Monarch/Architect

Designed by Allen Smith.


Sites

2 Whirlpool of Blood
2 Ring of Gates
2 Pinball Hall
1 Fox Pass
2 Proving Ground
1 Monkey House
2 Fortress of Shadow

Foundation

5 Test Subject
2 DNA Mage
5 Darkness Priestess
3 Ice Healer

Offense

5 Butterfly Knights
1 King of the Thunder Pagoda
1 Queen of the Ice Pagoda
1 White Ninja
2 CHAR
2 Thunder Sword

Defense

3 Brain Fire
5 Imprison
3 Nerve Gas
2 Neutron Bomb

Utility

5 Pocket Demon
2 Thunder Squire
1 Arcanoseed

Notes

Playing this deck is really very straightforward. Just get out a Butterfly Knight as soon as possible and proceed to whale away on any site available and unprotected. If there's no site unprotected, throw their defense back in their hand with an appropriately timed Imprison (possibly the most useful card in the game: zaps resources, cuts down card draw, effectively kills a character). You should never have more than three feng shui sites out; one and a proving ground is preferable.

Discard Nerve Gas before Imprison, and Neutron Bomb before either... unless you suspect Golden Gunmen. Unless you can immeditely use a Thunder Squire for a Butterfly, ditch them; if a Destroyer or an Abysmal Horror hits the board, pray you have a CHAR or enough power for a really heavy hitter. It is a very, very good thing if you can slap a Thunder Sword on a Butterfly, but they go just fine on your resource-providers. Brain Fire isn't really that useful except against the Architects, of whom I am overly paranoid. Never, EVER, let the Ascended get a chance to take control of things... your characters, your power, the game... Mr. X particularly sucks for you. Kill him off, and fast. CHAR is ideal to deal with this sort of secondary threat. The Arcanoseed is really just for fun, although I've found it very useful; you could stick in another Squire or an Avenging Thunder instead. Again, anything that can chomp Butterfly Knights and regenerate or whatever poses a very serious threat.