Temple of Asyra Opening

[residualshade]

so after skimming the opening move thread and seeing the necropian intervention and Valshalla opening videos i have been inspired to start discussions on opening moves. i think opening moves are not only a fun but valuable discussion topic. i want to share one i have been brainstorming lately.

Turn 1 | 20 Mana
Temple of Asyra -10 Mana
Harmonize on Temple -4 Mana

End of Turn | 6 Mana

Turn 2 | 16 Mana | 2 Mana on Temple
Asyran Cleric -3 Mana -2 Mana on Temple
Asyran Cleric -5 Mana
Harmonize on Mage -6

End of Turn | 2 Mana

Turn 3 | 13 Mana | 2 Mana on Temple
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This is meant to be a hard mana ramp opening. if the enemy mage gets aggressive on you early you have enough mana to drop a brogan starting turn 2 and every turn their after.

assuming i am not forced to go on the defense i have no clue as to what to cast for my last spells on turn 3.

[Koz]

You know you can only have two Clerics put mana on the Temple each turn right?  With that in mind I'm not sure why'd you want so many Clerics.  If I'm reading this right, you will have four of them out, which seems like overkill.

[residualshade]

wow. idk how i missed that line. tweaking time.

[shapeshifter]

I love the temples and clerics. Clerics act like Mana crystals that can heal angels.
And i love the laser shooting temple. If only i had a playset of those  

[DarthDadaD20]

Well, the "laser shooting temple" is unique(only one in the arena at a time), I have two in my currant priestess book and that's all I would recommend, just one for a back up if the first one gets destroyed.Now hand of bim-shala, I need a play set of that! I have two now and that card is just so useful its not even funny. Temple of asyra and temple of light are my opening moves, followed by a battle forge with harmonize, then have temple of asyra summon a cleric, with you playing two hands of bim-shala. then I want to equip the priestess as much as possible and I try to save up for an angle, or some archers. Im just going off the top of my head,and this is NOT exact turn order, I am saving mana between turns,using the prestess to attack when not casting spells, but this been going well for me. Some times I get the Staff of Asyra out sooner, since my play group likes to mana siphon me first turn alot.

[pixelgeek]

I like putting out a melee unit prior to the Clerics. The Priestess is always going to be at a disadvantage in terms of raw fighting power and putting a Royal Archer into play sooner gives your opponent something to deal with while you put out the rest of your defensive conjurations and clerics

[sIKE]

My problem with this approach is that when you are fighting against a Warlock you do not have the kind of time to get this stuff out. They typically put out a Death Lock out the gate so your main advantage as a Priestess is out the window for at least several rounds why you send something over there to kill it. All the while the Warlock himself is up in your grill bashing away with his LOH. Very nasty and doesn't give you the time to build up the temples that you would like to get out.

What the Priestess does have in this scenario is big bad creatures that can put a hurt on him and his critters, but they demand mana and lots of it. So my open now for the first couple of moves is to lay out a couple of mana crystals/flowers move and set some traps. On round three the archer comes out and on round 5 a Knight and basically every other round after, I bring out a critter. Everything else done while this is happening, is to not die while getting all of my creatures out. Once I have my small army out an Archer, Knight, Angel, Unicorn (along with some buffs), and I have survived that long, the game is now mine as long as I can heal a couple of times. Typically my Priestess will armed with a Mage/Elemental Wand with a minor heal/geyser combo to deal with the hurt and the burns.

I have come to find out with this approach if I can make is past the first 10 rounds the game really tilts in my favor.

[DarthDadaD20]

Playing the priestess, I like to use at least  one Gray angle,(12 mana for a flying 4 damage dice dealing, plus its a free minor heal when the chips are down, that card is great!) if not Angle of light. That lash of hell fire is the first to be dissolved, I run two and will use two for a back up LOH if need be. Otherwise I use the second dissolve on Helm of Fear.....I HATE helm of fear! Traps are a good strategy, I use teleport traps around my temple of light and will use Decoy to make them think twice. I run 4 decoys, I just use them so much, especially with the warlock, since he will  often use nullify to protect his equipment.

[The Dude]

Against the Warlock, I would not use this strategy. This is against slower build decks, where you are both setting up your engines. Against the Warlock, who's strategy is to kill you as fast as possible with fire, melee, and all around badassery, I would go on the offense with a Vampiress hooked to a divine intervention on turn one. Turn two, you are swinging on their side of the board with a 15 life 2 armor five dice damage with a self healing ability. This will allow you to stall them out while you NOW set up your engine with no problem at all, of course starting with the hands of bim shalla.

Or, if you don't want to waste 12 points on the Vampire, you could spend your first three rounds casting  gray angels with divine protection on them. This will buy you some time as well, but honestly, NOTHING beats an intervening vampire....

[dexmark]

I am playing Temple of Asyra Opening right now.

Due to I have only 1 core set, I am limited on Angels (Gray Angels).

My side
- First few rounds, I had the Temple of Asyra + 2 clerics + 1 Gray Angel out + Crown.
- 1 Gray Angel sent out to harass = given her 1D from the Crown
- Another Gray Angel Spawn
- A Royal Archer Spawn
- About 2 Knights Spawn too
- Then about 3 temples

Opponents side:
- Heavy equipment Warlock
- Elemental staff (with Fireball)
- demonic armor (the one with damage barrier - reason why my 1st Angel went down fast)
- ring of fire
- The conjuration that makes everybody finite
- a curse on my mage face down (most likely the curse that gives my mage finite life)
- Nullify face down
- Lash

First few turns were mana generation then the Warlock started to build equipment, I got the temple working. Then started harassing him with Gray Angel. He quickly destroyed the Gray Angel, then I sent another Gray Angel and so forth. Then he started positioning properly where my Gray Angel can't hit him on a move + attack while he does that Elemental staff attack on my Mage. With the finite life conjuration I cannot heal.

Who do you think would win?

I have 1 Gray Angel attacking him, a Royal Archer, 2 Knights and 3 temples (without the attacking one). I have about 10~12 life left while he has about 5. The turn before the potential last round, He cast FLY on his mage on a quick cast before creature action. Basically rendering both my Knights useless. This round I cast Dissolve on the Elemental staff (he nullified it).

He has initiative with potential burning spells like fireball + a full action attack spell.

Now 10~-12 life (for Priestess) versus 5 life (Warlock) with him with initiative for the last round.

I have no anti-attack spell cards or protection cards that would potentially nullify burns.

I know he will burn me (twice) but my 2 cards are:

1) The temple that attacks for my Quick Cast Turn - I have a place to put it down in range of his mage (potential quick attack on him with potential stunning I have 4 temples if this gets executed)
2) Another Royal Archer

I am guessing he has: 2 more burns..

1) Burn (Quick Cast - Elementalist Staff)
2) Burn (Probably a full action fire spell)

Who would win? It's all in the dice now..

[reddawn]

Hey all.  New to the forums.

I play against my brother mostly, who rocks the Priestess while I play Warlock.  We haven't been playing too long, so grain of salt and all that, but I have noticed that the Priestess can't simply summon cleric after cleric early on successfully with the temple, or theyll just get slaughtered.  A better idea is definitely what Pixel hinted at, which is setting up some defensive units early on, and maybe a wall too.  

A Knight of Westlock and the Priestess with her staff and/or Deflection Bracers guarding the zone is pretty potent and relatively efficient...both have a good defense that protects against range attacks, and both punish attacks within their zone heavily; the Knight with his defense and 5 dice counterstrike and the Priestess with her ability to Daze a unit into its NEXT action phase (I believe that's how it works if a unit gets dazed AFTER activating), and swing back for 4 dice.

This goes doubly if the Knight is still on guard for the next action phase...he can effectively put TEN dice on a unit that is dumb enough to attack in his zone.  Pretty much means I have to take him down at range and hope for crits, since his armor is pretty high, or feed him an imp so my bloodreaper Dark Pact Slayer can do some real damage to him.  There's other ways to deal with it, like Knockdown or Force Push-ing him out of the zone, but that's one less attack or spell I have towards killing the valuable targets in the zone, so he's already achieved his goal...and then still swings for a ton.  

Yet another reason why I like the Fire school in combination with demons.  All fire spells except Fireball are unavoidable, so defenses won't help, and demon's fire immunity/resistance helps keep the pressure up in a particular zone without the need to retreat them.  Still a tough fight, but very balanced.

[Tacullu64]

@ Dexmark What spell did he cast on his mage to give him flying? I ask because as far as I know there aren't any.

[reddawn]

He probably means the Eagle Wings enchantment.  Though I'm not sure how that would render the knights useless...the warlock will lose flying after he goes to attack.  I guess the warlock could pass creature activations until most of the priestess' creatures are done activating, but a smart priestess will just guard with a knight.  I could see a combination Evade/Eagle Wings with lots of passing of activations working though.

[Tacullu64]

Eagle Wings targets Non-Mage Living Creature.

[reddawn]

Oh.  Well theres the reason I've never thought of putting it on my mage...you can't, lol.  Maybe there's a forcemaster spell for it? Dunno.