Beginner's strategy guide : Absorb or breach

## Intro

Welcome to the first article of a series of strategy guides, which will develop some aspects of Prismata strategy.

My name is Foxclear, and I have been playing Prismata for a few years at competitive level.

In this article, I will talk about two of the most basic yet core mechanics of Prismata : Absorbing and Breaching.

## Absorbing

Due to the fact that damage points cannot be spread freely between units, but instead will destroy any defender unit until all points have been spent, only one unit can take some damage and still live. The unit in this role is called the absorber, as the damage it sustains is not enough to kill it, and it will regain its life afterwards, thus making it effectively absorb some damage.

In the base set, the most effective absorber is the Wall, with an absobing power of 2 Attack, builds instantly. However, many advanced set units have a much stronger absorbing power.

The higher the Health of a defensive unit, the higher the health it recovers, that is the gain of the Absorb.

Absorbing damage is very important in this game, as the absorbing unit costs far less than the attacking units used to produce the absorbed damage, thus you will most often try to absorb as much damage as yo can every turn.
*Note : when I talk about absorbers, I taslk mostly about units with blue Health (health that recover after an attack). I will mention other absorbers later*

## Breaching

A breach occurs when the attacking power equals or overwhelms the defenses. It is usually a bad thing for the attacked player, as three things will occur :

* **No absorption** ! Remember when I said that absorbing is great because it negates some damage ? Well, when you're breached, you take full damage, even if you have defended for exactly as much as your opponent has attacked (which is called *breach for exact*). Thus, it is like your opponent does extra damage to you. And this effect is of course a worse loss when your absorber has more health. Here:

Instead of absorbing 6 attack, I take a full 7 damage. Ouch!

* Any damage over your defenses will be redirected to other units chosen by your opponent. And he usually will prioritize frail and easy targets like Tarsiers or Drones, or more important main economy engines or damage dealers.
* When you do absorb, then the absorbing unit will still be standing on the following turn, helping you on your defense. After a breach, your absorber will be dead, so you will have a harder time defending on the following turn and you are likely to get breached again.

## Absorbers

Basically, any unit with more than 1 health and the keyword **Blocker** (represented by a shield on the unit icon) can be an absorber. The base set has 2 of them : Wall

, with 2 absorption, and Rhino

, with 1 absorption. Many units from the advanced set can be absorbers, too, and not all of them have blue health. Some units with red health can also be considered absorbers, either because they regenerate some health each turn (like Xaetron, which is one of the best absorbers in the game), or because their health doesn't matter because you will not be using them on defense later on (classic examples are Protoplasm which you can sacrifice or Feral Warden which will join the ranks of your attacker after having "absorbed" damage).

## Soaking

As I mentioned earlier, at any given point, you can have only one absorber. However, even a strong absorber will only take in a small portion of your opponent's offensive. The rest of it will be taken on soak units. Soak units are units which also have the Blocker keyword that will be sacrificed to reduced your opponent's damage until your absorber can take it all. Absorbers, like Walls, can also become soak units when there is a stronger absorber to replace them. Some of the soak units have the keyword **Prompt**, which let them defend instantly when they're bought, like Wall, others do not and will be active on the following turn. Often, the second category will have better defensive capabilities and they will be used in anticipation of your future defensive turn.

next : economy >