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Review & Strategy Guide: the best game add-on this year (so far): Orions: Deckmasters

The new add-on, Orions: Deckmasters, for probably the best (native) Windows Mobile game of all times, Orions, has just been released. It not only adds 45 (!) brand new cards, but also implements most of the custom features I’ve asked for in my previous Orions articles.

I’ve been playing it for more than three weeks and, now, I feel I’m able to write a very thorough guide and tips. Please consult my two, related articles HERE and HERE for more info on what the game is all about, how it should be played; in this article, I only elaborate on the new cards and new modes.

In addition to the new cards, there’re brand new duel modes:

A "Custom Decks" feature, which allows to build your own deck and use it for fighting in duels. You can put any cards (at most, 24 and, at most, 5 for each element) on these decks. There are some 10 individual decks you can use.

By using these customized decks and utilizing my favorite cards (more on them later, in the Appendix), it was only in about 2% of cases that the CPU was able to defeat me in regular duel games played in Hard mode. Just a comparison: in the standard mode, the same figure is about an order of magnitude higher.

There’s also a new "Draft" mode, where players pick cards out of randomly generated "pool" before each game, and then use these cards as their fighting decks. This also makes the game less random (and you also know, before starting to playing, what cards the enemy has if you pay attention to watching him selecting the cards), while it still isn’t so restricted as with the before-explained custom deck mode.

Note that there’s an unofficial PDF manual downloadable HERE; the PMG folks don’t plan to publish a similar, updated one for the new game. Also note that the developers promise a touchscreen-less MS Smartphone (AT LAST!) and a BlackBerry(!) version of the game. Incidentally, BlackBerry means Java MIDlet. Java MIDlets mean out-of-the-box (or, at least, after some VERY simple conversion steps) compatibility with standard MIDlet environments; this may also mean other advanced MIDlet-capable platforms (for example, Symmbian S60) may also be able to run the game some day.

The game is, of course, a must to buy. I've too purchased it in order to support the developer (I've previously had it so I didn't really need a new license, but I've found it so excellent that I though to myself the developer definitely deserves this).

Now, let’s take a thorough look at the best new cards.

The best new cards

Creatures

Air / Lord Lighting (Level (price): 9/ Health (HP): 22/ Attack (strength): 5): Whenever attacks Air / Zeus, kills it. That is, if you want to kill Zeus because you have a lot of units on the deck with less than level 7, want to defend them from Zeus’ pretty effective and cheap lighting spell, the opposing slot to Zeus is free and and also have some way of making sure you can stop Zeus attacking in the next turn (by, for example, Earth / Spider’s Web), using this card is excellent.

Its spell is a bit less powerful than that of Zeus if you have little Air (the damage delivered equals to the current air) or some other direct, comparable spells like Life / Knight’s pretty powerful spell attacking all the other cards; but can be cast on any other enemy, even over level 7, unlike Zeus’ spell.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Lordlightn.jpg

Life / Monk (7/ 16 / 1): probably the best, new card; highly recommended. While its attack is pretty bad, its auto-healing effect and, even more importantly, its spell is probably the most handy of all spells. The spell decreases of the target creature’s hit by 2 until 1 until 1, it’s already at 1 and with, say, Fire / Salamander or Earth / Dryad increased or in the very few cases when the damage is pure magical and can’t be decreased – see the brand new Death / Evil Sorcerer. With it, you can quickly decrease the direct attack of even the most lethal opponents.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Monk.jpg

(Note that this was a lvl6 card during the closed betatest. I was one of the testers that pointed out it was far too powerful for being lvl6 only.)

Death / Shadow (5 / 10 / 3) is particularly useful in that it only takes half the damage from non-Life cards.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/DShadow.jpg

Death / Assassin is very important if your enemy has a Life / Etherial on the board and you quickly want to get rid of it – even if the opposing slot is taken. Of course, you still have the other, already-known ways of killing of Life / Etherial. It’s also excellent at instantly killing any other creature.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Assassin.jpg

Life / Kermit’s (6 / 8 / 2) spell (Gift of Life) is really-really useful to make sure your high-level cards like Life / Chimera or Water / Kraken are reborn after being killed. This way, by only spending 10 Life, you can even restore cards of level 13…15.

Beware: as it’s a good spell, it can be stolen via Death / Darklord.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Kermit.jpg

The biggest advantage of Water / Water Troll (6 / 16/ 4) is delivering 4 damage to three opposing creatures at the same time – for 1 Water only. Really useful if you don’t want to spend 13 Water on the similarly-working Hydra (which, in addition, would leave your Water at 0 all the time, unless you have additional ways of quickly increasing it – via, for example, Nixie)

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/WaterTroll.jpg

Air / Soul of Winds (6 / 200 (decreasing by 20 each turn) / 4 (default)) is THE card against strong card - and pretty much useless against weak cards like Earth / Dispercer or Life / Monk. The latter also means you’ll want to put very weak cards against it if your opponent brings this card to the deck.

The initial (but, in 10 turns, fully emptying) health means if it’s put against a very strong card, the damage caused by the opposing card will deliver little total damage. As the strength of the card equals to that of the opposing card, it’ll be pretty damaging to the opposing card. That is, if it’s put against, say, a Life / Chimera (13/30/10), it’ll only lose 10 + 20 HP every turn, while it, delivering 10 damage every turn, will kill Chimera in no more than three rounds (unless Chimera is protected / rehealed). And it’s really cheap!

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/SoulofWinds.jpg

Life / Valor is really useful if you can make sure (with, for example, Elven Archers or other spellcaster cards) there’re no opposing cards when it attacks the enemy owner; then, it’ll 14 damage (by default). Otherwise, its damage (to an enemy card) is 7 only.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Valor.jpg

Death / Evil Sorcerer is useful if you’re afraid of getting hit by Life / Kermit’s spells, decreasing your strength. Also useful against other spells and magical attacks.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/EvilSorcerer.jpg

Fire / Berserker (7 / 20 / 5) isn’t particularly good unless you need to quickly get rid of a very dangerous card causing huge damage (for example, an Air / Fairy or an Earth / Elven Archer) and it doesn’t have more HP than 12.

http://www.winmobiletech.com/062008orions/Berserker.jpg