In my 10 games this week, games took an average of 19 turns. Games are slightly-faster than normal, especially against unprepared opponents.

Early Game: Advantage Player Two

In this series of articles, I often describe how some formats allow a player or a play-style to determine the flow of the game. This week, player two controls how the beginning of the game will play out, because they shuffle their deck first.

Because starting decks have only eight cards, player two shuffles their deck at the end of their first turn. Normally, with a ten-card deck, both players shuffle after their second turn. In this format, player one still shuffles after turn two but player two gets a full turn jump. This means it is very possible for player two to have 7+ trade on their second turn! Impossible in the normal game (excluding Gambits)!

Both players should purchase with this in mind. If there is an expensive card on the board, player one should determine before they play a single card whether or not they are going to fight for it or fight against it. If there is only one trade-generating card to buy, player one has the chance to lock their opponent out of the race for the expensive card. But if there is more than one, this becomes impossible (as player one still begins the game with only three cards on their first turn).

With this in mind, I created a three-step list of what I want to buy as player two. I didn’t always get it, but this method led to great results:

Buy scrapping. Obviously. But you don’t really need more than two cards that will always scrap. (Count scrap-from-discard as a half-scrap.) I detail this in the next section.

Buy bases. If you can’t buy scrapping, buy bases. Promo Pack 1 in this format warps their value. If any bases from that pack arrive, buy them and then start buying any others.

If you are locked out of either of those, buy trade-row scrapping to deny them from your opponent on future turns. If they get one deck-scrapper and you get none, that’s ok.

Mid Game? What Mid Game?

Because each player starts with two cards scrapped from their deck, shuffles happen faster than normal. Player two will shuffle after turn 1, then after turn 3 (usually), then after their 5th turn (assuming they purchase 7 or fewer ships). Normally the third shuffle happens after a player’s 7th or 8th turn!

Scrapping is powerful normally, but it is even more powerful in this format. Cards you scrap from your deck this week can mean the difference between shuffling on turn 5 or 6, and again on turn 7 or 8. It isn’t just about removing low-impact cards from your deck. Because we start with fewer cards than normal, the ability to manage your deck size around upcoming shuffles is increased.

All of this adds up to games reaching a very powerful state starting on Turn 14 (player two’s seventh turn). Because games are faster, the impact of a missed purchase or a bad scrap is magnified. There is very little margin for error. In this week’s Arena Strategy Thread on the fan page, Morgan Tysor aka MarauderMo, had a great insight. “TURN OFF AUTOPILOT.” You need to think things through more than normal this week, because there is more to care about.

Conclusion and Game Log

For the second week in a row, I began 6-1 and picked up a shiny. Trade Escort never looked so good! I ended with a 7-3 record overall. Here is a breakdown of my games, including lessons learned as I went: