61-the-battleline-with-george-keagle

[00:00:00] Welcome dear listener. This is Zach. And today we have something kind of special. We have a replay from my previous KeyForge show call of discovery, which I co-hosted with the incomparable Ed Pocock. this episode that we're bringing back is about the battle line and positioning creatures in a battle line in a way that matters.

Now, perhaps how you position things in the battle line. Won't win you a game on its own, but it's part of an important series of decisions you make. Especially in response to what your opponent has that might help push you over the edge. And George has a two-time Vault Tour winner, uh, even when this was recorded two and a half years ago. Has a lot of wisdom and insight to share into this and having re-listened to it. It's still a very, very relevant topic and it's a whole lot of concepts and best practices that still hold up today. Even through wins of exchange. So I'm excited to present this to you. Again, many of you may, maybe you have heard this before. Maybe you haven't. It's probably been a long time since you have. And [00:01:00] so it is absolutely worth the time we're going to skip the first half of the episode where we discuss, uh, George cables, a KeyForge background, how he got into it. That's about the first 18 minutes or so if you want to go back and check that out, that is over on the call of discovery feed, which is of course still up.

And that is episode 61 from early 2021. So you're going to hear ed on this episode, you'll hear me. You'll hear George. George was an amazing guest and it was one of the topics that has just lasted the test of time. So huge compliments to George for that. And without further ado, This is an episode of KPR and also. Called discovery. C on the other side.

So, without further ado, we're going to jump into our topic today, [00:02:00] which we talked with George about before coming on, and it is going to be the battle line. in KeyForge. So, uh, I assume most of our listeners will be familiar with the battle line. You've probably played KeyForge a couple times, uh, either a lot or maybe just a few times if you're listening.

As a basic recap, the battle line is you, you place your creatures in a line as you play them in, in KeyForge, and typically you will play them on either flank. And so your creatures have neighbors to each other. There are effects that, uh, you know, There are effects that, uh, focus on flank or non flank creatures, neighbors of creatures, in all sorts of ways.

So, uh, we're going to dive into this topic, uh, a bit with George today. Just about, uh, how it's dynamic, what things do we consider when we're looking at the battle line, when we're building a battle line, uh, mostly dependent on, uh, what kind of cards are in our deck that are going to interact with the battle line.

Now, I will have to say, I'm not trained enough on card games. to know how many other [00:03:00] games have had a battle line, uh, really be important in this way. But I definitely appreciate it as, um, you know, a little bit of, uh, a little extra layer of strategy inside of KeyForge to have neighbors, to have neighbors matter, especially as we've gotten more sets and that positioning has mattered more and more.

Yeah, I

agree with that. Um, Runeterra does a little bit with kind of like the left to right attackers thing, but it's not so much your board state left to right matters as much. Um, KeyForge. I don't know, again, it's unique. I've played a lot of card games, but I don't know if that aspect of it is unique, but it's certainly, I feel, more important than a lot of players realize at first, and that's kind of what I wanted to talk about it.

Yeah, yeah, so in what ways does it kind of become more important, or when does it become more important than one might assume? I know in Call of the Archons I was just kind of playing things, the only thing I was worried about was Taunt in Call of the Archons. So what makes it more important than just, uh...

Now I gotta get this whole house out of my hand.

[00:04:00] Well, that's the first level of it. You have your taunt effects, you have things like deploy, you have Titan Mechanic, which is if it's on a flank, then your keys cost one less. Valder, which can attack things on flank. So I really think the most obvious thing that players see when thinking about the beta lane matters is the cards that directly call it out, like the Painpakas, and your Taunt and your Deploy effects.

So... Part of that is not just recognizing those cards, but then also recognizing which cards you would want to put next to those cards. So, the taunt is probably the biggest, most obvious one, right? You want to put your taunt guy, um, next to your, maybe your vulnerable creature so that they can be protected.

by the taunt effect and can't be directly attacked as much.

So, George, what kind of, [00:05:00] uh, what kind of cards in your deck, uh, make that battle line placement matter? We talked about taunt, kind of an entry level one, but what are some other effects on maybe some particular creatures or cards that make battle line placement, uh, actually important that, that come to mind when you think about all

this?

So, when I think about it, I'm typically actually... Thinking about my opponent's cards more than my own cards. Um, there are, I think, newer effects, like... Excuse me, I don't remember the name. There's an Untamed card in Mass Mutation that's kind of like Positron Bolt, but it puts plus one counters, where it does three, two, one from a flank.

Mmm, Growth Surge. Growth Surge. So that's the type of thing that you can put your smaller creatures on a flank and then beef them up pretty quickly. Otherwise, I'm thinking, like, does my opponent have a booby trap, or... The Untamed card there everywhere, which does 2 to the flank and 1 to everything else.

And typically I'm [00:06:00] organizing my battle line defensively to make my opponent use... their cards less efficiently if they want to remove my troublesome creatures. Um, your Restoring Guntis is something you really want to protect and where it is in your battle line can matter quite a big deal whether or not it gets actually removed.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point about... Make, protecting the creatures you need to protect by knowing how the threats from your opponent's deck work. One of my favorites in that category of offensive cards to watch out for and build your battle line around if you can is, uh, the, uh, the, um, I'm tempted to say the only good, uh, Brobnar card in Worlds Collide, Berserker Slam.

That deals 4 damage to a creature, if it kills it, that, the controller of that creature loses an aember and it gives you an aember, so it's a nice little 2 aember swing. With a 4 damage to a flank, and so, um, if you're really conscious and you have the right creatures, you can try to avoid the [00:07:00] situation where the Berserker Slam really gets a full

value.

Absolutely. Sorry,

go ahead, Ed. The only good card. The only good Brobnar card.

I said I hesitate to say this, but I will admit I did still say it.

What about my boy, Meganarp?

Meganarp is just so handsome and great at dinner conversation. However, as a card, I mean, I mean, he's fine. He's fine.

If you, if you turn him up the other way around and reverse him, then he's fine.

His neighbors can only reap.

That brings up a good point though, is that you can Um, one of the topics I wanted to touch on is that you can affect your opponent's delta and essentially change their plays on their turn by altering their beta lines. And Meganarp is a great example. [00:08:00] If anyone is actually playing a mega, a mega NARP.

Sure. I feel like nobody likes them. But if your opponent has creatures that give a big reap bonus, like maybe it's a reap steal one or reap capture one or something like that. You can take out the creatures in the middle and get that creature next to MegaNarp, um, which might actually change their game plan, especially if you're on check or something else, they have to do something different.

Or maybe they have to kill their own MegaNarp somehow.

Yeah, killing one's own MegaNarp is a bit of a, a bit of a task. A bit of a task. Uh, and you mentioned, uh, I think defining this term is going to be really good for this discussion, but you mentioned the, the Delta there, which I know I first heard, on, uh, the bouncing, now archived, uh, bouncing death quark.

So what, what do you mean by delta in respect to, like, battle lines

and amber? So delta is typically how much amber can your opponent or yourself produce in a given turn. Um, and they often use the example [00:09:00] where if your opponent has three creatures of the same house they can make three amber, but if they have three creatures and they're all different houses they can only make one amber.

Um, and the common The first thing a lot of players learn is, you know, cards in hand plus abilities on the board. And by adjusting the opponent's battle line, you can change that number to where maybe they don't have as much on the board now. So they actually, their cards plus board might be a different house, and that might benefit you in a different way.

For like, the obvious one is shadows, right? You don't want your opponent to call shadows on a specific given turn. So like, what's uh, Gamgee, if they have a Gamgee and a Gnarp, and you are able to kill the thing in between the Gnarp, if they call Shadows, they're going to be able to steal one less. Um, and that's just the example that I come off the top of my head, but every game is different, and [00:10:00] looking at the battle line in that type of way might be, might allow you to make...

Yeah, certainly. Certainly, and even, even without a MegaNarp on the other side of the board, I think something you said there really still stands is that if you know there's a house that, uh, they are likely to call, or you don't want them to call that house because you know they have some threats there, maybe some answers that they might play, You can disincentivize playing that house by getting rid of creatures, even if you know they're going to call that house.

Maybe you focus on taking out creatures of that house so that they have, uh, fewer resources. Like you said, you reduce their delta, uh, for when they go back into that house. Or maybe they, they pick another house entirely and skip the advantage they were going to get anyways.

Exactly. And you can also use that in, I'll say, a defensive way.

So, there's a lot of, um, [00:11:00] conditional removal in KeyForge, because it's all free, right? You just call a house and you play it. So, I'll use the Rustering Contest example, because it's the most, uh, close, the closest to home for me. Um, let's say I have something with Taunt on the board, and I can put a Rustering Contest next to it.

I can use the extra defense of... the battle lane positioning to make my opponent call a Even a more specific house than what I locked them out of with Restoring Guntis so maybe my opponent has like Shadows, which has a lot of cards that are able to remove a Restoring Guntis by doing a little bit of damage or whatever and completely avoid fighting And they have Brobnar, but they don't have as much removal in Brobnar.

Maybe I saw that because it's an Archon tournament, right? So I put it next to a taunt person to where they have to call Brobnar, fight down the taunt thing first, which will take out a lot of their [00:12:00] creatures, and then maybe they even still kill the Rustring Gauntest, but it costs them a turn and a lot of their battle line to do it, putting them farther behind.

Yeah, and I think that's a great way to think about the battle line as a tool, both yours and your opponent's, for how can I make them spend more resources that I'm spending to threaten? Like, if I play this one card smartly, I can get them to take a turn, use a couple of creatures to fight instead of reap, and even if they're gonna kill that Restoring Guntis, maybe you're getting kind of an advantage out of that turn they're spending killing it that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise, which I think is, uh...

There's a lot of smart plays in that area. Yeah,

exactly. And you can use... It's not just Restoring Guntas. You can use your Pampakas this way. Um, you can use Hazardous this way. Uh, where you just set up... Use your Battle Line left to right in your flanks to dodge your opponent's removal and force them to...

Waste cards that, [00:13:00] or use their cards less efficiently, because it is a race, so using, making their cards less efficient essentially slows them down, puts you ahead in the race. It's almost

like a game within the game, uh... Working out where to put things on the battle line and, and whether you're making the best use of it at the time, particularly with the effects that we've had introduced, I think, in later sets.

It's, it's like a, like a little puzzle within

KeyForge. It is. And, and, and it is a... a smaller aspect that can have a big difference. Um, oftentimes in card games, it's... They say it's like a game of percentages, what, what choice can give you one more percent to win, or two more percent to win, um, and the battle line is often the place I see my opponents giving up free percentages, because they just, they didn't, they just slammed all their creatures [00:14:00] down, they didn't care that they put, you know, like, they lined up to a positron bolt exactly to where I killed three creatures with one card, You know, versus if they would have just placed them in the opposite direction, I might only got one or two creatures.

So I think that's a great lesson to kind of have a plan, a defensive plan, right? After reading your opponent's archon card, if you, if you can, in an archon environment, and knowing, okay, here's the threats they're going to have. You know, they've got a bullet eye or a Kymor Eclipse. Um. You know, something like that, uh, to, to kind of play around.

Positron Bolt is a great practical example, because that does the 3 2 1 damage. Um, but, uh, depending on your deck, you're also going to have some cards that, uh, you want to kind of play to your outs. You know, if you've got a Ghost Talk or an Order of Hysario, um, you might want to set up your battle line.

for as well. Are there any of kind of your favorite cards, George, that you kind of have to [00:15:00] set up for, like, in your own deck as far as a battle line order goes?

There are, and we'll get into that with next week's episode, likely, with the deck I want to review. But sometimes it's not as obvious, and it's the card effects that control it that even don't even say flank or non flank or anything like that.

But generally... The, what are my, like, my favorite cards that matter? I really like the Pampakas. Anything with Taunt, I love Taunt and Hazardous, uh, as defense cards, even though I don't like Sanctum. It's, uh, one of my least favorite houses. I do like some of the abilities that they give. And, the last thing I wanted to, maybe not, maybe not the last thing, but something I wanted to...

bring up was that so if you know your your cards that have the battle line matters abilities your deploys like you just said ghost hawk or uh orator has sorrow you can change your gameplay if you know your deck well enough like call the certain house to build up your battle line ahead of time to draw into [00:16:00] your outs so that like If you have a Ghost Hawk and a Gamgee, you can do your Shadows turn, set it up, um, and then maybe they think they're free to do whatever, and then you slam a Ghost Hawk and you reap and you steal or anything like that.

So, I think the last level of really getting to know your deck and really getting to know your battle line is setting it up ahead of time and building the best possible board state. That you can with that. Which also, to re like, to bring it all together, that changes if you're at an archon event where all the sets are legal, or you're at a sealed event.

where only a one set is legal. It benefits to learn all the cards that care about, um, the battle. What was the, um, what was the Brobnar example you said? Berserker Slam. Berserker Slam. So like if you're doing a World's Collide sealed event and your opponent has like a Brobnar deck, you can't actually look at their list, but you can [00:17:00] know they might have Berserker Slam, especially if they picked.

Brobnar and Worlds Collide, they might have some, you know, something up their sleeve, which might be a handful of Berserker Slams. And you can plan accordingly ahead of time before it even becomes a problem.

Yeah, certainly, certainly. One of my, I'll shout out one of my favorite cards here that makes that, um, really pulls together a lot of this thinking is, uh, the Think Tanks, especially the...

Uh, regular just group think tank that has action deal four damage to every creature that shares a house with at least one of its neighbors because I've noticed with that that if you can get out your think tank and minimize damage to your own battle line if you manage to clear your opponent's battle line all of a sudden if they play more than one creature in a turn those those creatures will get hit by um, By group think tank, which I just think is, uh, that card has grown on me the more I've played

with it.

I think that's a very [00:18:00] difficult card to use, and you, that's a great example. That is a, that's a very good example of how, even if you just take out the specific creatures ahead of time, and then you slam that thing, they have to answer it, or they're just going to have their board state wrecked every single turn.

Great example. And

then of course we have the leaders, uh, something to be aware of both on your side of the board and your opponent's. George, which of, which of the leaders do you think could be truly influential or could we see in some of those truly, uh, truly outstanding archon decks?

My favorite is Zenzi, Zenzi, Zenzi, Zenzik.

Um, those effects have continued to be very strong. The Dis one, where you can steal your opponent's creatures, I think is also very good. But... Generally, I think the creatures that have an ability immediately, which Xen'Z does, tend to be the better ones. Ancient Bear has not been so great for me. And

congratulations, George, for [00:19:00] the potentially best pronunciation of Xen'Z, Xen'Z, Xen'Z, Xen'Z, Xen'Z on the podcast that we've had so far.

Awesome. And we have a few questions from... Uh, our, our Patreons, we got a couple of questions from S. C. Steele, uh, about the battle line, some of these touch on, touch on a few kind of concepts we've hit on earlier, uh, and they're also very general, right, the, um, you know, KeyForge, uh, the answer is often it depends, right, with your matchup, um, but, uh, one of her questions was, uh, at what delta of creatures, there's that word delta again, uh, at what delta of creatures do you, Play a board wipe.

Now this is assuming of course you have one and maybe you're holding it for for maximum value. Um, but yeah, Georgia, what kind of delta of creatures do you, if you're holding a board wipe, do you wait for to drop

that? I think it's not a particular delta. It's whether or not you are in control [00:20:00] of the game.

Your opponent might only have three creatures, but if those three creatures are completely wrecking you and stopping you from doing anything, then you might just need to pull the trigger on that board

wipe. Yes, yeah, I think, I think that's right. There's just so many factors that, um, sometimes I have held board wipes if I think my opponent is going to play some more creatures, but of course it is that balance between what value would they get between, between now and then.

As well, or playing to the conditions of your board wipe. Maybe you want to get some damage on your Brobnar creatures before playing a Coward's End.

I would say if, it's a conditional delta, but if you think that you can't at least match, cause it is a race, so if you can't match the delta within the one or two next turns, then you should probably...

Pull that trigger on that board away. That

is a great thing to ask yourself. Can I match, yeah, can I [00:21:00] match the delta? If not, then I go ahead and reset the board, because then we're both at probably delta zero, you know, excepting wards and other protections and things. But, yeah, that's a great, that's a great way to look at it.

And we talked about this before. She asks, what cards opponent's decklist that affect flank, non flank?

When I'm looking at whether or not the, If I'm looking at an opponent's archon's card, I'm looking for cards that, um, remove flank creatures that are not creatures. So, there's Vaulder that attacks flank creatures, that's fine.

There's, uh, the Sanctum. I would, like, the Sanctum creatures always mess me up because they all sound like angels and they all have...

I'm not looking for those things. I'm looking more for like the Berserker Slams, the, um, the Booby Traps, the, okay, Special Delivery, uh, is the one [00:22:00] that I'm always on the lookout for, because I don't want my Wrestling Contest getting purged, but essentially the thing I'm always looking for is the removal that can take out your flank creatures particularly, um, and then the opposite of that is the removal that only hits non flank creatures like Hand of Dis is a big one.

If your opponent has even multiple Hands of Dis, then you need to put your valuable creatures on the flank like maximum as possible just to do the most damage to the opponent. And then on the opposite side, the ones that I like the most are Titan Mechanics, even though I feel like those are difficult to use sometimes.

Staunch Knights, the Panpacas I like quite a bit. Those things can get out of control with just a heavy board controlling the game.

And that walks very well into our final Patreon question, which is indeed on the Panpacas. Everyone's favorite [00:23:00] card, of course. Which of the Pampakas do you think is the, the biggest kill on sight Pampaka?

Which one do you want to get rid of the most if your opponent brings it up?

That's, I was wondering if the question was going to be like, which one is better? But that's even a better way to pose that question. Yeah, yeah. I, I gotta still say the, the plus two, Panpeka, so... Panpeka

Anga.

That's such a better question than what I expected.

The plus two is gonna make it more difficult to kill anything else. So, if you're gonna, like, have to kill one of them, it's gonna be that one, because then you can take out the other things you need to take out. Um, Skirmish is obviously gonna wreck your board state, but like... If they have a, like, a plus two and then, like, some other kind of bonus power, that, that board state's gonna get out of hand, and then if you don't have a board wipe, you're probably just gonna end up losing after that.

Panpaka Anga is the answer to that one.

[00:24:00] Excellent. Excellent. If anybody needs my trick for how I remember which is which, uh, well, step one, watch the entirety of Avatar the Last Airbender. Um, step two, remember that the main character, Aang, is powerful. And step three, Panpaka Anga gives plus two power. So that's my trick.

It's a good trick. It's awfully convoluted, but it works. It honestly works.

Thanks so much, George, for joining us today for a chat all about the battle line on KeyForge.

And that is the episode for today. Thank you so much for joining us here on KeyForge public radio, a special shout out as always to our AirWave advocate level supporters on Patrion like Paul Roadrunner. Of course, you can check everything out on the website. KeyForge public radio.com. All the old episodes, lots of blogs, the merch shop as well. The Patriot and the Mert shop are how the show gets support so that we can keep going and delivering this kind of KeyForge content to you. Thank you so [00:25:00] much. We'll see you next Wednesday.

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