By Zach Shephard
For those of us that love carnage, there’s no better way to destroy an opponent’s vehicle than blowing up your own units to get the job done. After all, it doesn’t matter if you leave a smoldering trail of friendly corpses in your wake, the important thing is that you take your enemy down in the process. And who better to do the deed than those crazy, self-destructing Pikes?
If there’s one word to describe the Pike approach to combat, it’s probably "kablammo." Whether or not this is a real term is irrelevant, as the Pikes probably blew up the dictionary so that we can’t check anyway. Pikes excel at sacrificing themselves for the betterment of humanity (assuming that humanity’s ultimate goal is to annihilate enemy units and vehicles).
So how does one wield a force so destructive and seemingly uncontrollable? The short answer is with a Spirit Tracker SUV. The long answer is difficult to explain without the use of puppets.
The Mutant Spirit Tracker allows a player to pull tactics back into his or her hand every turn, and tactics are what make Pikes really shine. Fall Back is possibly the single best defensive card in the game, Savage Craze ensures that your Pikes won’t lose a fight when they raid, and Collision Course wipes out the enemy unit competition. As if that wasn’t enough, Zealotry is a real game-breaker – you can’t go wrong with directed damage that isn’t reliant on winning a fight. You could have five accuracy to your opponent’s 90 speed, and Zealotry will still put a dent in your opponent’s vehicle. All of these cards are good enough as is, but when you start replaying them with the Spirit Tracker, you’ve got one heck of an offense.
Of course, in a deck of this nature, one will need a fair amount of units to replace the self-inflicted casualties. For that very reason, this 56-card deck has a whopping 32 units. Excavator, Powderkeg, Ashblaster and Ashdragger all have abilities that trigger when they get destroyed, which isn’t difficult to do when you’re packing Collision Course and Zealotry. Dropping two copies of Zealotry to destroy your own Ashdragger means three points of damage against your opponent’s vehicle before a combat bonus is even drawn.
Gasman and Minerunner both benefit from taking damage, which works well with Savage Craze and, once again, Zealotry. A single Savage Craze on your Minerunner acts as a +40 accuracy boost (at the very least), and that’s nothing to sneeze at. Missionary, Mozak and Hateflinger don’t get any special perks for being damaged or destroyed, but they’re just too good to pass up.
In addition to the units and tactics in this deck, you’ve got eight maneuvers and two gears. Maneuvers can clear out lone enemy units on assault phases, swerve for defense against incoming vehicles, and complete an early mission or two to ensure you have some power to work with. Playing against decks that pack very few maneuvers means you’ll only be getting three power per turn unless you can complete a mission yourself, and that’s not a whole lot to work with. Cruising gives a nice defensive boost for only two power, while Infuriate helps your units take down the enemy vehicle.
Two copies of Mutant Heart are included as a means of mitigating some damage against your vehicle – if your opponent is playing any amount of units, your Ashblaster/Collision Course combo will ensure that you have more tokens than you know what to do with.
Vehicle
Missions
- Mesa Roja
- Signal Tower
- Hunting Camp
- The Killing Field
Draw Deck (56)
- 4 Ashdragger
- 4 Excavator
- 4 Powderkeg
- 4 Missionary
- 4 Gasman
- 4 Minerunner
- 4 Ashblaster
- 2 Mozak
- 2 Hateflinger
- 4 Fall Back
- 4 Zealotry
- 3 Savage Craze
- 3 Collision Course
- 4 Cruising
- 4 Infuriate
- 2 Mutant Heart
