Tips & Strategies (8)

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Tips & Strategies (8)

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10
Critic - Level 5
Professional Advisor
Expert Reviewer
Marquis / Marchioness
22 of 23 gamers found this helpful
“Use updated (rebalanced) characters in your game”

This is updating an overly brief tip I put in below, to give useful information and more specifics!

A number of characters in Puzzle Strike have been updated by the designer to lead to a more balanced game. You’ll likely enjoy the game more if you use the updated powers from these characters, in place of the existing tiles (until replacements are available, you can print out what the new tiles do, and assign their powers to your existing chips).

You can see the new chips at http://gallery.me.com/sirlin#100171

Changed chips by character:

Grave – Versatile Style (action added to Piggy Bank choice); Martial Mastery (now must be a non-purple chip)

Jaina – Playing with Fire (adds a Piggy Bank)

Midori – Purge Bad Habits (now gains a chip costing exactly 3) ; Rigorous Training (now brown, triggers when opponent buys a 4 or greater, then you trash a non-purple and gain a chip worth two more than trashed chip) ; Dragon Form (may discard this chip instead of ante 2)

DeGrey – Pilebunker (gained Piggy Bank) ; No More Lies (must be non-character chips) ; Troublesome Rhetoric (no longer ongoing, next opponent chooses between two options (1) action and draw, or (2) $2 and Piggy Bank)

Setsuki – Double Take (minor – added puzzle icon instead of word puzzle)

Rook – Stone Wall (Added Piggy Bank)

Valerie – Burst of Speed changed to Three Colors (gain a brown, a red, and a blue action)

Geiger – It’s Time for the Past (Black action instead of brown, can’t take an ! chip) ; Future Sight (now two draws and two Piggy Banks)

Lum – Living on the Edge (now 3 actions and one black action if gem pile is at least 10) ; Panda’s Bargain (completely different, Ongoing – at the end of a turn where you bought a puzzle chip get a draw, discard when you buy a purple) ; Poker Winnings replaced by Jackpot (reveal two chips at random from opponent’s hand, if any are gems, gain $1, if any are purple gain an action and draw)

There are a few that are reworded for clarity, but retain their effects.

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2
Amateur Reviewer
11 of 11 gamers found this helpful
“Don't bloat your deck size.”

Even though the rules state you can buy as many new chips on your turn as you can afford, it is generally a good idea to avoid doing so and only buy 1. The quicker you can cycle through your bag of chips the easier it will be to get a combo going on future turns.

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10
Critic - Level 5
Professional Advisor
Expert Reviewer
Marquis / Marchioness
25 of 27 gamers found this helpful
“Online Play (free) available for Puzzle Strike”

You can try Puzzle Strike (and Yomi) online for free.

Check out http://www.fantasystrike.com

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4
I'm a Player!
Advocate
13 of 14 gamers found this helpful
“Good Introduction characters”

After playing most of the characters, the ones I’d recommend for a new player are:

Setsuke – This character revolves around a quick rush strategy. I’ve been pretty successful by using lots of chip drawing abilities and either working them into a series of crashes or building an economy to buy the ! puzzle chip.

Jaina – A very aggressive character, Jaina works by assaulting quickly. Her chips can cause you to get some wounds, so you’d really want to play aggressively quickly and early.

Grave – A very strong character and very good for new players to get the hang of how the game works.

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10
Critic - Level 5
Professional Advisor
Expert Reviewer
Marquis / Marchioness
21 of 24 gamers found this helpful
“Check for character updates (rebalancing)”

There has been some rebalancing done on characters for Puzzle Strike. Check out http://gallery.me.com/sirlin#100171 for the gallery of new chips.

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4
I'm a Player!
Advocate
10 of 11 gamers found this helpful
“Jaina”

Jaina is an insane brawler that can pack a huge punch early. She’s really good for players who want to just punch the opponent over and over again until they pass out, bloody at your feet!

Of Jaina’s chips two really strike me as being great! One adds a red action and allows you to Trash (remove) a Wound chip (which is kind of a dead chip that does nothing) from your hand or discard pile and then send a gem to the opponents pile. In and of itself, this is nothing that great – however, her Purple chip gives it versatility. Her Purple chip is a free double crash chip, which allows you to send two of your gems to the opponent at the cost of giving you two wound chips. Together, these can create some good synergy for each other – but you need to be careful. If you add too many wound chips to your bag then it’ll slow you down considerably.

As for building your deck, for her I tend to focus on Red actions like Sneak Attack (forget the name off hand) which allows another Red action and forces the opponent to ante a gem, but I also really like adding Combines with her too – because of her ability chip.

The biggest thing to note about Jaina is that you need to generally fight out the gate and win fast. I find that Jaina, unlike a lot of the others, tends to get weaker and weaker as the game progresses – so she either wins early, or has a fairly large up hill battle to go. This is, in part, due to filling her bag with wounds.

If you like to play an aggressive in your face style, then definitely try Jaina.

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2
Video Game Fan
11 of 13 gamers found this helpful
“Deck Density”

‘Deck Density’ refers to the general worth of your deck. While there’s no hard-and-fast rule about how dense your deck is, keep the following ideas in mind:

* In general, you want to get rid of your 1-gems in favor for bigger denominations as soon as possible. Training Day is an excellent chip for doing so, but keep in mind that it costs an action to do.

* ‘Forks’ are chips that give multiple arrows. ‘Enders’ are chips that don’t give arrows at all. Try to strike a balance between forks and enders; in terms of raw effects, enders are more powerful than forks, but without forks, you’ll only be able to play one of them per turn. Conversely, if you consistently find yourself with excess arrows, you’re probably not buying enough enders.

* Money is nice, but remember that the ultimate goal of the game is to crash enough gems into your opponent’s pile to eliminate them. As the game wears on, try to have as many purple chips as you can.

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4
I'm a Player!
Advocate
8 of 11 gamers found this helpful
“Satsuki”

Satsuki, the hot ninja girl (at least imo) is a terrific rusher. Her ability chips let her draw cards and take extra brown moves. The way you want to take advantage of her is to make sure you buy Chips that turn your brown moves to black moves, increasing your speed and tempo in the game.

Also include lots of drawing in your bag too. What I like to do is try to load up on drawing extra chips, making me cycle through my bag quickly and get the Gems I need in order to buy Master Puzzler! If I can get Master Puzzler out with her, then its game over for the most part.

She starts to get weaker around the mid and late game, so be sure to try and rush your opponent quickly and bring them down hard. If you are an aggressive player who likes to see the look of ‘ Oh no!’ on your opponents face, then definitely she is a great character to try out and play.

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