Thunderstone - Tips & Strategies

A common mistake I see a lot of new players make is not using the Rest option more often. When you rest, you destroy a card in your current hand.

One is often better off resting to remove a less useful card than buying yet another card. This proves especially true in the early game when one less militia means that much better chance of getting that real hero out there.

Even in the long term, removing that 1st level hero you can’t level up is going to help you get to the better heroes. Don’t just buy more stuff because you have the gold!

Early on in the game, buy a few cards that can destroy other cards to trim down your deck. A great example is the Trainer card which allows you to destroy a Militia to gain 2XP. Not only does this remove the mostly useless Militia from your deck, which increases your chance of getting better cards in each hand, you get a valuable resource in return which you can use to further improve your deck. Another example is the Pawnbroker which allows you to destroy anything with a gold value (including Militia which have gold value of 0) to receive that value plus 3.

In short, using a “Destroy X to receive Y” card is always preferable to simply Resting to remove a card from your deck.

The village of Barrowsdale was always insignificant. No one of great power, or hero of great reputation ever hailed from there, nor any great villain to rampage the country side. The village was quiet and peaceful with nothing noteworthy to speak of. Until the plague.

You have been sent by your temple to assist in the defense of Barrowsdale. You’ll have to fight through Rann-kor’s horde to destroy her and the Stone of Blight. Only then can the healing begin in Barrowsdale.

The Barrowsdale Plague is an advanced setup for Thunderstone Classic. You will have a selection of 4 Cleric-type Heroes, and an assortment of village cards to support them. The village is plagued, however, so be careful of spending too much time there. You’ll need to overcome the Guardian of Virulence and her horde to claim and destroy the Thundersone, saving the village.

Heroes

Chalice (Thunderstone)
Divine (Wrath of the Elements)
Terakian (Dragonspire)
Woodfolk (Thornwood Siege)

Village

Amulet of Power (Wrath of the Elements)
Belzur’s Blessing (Heart of Doom)
Burnt Offering (Dragonspire)
Cursed Mace (Wrath of the Elements)
Feast (Thunderstone)
Sage (Wrath of the Elements)
Soul Jar (Do*ate Legion)
Spirit Hunter (Do*ate Legion)

Monsters

Abyssal (Thunderstone)
Cultist – Humanoid (Do*ate Legion)
Undead – Plague (Dragonspire)

Dungeon Features

Guardian of Virulence (Thornwood Siege)
Stone of Blight (Thornwood Siege)
Setting – Barrowsdale (Dragonspire)
Disease – Special (Do*ate Legion)
Disease

Setup: Shuffle all of the Monsters together. Set aside the Stone of Blight. Take the top five cards from the Dungeon Deck, shuffle in the Guardian of Virulence, and place these six cards the bottom of the Dungeon Deck. Place Setting – Barrowsdale near the Dungeon.

Shuffle 3 Disease (normal) cards into each Village stack. This does not include Basic Cards or Heroes. If a disease is showing on the top of a stack during setup, reshuffle until no Diseases are showing.

Special Rule – Disease-Special: Monsters in the Dungeon, and any effect during the game (such as the Cursed Mace), give Disease – Special.

Special Rule – Plagued Village: During setup, shuffle 3 Disease (normal) cards into each village pile. This does not include basic cards or heroes.
Any time a Disease is revealed after purchasing a card from the village, you add the revealed disease to your discard pile.

Special Rule – Guardian: When the Guardian is revealed, place the Thunderstone underneath it. The Guardian gains a health bonus equal to the Thunderstone’s Victory Point value.

Note: This is not an official module, but a fan-made module. For more Classic Thunderstone Modules, visit analoggamer.blogspot.com

Players new to Thunderstone rush to the Dungeon, keen to attack anything their lowly hand of dagger-armed Militia can handle. More experienced players hang back, looking to build the efficiency of their decks in the early game, to guarantee strong play in the endgame.

Thunderstone is a deck building game; he that drafts the most efficient deck will win. And a deck full of cheap, low-value trophies is slow and cluttered, leaving you struggling to scrape together 4-5 Gold or 5 Attack each turn by the endgame, while your opponent is drawing two higher level heroes, two solid weapons, and a spell or two in every hand.

Don’t be tempted by cheap, early success in the Dungeon. Actively adjust your deck in the early game until it is ready to take on the more powerful monsters, then head down into the Dungeon. One or two weaker monsters with high gold values or high XP returns could be worth your attention — and remember, these can always be Rested away if they slow your deck in the endgame — but always keep in mind that more powerful monsters mean less clutter and a more efficient deck. And many come with Attack-based trophy abilities that further strengthen your attacking potential.

Overview: The point of this setup is to help assure that no village setup will ever be “dead” and to give plenty of options in each game for building your deck, without needing any spreadsheets or computer access.

Prep: Replace the hero and village randomizer decks with a single copy of each level 1 hero and village card.

Setup Heroes: Shuffle your hero randomizers and deal out 4 normally, however, if none of the heroes give light, continue to flip heroes until one is found that does, replacing the 4th hero. My group also prefers no more then 1 of each type of hero (so never 2 clerics for instance), so in our case we’ll also keep flipping until we have 4 unique hero types.

Setup Village: Similar to the hero setup, you’re going to be continuing to flip cards until you reach certain goals here as well. You’re aiming for 4 weapons, 2 villages, 2 light items, 2 spells and 2 food. Sometimes you’ll have cards that fit both categories, which is fine, but keep flipping until you have 12 cards that fit these 5 goals.

Conclusion: You’ll have access to a larger variety of cards then normal and there will be less copies of each card available then normal, but you should never end up with a “dead” village. The guaranteed variety in the dungeon has never let us down and usually provides multiple decent strategies.

There is a iPhone app (which is occasionally free), which allows you to list which sets you have and will randomly generate he setup for you. It will also make sure that if you get a creature stack that has a lot of monsters that can only be hurt by one specific type of character or damage, tha there will be at least one way to kill those monsters.

Sleeving cards may seem a bit extreme, but it is a must for Thunderstone if you play with any regularity. Without sleeves, the endless shuffling of the cards will destroy the game in no time. Prior to sleeving, my set was already showing a ton of wear after only 4-5 games, especially the basic Dagger/Ration/Militia/Torch cards.

Standard US card sleeves (63.5mm x 88mm) work great.

Squeatus mentions Epic Thunderstone. Tom Vasel demonstrates how to set that up here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEKAm4VLwbI.

It adds loads to the theme, giving you opportunities to get all kinds of heroes and fight all kinds of monsters. It does make it harder to build synergies into your deck, reducing the game-iness.

It’s a lot of fun, particularly if you’re digging the fantasy theme.

Here is a link to the Gamegeek website that has the full solo rules. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/49890/official-thunderstone-solo-play-rules

Personally I will buy the Short Sword as weapon of choice. Not only will it give you +4 in combat. It is also worth a chunk of gold when you visit the village.