This week we are playing with the Colony Wars starter, Promo Pack 2, and Crisis: Fleets. 104 cards in the trade row, six of which can be acquired directly to hand.

Technical Notes: Most people seem to understand the scenario rule but just to be clear: you draw a card when you scrap a card after you’ve played it, using its scrap ability. The scrap-from-trade row cards won’t do anything special. (This week, I don’t think you should buy them anyways. See below.)

Exploring To Infinity And Beyond

Because you can always buy an Explorer, every card in the game must be compared to Explorer. If the card is not better than Explorer, you should usually avoid it. I’ll get into exceptions later in the article. But to belabor the point: every card must be compared to Explorer because you can “go infinite” with them. Here is the infinite combo, a first in the game’s history:

You have an empty discard pile,

You have an empty deck,

You have a way to draw a card (including any scrap ability) and at least 2 trade unspent this turn.

Buy an Explorer.

Draw a card, forcing your one-card discard pile to become your deck, meaning you draw Explorer.

Play Explorer, gaining 2 trade.

Buy an Explorer.

Scrap the Explorer you just played, gaining 2 combat and drawing a card — which is an Explorer.

Repeat these last three steps infinitely until you generate enough combat to destroy every opposing base, then your opponent.

Extremely technical note: There are other ways to perform this combo. Technically your discard pile can have cards in it when you start, if every card in it has a scrap ability and/or lets you draw cards. You can even have some number of cards that do not do that, so long as your draws and scrap abilities in your discard pile and hand are greater than the total number of cards in your discard pile.

Every card you buy during the game can decrease your chance to go infinite. But you can’t go infinite if you only buy Explorers; you must buy Machine Cult’s deck-scrapping cards to get there. That option is not always going to be available, however. Or both players might buy one of these cards, making the race very difficult to win. Then what?

Andrea’s Comprehensive List of Cards Worth Buying

Here is a list of every card in the format worth buying, in my opinion. These cards have self-scrapping abilities, draw cards, or have a damage or authority-gain rate high enough to justify playing without the card-drawing. I’ve rated every card in the format from 1 to 10, where 1 is “just barely playable” and 10 is “buy this or please do not blame me for your losses.” If the card is not on this list, I cannot imagine a scenario where it is worth buying.