Counterplay: The Embergard Expansion Decks

This article will continue the Second Edition series for beginning competitors on Counterplay – a concept about finding ways to shut down your opponents’ plan and keep them from meeting their goals. Many players focus on how to achieve their own aims, score their own cards, and execute their own gameplan, and this is a great thing to do! It’s hard to win if you don’t score your cards. If you want to take your game to the next level, you should try to be mindful of your opponents’ possible plan and work to interrupt it when possible, and that’s what we will be looking at today.

If you’d like to see tips on how to counterplay the four decks in the Embergard core box, click here. Otherwise, dig in below to hear about the next 5 decks, Reckless Fury through Raging Slayers!

This guide will be written with Nemesis in mind, Where you’ll have to guess whether your opponent did or didn’t take a given card. In Rivals, you can expect to use all of these tips as their deck will be no mystery to you and you can be confident you’ll see most of the available counterplay opportunities bear fruit across a best-of-three match.

Click here to see other articles in the Counterplay Series
Click here to see a review of the Surge Objectives from these decks by Konsul/Mikkel

Reckless Fury

Deck Overview
Reckless Fury is a Strike deck, and as such the gameplan is to start trading punches. The unique twist here is that they’ll want to do so by playing tricks with charge tokens, want to be charging, and want you charging too. As such the most straightforward way to counter this deck is to not charge – much easier said than done. In a more nuanced way, you’ll want to make sure you’re charging with the right fighters at the right times, and always having at least one fighter who doesn’t charge in a given round. I also want to include a caveat about Forsaken and Restricted cards, as the deck has a few cards that are straight-up illegal in Nemesis since they’re too good. If you’re playing in Rivals you’ll need to know about them, but none are Objectives and thus less relevant for this article.

The easiest Objective cards to counterplay in the deck are Unrelenting Massacre (either don’t let all of their fighters get charge tokens, or make sure at least one of yours doesn’t charge and survives the round), Arena Mortis (don’t let 4+ bounty of fighters be charged in a territory without one uncharged fighter in that same territory), and Sally Forth (Don’t let anybody with a charge token holding a treasure in your territory stay there – knock them off). You need to be mindful of who has charge tokens and where, and don’t be afraid to take a move action or a Focus to block their scoring when necessary.

Board choice and orientation will generally benefit you the most if you can prevent their charges with the setup. Choosing a blocked hex board will limit their charge lanes and lines of sight. Choosing a ‘long board’ or ‘nines’ setup will make the distance between your two forces farther and thus reduce their ability to charge you. Alternatively you can play really close and just get all of your fighters into their territory quickly – since they also want to be doing things in enemy territory and if you force the fight to their board side you’ll slow them down.

Treasure token placement is largely irrelevant save for Sally Forth – they’ll want to charge onto something in your territory. if you can stack feature tokens in neutral territory or keep the ones on your side far away from the front line, they’ll struggle. Otherwise put them where you need them to score your cards.

Fighter placement – you’ll benefit from having your fighters far back so they’re harder to reach with charges, or by being very close so you can hop over to their board side and disrupt their enemy territory stuff. When possible, hang back and prevent them from charging out.

Priority Targets are whatever has the most damage potential or accuracy on their team. Should somebody happen to have Bladecatcher equipped (or if in Rivals, Utter Ignorance), maybe ignore that guy since they’ll be much harder to shift. Range 2 melee fighters should be a priority to kill as well.

Positional Tips for facing Reckless Fury would be: stay away, don’t let them charge, and if you have to, make them charge in their own territory. Always have a fighter on your team surviving with no charge tokens, and hopefully able to take a move action into the correct territory to stop Arena Mortis if you haven’t seen it yet.

Wrack & Ruin

Deck Overview
Wrack & Ruin is among my favorite decks to play, because it has some interesting positional scoring. This of course means that a canny player can counterplay it pretty well if they’re mindful of this and have the movement/push tools to make it happen. Wrack focuses on dealing damage with their power cards, spreading the pain, and standing in the right spots to do it. You’ll beat them by focus-firing down fighters rather than spreading damage yourself, healing your guys when able, and paying attention to your fighter positioning – be in edge hexes and/or adjacent to somebody.

The easiest Objective cards to counterplay are Alone in the Dark (make sure at least two fighters are adjacent in an end phase), Living on the Edge (don’t let an enemy fighter be vulnerable in your territory), and Stay Close (make sure there is a fighter in an edge hex every end phase until you see it). Other Objectives in W&R are either too hard to counterplay or don;t get played often enough/too little value to worry about.

Board choice and orientation can really be whatever your gameplan requires. Ideally you’ll chose a board that has a starting hex in an edge hex and can deploy somebody there. Blocked hexes can slow down some damage output, but will also make your paths to ending adjacent or in an edge hex harder to do, so probably just go open board.

Treasure token placement is almost completely irrelevant for WnR counterplay. The deck only has one card that mentions treasure tokens, and it’s rarely taken. Put them where you need them for your own deck’s scoring.

Fighter placement when facing Wrack and Ruin should largely be focused on what you need to score your stuff. If you have the option to deploy in an edge hex, it’s not a bad idea to do so if you’re ok with just leaving that fighter there. Deploying fighters adjacent to one another can be smart too, but they’ll likely end up separating as the game proceeds.

Priority Targets when facing Wrack and Ruin is anybody with damage on them. Don’t allow them to have multiple damaged fighters at a time, or you make Bloody and Bruised trivial to score. Don’t leave people vulnerable because they’ll then benefit from Unstoppable, and also can potentially score Living on the Edge. Definitely don’t have 3+ of their fighters damaged at the same time in the rare chance they are running Out of the Frying Pan, but nobody takes that one. Pick one fighter, delete them, and then move on to the next one.

Positional Tips – this is critical against WnR. Their two best end phase cards are positional cards, and you can do something about them. Always, always have a fighter (yours or theirs) in an edge hex, and at least two fighters adjacent (yours, theirs, or a mix) going into the end phase. If that means not driving somebody back, so be it. Once they discard Say Close or Alone in the Dark, you’ll be liberated, but until then they’re sitting on 4 potential glory that you could have prevented and didn’t.

Edge of the Knife

Link to the Review article

Deck Overview
Edge of the Knife is an interesting deck when considering counterplay. It focuses on the ‘Tempered’ status described in the Plot card – fighters with 2 health or less are Tempered, but so are those with 2+ damage counters on them. Many of their cards deal with these Tempered fighters doing something or being somewhere, so you’ll want to either prevent enemies from becoming tempered, or eliminate the tempered ones when you can. If facing a horde, there will likely be many little guys you’ll have to play whack-a-mole with. If facing Elites or a Standard warband, don’t Temper anything you don’t plan to kill right after. Then try to keep the Tempered guys away from each other/out of your territory. You’ll also have to be mindful of your own fighters tempered status – try to keep a few of them healthy so they can’t Temper the whole field.

The easiest Objective cards to counterplay are Behind Enemy Lines (don’t let a tempered enemy hold a feature token in your territory after your action), Calm Before the Storm (have at least two damaged fighters end adjacent to each other), Power in Numbers (don’t let the Tempered guys bunch up), Sneak into Position (don’t let one of your fighters get swarmed unless you can move them away/drive the enemy back), and Trial of the Tempered – do NOT allow every fighter on the board to be Tempered. Keep at least one of your bigger fighters hanging back and healthy, and don’t do them the favor of tempering their bigger guy for them.

Board choice and orientation should mostly reflect your own gameplan. Note that they will want Tempered fighters in your territory, so a longboard ‘nines’ orientation will make that more difficult for them, as will blocked hexes.

Treasure token placement when playing against Edge of the Knife has two considerations. First, the deck contains (and they almost certainly will be taking) Aggressive Defender. They’ll want to make an attack from a treasure token, and since we know they already want Tempered dudes in your territory, don’t put one in a great landing spot for an opening charge. Second, they’ll want a Tempered fighter holding one in your territory to score Behind Enemy Lines, so keep them further back if possible.

Fighter placement when facing Edge is largely up to you. You’ll want to protect at least one of your bigger fighters to prevent Trial of the Tempered from scoring, so maybe deploy a chunky boi backline. Then, don’t drop two tempered minion type guys adjacent to each other and chargeable off the bat unless you want to hand them Power in Numbers. Otherwise, play your gameplan.

Priority Targets when facing edge are pretty simple – if it’s Tempered, it’s gotta go, especially if it’s in your territory and especially if it’s on a feature token in your territory. Don’t spread the Tempered status to multiple fighters if they have 2 or more 3+ health fighters, make them do that. If you’re facing an elite band, focus fire that guy down before moving on to the next. If they give one of their big guys the Tempered status through a power card, you might as well kill that guy next. Don’t Temper what’s not Tempered unless you have no better option, keep tempered guys out of your zone when you can.

Positional Tips when facing Edge make for a complex puzzle at times. You don’t want them to swarm and surround you with Tempered guys, so you’ll want to play keep away, drive guy back, and stay out of range. That said, one of their bigger positional scores is Calm Before the Storm, which happens if there are damaged guys not adjacent to each other. So… easier said than done, but stay close to ONE damaged enemy with ONE of your damaged fighters, then otherwise spread out. Piece of cake, right?

Realmstone Raiders

Link to the Review article

Deck Overview
Realmstone Raiders is an interesting deck in that it cares a whole lot about its Plot Card mechanic of Raiding. After the RR player successfully hits a melee attack, they can raid by revealing cards from the top of their power deck and are hoping to get special Emberstone cards when they do so. A great deal of their scoring is based on their ability to successfully do this, so hitting melee attacks is their main focus. They’ll benefit the most when they hit higher-bounty targets, so keep your big boys away from accurate melee fighters. There are a few other cutesy things to keep in mind, but this deck’s scoring is pretty random and the RR player will stymie themselves as much as you’ll stymie them, so just focus on your gameplan and trying not to get hit. However, there are some things you have counterplay control over, and we’ll look at those below.

The easiest Objective cards to counterplay are Certain Aggression (make sure you have a fighter in their territory in the end phase), Hoarder’s Hovel (don’t allow a fighter to hold a Treasure token equal to their bounty characteristic in the end phase), and Roused Violence (don’t delve too many things to cover side, and flip things back to treasure when you can). Stop these, and let the RNG machine do the rest for you. The other Raid-related objectives can be counterplayed to an extent if you only feed them 1-bounty fighters to hit, or better yet, 0 bounty/raised fighters. If you have a 3 bounty leader, keep them well away or load them up with defensive tech.

Board choice and orientation is largely irrelevant. Blocked hexes will make their charge lanes and mobility worse and reduce the number of potential melee attacks coming your way, so consider that as an option. Longboarding in the ‘nines’ orientation will increase the distance between warbands and possibly reduce the attack opportunities they have as well.

Treasure token placement should focus on whatever your warband needs to do. They have some cards tied to holding treasure or having things delved, but not positionally, and won’t be the main focus of their gameplan.

Fighter placement against an RR opponent should focus on keeping your fighters out of melee range where possible, especially those with higher bounty characteristics. Out your leader in a hard-to-reach spot, and only dangle your 1-bounty nobodies too close so they either have to settle for raiding once, or charging into a flanked position to hit somebody more important.

Priority Targets when facing Realmstone Raiders largely fall to whatever opponent has the best melee accuracy and potential for multiple attacks. If they have a range 2 melee option, get that guy out of there. If they have somebody with lots of attack dice, rerolls, cleave, etc, they’re a threat. The deck lives and dies on its melee accuracy – blunting that should be your main focus. Secondly, if they have a fighter sitting on a treasure token, check its number. If it’s the same number as their bounty characteristic, they’re trying to sneak 2 glory from Hoarder’s Hovel and you’d be a dum-dum to just let it happen.

Positional Tips in the RR matchup are pretty minimal. Don’t let them wallop on your and try not to get flanked and surrounded to increase their odds. Otherwise, do whatever you need to do to score your own stuff. Prioritize protecting your higher-bounty fighters.

Raging Slayers

Link to the Review article

Deck Overview
I’ll come right out and say it – the Objectives in this deck are bad, and your opponent isn’t focusing on scoring them so much as obliterating your team. The deck grants a special status called Enraged via the plot card – if they choose a fighter to charge, they may also give them a Rage token which grants them the status. Enraged fighters get a reroll on melee attacks, so they’re pretty likely to hit you. However, Enraged fighters also have ‘poor footing’, and you MUST drive them back when attacking them even if you straight whiff. On one hand, this means you can effectively control where the fighters land, and can push them out of the positions they need to attack again, score enraged fighter-based cards, and so forth. On the other, you have to push them, so be smart about which enraged fighters you attack and from what angle.

The easiest Objective cards to counterplay are Unrelenting Massacre (like in RF, have a fighter who doesn’t charge), Overwhelming Presence (hold at least one treasure), No Escape (have at least one of your fighters in Enemy territory) and then effectively 2/3 of the rest of them by just keeping enraged fighters out of your territory. Drive them back to neutral or their own territory, or better yet just hop the line and make them fight in their home turf.

Board choice and orientation looks a lot like the other strike decks. Blocked hexes get in their way, as does the longboard ‘nines’ orientation.

Treasure token placement is up to you. The deck effectively doesn’t care about treasure at all, save for Overwhelming Presence, and if any fighters hold one it’s stopped. They don’t want to hold treasure unless their other deck pairing asks them to, and it’s a tall ask when enraged.

Fighter placement when facing Raging Slayers should prioritize making it harder for them to charge – keep fighters further back when able, and they can’t enrage as easily. You could opt to start far forward and launch yourself into their territory, but they’ll out-aggro you and you’ll die.

Priority Targets are any enraged fighters so you can keep them away from you, and especially their leader. Several of their cards reference their own leader as it makes an attempt at being a leader-centric deck, so if their leader is slain early a lot of that scoring goes out the window. Otherwise, punch out whatever fighters have access to 3 damage or 2+ grievous and you’ll limit the bleeding.

Positional Tips against RS involve the angles from which you attack enraged enemies. Be very mindful that you must push them away from the attacker. You must do it. Angle your attack in a way that leaves them in a position where it’s hard for them to land a charged-out swing, especially if you can also get the out of your territory. Then, make sure you have a guy over the line in their territory so you can block No Escape if they were crazy enough to take it.

Wrap

That’s it for this Counterplay article! Let me know what you think about this and what other things you can think of to counterplay the Embergard expansion Rivals decks. I hope you enjoy spending your glory, and don’t forget that your opponent can’t spend theirs if you don’t let them score any in the first place.