kpr-ep27-supporthouse

[00:00:00] In the ancient times though, was a podcast called bouncing death. Kwok by Kira mode and co Damron. Cameron, these super nerdy dudes launched a podcast that would change how we talked about KeyForge forever. With their strategic thoughts and framings for the game of new paradigm shifts, no resources, opportunity costs filling up your hand at the end of the turn. How can we think about this?

And they swooped in and said, main house support, housed burst house. And here's some 18 minute episodes where we tell you what it is. And then we stop talking about it after age of Ascension, because we're done. And I thank them for their service. And now we pick up where they left off. To talk about as we did last week, main houses in this week, support houses. So. Let's get sweaty.

[00:01:00]

Welcome to KeyForge public radio. My name is Zach Armstrong, and we're here to help you be a better keyboard player. And Hey, quick note. I see some of you are listening at your, you hadn't didn't hit the follow button. That's so weird that you wouldn't hit the follow button. So whatever podcast platform you're listening on.

So. Do that then you'll hear more KeyForge public radio, as soon as it drops. Every Wednesday. So we are talking about bouncing death, corks house rolls from early in KeyForge and looking at them in the light. Of all the new mechanics and new meters that we've experienced since then. Last week, we talked about the main house role.

Next week, we're going to talk about the burst house role. This week, we are talking about the support house. Role? What does that mean? What does it look like? And how does understanding what this looks like? Putting these frames and terminology on it, help us [00:02:00] play KeyForge better and help us understand. Things. In ways that will help us select decks better either for our con or as we're putting together a lions techs or seal decks. In Alliance sealed,

or selecting our context or deciding how to pilot. Our straight up sealed decks. And that's what we're looking at two day here on KeyForge public radio. So, what does a support house do? What do we mean by a support house? Well, there's all sorts of different things that go into a support house as far as what they can do.

It's a number of things. So to compare, let's re describe what a main house is. So we know what a support house is in comparison. Main house is a house that you can call back to back and be advanced, properly advancing your game state. Without having to play even any cards from hand. So main house is where you can be calling it back to back taking advantage of your board and you don't even need necessarily be to need to be playing cards from hand.

You are getting good [00:03:00] advantage from what's on your board. These creatures are surviving. They are getting you advantage and you are pushing forward, just using them, demanding an answer from your opponent. So a support house can do. A couple of things, it wants to help your main house do its job. Maybe you've got some house cheating effects to get your main house set up better.

Maybe you've got your board wipe in this house too, when your opponent responds to your board or is getting a board out before you do. And so you get your board wipe out to to even the playing field, as you try to set up your main house. And it's going to have more situational cards that. Have more fluctuation to them,

they have more variants to them and that they are situationally going to be. Better in some situations than many cards in your main house is going to have cards that are just always good to place out onto the field and call back to back. Your support house is going to have situationally good cards.

This is where your removal is often going to [00:04:00] live. Your control cards, right? Like bounce or house a house restriction cards. Tempo cards, maybe capturing Amber to buy time. Right? Helpful combos that aren't necessarily wind condition combos or burst combos, because that's going to be over in our burst house later. These are combos. Perhaps you're going to see these classic fog effects.

That's the old magic, the gathering term. We have things like fog bank to stop fighting or opposition research. To stop reaping. There's a number of these kinds of effects, across many different kinds of KeyForge cars. And so it's going to be, it's going to be helping your main house, do its job more situational cards that may be control and affects the tempo that let you either by time or by time by slowing your opponent down, accelerating your game plan to then set up your main house to do its job.

Really. Well, So, uh, with, with removal, that's going to be, of course removal is. Responding to [00:05:00] threats that your opponent puts down. They've got a there's the old KeyForge phrase killed a which, and this is inspired by the early. Which traded cards, especially over in untamed and the early days of the game hunting, which to power after another friendly creature interest play gain one which of the eye, which is going to be reprinted here in grim reminders soon, which is a three power creature that says after reap return a card from your discard pile to your hand, these are all very powerful cards with very good effects. That your opponent wants to remove generally speaking, as soon as they can. And so it killed the, which is a term there and your support house.

If you're going to have removal, if you're going to have removal that just pings them for some damage, let's look at we had reprinted and winds of exchange the card pound. And. In Brobnar with an Amber PIP that says deal two damage to a creature with one damage splash that's four total damage.

That's great at removing these pesky smaller witches like hunting witch, or like a desk, which one power [00:06:00] elusive friendly creatures enter, play ready with omega. That was printed it back in an age of Ascension. So a pound is going to, that is a good situational card where if your opponent only has big creatures and them being damaged, doesn't really matter to you or your opponent has creatures with armor, right?

It's only situation to get pound does not always good, but pound is great if they just dropped a threat onto the board, or you need to go ahead and get some damage spread out across them. So a support combo in this way, a situationally good set of cards that you might hold while your main house does. It's job.

Is a pound plus something. Like. P. Pound plus something like Val of blood that deals two damage to enemy damaged enemy. Creature. So the balancing act with how that card is designed is that it's great because it doesn't damage your creatures. Usually these effects are two sided to be quote unquote balanced.

But the prerequisite is that the enemy creatures have to be damaged to receive just two more [00:07:00] damage. Now, plenty of ways to get damage onto enemy creatures in Brobnar. So valve blood usually. Quite good. Quite good. And it really helps you close the gap between how much damage you can do via pink damage or fire spitter. Or flame thrower, getting all these one damages out to deal more damage and get, especially those three and four power creatures off the board completely.

So that's an example of two cards that are situationally good, right? Like early game. If your opponent's not presenting small threats that you need to blow up with things like valve, blood and pound those cards, aren't going to be. Particularly really good. Also a good example here. It's a bit of a support card, a bit of a burst card, perhaps.

So we're going to, we're going to blur the lines a little bit here, but easy marks where you blow up a friendly creature to exalt three different three different enemy creatures. So that is a great way to get Amber out onto the board. And then, blow them up to get some Amber.

So that might not be true burst because you're really just setting yourself up to reward blowing up those creatures later. So, that is a bit of a board, a burst [00:08:00] card disguised a burst card designed to help out a main house where or support house. Doing its function of fighting down the enemies board, or just blowing them up with action cards.

So removal is a very good support house role. Control as a very good support house role. We're seeing a lot of this, a lot of high performing cars in unfathomable in winds of exchange, doing this kind of work. We have a Bissell site where you blow up a friendly creature. Look at your opponent's hand and get to discard a card from there.

Very powerful. You have befuddle or you name a house in your opponent. Can't play cards of any other houses during their next turn. Catch and release. There's a lot of disruption and control. Where you can really mess with them. And now what I think unfathomable in Windsor exchange, if you played with them as a great example of this, because I very rarely see a strong and fathomable house that you want to call back to back like a main house, you want to be calling your other [00:09:00] houses and then call unfathomable once every few turns to play out your control, your threats to your food gurus, your. Your food gurus, your fathom rivers that keep their hand size down unless they respond to those threats.

Food grew being one power and wallets on the board. It's got poison. And it says, while it's in play your opponent refills, their hand till one less card fathom river does the same thing. It's got four power, no poison, but makes a token creature and does the same thing. If they have, if you have a token creature out. So it can present these threats that slowed them down.

You can play things like befuddle catch and release. Bissell site, all which disrupt your opponent and control them so that you can shape. You can shape their response right on the next turn. You're discarding a card. You are telling them what they can and can't do on their next turn, or just completely messing any up any came crafting. They've done. With things like. With things like catch and release, which returns all creatures to hand. And then everybody just cars [00:10:00] down until they have only six cards in hand. Pretty disruptive. Card. So that is the kind of thing that can control looks like, right?

There's the old classic car control the week where you pick a card and they have to choose, they, you pick a house on your opponent's identity card and they have to choose that as their house. Next turn, mark of dis in mass mutation was another version of that, where your deal two damage to an enemy, creature or UDL to damage to a creature.

And if it survives that house must be called on that's controller's next turn. So, that lives often in the support house where your main house are calling back to back, and then you go into the support house at some points to remove creatures from the board to slow your opponent down more than you're slowing yourself down. And take that tempo.

I think capture often plays into tempo, right? Tempo capture was derided a bit in the early days because people said, oh, they can just blow the creatures up and get the Amber back. So it doesn't really matter. Now, in some cases, that's true. You're going to capture some Amber and your opponent may have a way to go [00:11:00] ahead and get that Amber back within a turn or two. But what capturing Amber really does as far as tempo. Is, it keeps your opponent from forging when they otherwise would have, right.

If they had that number, they might be forging. And whenever you take a turn. Whenever you take away their ability to forge. During that forge a key step in attorney and you've put them one turn further behind. You, you are taking turns away from them as far as getting to that third key.

Cause remember when we talked about KeyForge is a racing game, you've got to get to the third key. All that matters is getting to that third key. And if you lock that in, then you've won and, whatever it costs you to get there, whether you made a play that looked like suboptimal, but given generally speaking, but given the game state. Or what you knew they had left, that was the right play or you made a risky play to get there. You don't want to get to that third key.

And if you're taking away, their Amber save got for Amber captured, they make tune bore. They would be at check if they had that Amber, but now they're not because the Amber is sitting on your creatures. [00:12:00] So that is the kind of tempo thing that support house. Can also do, it's just pulling that Amber over onto your creatures.

I am thinking a lot about Star Alliance and winds of exchange also has a number of great support cards. That reflect this sort of thing in. In Star Alliance and one's exchange, you have a lot of deck filtering, which can work in a main house, but also can very much work in a support house, especially if you're using the deck filtering to make tokens for whatever your main house is.

Like. We talked about last time, we talked about Mar as being a great token creature main house in ones of exchange, you have things like. Future booster, which of course is Omni. Let's you look at that top card of your deck and put it on the bottom. When you're in any house, you have things like grunt work, letting you look at the top three cards of your deck, rearrange them, and then make a token creature. You have a scout, Pete. And navigator Ali letting you interact with the top cards of your deck, lots of filtering and skill testing there. And those can be main house, but often [00:13:00] Star Alliance is a more easily fought off the board or removed from the action cards. So they certainly can be may house and they can jump in as a main house.

If your opponent is not responding to them, they can serve that role. But many of their cars aren't quite as natural. At least in winds of exchange in that role. Together in in that latest. And that latest set, although they can certainly serve that purpose if they're getting their combos to go off and you do have enough protection, especially things like collector, Morin, and upgrades with extra Amber pips on them, a collector born returning upgrades from your discard pile to your hand on play, and then readying after you attach upgrades. To it.

And there's just all sorts of fun bursts you can do there, especially if you have transporter. Platform. So sometimes they can serve in the main house, but often they're serving the support house role. Either with their. Good removal, which traditionally star Alliance has had some good removal.

They have both Quinn, Trina. They have country, no warp. In winds of exchange, where you choose a friendly and an unmade [00:14:00] creature and destroy every creature that shares a house with the chosen creatures. A fantastic piece of. Fantastic piece of removal. And so they have good removal. They have good, helpful combos that aren't necessarily a wind con, but are helpful combos to get you towards. The end there.

So remember that your consistent cards are going to be over in your main house. If a house is doing something consistently and can call it back to back, that's your main house. When you have your removal, when you have your control or tempo cards in a different house. And that identity is as clear in that house.

Now it's not always right. KeyForge houses can often be a mix of things or play different roles at different times, given just on what your draw looks like or how mixed up a list looks like, but your support roles often have remove a control and tempo.

So as you keep playing winds of exchange, and as you look forward to grim reminders, Look for what are the support house roles? Looking like in [00:15:00] those houses, what houses have removal at common and uncommon that you can count on seeing for Alliance sealed or in regular sealed. What is going to be a good support house?

So what does the control look like? Control is often a very strong archetype. We've seen a lot of that for mass mutation. Dominate. Quite well, with things like market disk, things like in furnace. So keep an eye out for what the control, what the template looks like in grim reminders, so that you can tell what is going to be a good support house to backup any main houses that you can push forward, especially as there's stickiness on the board hand filtering. Going hang filtering for a main house.

And then you can set up that perfect support house that as they, if they ever respond to your main house, being really strong and they take it out or they disrupt it, what can be your response right after that, with your support house that you got ready in your hand, especially in grim reminders, where are you going to be able to. Discard cards as you go from out of house. And make that hand look like as close as you make that hand look like you want it to, as you [00:16:00] go forward. This has been KeyForge public radio.

I am your host. Zack Armstrong. Remember that KeyForge public radio.com is where you can find these episodes and blog posts. We've recently archived all of Soho genes, a hobby drama, blog posts. He put on a Reddit a while back that chronicled all the worst bits of KeyForge is history, but in a way that makes you love KeyForge even more.

It's really seems quite skillful writing. When I am happy to have been permitted by him to archive those onto the KeyForge public radio website, we have co are of course, supported on Patrion. Thank you so much to everybody who has joined us there. And if you would like to join us there, I would love to have you there on Patrion supporting KeyForge public radio and a special thank you to our AirWave advocate level supporters.

Like Paul Rudd runner. Make sure you are following the podcast on your podcast player of choice. If you haven't already. And remember like your radio dial me or KeyForge skills always be well tuned.

Visit [00:17:00] keyforgepublicradio.com to find all of our episodes,

is made possible with support from listeners just like you, who believe in this game and this show. When you join the Patreon, you'll receive access to votes on content, sneak peeks, early knowledge of interviews, access to the Discord, and other benefits. So come on down, I'd be honored if you joined us.

Follow KPR on any social media platform you frequent, just search for KeyForge Public Radio, and we're probably there. This show is produced by Rooster High Productions, which is me. And remember, dear listener, the most important part of KeyForge is the person across the table.