Zealot Situation While Zealot is in play, if you make an Exertion on your turn, you may take one card from that Exertion and place it on the bottom of your Endurance, instead of discarding it. If you do not make an Exertion on your turn, discard the top card of your Endurance. This Situation, tied promotionally to the novel of the same name, is another that doesn't seem to see a lot of use. From a game-mechanic point of view, Zealot is fairly straightforward. Exert five cards (base), look at them, put one card on the bottom of your Endurance. If you didn't Exert, after your Attack Phase, discard the top card from your Endurance to your discard pile. Obviously, Zealot is of use to you if you plan on Exerting. If you don't, it is not only useless to you but actively harmful. Thus, its use as an "emergency" card, in case that you run into a forced-Exertion strategy, is minimal. The most common Exertion strategy since the revision to Kastagir's Persona ability is forced/shared Exerting. This involves around the use of Avery Hoskins (CotW #47) and Challenge/ME (#48). You force your opponent to Exert by playing cards that force both of you to Exert. You, of course, are better prepared by using cards that minimize your Exertion (Collect, Master/Swordmaster). Ideally you also choose a Persona so that you can do something _with_ the Exertions. Thus, you typically choose the Kurgan, Connor or Duncan and keep Power Blowing every turn. Or Kern, and keep playing multiple attacks. This strategy also used to work well for Kastagir. However, now that he has to actually play a card from the Exertion, or at least keeping Exerting until he finds one to play, it is not particularly effective. The recent changes to the Guard rules have also impacted Kastagir's ability to pull this off, by robbing him of the ability to play unprovoked Guards. If you choose this strategy, Zealot further minimizes your card loss to Exertions. You make a three-card Exertion, and then put one of the cards on the bottom of your Endurance. Angus MacLeod begs out for use with Zealot. Not only can you Exert and get back the card you got last turn . . .but since you made an Exertion to use Angus, you can put one of your card on the bottom of your Endurance and then Exert/Angus again _next_ turn to get that card back. And so on, and so on. This use of Angus plus Zealot also conveniently provides you with a reason for Exerting every turn, which is necessary for effective use of Zealot. If you stop Exerting, you start losing cards that you can _not_ recover. You need to remember that you can't Exert for a Power Block unless you are the target of a Power Blow. You can't Exert for an attack unless you have an attack slot. And you can't Exert for a defense unless attacked (with the new Guard rules). You can Exert to make an attack a Power Blow, but this requires that you risk making a Power Blow, dealing with the Hidden counter-attack, etc. So Angus gives you a useful way to make Exertions every turn. Joe Dawson/pre- game is also useful here: there doesn't _have_ to be any Watchers in your discard pile for you to make the Exertion. General Katana (or someone using his Quickening) can usually find Situations to remove via Exertion as well. However, since this now requires foregoing the play of a Special, this may not be a good idea. So who should use Zealot? As mentioned above, Zealot is most valuable in Avery Hoskins-type forced Exertion decks. The three Persona who can best use this strategy are Connor, Duncan, and Kern, with the Kurgan a distant fourth. Other Personas? Typically, your best bet is using Zealot in tower decks. Anybody can build a tower deck. However, the required Exertion or card loss can be a pain for them. Slan and Luther, for instance, really have no reason for Exerting at all under most circumstances, and shouldn't bother. Other Personas can use cards like Master/Swordmaster and Collect to reduce their Exertions (or Zocchi to increase their opponent's). However, multiple Situations usage took a blow with the addition of Bedsoe and Precinct in The Gathering. And even if they get the Exertion down to zero, they still have to Exert for something. So overall, Steve gives Zealot a _3_. It's only real function is as an enhancer to Angus or Avery Hoskins, or both in conjunction. As an "emergency" card against forced Exertion, its price is too high to be particularly useful. What Our Other Raters Say: Jeff - Zealot: Interesting card that I used to think was more useful than it ever will be. It doesn't stack (though it does work okay with Exertion- reducers like Master/Swordmaster and Collect), it doesn't do much of anything for you (putting the card on the bottom of your Endurance; I suppose Angus actually becomes useful... nah), and it costs you a Special. Not a bad card for fun play, but not really tournament-worthy... unless you're one Collect short. Hank - The penalty for Zealot means you're going to be Exerting every turn. With a tower Avery deck, this is definitely a useful Situation to put down... but I haven't seen those decks in much play lately. Still, it's a card that I could see putting to use. Alan - Excellent when combined with cards such as Avery Hoskins, which force you to Exert anyway. Also good for use against decks which force Exertions (i.e., use of Avery Hoskins, Challenge/ME, etc.) Jim - Useful for a few special circumstances but often as damaging as it is useful. Wayne - Good card for saving the important cards from Exertions. The only problem is that this requires a turn in which you are not doing any damage to your opponent. Prodipto - This is a great card for exertion heavy decks. Combined with Master/Swordmaster and Collects, and you can keep a steady supply of good cards cycling back into your deck instead of to your discard. Of course you have to Exert a lot to make it worthwhile, so I'd recommend it primarily for Duncan or Kern for their tendency to Exert, and the Kurgan, since his Exertions tend to be smaller, so the sacrifice is lessened. Allen - Abstain Bruce - This is only a useful card if you are planning on Exerting a lot. It allows you to protect cards that you want another chance at. It saw some use in Kastagir Lock decks, but that does not seem to be very viable anymore. Stealth Dave - This used to be the card of choice for Kastagir L&M decks. Exert one card and place it on the bottom of your deck. This can still be accomplished with Master (or the Master Q) and a couple of Collects, but by that point you may as well make 0-card exertions. If you're planning on making a lot of Exertions, this may be the card for you. Ratings Overall: Steve 3 Jeff 4 Hank 6 Alan 5 Jim 3 Wayne 4 Prodipto 6 Allen N/A Bruce 4 Sdave 4 Average: 4.33 ------------------------------------------------------------------
The Gathering Situation While this card is in play, neither player may play Special cards during his Defense Phase. The Gathering, compared to some of our last few cards, has seen fairly widespread distribution. The question is, is it as useful as it seems to be. Game-mechanics questions first. The Gathering is pretty straightforward. The question is less about how does it work, than what does it affect. Focus and A Master's Focus will let you bypass The Gathering. Although several of our reviewers mention avoidance cards like Disappear, Live Forever, and It's a Kind of Magic below, it should be kept in mind that more often than not, The Gathering will _not_ affect these cards. Disappear, for instance, prevents all damage no matter when it occurred during the turn. Thus, even if you are successfully damaged by an attack during your Defense Phase, you can still play Disappear during your Attack Phase, preventing the damage. The Gathering _will_ keep Disappear or Live Forever from avoiding a Head Shot, since that resolves at the end of the Defense Phase. It also shuts down Holy Ground entirely. There are several other defense phase-only cards, such as Run Through, that TG also shuts down entirely. The Gathering also inhibits some cards that can be played at any time, if the timing is right. Thus, it doesn't make much difference to your opponent if they want to play Ancestral Blade...unless they don't have it out in play, and want to play and use it on the same turn. Ditto for Continuity/Power Block. So what is The Gathering good for? Its lesser function is to shut down Chessex. The former prevents the play of a Special on the defense phase: the latter prevents the play of any card on the attack phase. If both of these are down, the Chessex owner cannot play any Specials unless he uses Focus or A Master's Focus, or Exerts to remove one or both cards (using Katana's ability). The Gathering's primary function, though, is to enhance attacks. TG has no effect on Events that enhance combat (Combination, Trip, Extra Shot, Head Shot). It only impacts defensive Specials. _Any_ aggressive strategy can potentially benefit from using The Gathering. However, Head Shot-oriented strategies becomes even more powerful, since even avoidance cards like those mentioned above (Mishap/reprint, Disappear, Live Forever) are useless if they can't be played until the attack phase. And since you lose your head at the end of your defense phase, that's too late. The primary problem with The Gathering is that it affects both players, meaning that you can be caught in the backlash. Focus will let you avoid the affects of a single Gathering...but your opponent can do the same. Multiple The Gatherings mean that your opponent has to deal with all of them before he can play a Special during his defense phase. Of course, that means you need multiple Foci as well. Which brings us to the question of who should use TG. Since for best effect, you want multiple The Gatherings in play, an Immortal that can bypass multiple Situations with a single card is best off. That points us to Duncan and Methos, who have A Master's Focus and enough Master slots to use it effectively. Other Personas can "borrow" that card using the Methos/Master Quickening. However, for someone like Khan or Corda and Reno, or even the more common five-slotters, that can take up valuable resources. Connor and the Kurgan can be good choices, however, to pursue this strategy. We talked about Head Shot strategies above, and how The Gathering benefits it. Currently, Duncan, the Kurgan, and Methos are at the top of the heap. Why? Because Duncan and the Kurgan have the new, non-Special oriented Master Head Shots, and Methos can "borrow" the Kurgan's. Other Immortals can use the Methos/Master Quickening to borrow the Kurgan's as well. Amanda and Kalas also have their own Head Shot combos, due to Destruction/Seduce and Stalk, respectively. For Kalas, it can be a little tricky since his opponent has to bypass The Gathering(s) in the first place to play a Holy Ground so that the Stalk's special qualities are triggered. In general, any Persona who has a heavy-hitting strategy, either from massive multiple attacks (Bloodlust, Berserk, Annie, Kim), or large numbers of single- card, heavy-damage attacks (Shooting Blade, Seduce/Thrust/Power Blow) can potentially benefit from the use of The Gathering. So overall, Steve gives The Gathering a _6_. It's a potent head-taking card and a nice augmentation to practically any heavy-hitting attack deck. Carl is probably a better alternative if you are favoring damage-type attacks. However, if you plan on going for Head Shots, TG provides the extra prevention against Live Forever, Disappear, and similar such cards. What Our Other Raters Say: Jeff - Not a bad card, but this card doesn't see much tournament play...for good reason. It perhaps slows your opponent's card-cycling down a bit (if they don't have a defense and have to use Elizabeth Vaughn or a similar Event to cycle) and stops Holy Ground/Disappear/Live Forever if your opponent doesn't have a Focus, but that's about it. Average, perhaps occasionally useful card. Hank - Definitely a powerful Situation. If I'm not playing with Holy Grounds, Disappears, Kind of Magics and the like myself, Gathering often makes it into my deck. I like The Gathering a lot, I think it's a strong swordfighting card. Alan - Superb against those Chessex-lovers. Superior to Carl, in that it prevents _any_ Special from being played in the Defense Phase, and is not vulnerable to Ally-removal. Jim - A useful card for Head Hunting decks. Very good at limiting your opponent's play of Holy Ground and other escape cards during the defense phase. Wayne - Good card for a Bloodlust deck or any deck that would be affected by Holy Ground, Disappear, etc. The negative is that it hurts you also. This card might be more popular to help shut down Methos and his great cards. Prodipto - This is an amazingly useful card if you're using an attack-heavy deck. Get a couple Gatherings out, and then launch into your attack sequences. Without Foci, your opponent can't use Holy Grounds, Disappears (editor's note: yes, he can, by playing in the attack phase - it will avoid all attack damage, but not Head Shots), Continuities, Ancestral Blades, or any other card that helps him defend. Combined with judicious use of Power Blows and Head Shots, you can put your opponent in bad shape quickly. Additionally, all those nasty defensive cards will start to clutter up your opponent's hand after a while, leaving less and less room to defend against your attacks. Allen - I don't use it as much as I used to, but I still think it is a good addition for many attack decks. One great benefit to defensive cards like Continuity and Ancestral Blade is that you don't need to waste your Special slot playing them until your opponent makes a Power Blow. With The Gathering out, your opponent will need to play these cards early, and thus you can deal with them before you attack. Of course, its most useful effect is the prevention of Holy Ground, and anything that keeps your opponent from going to Holy Ground is good. Bruce - Classically this card has been used to prevent Holy Ground. It is fairly effective at this, and none of the alternatives (except TCG rips) are any better unless you want to play your own Special cards during your defense phase. Stealth Dave - An excellent card for dealing with all of those pesky Holy Grounds, Disappears, Live Forevers, etc. Just make sure it doesn't backfire when you need to pull off your Holy Ground. More versatile than Carl, it deals with a larger variety of attack avoidance. And it absolutely kills Chessex decks. Ratings Overall: Steve 6 Jeff 5 Hank 8 Alan 7 Jim 6 Wayne 6 Prodipto 8 Allen 6 Bruce 6 Sdave 7 Average: 6.50 ------------------------------------------------------------------
Scotland the Brave Situation Discard Scotland the Brave and make an Exertion. All basic attacks you play this turn may be considered Power Blows. This will allow you to make more than one Power Blow this turn. (Restricted to 2) Well, this one also seems pretty straight-forward. still, let's take a look at the rule stuff. Yes, Scotland the Brave is _intended_ to let you break the rule that prevents you from making more than one Power Blow a turn. As anybody playing against a Slan/Berserk can tell you, there's a very good reason for that rule. An Exertion never "pays" for more than one thing. So you can't Exert for something else, and consider that Exertion to "pay" for Scotland the Brave as well. Sorry. Although it seems self-evident, StB does two things. Not only does it bypass the "one Power Blow per turn" rule, but it makes all of your attacks Power Blows. So it serves the purpose of exerting for a Power Blow as well. All you need is a way to play multiple basic attacks. So how do you do that? when Scotland the Brave first came out, most of the ways to make multiple attacks involved Exerting (Battle Rage, Berserk - not Bloodlust since those attacks can't be made Power Blows). This tended to get in the way of using Scotland the Brave, since you then needed to make _another_ Exertion to use that. Initially, the only way to get around that was for Duncan to use Flashback/Situation to make an extra 3-card Exertion. Of course, you could settle for two-attack cards like Combination, Extra Shot, Hook/Xavier and Follow-Up/Kurgan and then Exert to make the second attack a Power Blow. Most folks at that time didn't consider that particularly cost- effective, though. Since those early days, things have changed. The Prize/Extra Exertion (CotW #19) assures that anyone who really wants to can make two Exertions. More Personas have the Flashback/Situation/Extra Exert card (Fitzcairn, Annie, Kern). And there are more ways to make multiple attacks without Exerting (Kim and Annie in general, Berkeley, The Prize/Extra Attack, Fury/Kane, Master of the Hunt/Kurgan, Weapon's Training/Nakano). So the ability to effectively use Scotland the Brave is no longer absent. The question is, what can you do with it and who can use it best? The main problem with Scotland the Brave is the problem that plagues Special- assisted Power Blowing in general: Ancestral Blade and "free" Power Blocking in general (Luther, his Q, even Continuity). If you've got one of these, all you need to do is block normally, and you're set. Alex Johnson and Conjure, and the neutering of Thief, make it very hard to deal with Ancestral Blade. Short of a card like the Gathering, your opponent can always play Ancestral Blade (or Alex to grab an Ancestral Blade) and then block at his leisure. Escaping multiple attacks is also fairly easy. Carl or a willingness to rip TCGs is a must, and even the former won't help against Disappear or Live Forever. Ripping on a TCG or Alex Johnson can be critical. So who can or should use Scotland the Brave? The aforementioned Berserk and "standard" Battle Rage users, for one (Duncan, Khan, Richie, Connor, Nefertiri, Slan). Use The Prize/Extra Exertion (or Flashback for Duncan or "borrowed" by Richie), and go for it. Kern can "put together" a Battle Rage by using Flashing Blade in conjunction with his Persona ability. He also has Flashback/Extra Exert, so can pull this off. He can further supplement Rage in this manner, which also permits him multiple Power Blows. Annie also has Flashback/Extra Exert, but since she has Run Through (which lets her make multiple Power Blows), Scotland the Brave seems a bit redundant. Amanda can make multiple attacks easily, but with her Persona ability, why bother? Kim will 2-3 Frenzies on the board, and an Extra Weapon, can at the cost of both losing two cards for his Persona ability and (typically) five cards to the Exertion, can pull this off a bit more readily. Even more dangerous is Kane. Use of Dojo will let him collect up to 10 Basic Attacks fairly readily, then make an Exertion, play his 10 attacks, and cut loose with Power Blows. Of course, he'll lose cards to the Exertion... Which brings us a good time to mention using Collect to minimize your Exertions. Get enough of these down, and you're set. Det. Bedsoe can be a problem, but he doesn't deprive you of the ability to use Scotland the Brave: he just makes it less cost-effective. Also beware of Zocchi Distributors. Other Personas? The Kurgan's extra damage and "cheap" Power Blowing can let him, in conjunction with The Prize/Extra Attack, turn an Extra Shot or Follow- Up in to a deadly one-two. In all cases, the key to remember is to not only put in what you need to make Scotland the Brave effective, but deal with any "escape" cards your opponent might have. This can mean your deck may be slow to develop. But once you've cut off most avenues of escape, a single Scotland the Brave used in a multi- attack combo can be the turning moment in a game. So overall, Steve gives Scotland the Brave a 5. It's slow to prepare if you want it to work effectively, but powerful if you can pull it off and cover all the bases. What Our Other Raters Say: Jeff - Another fun and not overly powerful promo card, this one makes the multi-attack decks a bit stronger. Not much stronger, but a bit tougher. Annie, Kern (with some way to make 2 exertions), maybe the MacLeod boys (with Bagpipes and The Prize: Attacks) could possibly benefit from this, but it's still not quite tournament level. Hank - A useful card in multiple-attack decks, doubly useful in a deck which restricts Exertions and removes Ancestral Blades. I've used it before, and I like the card. Alan - At one point, this card's best use was in Duncan's hands, due to his fairly easy ability to make extra Exertions _and_ play multiple attacks during his turn. However, now that just about _anyone_ can make multiple Exertions and attacks during their turn, this card's usefulness has skyrocketed, especially with those Personas who have an inherent ability to make multiple attacks. Jim - This card is not very useful for most Immortals, but those who can use it to advantage, benefit from it considerably. This is an essential card for any Duncan deck built around multiple attacks such as a Duncan Battle Rage deck. Annie can also benefit from Scotland the Brave. The key is getting some way to make an additional Exertion. The Prize/Exertion is the card to go with for non-Duncan personas. Wayne - One of the better one-turn kill cards for multiple attack decks. Drawbacks are Ancestral Blade or Event cards that escape damage. You can't really base a strategy around this card but it's not a bad complimentary card. Prodipto - This is a good card for multiple attack type decks. Kern and Annie can benefit from it, although Kern needs a way to make two Exertions (read Signorina Arianna...). Similarly, Battle Rage and Berserk decks can benefit whether through the use of Flashbacks (Duncan), or Signorina Arianna (Richie, Nefertiri, Slan). It's a good card, but it requires you to design a strategy around it. Allen - This is a promo which was easy to get, and works well if you build your deck around it. It won't do you much good if you just toss it into an already existing deck. Multiple Power Blows can be a pain for your opponent to deal with, especially if he can't run to church or dodge freely. Take relevant precautions such as Flashing Blade, Battle Rage, Carl, etc. You should also watch out for Ancestral Blade. A Duncan Battle Rage using five Flurry Strikes can be most effective when you use his Flashback to get the exertion for StB. Bruce - Well, other than the requirements of waiting a turn to use it and having some means of making multiple attacks, this is a very effective card. There are now other means of making multiple Power Blows in a turn and I have seen people have significant difficulty in pulling this one off. Stealth Dave - A previously unattractive card, StB is now quite viable with Kane's Fury and YDK's Frenzys. It takes a lot of planning to set it up correctly, but it can be worth the effort. I would suggest using The Gathering with this card so that your efforts are not wasted. Ratings Overall: Steve 5 Jeff 4 Hank 7 Alan 8 Jim 7 Wayne 6 Prodipto 5 Allen 7 Bruce 5 Sdave 6 Average: 6.00