That turns every encounter into a balancing act, where you need heavy damage to take down the initial waves, and survivability to handle the last. Every fight ends with a boss, who'll keep pummelling your units until someone's remains are splattered all over the carriage floor. These are rock-strong foundations, but it gets cleverer. You don't tend to get far without a plan: you'll want to visualise your armies, to plop that multi-striking demon behind that plant-based beefcake with purpose. In so many ways, Monster Train rewards thinking ahead. Sometimes you'll do that, then curse yourself five turns later when you realise they were the linchpin to your entire strategy. Sometimes you'll hang one of your defenders out to dry, and busy yourself elsewhere. It's often, but not always, best to sit back and let your engine take a licking, and instead devote your defences to the baddies (goodies?) further down. You've got to constantly asses your priorities, and figure out where to spend your resources. That twists your thinking into novel dimensions. You've got to stop them by placing defenders and playing spells, attempting to knock their lights out before they can punch out yours. Enemy minions stumble in at the bottom of your train, then attempt to claw their way to the fourth and final level, where they'll do some damage to your engine before being obliterated by it. So far so Spire, but those fights play out very differently. You're up against a series of fights, with opportunities to improve your deck in-between. It's a neat framing, but that's all it is, and that's all it needs to be. This is all background stuff, but I do appreciate the little speech bubbles where the (often equally monstrous) agents of heaven express how sad they are about trying to murder you. Your goal is to guide a train into the centre of hell, and retake it from some pesky angels. Its engine burns with an unholy fusion of the Spire's best ideas and its own, and now it's steaming off into the history books. But Monster Train was watching, and Monster Train was learning. It's a masterclass in elegant design an unfolding lotus of weighty decisions and wild card combos. I adore the Spire to the point of self-destruction, and have played it for many hundreds of hours. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but it's at least as good as Slay The Spire. I've been playing Shiny Shoe's roguelike deckbuilder almost every night since, and I have no intention of stopping. Two weeks ago, Monster Train breezed into my life like a man wearing a trenchcoat stuffed with cocaine. This puts you into Calm (though can be used to draw cards if you're already Calm), Meditate, which lets you bring back a card from your discard pile, puts you in Calm, and ends your turn, and Fear No Evil, which puts you in Calm if the enemy intends to attack.An impressive roguelike deckbuilder with the potential to consume you. Tantrum, which deals damage multiple times and then puts itself back into your draw pile.įor non-exhaust options to get out of Wrath before the turn ends, good options are Empty Body/Mind/Fist, which give block, draw cards, and deal damage respectively as well as exiting your current stance, along with Inner Peace.Eruption, which deals damage and puts you into Wrath.There are two main ways to achieve this, the first of which involves constantly switching between stances to deal damage in Wrath with cards like Ragnarok and Wheel Kick while ensuring you never end a turn in Wrath.Ĭards that are good as they don't exhaust are: The key to a stance-dance deck is moving between stances so that you never actually take damage while in Wrath. The huge damage potential of Wrath is what makes the Watcher so strong, but the obvious drawback is how easily you can be killed.
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