Duelyst isn’t your granddaddy’s CCG. Heck, it isn’t even your daddy’s CCG. Counterplay Games has developed such a unique and befuddling card game that it’s hard not to be fully entranced by its gestalt magic. Is it Hearthstone? Is it Chess? Should I just rage quit now? It’s a tough game to summarize in elevator pitch fashion, so you can also imagine that it’s equally tough for beginners to get a solid footing on how to really play this game. I’ll do my best to bridge the gap.
1. Location, Location, Location
There is no bigger asset in any particular round of Duelyst than where your units are and where they could be. Location is crucial to survival here, because so much more than just how close you are to your enemies relies on it. For starters some units don’t move in traditional fashion. Flying units have no limit as to where they can move on the board during there turn, as they soar over friendly units and enemy combatants alike. Ranged units can attack anywhere on the board without actually having to move. These more obvious examples are still quite secondary to one of the biggest overlooked/under appreciated rules of Duelyst: summoning.
Whenever you summon a minion – by playing a card from your hand – you can only place it near your friendly units. That means the 8 potential squares surrounding any given friendly minion. This can be a really big deal, especially when summoning multiple minions in succession. Suddenly, you can start dropping real threats across the board thanks to a chain of other, lower cost minions. Or my favorite, dropping a minion with Airdrop (like Planar Scout or Paddo) anywhere on the board (especially near an enemy) thanks to that ability, and then dropping something with Provoke right next to it. Anything adjacent to the Provoke minion must attack it first, keeping your Airdropper safe, and getting the most out of that ability synergy.
Another positioning based ability to keep and eye out for Backstab, which does extra damage – of a number specified in () – when attacking from the square directly behind a target. Fury allows attackers to hit every enemy in range at once. Guys like the Piercing Mantis become very good a clearing clusters of low end minions that could be jamming important entry ways because of it. If you’re running a swarm deck, be very careful around these guys.
2. More Money, Less Problems
Like many other Free to Play games of its ilk, there is an in-game currency that is used to purchase everything within it and can be bought with real money. Duelyst’s monetization setup is very close to Blizzard’s Hearthstone dollars-to-gold ratios. You even spend Duelyst gold in similar ways as Hearthstone gold, on 5-card packs for 100 gold (with a rare guaranteed) or an 150 gold entry ticket into The Gauntlet (or The Arena). The big difference between the two titles is the incredible amount of gold you can make in comparison to Hearthstone just by playing the game.
Quests can get you up to 30 gold a piece and reset daily. They usually involve playing a certain amount of matches as a particular faction. You can also replace one of these each day, just in case you don’t like what you see. When you win, there’s a bonus 25 gold in it for you daily. Every two wins after that, you gain 15 gold. After getting that reward 7 times (after 14 wins) your win pair gold bonus gets cut to 5 per. That’s 190 gold a day potentially won through these bonuses. It’s not super realistic, as winning 14 games a day is easier said than done. In raw numbers that’s almost two packs of cards or a trip into the gauntlet every day.
Not to mention the prizes for competing and winning in The Gauntlet. If you can draft a decent deck from random cards and factions, and win around 2-3 times, you’ll almost always win the money you spent back. The more you win, the better the rewards can be, including more gold and rare cards. There’s also an assortment of other rewards available to you for completing certain tasks of hitting certain benchmarks. All of the single player challenges reward gold and can actually be pretty educational in the way of teaching you how to link combos together. Mastery levels and first time bonuses are about, too. In short, try everything at least once. Disenchant cards, play games against friends, etc. Don’t let a money making opportunity pass you by.
3. The Right Fit
It’s tough to figure out exactly which of the factions are a good fit for you and your play style without sampling each one for extended periods of time. That can come eventually. Right now, as a quick beginners look into each factions strategies, I want to highlight a few things about each that may help a rookie Duelyst get the most out of their games.
My favorite Faction right now is the Songhai Empire, a group of swift and elusive warrior mages who use very strong spell synergy and minion support as its greatest weapon. There are two big ways to play them: as burning nukes that hit the enemy General as hard as they can, as fast as they can, or as hardcore controllers who focus on removing anything the opponent really likes on the board. I favor the first, and with signature cards like Inner Focus and its inherit combo ability with Backstabbing units like Kaido Assassin, crazy versatile artifacts like Cyclone Mask, and aggressive onslaught of minions like Tusk Boar and Four Winds Magi, it’s hard not to appreciate the sudden violence that Songhai can manifest.
The Abyssian Host is about as close as you get to the “undead” or “demonic” faction in the game, and pride themselves on their incredible internal synergy. They excel at sacrificing units or life for extreme killing power, and much of that centers around its big, class-centric ability, Deathwatch. Deathwatch is an ability that cards may have that activate whenever something on the field dies. Deathwatchers like Shadow Watcher and Shadowdancer find themselves being main stays in Abyssian decks and can become a real issue very quickly thanks to how fast this faction can produce low cost, low attack minions whose job is to die. Spells like Darkfire Sacrifice turn your minions into a resource, while Ritual Banishing turns them into an all purpose banisher. Let Abyssian numbers rise at your peril.
The Vetruvian are slow and their units seem weak in comparison, but seemingly all of their units have some impressive ability that evens the score. One of the factions best abilities is Blast. Any creature with Blast attacks every target in a straight line. Artifacts like Wildfire Ankh allow your General to Blast enemies, too. Suddenly, your board can consist of long range ballistic bullies that can zone with the best of them. The obvious counter play to Blast? Don’t stand in a line, which is a strong move, until a Vetruvian drops a spell like Star’s Fury, which only gets better based on the amount of free space near enemy minions. Vetruvians have three Obelysk cards at their disposal as, each summon minions with the Dervish subtype, but Fireblaze Obelysk and Windstorm Obelysk can actually buff them on top of that.
The Lyonar Kingdom is stacked to the brim with high statline minions who have no issue entering long engagements with any one enemy. Lyonar creatures often have high health, which can be sustained with their wide array of healing spells. Also, a Lyonar minion never stays at it baseline stats for too long, the Kingdom is huge on buffing its warriors to astronomic amounts quickly. They are slow, but their specialty is capitalizing on minions with the Provoke ability, like Silverknight Guard. Zeal abilities can become a crux of a deck as well, providing minions with bonuses for being near the General. Lyonar Generals become hard-to-kill face beaters thanks to artifacts like Arclyte Regalia, or spells like Martyrdom and Circle of Life.
The frosty Vanar Kindred are stacked with some of the best board control in the game. They do this primarily by erecting walls in spaces on the board that block enemy movement and support friendly advances. Some walls can do more than that, including attack like normal minions, or stun enemies that attempt to break them down. Infiltrate is an ability Vanar have a lot of access to, which gives minions extra traits for being on the opposite of the board. Wolfraven is the quintessential Infiltrate minion, as it can fly, guaranteeing that it can get its bonus attack at will. Vanar can play a passive game pretty confidently too, thanks to spells like Avalance, or all of the crazy synergy with their specialty minion subtype, Vespyrs.
Last but not least, the Magmar Aspects are nature’s wrath come to life. Their minions are incredibly powerful, if not a bit slow, and with spells like Flash Reincarnation they can find themselves on the board much earlier than anticipated. Even taking 2 damage from it, the Makantor Warbeast takes full advantage of being summoned early thanks to its Rush ability. With a good amount of removal, AoE, and dispels, Magmar actually makes for a great starting faction. Not to mention the gross amount of damage that can dished out by creatures like Unstable Leviathan, or with artifacts like Twin Fang. There’s also the faction special ability, Rebirth, which turns minions that die into eggs, that can hatch copies of that minion. The circle of life is terrifying.
Hopefully these tips help you stash more wins under your belt. For more information about cards, abilities, and the like, come visit the Official Duelyst Wiki. Let us know how your doing out there on our Facebook page or on Twitter @CurseGamepedia.