![]() Use your Phoenixborn’s guard when you can every round unless it’s going to kill you. You can use your Phoenixborn’s life total in a similar fashion. Unless you know for a fact that a card in your hand or spell board is useless for the remainder of the game, just mill yourself to meditate. The most common example is the meditate side action, just mill yourself. Like I just said, any cards you can use for some advantage from your pile you should usually take advantage of. The last 2 resources I try to take advantage of in every game of Ashes are my life total and pile size. ![]() Obviously don’t do it if it will kill you, but mostly the games seem to be fast enough you should take advantage of the size of your pile as a resource. For the most part this is not something I take into account when deciding to make a play, draw a card, or mill a card off the pile. It is very possible to deck yourself in a game with a 30 card pile and you draw 5 every round. The other consideration to take into account regarding drawing is the number of cards left in your pile. So if you can draw and play more cards than your opponent you will probably win. But if I draw more than you in Ashes and at the end of the round you just refill to 5 while I only draw 1 the differential is gone. If we were playing Magic and I drew more cards than you, I would win a majority of the time because I am generating a big differential in resources. It is usually good, but only when you can actually deploy the important threats and answers from your hand. Because both players draw to a full hand of 5 every round, drawing more cards than your opponent isn’t strictly good. But there are a few caveats to that statement. ![]() Like most games card advantage is a good thing. We’ll talk about the archetypes the constant dice affects differently later. I don’t think the lack of these effects is inherently good or bad, it’s just how the game plays now and Reborn is great (see previous paragraph). We used to have both dice recursion for ramp and dice removal in Ashes 1.0 but they were too powerful or un-fun and have been removed from the Reborn pool. Likewise, resource denial strategies that stunt growth or remove existing resources your opponent uses to play their cards could only exist if there were effects in the game that removed dice. “Ramp” decks that try to amass more or faster resources and go over the top of their opponent don’t exist because I can’t get more than you fast or slow. This alters or down-right removes some staple strategies from other games. In Ashes both players begin their turn with all 10 dice available never more, never less. The biggest difference I see is that resources and resource management are almost the polar opposite of how most dueling card games function. Ashes has a lot of differences from the average competitive card game when it comes to general theory. For the last 6 months the Shuffle Bus has been driving through Ashes country and I have learned a lot. This article is assuming you want some insight into competitive Ashes: Reborn. So go out and buy or preorder it (We are not a sponsor and do not benefit from your purchase). An extra bonus for the owners of the original printing is the upgrade kit for Reborn that you can purchase to just replace the things that changed and you can still use most of the set you already have. But I’m also right, we’ll go into more detail later. This might sound like an opinion from someone that has played less than 10 games of the original. The game is quicker, less grindy, and overall more fun. But don’t be discouraged, all of the changes to the cards and rules are positive. Most of the new iterations have wildly different effects than the original printings. If you are an original ashes player you will see some fundamental changes to the rules and many drastically different wordings on your favorite cards. This primer is to help you get into competitive Ashes Reborn play. This isn’t a bad run for a game of this type, but if you’re reading this you know in the year 2021 the firebird has come out of its hole and didn’t see a shadow so we are getting the shiny, new, and rebooted Ashes:Reborn. Then, in 2019, the game went out of print after 16 expansions. Back in 2015 Plaid Hat Games produced the Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn expandable game system. After 1,000 years of waiting the rebirth of the Phoenix is upon.
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