War over energy

**Tyr Anasazi** · 06-08-2012, 05:20 PM

All hero abilities cost either 3SE or 4SE, with the excetion of Nishaven

who needs 5SE. Those 4+SE abilities are in general more powerful than those 3SE ones. So the more powerful abilities can be used less often. Everything seems logical and balanced, right?

But what if those 4+SE abilities cannot be used at all?

What! How? Let's see an example. You use a 3SE hero and your opponent uses a 4+SE hero. And you will be polite and play first so that your opponent will collect SE first. On your T4, your opponent and you both have 3SE. Now you will use up your SE and hit the SE RESET button. Next, rinse and repeat on your T7, T10, ... Then your opponent will never have a chance to use his/her hero's ability unless he/she has some SE manipulation as well, such as Shadow Font

. And even then he/she has to use ability right after playing Shadow Font

or he/she may have only 1SE left again.

Unfortunately, there is currently only one RESET button in Shadow Era, Shadowspawn

. So this is more psychological warfare than a consistent lock-down strategy. All good players will plan ahead for a few turns. And most players who use a 4SE hero will have a well-planned T4 play. Just imagine what they are thinking after they see the RESET button. Oh great! Now my T4 play has been postponed to T7. But what if this happens again before my T7. Am I going to wait till T10? Wait, am I goiing to even have a T10?

You see, even if this is the only Shadowspawn

you are going to play for the entire game, it has the potential to push your opponent outside his/her comfort zone, make him/her think on the feet and do something he/she is not familiar with.

Hopefully, there will be more RESET buttons (in fact -3SE is enough)/ability search/ability revival introduced in the future to make a SE lock-down deck type feasible.