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Excavating for a Winning Ashes Reborn First Five

Hard 30: First Five – Beginner Deck Building

Your first five in Ashes Reborn is the most important skill to mastering winning strategies. What makes this game so dynamic is that not every beginning clutch of cards works for every deck. You may even have a tremendous first five but it is paired with the wrong phoenixborn so it just falls apart. I break down some basic do’s and don’ts to help guide you through treacherous first five waters.

Reframing An Idea

The first thing you need to know is your first five doesn’t have to gel with the rest of your deck. I have said this before and I will continue to shout this from the mountain tops.

Your first five does not define your deck!

As soon as I embraced this axiom my win percentages jumped dramatically. The first five sets up the rest of your deck. However, just because I have lots of summons in my first five doesn’t mean I have to run support cards. The rest of the deck could be burn or mill. The opposite can be true as well. Start with a traditional mill package in the first five and then, BOOM, Molten Gold to the face! Learn it, live it, love it. If you need help balancing your dice check out this essay.

Generic First Fives

Ms. Generically Good

Speaking in the most basic terms you don’t want to lose round one. Ashes is a game of incremental advantage most of the time. Unless your deck is designed for giant comebacks you have to prepare correctly. Feilding a generic first five can help you out with that. This is not my preferred method but it can act as a placeholder until you are able to make more informed decisions.

There are really only two things you are trying to avoid round one; being overrun by a swarm of units or being dominated by a singular large threat. Since you don’t know which one you need to be ready for when you first sit down to play you have to be ready for both.

This gives you flexibility to not be completely swarmed and enough resiliency to guard or take on one big threat. Notice there isn’t a lot of wiggle room for ‘fun’ cards. Cards that don’t immediately contribute to removal, cancel, or a threatening summons are right out. This is just to give you the best generic first five. Here’s what I recommend:

3-4 units – Good range of efficiency units, total costs of at least six

0-2 removal – Targeted for large single unit or an explosive AOE like nature’s wrath if you have big units

0-2 cancel – Protect your investments if you have an important unit like a knight or creeper

A Generic First Five Guideline

Phoenixborn Fits

Think of your phoenixborn’s ability like a sixth card you get to play every round. How does it fit into the above generic list? This is why I rank phoenixborn with removal or unit summon abilities above others in a vacuum. If I run Odette or Aradel, I now have more flexible choices in my first five because their ability is filling one of the removal functions. How good is that? Leo and Dimona bring the thunder on round one with units ready to go.

Check out those rankings here!

Are You Threatening Me?

Beginning units must either threaten to kill another unit OR do significant damage to your opponent. Admonishers do not make the cut in the first five. Ruby Cobra’s barely make the cut and they are legitimately good. Think how your units work together. Examine their strengths and weaknesses.

If you spend three dice on a knight you need to protect it with unit guard or cancel. If you choose to play Salamander Monk your other summons need to have some higher damage. If you have four books do you have the battlefield space? You can either find a balance or skew into a more extreme end of the unit scale.

Double Knight Opens

Once the belle of the ball playing two knights round one has fallen out of favor recently due to highly efficient removal options like frog ping Fester and To Shadows. So, cancel cards become a MUST play option if you go with knights. I tend to run both Fate Reflection and Golden Veil and then choose which one (or both) depending on what dice the opponent is showing.

I want to get maximum value out of those three dice workhorses by adding unexhausting effects and unit guard. A Call to Arms is a delightful surprise and Flute Mage does double duty as another body they must handle before next turn. You can’t go wrong with Gilder and Crypt Guardian can absolutely cause fits.

Gates Thrown Open

Sometimes the best option is to simply overwhelm your opponent. They can’t kill all of them, right?! This strategy is two pronged. Firstly, it can produce too many units for the opponent to account for as they swing to the face. Secondly, you can use your extra units as a way to whittle down your opponent units. Either stratagem is viable depending on the rest of your deck. Basically, how many units can you get into play?

I’m currently messing around with Salamander, Snapper, and Shadow Spirit with Gates. This leaves me 3 dice to play around with and a board being very resilient. The monks repopulate themselves and Snappers basically count as a 2/2 when you have that many conjurations. Spirit is a personal call. What you do with the remaining is up to you. I would lean towards removal of some sort.

Advanced First Five: Identifying Your Deck

In Identifying Your Winning Ashes Strategies, I talked about discovering your winning condition. Once that is established, then you choose cards for your deck. Picking your first five is going to follow some of those same ideas.

There are two recommended first five archetypes on a sliding scale: aggro and control. Each has strengths and weaknesses. What you have to ask yourself is what first five is going to pair the best with my deck to give me the best chances to win regardless of the meta?

Aggro

The goal is to deal the most amount of damage you can to the opponent in round one. Long term battlefield presence is sacrificed. Sometimes called Oops, All Burn. That means the rest of the deck either needs to finish insanely strong with more direct damage or transition into more control elements.

The best example is the crazy good efficiency of Brennan. It combines some direct damage with sheer overwhelming units with widows.  Brennen Spring Qualifier – SB7 – Ashes.live Read the notes to see how the deck can pivot into the Oops, All Burn strategy. For a completely different take on an aggro first five take a look at how going all in on Realm Walker can produce similar results: Astrea Tours the Realm of the Absurd AIL week 4 – Ashes.live. I can personally state the Astrea deck has taken down some of the strongest Ashes competitors based on unabated damage round one finished up with burn.

Control

In this first five you simply want to lock up your opponent’s units using a mix of units and removal. The point is to grind the battlefield into a stalemate or dice advantage. You probably won’t do much damage during round one, but it is possible to win the rest of the game already from positive trades. You want to end round one with more “dice” on the battlefield than your opponent. I think a lot of people dismiss swarm as a way to control the battlefield.

Echo does a great job of emphasizing positive trades in the long run. Echo Normal Gravity Gencon 2022 2nd Place – Ashes.live Also notice Echo’s ability enables bypass to help finish the game. Harold and Meoni have both won a ton on the back of bullying the battlefield Frostburst Harold – GenCon 6th Place – Ashes.live

Combo

Does combo exist in Ashes? Well, kinda. I’m going to present the idea that there are a couple card engines with inevitability. Meaning if a combination of cards produces an efficient replenishable win condition. Doing only one point of damage directly to the phoenixborn for one die with Frost Bite does not count.

Help?! Am I combo?

I believe it is fair to say Fallen, Creepers, Piercing Light, Silver Snake, Orrick, and now the esteemed Rowan join the ranks of combo. Given a long enough timeline all of these decks can generate neigh infinite damage. Brennan and Jessa kinda fit in this mold as well since they both deal damage directly to the dome. But, you don’t really need to assemble pieces to make them effective and Jessa doesn’t meet the efficient qualification.

To make combo work you have to first protect the combination from being disrupted. Then, you have to stay alive long enough to generate the win condition. Here’s where the prison idea comes from. I think you can also lump dedicated mill decks into combo as well. If given time, your opponent will have zero options available.

To facilitate a strong first five for combo you have to run two-for-one removal cards to reset a weak board like Meteor, Nature’s Wrath, or Kneel. Slowing damage down also means stuff like the laws and healing. Because most of your first five cards will be dedicated to setting up a cardboard engine. Look for phoenixborn who already come with high life totals or built-in removal abilities.

I tend towards a Beast Tamer strapped with Root Armor. I have witnessed Law of Fear followed up with Meteor or Survival of the Fittest. That leaves three cards working towards your combo. I hope the rest of the deck, or the combo is prepared for a powerful round two!

Keep Limber with Flexing and Pivoting

Once you have a comfortable first five that meshes well with the rest of your deck, make another one. And probably another one. Create enough first fives that can bring different strategies against different deck types. Try to keep your opponent off balance while still maintaining first five integrities.

Flexing

This is the easiest one to think about. Plan on switching out a single card based on what your opponent shows you before the game. This usually means a like costed unit, removal, cancel, or ‘silver bullet’. Learning when to flex and what to change takes practice. Realizing what your deck is weak to can be briefly shored up in a well called first five flex.

For instance, if I see Tristan across the table, I will opt for a Golden Veil instead of Fate Reflection to handle his signature card. I will juggle a couple different knights if I think I’m going up against a weenie swarm deck, Hammer Knight will get the call over Sonic. If I see Illusion dice but no Charm, I’ll audible to To Shadows over Fester. Another call versus Tristan is to slip a Wrath of Nature for all the incoming tetras.

Pivot

Once you become adept at understanding game flow, adding in a full pivot can be a game changer. Well, literally. Using the same ten dice to create both a control and an aggro first five. Using the full sliding scale between swarming out a ton of folks versus dropping a couple knights to stay alert. When used correctly it is possible to virtually win the game round one.

I wish I could give a blueprint to decide when to pivot. Unfortunately, there is no replacement for experience. It is also important to note that some decks are so fixed in their first five that it is impossible to pivot. So, get out there and play more games!

Final Thoughts

What comes first in deck creation; the phoenixborn, first five, or a combo in the deck? It doesn’t matter. Everyone gets different inspiration from different card interactions. Just think about your deck as two separate entities: the first five and the rest of the deck. You can start building a deck from either direction. Constructing holistically bridges the two parts together for more wins. 

Recognize that sometimes you will misread the plan between the two ideas. Don’t just huck the whole thing out the window. Change up one of the deck identities to fully find out if it is garbage or not. Even switching out a phoenixborn can be a major adjustment. It’s ok to lose. Just learn to lose smartly and have fun. Every loss gets you closer to a more perfect deck. Heyo and gl!

About the Author

Jerod Leupold has been an avid gamer and advocate for over 30 years. Founder of Paroxysm by Design and Critical Hit Games storefront in Iowa City, Iowa. He has been published under the Gamenomicon franchise for Party First RPG and is currently launching his own rpg, Goblin Market. He cut his teeth playing the red book D&D but found his passion for writing articles about ccgs with A Game of Thrones. Follow Jerod at Paroxysm by Design on facebook, itch.io, or drivethru RPG!