Hello Element Wars fans!
Lately, I’ve been having a blast playing with the new duel decks. I’ve played about an equal amount of the two decks, and I’ve had just as much fun cremating my opponent as I’ve had calling upon the stars to heal my Elemental out of KO range. If you’re anything like me, I bet you’ve been having a lot of fun too. The duel decks are a blast!
But if you’re anything like me, you’ve also been thinking to yourself “How can I beat my friends in the most efficient way possible?” That’s what this article is about. If you’re looking for strategy tips on how to win in Flames of Rage vs. Rays of Justice, you’ve come to the right place!
On the surface, the strategy of the two duel decks appears simple. Flames of Rage, the fire deck, aims to incinerate the opponent with a barrage of attack-power boosting cards. Rays of Justice, the light deck, aims to outwit and outlast the opponent using well-timed heals. Simple enough, right? But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that the path to victory is a bit more complicated than a simple checklist. Each deck contains a number of different possible lines of play. Which strategies give you the best chance of victory? Keep reading to find out!
Strategy: Flames of Rage vs. Rays of Justice
To Burn, or Not to Burn?
Let’s talk about the strategy behind Flames of Rage first. Let’s say your opening hand is full of attack-power boosting ability cards, like Great Flames, Solar Flare, Heat Wave, and Grip of Magma. Your first instinct might be to store some cards and start pushing through damage as fast as you can.
But that’s not always the smartest approach. Sure, your deck is the more offensive of the two, but you must remember that using all of your pump spells early is exactly what your opponent wants you to do. It does little good to spend all your cards knocking your opponent down to 3 health if they are just going to use Spirit-Lit Lanterns to gain half of it back. On top of that, a number of Fire’s ability cards come with significant drawbacks: Great Flames nerfs your attack next turn, Grip of Magma gives your opponent an extra card, and Heat Wave hurts you.
One last individual card to pay special attention to is Firewall. Firewall is the only defensive card in Flames of Rage, and when it comes to defeating Rays of Justice, Firewall plays a key role. If your opponent knows you are planning on KO-ing their Elemental in one fell swoop, they might save a copy of Imitate in their hand so that they can strike back at you the turn after you make a big attack. Imitate is really, really powerful - while you might have spent 3 or 4 cards to make your big attack worth it, Imitate can do exactly the same amount of damage as you did at the price of only one card (and as we learned in Strategy 101, this gives your opponent simply too much card advantage). So save your Firewalls when you can - they’ll often make the difference between life and death.
So what should you do? Well, your opponent can’t heal an Elemental that’s already dead! If you wait to use your damage ability cards until you can finish off your opponent’s Elemental, you can prevent them from healing it back up, and thereby stop them from recuperating the health they just lost. If you can do this three times, then you’ve won the game!
Certain cards in Flames of Rage help you towards this goal. Embrace Your Rage lets you make one of your skills stronger by weakening another of your skills. If you use Embrace Your Rage to create one super-powerful skill (by combining your two strongest skills), then it might be able to one-shot your opponent even without bonus pump abilities! Flame Dragon is probably the best card to do this with, because combining its #1 and #4 skills create a 14-power attack, meaning that any amount of pumping or wildfires will finish off even a full-health opponent.
Great Flames is another card that is quite powerful when used correctly. In isolation, Great Flames doesn’t seem very good. Sure, it makes your attack stronger now, but it makes your attack weaker by the same amount on your next turn. The key to Great Flames is finding ways to circumvent its drawback. A simple one is to stack copies of Great Flame together in a single turn. You’ll deal 6 or 9 or maybe even 12 this turn, but next turn, unless you roll your strongest attack, your probably only going to get your attack reduced by 3-4 at the most. But an even better way to get around the drawback is to use Great Flames when there isn’t going to be another turn after this one. Think about it: if you use Great Flames to end the game, then you never suffer the drawback! For this reason, it is often best to keep copies of Great Flames in your hand until you’re ready to win the game.
Now I’ve been talking a lot about burst damage, but that ignores the important role of one of Fire’s grindiest cards: Wildfire. Over the course of a game, Wildfire might deal 8 or more damage to your opponent. Even though you are also taking damage, that chip damage might make the difference between closing out the game with a win and losing because your opponent hung on by a single health point. But use your Wildfires carefully: If you are behind your opponent in health, Wildfire might wind up causing more harm than help!
Overall, I’d say there are two main ways to play Flames of Rage: you can save up your attack-boosting abilities to burst down your opponent’s Elemental in a single turn, while keeping up a copy of Firewall to protect yourself from your opponent’s Imitate, or you can use Wildfire and other abilities to slowly chip away at your opponent, preventing them from ever getting a good chance to use Imitate. Either way, there’s a few last fundamentals to keep in mind: try to store excess Elementals if you can, since Elementals beyond your first three don’t do anything extra. And if you’re in a pinch, Grip of Magma is a good card to store, as it’s probably the weakest of the attack-boosting cards (because of card advantage).
Although there is always more to discover, this should be more than enough strategy tips to get you started with Flames of Rage. Now go out there, and burn your opponent to a crisp!
Go Towards the Light
Now, it is time to flip the equation: knowing what we know about the strategy in Flames of Rage, how should Rays of Justice, the more reactive and defensive of the two decks, be played to give you the best chance of winning?
One thing you might notice immediately about Rays of Justice is that its cards, when used right, can be a lot more explosive than the cards in Flames of Rage. For example, while the strongest attack-boosting card in Flames of Rage does +3 attack, cards like Cleric’s Healing, Spirit-Lit Lanterns and Last Hope can heal you for as much as 5, 7, or even 9 health. This is because Light’s cards are more situational than Fire’s. While Solar Flare will always do +2 attack, sometimes Spirit-Lit Lanterns will do absolutely nothing. But if you wait for the right opportunity, you can squeeze the most value out of these cards, and in doing so, gain the upper hand.
With that in mind, your gameplan is to walk a careful balance: maintain a high enough life total so that your Elemental will survive your opponent’s next attack, while simultaneously trying to use your healing cards at the best possible moment. So try to save Cleric’s Healing for when you are at 1 or 2 health, save Imitate for right after your opponent has made a big attack, and save Spirit Lit Lanterns for when your opponent has a fresh Elemental and yours is almost KO-ed.
One of the most interesting and difficult to use cards in Rays of Justice is Northern Lights. At the cost of skipping your attack, Northern Lights lets you return a card from your Void to your hand. This effect is extremely powerful, since it lets you always pick the best card in your Void for the particular situation that you’re in. Some of the better cards to retrieve with Northern Lights are Imitate, Spirit-Lit Lanterns, Gemini Gift, and Last Hope. By themselves, these cards can cause significant trouble for your opponent. But when you can repeat their effects multiple times, they become very difficult to overcome.
For example, maybe you wanna use Northern Lights to get back the Imitate you used last turn. Now that your opponent know that you have Imitate, they are likely to play a little safer, knowing that if they choose to do a big attack, they will pay dearly for it. On the other hand, Northern Lights for Spirit-Lit Lanterns or Last Hope can save you from certain death, while retrieving a Gemini Gift can help you reload when you’ve emptied your hand.
But this strategy still doesn’t address the hardest part of using Northern Lights: when should you cast it? Obviously you can’t just go around skipping your attack all willy-nilly all the time. Well, there are a few situations where the downside of Northern Lights is not quite as bad as others. The dream scenario is to cast it when your opponent’s Wildfire would KO their Elemental on their turn anyway. But you can also wait to use Northern Lights to set up a big Spirit-Lit Lanterns; after a turn or two of skipping your attack, Spirit-Lit Lanterns is much more likely to heal you for a bunch.
Last Hope is also a card worth thinking about. If you suspect that your opponent is storing cards in their hand so they can burst down your third and final Elemental, you might be tempted to hold onto copies of Last Hope so that you can survive their onslaught. And while there is merit to that game plan, sometimes, it might be better to save your second Elemental using Last Hope. After all, they can’t burst down your third Elemental if you never have to play it!
Rays of Justice has a number of situational supporting cards, like Lifening, Moonlight, Galaxy Sprites, and Cleric’s Healing. Although these cards are less explosive than their brethren, correct use of them over the course of the game can help you squeeze out just enough extra life to win. Although Lifening appears very weak, and indeed should sometimes be used just for storing, it can be quite good when you are trying to finish off an opponent’s Elemental. If your opponent’s Elemental is at 2 health, casting Lifening is always better than just attacking, since it also heals you. And if your Elemental is Ra, Protector of Mortals or Neon Panther, Lifening is actually statistically favored to be a bigger swing in health totals (+3) than doing a regular attack.
Moonlight and Galaxy Sprites are both fairly situational, and because the ability to cast them comes up rarely, you should probably fire them off whenever you get the chance. Sometimes this might be better than using more potent healing, since you’ll likely get another chance to use Spirit-Lit Lanterns again, while you might never again roll your weakest skill for Moonlight. Cleric’s Healing is a little bit more difficult to use. Although it might be tempting to hold it for the ideal scenario where it gains you 5 health, using it to gain 3 or 4 is still a big heal. And because it's only good when you are quite low, and Flames of Rage is especially good at KO-ing Elementals with low health, playing a suboptimal Cleric’s Healing when you get the chance is sometimes the best chance you’ll get.
Last but not least, let’s talk Elementals. Surprisingly, in a deck full of ancient gods, huge hydras, and magical panthers, the strongest Elemental you can put into play is a bioluminescent rabbit - Glow Bunny. Glow Bunny’s three 5-power skills mean that it has a 1 in 2 chance of wacking your opponent’s Elemental for 5 every turn. That’s really powerful! Glow Bunny’s evened-out stats benefit it greatly, because even if it spends only a few turns in play, it's likely to get a lot of value, while your other Elementals might never hit their one really strong attack. Glow Bunny is also stronger against the only defensive card in Flames of Rage, Firewall, since it does chunks of damage over time, rather than singular huge attacks.
Let the Battle Begin
Phew! That was a lot! And yet, there is even more to discover in these decks that I’m sure I haven’t gone over yet. And of course, maybe you just want to play these decks in your own style, with your own strategy. If so, then I say go for it! Element Wars is a game that allows you to play in a lot of different ways, and that is certainly true with these decks. Maybe, if you and your friend both have a copy of the duel decks, you might combine both Flames of Rage and Rays of Justice into one super-deck with all the best cards, and play against your friend’s own super-deck.
Whatever you do, make sure to play nice and have fun. And kick some butt! If you liked this article and you want to see more on Element Wars strategy, drop me a line using the Contact Us page, and include “For Victoria Vallins” in the subject line. And don’t be shy about any strategy topics you want to see.
Until next time, may you always roll your strongest move,
Victoria Vallins