Liches

## Overview

*Liches are extremely old wizards who seek immortality by shedding their flesh for a skeletal form. They feed off of the souls of the dead, both reanimating them and drawing power from them. The more minions they send to other players’ discards, the more powerful they will grow!*

Use players’ discard piles as a toolbox to enable powerful abilities. Drain other players of their minions while you play many of them, and grow your horde of undead to overwhelming proportions.

### Details

#### General

* **Name:** Liches
* **Author:** Berryl
* **Complexity:** 2/5
* **Version:** 2.3
* **Last Updated:** October 7th, 2023

#### Mechanics

* Stasis
* Storing

### Breakdown

Liches have the standard 10 minions and 10 actions. They have an exceedingly low 19 total minion power, or an average minion power of 1.9 per minion. Among their actions, they have:

* 2 play-on-minion actions: 2x Phylactery
* 2 play-on-base actions: Blight, Danse Macabre
* 3 self-stasis actions: 2x Enervation, Toll the Dead
* 3 standard actions, 1 of which directly affects one or more minions (in **bold**): **Raise the Dead,** Death's Grasp, Necronomicon

### Minions (10)

* **1x Acererak (5):** Talent: Choose a minion in any discard pile. Place stasis counters on it equal to its power (if it has 0 power, play it).
* **2x Dracolich (4):** Ongoing: Once per turn, after a minion goes to any player’s discard pile, draw a card.
* **3x Demilich (2):** Discard a minion of power 3 or less from the top of another player’s deck.
* **4x Necromancer (0):** Play a minion of power 2 or less here from any player’s discard pile.

### Actions (10)

* **2x Enervation:** Place two stasis counters on this card. Special: Before a base scores, you may play this card from stasis (regardless of its number of stasis counters). When you play this from stasis, you may destroy a minion of power 3 or less.
* **2x Phylactery:** Play on one of your minions. Ongoing: Once per turn, after a minion goes to any player’s discard pile, you may store it under this card. Talent: Place a minion stored under this card on the bottom of its owner’s deck to place two +1 power counters on this minion. Special: Before a base scores, you may use this card’s talent.
* **1x Raise the Dead:** Place a minion from another player’s discard pile on top of its owner’s deck. Place total power counters on your minions equal to the power of that minion. Place this card on top of your deck.
* **1x Toll the Dead:** Place a stasis counter on this card. Special: When you would remove a stasis counter from this card, you may instead store a minion from another player's discard under this card with power greater than or equal to the number of cards stored under this card and give one of your minions +1 power until the end of the turn for each of those cards.
* **1x Blight:** Play on a base. Ongoing: After you play a minion here, draw a card.
* **1x Death’s Grasp:** Each other player may discard two minions. For each player who does not, you may play an extra minion from your discard pile.
* **1x Danse Macabre:** Play on a base. Talent: Place a minion from another player’s discard pile into their hand to give each of your minions here +2 power until the end of the turn.
* **1x Necronomicon:** Shuffle up to three actions from each player’s discard pile into their owners’ decks.

### Bases

* **(15) Archmage’s Tower (2 3 1):** The winner here looks at each other player’s hand and discards two cards from each.
* **(18) The Underdark (4 1 1):** After you play a minion here, you must discard a minion or reveal your hand to show you cannot.

## Clarifications

* **Phylactery:** You may use this card's talent once in phase 2 and then one or more times in phase 3, if the appropriate conditions are fulfilled.
* **Toll the Dead:** You may store a minion instead of removing a stasis counter even if there are no minions eligible to receive the power. If you remove a stasis counter, you cannot use the power.
* **Necronomicon:** Choose which number of actions to shuffle separately for each player; for example, you may shuffle in one action from your discard pile and three from another player's discard pile.

## Strategy

### General

Liches use discarded minions as fuel for their abilities. Thus, they can be a little slow to get going early in the game. The Demiliches will help with this, as they put minions directly into other players' discard piles for you to use. Once you get a couple minions to pull from, your options open up dramatically: Death Knights can pull themselves and others into play, Dracoliches can draw you cards, Acererak can play them on a talent basis, and Phylactery, Raise the Dead, Toll the Dead, or Danse Macabre can convert them directly into power. Given that the Death Knights are 0-power minions, they are excellent targets for Acererak's talent, and they synergize very well with Blight and Danse Macabre. Blight is best used in the early- to midgame, when Death Knights can use it to fill your hand and discard without completely depleting your deck. After that point, Necronomicon and Raise the Dead should be used to stall out a reshuffle; resetting the deck and destroying your discard pile is something Liches should avoid at all costs.

In addition to offense via swarm, Liches also come naturally equipped to play defense. Demiliches and Death's Grasp will force or encourage other players to have fewer minions at their disposal, buying you time to set up your attacks. Necronomicon can further dilute opponents' decks with actions they may not want back. The two copies of Enervation allow Liches to get solos against minimal opponent presence, forcing opponents to commit the valuable minions they do draw into helping you win more efficiently.

### Partner Suggestions

Partners with a sprinkling of self-destruction will help Liches get going more quickly. Those with extra benefits for having a large quantity of minions will benefit greatly from Acererak and the Death Knights. A partner with a high raw power output will help Liches overcome their extremely low printed power; this is especially true for those with terminal actions, as Liches can sometimes struggle on this front if Raise the Dead has no good targets.

#### Published

* **Robots:** This is probably Liches' absolute best partner. Microbot Alpha can be played by the Death Knights to massive effect, and the Fixers can further buff the Death Knights.
* **Ninjas:** Any opponent presence becomes slippery at best when Liches' minion starvation is combined with Ninjas' extremely high removal potential. Invisible Ninja for a little bit of extra card draw and terminal power will go a long way.
* **Magical Girls:** Death Knights are perfect for powering up the Magical Girls' talents with a low footprint. Their movement options bring something new Liches lack on their own.
* **Superheroes:** Mild Mannered Citizens to immediately grab (and Golden Age to continually recur) Acererak will work wonders. Superheroes' high power will help compensate for Liches' weakness in that department.
* **Killer Plants:** Sprouts being self-destructive ways to grab Demiliches will greatly accelerate Liches to their midgame state. Kudzu can be absolutely unfair with how much power Liches can leverage it for.

## Author Notes

Liches were a faction I drafted a couple years ago, but returned to recently with a new focus. They always had the theme of caring about minions being in others' discards, but in early versions they cared more about actually destroying things. The version you see here is much more streamlined, leveraging destruction in better ways and incorporating mechanics from Excellent Movies, Dudes which were not available at the time.