“It is exquisite finality draped in a gentle kiss.”

Click here to pre-order The Duchess of Deception, The Roaring Rose, Ashes dice, and more at the PlaidHatGames.com store! Ashes pre-orders come with a FREE exclusive Phoenixborn; Orrick Gilstream now available with Victoria and Leo orders!

Brace yourselves! Prepare to have your jaws drop! When I first saw the art for the 2 conjurations found in The Roaring Rose I was speechless for about a minute. They were absolutely stunning and still amazingly reminiscent of the flowers that inspired them. But enough prattling about the art. Let' jump right into what these cards do.

Before your eyes feast upon the amazingness of the flower conjurations, lets first look at one final card in Leo's deck designed to play mind games with your opponent. You've already seen a couple cards that make attacking less desirable for your opponent, and remorse will add to that feeling. Remorse allows you to punish your opponents for their aggression, making them less likely to attack again.

But remorse doesn't stop there. Oh no. On top of dealing your opponent 2 damage for having attacked you, Remorse discards the top 2 cards of their draw pile, advancing a secondary plan of winning by exhausting their deck.

And once you have removed the opponent's entire draw pile, this card deals an additional damage, bringing the total damage from this card to 3. I know that this is conditional damage, and this isn't the first card in Ashes to deal 3 damage for 2 dice, but it is the first card that deals 3 damage in one go, that only requires one of those dice to be on its class side. That fact makes this card much easier to play than other options already available.

….....

Sorry, just staring at the art again.

So, this unit will destroy anything it battles. Deathstrike allows you to take out anything, regardless of its size. And even better, if an opponent throws small units at it, this conjuration has a recover value of 1, so if it survives, it's ready to go again in the next round.

It may seem this is really strong to begin with, But the summon brings a bit more to your game as well. Once you focus the summon, you also get to start removing cards from the top of your opponents' decks. So basically this is the perfect summon spell if you want to use a strategy that wins by dealing damage during the draw phase because your opponent can't draw cards! It discourages attacks with big units, and punishes the opponent for not trying to end the game quickly.

Another little rules tidbit: You pay the cost of an effect before resolving that effect. This means that if you have the same amount of dice as your opponent when you activate the summon effect, you can still discard the top card of their deck with the Focus 1 ability because you'll have fewer dice in your active pool when you resolve the effect.

This conjuration is a collection of ones, but it's a very exciting collection of ones! It has 1 attack, 1 life, It costs to put into play, and once it's in play, it costs your opponent 1 to even attack. (Note that regardless of how many you control the opponent still only has to pay 1 .) And what follows is where the ones start to get exciting!

Once you have this spell focused once, you only have to pay 1 to put an Orchid dove into play! This is the first non-unique summoning spell (that's right, it's the only one) that allows you to pay absolutely no class symbols to put a unit into play. (Iron Rhino comes close, but you still have to spend 1 to put that summon spell int play.)

With one more Summon Orchid dove in play (ok, so I'm cheating on my ones here because this is a Focus 2 ability), you get to deal 1 damage the opponent when you summon the dove. It may seem like this is unlikely, after all, it's hard to get any spell focused twice, and your opponent has to have no cards left in their draw pile for this focus ability to work, but remember, you're probably in charms if your playing this card. And charms is just the type of magic that allows you to focus things with ease. Here's why...

Charms magic allows you to search your draw pile for a specific card with Open Memories. And as you've seen with Leo's previous cards, charm magic excels at the long game, discouraging aggression from your opponent, and blunting the edge of the opponents attacks. Charms also excels at discarding cards (from hand and draw pile) making exhausting your opponent's deck a far more likely situation. All of these factors combine to make it far more likely that you can pull off the Focus 2 ability on this Summon.

So in summation, this is one card I'll be sure to include in a ton of decks. Try it out, you might like this one too!

It's sad to say, but we come to the end of another cycle. Leo and Victoria's card have all finally been revealed. Are you as ready to have the actual cards in your hands as I am? But that's not all of the Ashes news. Very soon there will be an announcement about Ashes competitive play, an errata announcement. Make sure you check back to find out what's going to change. That's all for now, time to get back to testing the next set of decks!

Thanks for reading!

Bob

Click here to pre-order The Duchess of Deception, The Roaring Rose, Ashes dice, and more at the PlaidHatGames.com store! Ashes pre-orders come with a FREE exclusive Phoenixborn; Orrick Gilstream now available with Victoria and Leo orders!

Previous Victoria and Leo Previews:

Victoria Glassfire and Illusionary Cycle, Shadow Spirit, Shadow Hound and Body Inversion, Vanish, Particle Shield, and Secret Door, Figures in the Fog, Flash Archer, and To Shadows

Leo Sunshadow, Glow Finch, and Anguish, Memory Theft, Mind Probe, and Dispel, Change Psyche, Amplify, and Beast Tamer