Nickname: Vengeance
Release: Jagged Earth
Elements: 
, 
, 
Guides
Vengeance - Curve Out
Topic - Vengeance As A Burning Plague
Intro
Idea is to smoothly gain and play cards while working towards the magic 3/3 milestone.
Opening
- G3 top > Fetid Breath (set up for plaguebearers after upcoming build)
- G2 bot/bot > Plaguebearers + most relevant card
- G2 bot/bot > last 2 cards
- You don’t have enough cards this turn to take full advantage of the 3 plays. The idea is to set up for next turn when you reclaim, such that you have many options and plenty of plays to take advantage of them.
- Reclaim
- Start thinking about drafting a major - you will want one relatively soon.
Other Notes
You can delay your reclaim by 1 additional turn to better set up for drafting a major. 3. G3 bot, gain minor 4. G3 bot, gain minor or major - Pro of gaining major here is that you’ll know what elements to look for while drafting a minor next turn. - Con of gaining major here is that you might not have quite enough energy to play it. 5. Reclaim, gain minor or major (whichever you didn’t do last turn)
Link to original
Unique Cards
| Rating | Elements | Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | | Fetid Breath Spreads Infection | Costly but disease add is good |
| B |  | Fiery Vengeance | Limited pings, forget for major |
| A | | Plaguebearers | Move invaders + disease |
| A |  | Strike Low With Sudden Fevers | Ravage skip, contingent on disease in land |
Play Patterns
Presence Tracks, Innates And You
- The importance of 3e/3p: Vengeance truly shines when it reaches this point as it will have the energy income to handle it’s expensive uniques while also finally becoming capable of reaching the second threshold on it’s innates.
- The second tier of both innates are VERY worthwhile to pursue. 2x dmg for the left and 3x dmg for the right if you reach the second threshold. 4x / REQUIRES 3 plays to threshold.
- Your right innate is somewhat easier to hit higher thresholds with than your left, needing 1 less and 2 less total elements for the tier2/3 thresholds respectively.
- If you don’t gain cards with G3 you will find yourself reclaiming far too often.
Nothing Sacred About The Plague
Take note of your unique powers - none of them require a sacred site for targeting. While it is easy to set up a sacred site in a problem land with your G2, you’ll often be fairly spread out trying to scale up disease counts until the mid/late-game turns.
No Blight Without Lizards
Whenever you can, make sure that any land that is going to blight has one of your presence in it. This gives you a free disease token which scales your damage dealing and build/ravage-skipping options. Ideally, not a single blight on your starting board will come down without you running in at the last minute to get some value out of it. Chances are decent that you will be able to do this once or twice on neighboring boards as well.
Greed Without Madness
You can milk a ton of fear and disease out of the invaders by allowing builds and ravages respectively. A key skill for mastering Vengeance is to identify when it is time to start cashing in disease to lower invader tempo, and when to stop allowing blights.
- Having 2-3 additional blight on your board is usually sufficient to destroy everything.
- When to prevent builds is a more difficult balance of concerns. A situation where preventing a build might also prevent some following inland explores would definitely be worthwhile. Preventing a build such that dahan can clear the land and avoid another build the following turn is also worthwhile.
Drafting
Vengeance tends to have 1 or 2 sacred sites at most, and typically not until later in the game. Keep this in mind while drafting so you can adapt to situations where you really need those sacred site cards.
Here is a secret: Vengeance is actually a beast spirit!! is the holy trinity of beast elements, found on knockout cards such as Sea Monsters, Angry Bears, Venomous Spiders, Hunger of the Swarm… each one is SO EASILY thresholded by the cards you are already drafting to trigger your innates!
Your best elemental combinations are: , then , then , then and individually. Innates have comparable damage, left usually feels more suited to knocking down the tallest lands.
Boards
Vengenace does pretty well on all boards
| Priority | Board | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | C | Great position & targeting potential |
| 2 | F | "" |
| 2 | B | "" |
| 3 | E | Better when vs Sweden |
| 3 | A | Solid choice |
| 3 | D | "" |
| 3 | H | "" |
| 3 | G | "" |
Spirit Friends
Starlight - cleans up blight elsewhere, expands your danger budget! Stone - increases blight budget of entire island Wildfire - You can handle lands that it would otherwise cascade, and it can explosively solve problems on your end that also set you up for greater damage potential
Credits
- Ryan Lackie - YouTube
- Rei - BoardGameGeek
- ZenithPriest - YouTube