This week I’m continuing the new series focused on Gameplay Examples. This series walks you through what it is like to play Parallel TCG, which is still in closed grey box testing. The team looks to open up for alpha and beta testing in 2023 prior to the eventual game launch.
Card functions are available on Parallel.Life and will be discussed at length here in this example.
We left things off with an empty board state with significant energy having been built up in the first three rounds.
Turn four begins with us drawing a card, Squad Traitor.
We bank Squad Traitor and play Cunning Scipian and end our turn, generating a new Kathari Iterant. We also draw Cytokinesis.
Our opponent draws a card, banks a card, and then plays two cards. First Loyal Comrade and then Marcolian Bannerman. Bannerman receives the benefit of Catharine’s passive, and gains +1, +1. They end their turn and draw a card.
On turn five things start to get interesting. First we draw Cunning Diplomat.
We bank Genetic Correction, and play Cunning Diplomat. Cunning Diplomat allows us to draw a card, and we draw Scanner Probe. Then we play Cytokinesis and select Stoic Sellsword, and draw all three from our deck.
We don’t attack here, because we know that if we do, we lose board presence. We’re happy having some defense with Cunning Diplomat available, as well as a little clone team built up.
The Marcos get aggressive here and start to attack. First they draw and bank a card. Then Bannerman takes out Cunning Diplomat, to remove the Defender. Then, Loyal Comrade takes out Cunning Scipian. This is important, because it removes our ability to keep generating units on the board. CS does one damage to LC, leaving LC at a 2, 2. Then they play Mercenary Gunslinger and do one damage to eliminate one Kathari Iterant. Then they take a big swing with Orbital Strike and do five damage to face. Bannerman gets another +1, +1, since they played an Effect card (Orb Strike).
This leaves us with a board state heavily favoring the Marcolians.
With our turn we draw a card, bank a Stoic Sellsword, and play Scanner Probe. Scanner Probe allows us to look at the top card of the enemy’s deck and trade it with one in our hand. That card is Solar Grenade, so we take it and trade a Stoic Sellsword. Since Scanner Probe is battle ready, we use it to attack Mercenary Gunslinger to remove them from the field, leaving SP at 1 HP. Then we play Solar Grenade to do damage to the remaining Marco Units. This destroys Loyal Comrade and brings Bannerman down to 1 HP. We trade our Kathari Iterant for the Bannerman.
The Marcolian Response is swift. They draw a card and bank. Then they play Black Market Fixer to remove Scanner Probe, and play Iron Corps Rifleman to deal 1 damage to Face. The ICR get +1, +1 since it was the second unit played this turn.
We leave Round Six with the board state favoring the Marcos. It’s not looking good for the Kathari here, but hopefully we can overcome the odds and pull the cards we need and outlast them.