhere to these 3 fundamental governing concepts, you will always be in a position to win. This article is the first in my Basic Training Series. In this series, we will focus on each of the 3 fundamentals of Wars and how to uses those fundamentals to our advantage. This first installment will focus on Energy! But first, we must define what we know.
Every game starts with the same initial conditions…
- 1 Card equals 1 Energy!
- Your Deck consists of 60 Cards!
- Your Cards are your Life!
Given these 3 points, we see that Wars is an Energy Market! Pay 1 Energy! Draw 1 Energy! Lose 1 Energy! Everything that we do in Wars is an Energy Transaction. We buy effects with Energy. So, in order to understand Wars—The Energy Market—we must understand the value of a single Energy.
Wars turns on a single Energy!
Whenever you activate, use, or draw energy, you do it 1 at a time. Why? Because Wars turns on a single energy! And since 1 card equals 1 Energy, we must also understand just how important a single “card” can be! There are no cards to be played lightly…no card slots to be filled lightly. The fabric of the Wars universe is founded on energy. Therefore we must make the best use of every Energy/Card we have. That is to say…
“In any given game, the player who uses his Energy most efficiently will win!”
This is the Wars Golden Rule. This is the platform you should use to start your Wars career! What does this statement mean to you? Does it mean that you should look to do damage fast? Does it mean that you should be patient? Does it mean that you should ignore any card that doesn’t get a lot of bang for the buck?
The truth is that what this statement means to you will determine your style. Regardless, this statement should have many meanings depending on your focus because this statement incorporates Energy, Balance, and Control. While you focus on Energy, this statement should tell you something about value. Every card has a cost and effect! Does a card’s effect merit its cost? If the answer is yes, it’s a good card. If not, look elsewhere.
Every card has a cost and effect!
With this in mind, you might go find a list of power cards. You might start to hoard those cards. Don’t! Throw away the concept of power cards. The community assigns “power card” badges. Unless you personally have assigned a value to a card, that card is effectively worthless. You must understand and assign value for yourself. Hopefully, you’ll come up with a similar list to the community; however, if you don’t, don’t sweat it. The community is notoriously bad at appraising cards. I mean, look at the number of cards that are supposed to be “broken”. You have to assign value for yourself. If you see every card as an effect for an expenditure of energy; if you determine whether that card’s effect is worth that expenditure of energy; if you realize that that “worth” is situation dependent, you will be in a better position to win than if you take what you read on the net as truth without questioning. Basically, what I’m saying to you is “Start looking at card value, now!” And, bringing this back to our initial focus, to do this, you must understand the value of a single card.
Think about the times that you have spent, drawn, or played one too many Cards. Perhaps, you attacked your opponent’s location with the intention of bringing reinforcements over from an adjacent site. You deploy your units, initiate the battle, and clear the site according to plan. Suddenly, you realize a critical error. You didn’t account for movement. Your GR-Blade is sitting at a site alone. Your opponent has 10 cards in hand and 15 Energy available on his turn. You know he’s dropping the hammer. The only question is how much pain is he bringing. One energy costs you 20! Yes, Wars does indeed turn on a single Energy!
Of course, the same holds true for your opponent. If you are willing to absorb a drain or two, your counterattack will be that much more devastating, because you can gather the resources to launch your own assault while throwing away the least valuable cards (as dictated by the situation). You too can turn 1 Energy into 20!
Wars is a game of “bend but don’t break!” Roll with your opponent’s punches to open your opponent up to a flurry of counterpunches. In a contested game, the lead will change many times. This is to be expected. As such, each player must use opposing offensives as platforms for his own counter offensive. Don’t get discouraged if you take a big hit, or appear to be losing in the drain race. This is normal. The key is finding a way to get the lead back. In the end, the player who uses his Energy most effectively will win!
Now, let’s add what we’ve learned to our initial game conditions…
- 1 Card equals 1 Energy!
- Your Deck consists of 60 Cards!
- Your Cards are your Life!
- Wars turns on a single Energy!
- Every Card has cost and effect!
- In any given game, the player who uses his Energy most efficiently will win!
Simple Concepts! Simple Themes! Simple Game! However, as with Chess, we’re going to start combining these simple concepts to make complex interactions. In particular, we’re going to look at numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5.
Every time you deploy a card, that card goes into play. A card in play is removed from your deck. Therefore, if a Card is not in your deck, it has been lost. Every card you deploy comes with a nested cost of “Lose 1 Energy!” This nested cost speaks volumes about the game.
Let’s say that my opponent deploys 6 units (each with an Energy Cost of 2) to a 1/1 site. As an immediate cost, my opponent spends 12 Energy. However, because those cards are in play, my opponent has effectively lost 6 cards. Therefore, and this is what I want you to understand, it will take 6 turns of draining before my opponent has broken even on this transaction. That is to say that my opponent will have to drain me for 6 Energy before my losses are equal to his losses. However, if my opponent were to deploy those same 6 units to a 2/2 site, he would break even in 3 turns. Make sense?
All right, how do we use this information? Let’s go back to the first case. If you were to draw up a few cards, wait 2 turns, and deploy 4 superior units to a separate 1/1 site, you would effectively be tied. You would have both lost 6 cards and be draining for 1 a turn. On the other hand, you would have a number of strategic advantages. You would have more cards in hand and stronger units on the board. Therefore, you have more avenues of attack. Your opponent has to respond to you. You’re winning.
Whoa! I have to stop this discussion here because we’re getting away from Energy and starting to delve into Balance and Control. Keep this discussion in mind. We’ll revisit this example, later. In the meantime, I want to caveat our discussion of Drains and Schedules by saying that it’s very easy to oversimplify things by looking solely at drains. While drains are fundamental to Wars, battling is where the action is. Battling is often where games are won. Therefore, in a nutshell, Battling complicates the game, a lot. I’m not trying to give you a sure-fire recipe to win every time. I’m trying to help you identify the fabric of the game. Battles are wrinkles in that fabric. Eventually, you’re going to learn how to use those wrinkles to your advantage. But that’s beyond the scope of this article! I expect (in fact, I want) for you to start seeing how these simple concepts lead to more complicated topics. But let’s not bite off more than we can chew. For now, let’s get back to Energy!
As you play Wars, you’re going to want to “do” things. These things cost Energy. Now, you can spend Energy as you go, giving no thought to your Energy except when you need it; however this is incredibly shortsighted. Maybe you have 13 energy. You play Kulak, Ace McAllister, and Jack Wilgress. You have 2 sixes stacked, so you battle. Oops, you don’t have enough Energy for Ace McAllister. You didn’t make the best use of your Energy. You probably should have budgeted.
Through your Wars career, you will probably note that Wars veterans spend the first seconds of every turn planning their turn in its entirety. They count their Energy, count your Energy, and then they use that information to make their decisions. This isn’t a coincidence. Get in the habit of counting Energy! Count it in every way imaginable. Count your opponent’s energy. Count your own. Count how much energy you have available for next turn. Eventually, this type of counting will lead to a more advanced idea—Tracking—but that too is beyond the scope of this article. For now, just start budgeting your turns.
If you have 10 active energy and need 7 to deploy, 4 to use abilities, 1 to battle, and 1 to move, your budget is insufficient. You have to make sacrifices. That means that you have to ask some questions. Do want to initiate battle? Do you want to move? Should you sacrifice one of your abilities…or should you wait 1 turn to do everything? These are only a few of the questions that you should be asking yourself while you play. What you must realize is that these are the choices that win games. Budgeting energy will force you to make these choices.
For example, let’s say that your opponent had 8 Power and 4 Tactics (in some combination of 3 or 4 cards) at the battleground in question. You have Kulak at an adjacent site, 2 Aces in your hand, 1 Jack and a few other cards. You know the top card of your Reserve is a 6. You have 10 Energy. You would like to be able to deploy, attack, and use abilities, but you just don’t have the Energy. You could wait for next turn. That’s a good idea. You could deploy Jack and Ace, initiate, lose Ace, move Kulak over. That’s a good idea. You could play Ace alone, move Kulak, and give your opponent the opportunity to attack knowing that Ace is about to get huge. Budgeting your Energy and looking at the situation will make these options apparent. This is how you’ll win your games.
So, what have we learned so far? We’ve learned that deployed cards have nested costs of “Lose 1 Energy”. We’ve learned that we can use that information to create a Schedule for winning. We’ve also learned that effectively budgeting our Energy will force us to make the decisions we should be making whenever we play Wars. Furthermore, we’ve learned 6 fundamental points of Wars…
- 1 Card equals 1 Energy!
- Your Deck consists of 60 Cards!
- Your Cards are your Life!
- Wars turns on a single Energy!
- Every Card has cost and effect!
- In any given game, the player who uses his Energy most efficiently will
win!