Greetings! Welcome to the third and final part of the TOP10 series. In this article, I’ll be discussing upgrades. If you’re interested in checking previous parts you can read on objectives and gambits.
As in the previous articles - I’ll be focusing on universal cards only. The order in which cards are presented is semi-random and does not reflect their relative power level within the pool as it is not my intention to show THE best upgrade, but rather highlight the pool of most interesting/powerful cards in the set. As before, at the end of the article, I’m going to share my general thoughts about Direchasm’s upgrades. So, without any further delays let’s get to the list!
Augmented Limbs - an amazing upgrade to open up the list. Upgraded fighter becomes a quarry, which on its own is a big boon, and while he’s a quarry he receives +1 dice to all range 1 attack actions. That’s a great accuracy option that is pretty well balanced by the fact that it applies only to range 1 attacks. It is a fantastic alternative to Strength of Terror.
Dominant Defender - not only offensive playstyle has received great tools. Dominant Defender is an amazing option to increase your fighters’ chances to survive attacks. With this card, your fighter is on guard as long as it is holding an objective. As a bonus, you can react to claim the Primacy token if you happened to roll a defensive crit. While this is not the major part of the card’s power, it is adding an element of doubt for your opponent and can also help you score some extra glory by gaining primacy.
Haughty Resistance - another defensive card. This one is especially useful for larger fighters. If you have primacy, you can use it to reduce the incoming damage by 1. Otherwise, you’ll gain the primacy token. Win-win situation. The strength of this card has been impacted by its recent addition to the restricted list, but it is still a very strong upgrade that can make your opponent not even want to attack the bearer of this upgrade. And unless you’re fishing for a primacy it is a good thing.
Proud Runner - before this card has made its way into the restricted list it was probably the best movement upgrade in the game. It had strong competition from Savage Speed, but the primacy trick was giving it an edge. After being restricted this card is probably on par or slightly worse from a pure speed perspective, but it is still an amazing option to ensure you get the primacy token. It’s a very good option for faster warbands to bump their speed a peg and get a hold on that token to inspire or score some surges. It’s also a very decent backup for matchups in which obtaining that token would be difficult - facing off durable, elite warbands is one of the situations where you would want this card to get your token.
Savage Soldier - that is a crazy level of accuracy coming from a single card. Not only do you get extra dice for your range 1 attacks, but you also gain cleave and ensnare. This is super strong. Drawbacks? This card is a force multiplier. You have to have 4 upgrades on your fighter to get the full benefit from the Soldier. You’re not likely to stick it on your expendable killer-git. But Rippa will be very happy to add Cleave and Ensnare to his wolf bites. Bonded + this one means he’s very likely going to bite you hard. And while extra dice are limited to range 1, cleave and ensnare work on any range, so you can get a scary sniper by giving a ranged fighter this card.
Savage Visage - another fantastic accuracy upgrade. This time around you can get a reroll of the dice for each upgrade with the hunter keyword on it. Get this card and thing like Savage Strength and you’re rerolling two dice in your attack rolls. It’s not a surprise that this card has quickly made its way into the restricted list. Re-rolls are amazing and with this card, you can quickly get crazy amounts of them. I used to combo it with Hunters Talisman for 3 re-rolls. To quote Trinity: “Dodge this!”. You can still do that, but sacrificing 2 restricted slots is not worth it. Yet this card remains a very strong offensive option that is worth considering if you have other hunter upgrades on your list.
Scavenged Armour - this is Great Fortitude with a twist. The twist is that you can quickly give your fighter a guard token when applying this upgrade, but you cannot do it if the fighter is in your territory. Effectively this is a defensive upgrade, but for an aggressively played fighter. You can make a charge and then add this card to give your fighter an extra wound and a guard token. You can provide a degree of security for your fighter after charging into enemy territory. This upgrade is especially powerful if you have fighters with multiple defense dices. The fact that you cannot apply it to fighters in your territory is a great balancing factor that prevents using this for a turtle defense.
Silent Helm - this is a fantastic card. Not only it does provide quarry keywords, but it also changes one crit into a regular success. This is massive. Effectively your opponent has to roll two crits to be able to get a critical hit. This makes defense much easier, but also can shut down effects like extra damage from Fighters Ferocity. Set effect of this card offers a defensive re-roll, which is nice, but it’s not very likely that you’ll be running three silent relics in your list. So it’s a nice touch, but not something practical.
Silent Ring - another relic - again you can get a quarry keyword out of it, which is quite good on its own. But on top of that ring gives you the ability to draw some extra cards. Put it on a fighter that has some good ranged attack and you could get a good number of cards out of activating him. Set bonus from this card is… great! And extra dice to range 1 attacks? Yes, please. You would have to find another relic to enable this, but with Helm and Sword being around it shouldn’t be that difficult to pull off. After Beastgrave rotation, this will be the best universal draw option in the game.
Soultooth Dagger - now this is a weapon! You get a hunter keyword from it off the bat. But what is more important, you get a very juicy attack profile: decent accuracy and ability to hit for 3 damage on a critical hit. What’s more, you get a re-roll if your target has a charge or move token! And this dagger doesn’t break. Add punching up and you’re very likely to kill a 4 wound fighter with this. Super strong weapon upgrade and a must-have for warbands with smaller fighters.
Closing Thoughts
It has been very difficult to get this list together - mainly because of how many good upgrades Direchasm has. This season a lot of power has been contained in upgrades, while ploys (with a few exceptions) seem to be fulfilling a supportive role. I feel that this makes sense - you’re expected to invest some glory to pull off some explosive actions. In return - assuming your fighter will live - you’ll get to keep that power and use it again later. This makes the game more interesting. Looking at the set as a whole we can see it is rich in both strong accuracy and defensive options. There are also some interesting utility pieces and there we have two of my greatest disappointments of Direchasm: Silent Relics and hunger. I feel that too many cards were lost on printing hunger-related cards - I’ve said that before, I’ll say it again. Sadly this mechanic is a dud - maybe it will get better in S5, but it will have a difficult time when having Primacy as competition. My other disappointment is relics - some of them are fantastic cards individually and I’ve expected some cool stuff from them. Those set bonuses gave the promise of great things, but nothing came. except for a 1 glory end phase objective.
Overall Direchasm continues the trend of very strong upgrades and with Arena Mortis 2.0 around the corner, I dread to see what will we receive in that pack. Hopefully, it will be a bit more balanced than its predecessor. But even without AM 2.0 Direchasm has a lot of value in its store when it comes to upgrades. We’re having strong accuracy options, a lot of damage, powerful defensive cards, and some nice tech -cards. Coupled with essential cards pack this is a very powerful package to work with and bodes very well for S5 after Beastgrave will rotate out.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my review series of Direchasm cards. If you would like to hear more on this topic head over to Path to Glory podcast - I’ve had the pleasure to discuss this topic with Aman and Johnathan. You can find that episode on their page or directly on Podbean. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
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