[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Still speaking of healing, Life / Knight can also prove useful - it automatically heals the weakest card by two each turn. (Incidentally, sometimes it has chosen another card to heal so I'm not really sure the algorithm selecting the card to heal is correct or well thought-out.)

Also, if your opponent goes (mass-)Undead and frequently uses Death card abilities (for example, Death / Black Mage’s Extract Soul, very frequently used by the AI, Death / Necromancer's Dark summon etc.), the caster (Death) card will be hit for 3 damage.

In addition, this card has a REALLY useful, mass-killer ability, Concentrate, which is even better than Earth / Pegasus' Holy Strike (which only delivers 5 damage to ONE target card at the cost of 2 Life). This ability, which costs 3 Life (that is, only slightly more expensive than Earth / Pegasus' Holy Strike), is particularly useful against all the enemy cards. It delivers 6 damage to the chosen, target enemy card (unless it's a Life creature) and the same damage, divided by the number of cards, to all the others. It has no adverse effects like damaging Knight by 3 upon attacking a Death card either (unlike with Earth / Pegasus' Holy Strike); only (default) abilities like the Fire Shield of Fire / Efreet will return half of the damage to it.

All in all, ALWAYS try to get this card on your deck and make sure you always use its Concentrate ability! (Of course, you'll also want to try to bring an Air / Zeus on the deck in order to use its really cool (8 damage) and cheap (1 Air) Lightning ability if your enemy (frequently) uses cards with level 6 or below.)

If you go for mass-Earth (because, for example, your enemy doesn't have Earth / Titan, whose Thunder Fist ability is particularly effective (3 damage for each of them at the expense of 1 Air only) against Earth creatures OR he's preferring the use of the new Earth / Force of Nature spell, which has absolutely no effect on Earth creatures), you'll want to use Earth / Enchanter (level: 7), which also auto-heals other cards - but Earth cards only (as opposed to Knight, which heals any other type) and only by 1 each turn.

It has another feature: it heals all the other cards by five upon reaching one HP (but NOT upon simply dying) through, for example, the Death / Plague spell, other spells or direct attacks, only leaving 1 HP for the card.

Air / Kronos is a VERY useful card, for three reasons:

- its (pretty expensive: it costs 3 Air) Aging ability is particularly useful against high-HP cards (for example, Life / Chimera, Water / Leviathan, Fire / Infernal etc. to quickly reduce their (both maximal and current) HP to the half of the original. As it's the original that is halved, you will want to use the ability as soon as your enemy brings the card to the board - then, your first, subsequent attack will already decrease the halved HP.

Speaking of high-HP cards, you should also pay special attention to the new Earth / Force of Nature spell too, which deals damage to each enemy creature equal to half of its remaining health and is, therefore, REALLY useful. Note that it has no effect to Earth cards.

- attacks creatures of a level less than 10 with additional damage, equal to the HP difference. This means it'll attack for example a level 2 Earth / Satyr with (default) 4+(10-2) damage.

- one of the VERY few cards to deliver direct, and pretty high damage to the, otherwise, very though Earth / Etherial.

Life / Avatar is pretty strange and, frankly, I don't know why it's here at all. I consider it a pretty worthless card because, despite its high (10) level and double damage taking (the owner takes the same damage as Avatar, unless, of course, you have a Water / Ice Guard on the board to divide the damage by two), its strength isn't particularly high (7) and it has no special abilities / features either. Had it ANY extra ability, it'd be a nice card. Now, on the other hand, I in no way recommend it, not even together with the (cheap: 1 Air) Protect ability of the also-new Air / Guardian or the (expensive: 3 Earth) Spider Web ability of the also new Earth / Giant Spider.

Life / Etherial can be a real pain in the back for your opponent to get rid of and is excellent against “tough”, powerful, high-strength units like Water / Kraken or Life / Chimera; in this respect, it's pretty much similar to our old friend, Earth / Forest Spirit (the latter, of course, does receive (some) damage from other cards and spelling abilities).

Note that if your opponent has the Death / Lich card, it’ll deliver 5 damage to your Etherial every turn (but it won't deal any damage when it's summoned - as opposed to other cards). The same will happen with Air / Kronos as well - it'll deliver lvl 10- lvl 7 = 3 damage to Etherial each turn. If Kronos can't attack the card directly (another card is placed against Etherial), it can still use its Aging ability to reduce the health of the card to four (and, then, you can quickly Suffocate it with Python). Also, Earth / Echidna will eventually kill this card because of its poisoning it (poisons also kills Etherial - both used as card (default) ability or full spells). Finally, if you have Fire / Efreet, you can effectively use its implicit fire shield (or, if it's not in the opposite shot, its Fire Shield ability, preferably on another Fire creature to avoid losing health every turn) - it'll send back one damage (that is, damages Etherial by one) each time Etherial attacks.

To my knowledge, these are the only creatures that can do any kind of harm to this card by direct attack. Of card abilities (spells), you can Suffocate it Earth / Python (after damaging it with something like Fire / Fire Spikes, Water / Poison or the new, really effective Water / Poison Storm - or, with the other means (Aging, Fire Shield etc.) outlined above). You can also consume it with Water / Kraken, but the latter also consumes all other cards and, therefore, can only be used sparingly. Finally, you can also use Kronos' Aging against the card. It, however, can't directly kill the card with this ability - you'll need another spell / ability / card to finally kill it.

Installation tip

Make sure you also get and install the brand new version 1.10 of the original game (that is, Orions: Legend of Wizards) BEFORE installing the new pack on top of it. The expansion will NOT flawlessly work with the previous, 1.02 version of the original game.

Cross-posted to (might be worth checking out for additional info / discussions!): PPCT, AximSite, XDA-Developers, FirstLoox, BrightHand, HowardForums, MoDaCo, PocketGamer.org, PocketGaming.de.

UPDATE (08/20/2007): PPCT frontpage

UPDATE (08/26/2007): PocketGamer.org frontpage & featured review (no direct links can be given to top-of-the-page banner announcements; hence the screenshot)