This article is a part of the Contender Series, the goal of which is to encourage players to begin participating in Organized Play events, attending tournaments and Grand Clashes, and overall up their competitive game to improve as players and ultimately win more often. While I am not personally some competitive ace taking home glass every weekend, I do have advice to help get newer players off the ground and set you on the path to success, and also can point you to better players than myself where you can get more focused advice when you’re at that stage. I will attempt to keep this article series ‘timeless’, so while I’ll reference specific warbands, cards, and mechanics occasionally, I want it to be relevant for years and so will try to refrain from focusing too much on today’s current competition climate. With those things said, let’s dive into this article’s main topic: Choosing Upgrade Cards for Nemesis deckbuilding.

Articles in This Series:
Articles in This Series:
Warband Selection
Choosing a Deck/Pairing
Deckbuilding Overview
Evaluating Surge Objective Cards
Evaluating End Phase Objective Cards
Evaluating Ploys
Evaluating Upgrades
Deckbuilding: How Many Cards?
Opening Hand and The Mulligan
Board Choice and Orientation
Feature Token Placement
Fighter Placement
So You Won the Roll-Off – Do You Choose First or Second?
Practice
Event Format Considerations
Elites
Big Boys
Hordes (Coming Soon!)

Check out other tournament related articles:
Counterplay Series
Participating in Your First Tournament
What to Expect at your First Grand Clash
How to Run a Local Tournament
Building Your First Nemesis Deck
Formats for a Tournament: Best of 3, or Best of 1?

Having already chosen the Objective cards and Ploys that will be getting you Glory, let’s look at what you’ll be spending it on (and therefore generating Spent Glory): Upgrades. Before we look at the various flavors of Upgrades and I attempt to roughly rank their reliability, I have a few general pieces of advice you should keep in mind while selecting your cards.

Focus on Reliability

Think about how likely you are to gain the benefit of a given upgrade and try to pick ones you can control. Some players shy away from defensive upgrades unless they are particularly powerful (-1 damage, +1 defense dice, etc) since you can’t control if or when the effect will come into play. An offensive upgrade will be more reliable in many cases (so long as it doesn’t come with too many caveats) since you can put it on a fighter you know you’re about to attack with, and in a situation it will be helpful. You can get away with an attack upgrade that requires you to have a flanking fighter since you can control that to some extent, but a defensive card that requires the same is much worse because you can’t often force defensive positioning, especially since your opponent will know you have that upgrade on that specific fighter. You want to be able to say your upgrade card ‘did its job’ at the end of a game – did that Grievous allow a hit to take a fighter out of action? Even if it happens only once, you feel like it benefitted you. A defensive upgrade or a reaction upgrade could possibly happen multiple times, but realistically may never happen all game and will have been a ‘waste of glory’. Obvious exceptions include defensive upgrades that disincentivized your opponent from targeting you in the first place, but this is an area that is worth thinking about when choosing cards. Is this upgrade’s effect going to be felt most times I spend glory for it? If the answer is no, look for other options unless that effect is huge and wins you the game in the right scenario.

How many Upgrades should I take?

Similar to what I discussed in the Ploys article, you are allowed to take 20 or more power cards, so long as at least half are Upgrades. You could potentially take 11 or more Upgrades, but I would suggest staying with only 10 for the same reasons that I will not re-hash here, with notable exceptions for warbands with built-in card draw.

A Key Word on Plots and Keywords

I’ll repeat what I said in the Ploys article here as well. Your Objectives, Ploys and perhaps warscroll will potentially reference certain Keywords. Say you need two or more fighters with a Keyword in enemy territory. Or perhaps you need a fighter with a Keyworded to make a successful attack action. Maybe a Ploy is restricted to a fighter with a Keyword that you can apply with an Upgrade, such as Tempered and Dark Horse, or the Emberstone keyword from Realmstone Raiders. Whatever your ‘Package” contains, you’ll need to ensure that you take enough of those Upgrades to make their use and scoring likely/worthwhile. If you don’t think you can score those Objectives with the number of Keyworded Upgrades you’ve chosen, you need to either find a way to make space for more of those Upgrades, or redo your Objective deck. Make sure your deck supports itself internally!

React, Don’t Act

Wait, didn’t I say the opposite about Ploys? Yes I did! But the scenario is different here. I want a Ploy that I can play when I choose to and make the action out of sequence (or apply the effect for a subsequent activation). Reaction Ploys are bad because you can’t play them when you want. Reaction Upgrades are a little better because they don’t eat the hand space after you’ve played them, and a little worse because you have to pick which fighter gets to react. But “Action” Upgrades are generally not great. Think about it this way – you might have a card that says “Action: this fighter does some unique thing like pushing other fighters”. This effect is cool, could score you some Objectives, or deny an opponent. But it takes an Action. One of the 12 that you have all game. And you have to have the Upgrade in hand, have the glory to buy it, place it on the correct fighter to make use of it, meet its condition, and then spend the activation to use the upgrade (and that’s an activation you can’t spend charging, going on guard, or anything else you might feel the need to do). Some actions are still worth it, often Attack Action Upgrades, but you have to really like the effect of the action in question. A Reaction Upgrade can trigger multiple times and doesn’t make your other actions less efficient. So while I don’t generally prefer Reaction Ploys over standard Ploys, I prefer Reaction Upgrades a lot more than Action Upgrades.

“Roll a die: on a result of…”

Be VERY cautious about this type of Upgrade. Gambling with your Gambits is bad enough, as described last article, but this may be worse. For starters, the effect is telegraphed. Your opponent knows you have this Upgrade, and which fighter it is on. They can work around the effect it has and choose to make it harder for you to trigger. This is true of all Upgrades, but in the case of the Gambler’s Upgrades, you can’t even guarantee you’ll be able to make the thing happen! Sure, handing out a move token or getting a ping can be a big boon, but if you can’t guarantee it will happen then you risk losing a game when you’re depending on it. Second, these are worse than their Ploy flavor because you had to spend glory to get them. Imagine spending one of your more previous resources on a card that doesn’t even do anything when you fail the roll! Talk about a major bummer, dude.

A Note on Zero Glory Upgrades

These are a specific kind of Upgrade that can be played without spending glory, making them effectively a persisting Ploy. They can be pretty effective in the early rounds of the game as a result. Say you had a Ploy that said ‘Choose a fighter. In the next activation, They have +1 move’. Not a bad Ploy to play when you know you’re about to charge, right? A zero glory Upgrade of this same effect will last for more than just the next activation. I wouldn’t overload on these, but including a few and hoping to use them to get the glory snowball rolling early in the game isn’t a bad idea. It also increases the odds of having an opening hand full of “Ploys” since they’re somewhat of a Ploy-lite.

Types of Upgrade Cards

OK, now that those are out of the way, let’s look at the categories of Upgrade cards, and their relative ranking in my unprofessional opinion

Out of Sequence Actions (The fighter with the upgrade can, in circumstances, make an attack or move action often as a reaction) – You get 12 activations per game, and so does your opponent. Unless you have one of these, which allow you, usually as a Reaction, to take another. If it goes off even once during a game, you’ve gained 8.3% action economy. If you manage to have it happen twice or even three times in a game, you can gain substantial advantage in number of attacks, positioning, and so on since you can simply ‘do more’ than your opponent, and during times when you otherwise couldn’t. If you are avoiding an out of sequence action, you’d better have a great reason to give up such a huge potential efficiency.

Push/Teleport Cards (The fighter with the upgrade, or some other fighter, when a condition is met, push them x number of hexes or place them in a special hex) – also often reactions, these allow you to push a fighter, usually your own, and sometimes when you want to. In this case, you can attack and then get to safety, or attack and follow the fighter you knocked around. These are great effects. Even better if you can react to another fighter, and so can get supports, prevent an escape, etc. In some cases better than moves because they don’t always interfere with subsequent charges. Every warband appreciates positional help, and these cards are usually good to include unless they come with substantial downsides.

Card Draw (when some condition is met, draw x number of Power cards) – more ways to draw cards is always nice. In an Upgrade, you might even get to do it more than once (though these often read as ‘when this fighter is slain’). This helps you run through you deck and see the cards you want to see at the right time. Again, beware of the restrictions and reaction triggers, but you generally want these cards, if you can spare the Glory to apply them.

Offensive Boosts – This is a very broad grouping that contains multiple subcategories, but these are generally cards that help you attack more effectively. I tend to lump them into Accuracy, Lethality, Weapons, and Utility.

Accuracy (Plus dice, reroll, Ensnare/Cleave, innate symbols) – anything that helps a fighter hit is good, as it increases your damage output and you can plan your activations more reliably. You can also often get multiple uses out of them, so they’re superior to Ploys, though you need the glory to use them. Still great. Take them if you plan on attacking!

Lethality (Grievous, mostly) – these help you dish out more damage when you do hit. This can elevate a good fighter into a great one, or take a lesser fighter up a notch and present more threats your opponent has to deal with. Again, great if you can reliably hit and use it multiple times.

Weapons – these cards give your fighter a new attack action profile. Perhaps they grant you range 3 when you otherwise wouldn’t have it, more damage or accuracy than a base attack, or some other effect that makes them better than what you otherwise would attack with. You’ll want your new attack profile to provide you some benefit over whatever is printed on the fighter card, but these are often good choices if you have a strong attack to choose, or a set of weaker fighters who could use a little more punch. Note any restrictions, but often worth considering in your set of 10.

Utility (Grapple, Stagger, etc) – more situational than the other offensive upgrades, these can still disrupt your opponent and give you an edge. I’m less fond of these, but depending on your matchup you can still do great things with them.

Defensive Boosts – This is another very broad grouping that contains multiple subcategories, but these are generally cards that help you survive more effectively. I tend to lump them into Defensibility, Durability, and Obstructionism.

Defensibility (Plus defense, on guard, innates, defense dice rerolls, immune to cleave/ensnare, can’t be flanked, etc) – these make a fighter harder to hit, and so can potentially make you take no damage. If they still get through, you’re in trouble, but changes the math on enemy attacks and could cause them to reconsider attacking you in the first place. Generally good for a fighter who needs to live, or a basket you’ve put all your eggs into.

Durability (Plus wounds, reduce damage) – these can help you survive a hit you otherwise wouldn’t and are more consistent than the Defensibility type because you know they’ll do their job every time, rather than just weighing the odds more in your favor.

Obstructionism (Can’t be pushed/driven back, can’t be overrun, etc) – again, situational, but depending on the matchup and which Objectives you’re each trying to score, can help you get glory or deny your opponent theirs.

Direct Damage “Ping” (chose a fighter that meets a condition and deal x damage to that fighter) – more damage is always good, but these Upgrades are usually worse than their Gambit counterparts. The benefit is that you may be able to trigger the damage more than once, but the downsides are A) your opponent knows which fighter they’re on and can work around them, and B) they often come with difficult reaction triggers – like your fighter being slain. It’s hard to shy away from these, but be aware of their limitations and ask yourself how often you’ll really get the benefit. They can work as deterrents though and have play in that space.

Fighter Token Manipulation (guard, add a move token, remove a move token, stagger, Plot Card effects) – a very broad category, with variable efficacy, and therefore difficult to rank as a class. Look at your Objective cards and ask how these help you score, or failing that, how they deny common enemy game plans.

Mobility (plus move, plus move on a charge, can move through fighters, gains the flying trait) – these matter more depending on the base speed of your warband and how hard you’re finding it to engage/get where you need to be. I usually view these as a warband-specific type of Upgrade, and lean away from them if my move is 4+ unless I have special considerations with my matchup or Objective choices.

Review your Upgrade Choices

Run back through your selections after you’ve finished and make sure that your Upgrades agree with the Objective cards you’re taking. A very common beginner mistake is to take exciting or powerful Upgrades, especially if you’ve been told that a certain card is ‘the best’ or ‘auto-include’. The way you win the game is by scoring more glory, not Voltron-ing a fighter with the best Upgrade combo. An unkillable fighter doing tons of damage can be game winning, sure, but you have to have all those cards on the fighter at once, and if your Objective deck says “Hold treasure tokens” you’re going to find yourself trying to play two different games at once.

You also have to keep in mind the total Glory cost of your upgrades. Choosing the ‘best’ 10 from your pairing is not always the smartest play – maybe each Upgrade is killer, but if they all cost 2 glory to apply, you aren’t going to have many of them out at a time, especially in the early game.

Wrap

So you’ve picked your 10 Upgrades, limiting the amount of gambling and variability while cutting down on actions. You’ve made sure to take ones that fit with your Objective deck, including specific keywords where needed and playing to your Plot card if that’s part of your gameplan. Now you can move on to setting up the boards for your game! Tune in next time for a review of board choice and placement, where we will get to set the stage for your tournament winning deck to shine.