As we open the pages of the mysterious Bestiary, a fantastic kaleidoscope of exotic and otherworldly Creatures unfolds. Meet the hybrids and mutants of ancient myth, bringing two brand-new abilities: “Purge” and “Poison: X”.

expansion-set bestiary

Windwheel-Combo:

Use card draw (Wave Courier, Wave of Wisdom, Arcane Teachings and Gust of Wind) to get a Windwheel. Once Windwheel is in play you can use the Effects of your PE-Creatures over and over again! For instance you could return a Creature to its opponents hand using the Stormmaster every turn, virtually stalling the enemy. But be careful with all the card draw Effects. You might end up depleting your own Spellbook and lose.
Furthermore you can use Hastestone to attack with Creatures you have just played.

Creatures (9):

3 x Wave Courier (W)
3 x Mercury-Shatterer (W)
3 x Jupiter-Stormmaster (A)

Spells (14):

3 x Wave of Wisdom (W)
3 x Arcane Teachings (A)
3 x Whirlwind (A)
2 x Gust of Wind (A)
3 x Windwheel (A)

Element-Stones (17):

2 x Hastestone
8 x Mercury-Stone
7 x Jupiter-Stone

Purge – how to take the steam out of DPT and “Stronghold“:

I’m really looking forward to the expansion-set “Bestiary”, which is due to be released either in December or January. After I had made up the new ability “Purge” for “Bestiary”, I realized that it has a quite desirable effect on the game, as it literally takes the steam out of two dominant, overpowered deck-archetypes: “Stronghold” and “DPT-Exploitation”. But at first let us take a look on the rules-text for “Purge”:

Purge: If a Creature or Spell with “Purge” would deal damage to a player, instead of putting cards from the top of his or her SB onto his or her DP, remove these cards from the game. When a Creature would be destroyed through damage from a Creature or Spell with “Purge”, it is also removed from the game.

So, how does “Purge” affect the game?

Well, first of all, it overrides the DPT-ability. DPT takes place only when a card is put from a SB onto the DP, and not when it is removed from the game. “DPT-Exploitation” decks are thus considerably weakened.

Also, the “Stronghold” deck loses its power through “Purge”-cards. Its Creatures do not land in the DP, but are removed from the game entirely, thus being out of reach for “reanimation”-Spells like Excavate and Necromancy. What is more, the infinite-cards loop generated through the combination of Venus Wurm’s Destroy-Effect and Excavate/Necromancy is dismantled. Even Venus-Wurm itself cannot make use of its DE (Take a number of cards equal to the DEF-value of Venus Wurm from your DP and put them under your SB in any order), as it is not put onto its owner’s DP when destroyed, but removed from the game entirely instead.

I must say that I am quite happy about how the “Purge” ability affects the game, as it weakens two of the strongest, overpowered deck-types. I am sure that the new “Purge” cards will be seen in many decks.

The decklist below is a variation on the “Stronghold” deck I wrote about in an earlier article. It takes advantage of the fact that your unique Creatures (a Spellbook / deck may only contain one copy of a card with unique) land in your Discard Pile sooner or later, what makes them ready to be reanimated by Excavate and Necromancy. There is also the trick with Venus Wurm and Geomancer, which bring back Necromancy and Excavate, only to be reanimated by them over and over again.
Stonelore is ideal for fetching one of your unique Element-Stones (Dragonstone and Stone of Wisdom). The only problem you could experience with this deck could be that off-colour cards like the unique dragons end up in your hand, with you having no way of playing or discarding them so that they could be reanimated. Maybe future expansion-sets may bring a suitable discard outlet to add to the mix. In the brackets you see the respective expansion-set for every card in the deck, so that it is easier for you to look up the cards in the card lists.

Unique Reanimator.dec:

Creatures (12):

1 x Titania, Queen of the Woods (Unicum)
1 x Xilvox, Darkwood Sovereign (Unicum)
1 x Goldfeather, King of the Clouds (Unicum)
1 x Bargost Thundertail (Unicum)
1 x Ascarius, Lord of Storms (Unicum)
1 x Grimlock the Cruel (Unicum)
1 x Finborg, Sire of the Seven Seas (Unicum)
2 x Geomancer (Unicum)
2 x Venus Wurm (Basic-Set)

Spells (12):

3 x Earth Ritual (Basic-Set)
3 x Stonelore (Spellforce)
3 x Excavate (Basic-Set)
3 x Necromancy (Basic-Set)

Element-Stones (16):

1 x Dragon Stone (Unicum)
1 x Stone of Wisdom (Unicum)
1x Hastestone (Basic-Set)
2 x Powerstone (Basic-Set)
11 x Venus-Stone (Basic-Set)

Note: Adding one Rainbow-Stone might solve the issue with off-colour cards ending up dead in your hand. has to be tested…

Tribal-Decks:

Salvage.dec.:

In Elemental Clash’s third expansion-set „Spellforce“ there are going to be numerous Creatures and Spells that have the special ability „Salvage“. The rules for the Salvage-ability read as follows:

Salvage: If you put a card with “Salvage” from your hand onto your DP, you may play it for free immediately. A Creature is put either into its owner’s ATK- or DEF-Zone and a Spell is put onto its owner’s DP.

Here is a possible Decklist that makes the most of your Salvage-cards:

Salvage-Exploitation-Deck:

Salvage-enablers (13):

2 x Firemaw (F)

3 x Goblin Cadet (F)

3 x Giant Kraken (W)

2 x Burning Thoughts (F)

3 x Rummage (W)

Salvage-cards (11):

2 x Flowering Wall (E)

3 x Spark Spirit (F)

3 x Fiery Bolt (F)

3 x Restock (E)

Element-Stones (16)

2 x Hastestone

2 x Powerstone

6 x Mars-Stone

6 x Mercury-Stone

The Stronghold: How to annoy your opponent

Me and some friends found out, through excessive playtesting, that when you open up a brand new 54-card starter-pack “earth” you only have to remove 14 cards to get a competitive, above average deck. Among the four different starter-packs (one for each element), “earth” seems to be by far the strongest. Packed with “reanimation” (Necromancy and Excavate) and restocking Spells (Earth Ritual and Venus Wurm) it is nearly impossible for the opponent to overcome this rather basic earth-deck. This is why I like to call this defensive deck “The Stronghold”. The only chance to win against it is to inflict as much damage as fast and as early as possible so that the “Stronghold” player doesn’t have the time to build up his or her defensive lines. But once the deck unfolds, there is almost no chance to win against it. Using Venus Wurm to bring back Excavate and Necromancy and then using Necromancy and Excavate to bring back the Wurm allows the “Stronghold Player” to go infinite cards in his or her Spellbook. Thus it is possible to stay defensive (Earth Wall, which is 1  ATK / 7 DEF, comes in very handy for this strategy) and inflict not a single point of damage and still win the game solely because the opponent has to draw a card each turn, running out of cards “naturally” so to say.

This defensive reanimation deck will be unbeatable once the overpowered “unique” (a deck may only contain one copy of a card with unique) Creatures come out with the Expansion-Set “Unicum”. Simply wait for the unique cards to land in your Discard-Pile and then reanimate them through Excavate / Necromancy, go offensive and dish out insane amounts of damage.

Below you see my “Stronghold” decklist. Only the Loam Shaman is from the first Expansion-Set “Underworld”. All other cards are from the Basic-Set starter-pack “earth”.

Stronghold.dec:

Creatures:

3 x Loam Shaman

3 x Troll Grunt

2 x Bone Warrior

2 x Earth Wall

2 x Venus Wurm

Spells:

1 x Hardening

3 x Earth Ritual

2 x Elemental Ritual

3 x Excavate

3 x Necromancy

Element-Stones

2 x Powerstone

2 x Sparkstone

12 x Venus-Stone

Elemental Clash Strategy – Harnessing the Power of DPT:

Discard-Pile-Trigger, or shortly DPT is a very useful card ability in and of itself. Combined with the right cards though, you can abuse it and create powerful decks.

The very backbone of each decent DPT-deck is, besides the DPT-cards themselves, a set of, as I like to call them, DPT-enablers. There is a number of Fire-Creatures that do the job pretty well. Salamander, Fiery Devil and Archdemon should form the core of a successfull DPT-Deck. Especially Archdemon is a great choice, as he is both a huge threat to your opponent and triggers DPT-effects through his drawback ability. The rest of the card choices depends on which other element you choose to add to the mix. Below are two decklists I designed trying to make the most of DPT-effects.