The Art of Passing

“Play or pass?” – This is the greatest question we all must face when playing a game of SCALE.

One of the biggest hurdles that we find newer players experiencing is the impulsive urge to slam all of their cards to the Loop right away, because there is no immediately obvious detriment to doing so.

• In most other games (particularly trading card games), a player is limited to playing only as many cards as they have “mana” to pay for. In SCALE, we have done away with the concept of traditional card resource costs, but the secret is actually that we have simply transferred it into the cards themselves. This means that every single one of the cards in your hand is…. IMPORTANT!

• Is it fun to slam all of your cards to the Loop? Yes! Duh! Awesome dragons doing awesome stuff is what it’s all about! But, is it practical? Unfortunately not!

• True skill in SCALE comes from not playing your cards until you need to. What does this mean? Well, let’s break it down. There exists a hierarchy in this game of card importance. This means that the cards have different values based on where they are located within the play area.

Card Hierarchy

• The least important cards a player controls are the ones on the battlefield, even though they could ultimately win them the game with a successful attack. This doesn’t seem like it makes sense, but the true power of a dragon lies in its Loop abilities, not its power level. Alpha seems very awesome and powerful, but it does nothing against a well timed Breach or Fierce in the Loop, which can both have devastating consequences if you are low on treasure and didn’t keep a board wipe or some sort of counter in your hand.

• Basically, If you have a card on the battlefield, you already made something cool happen with the ability, so it now is simply an attacker, and almost any attack can be blocked by any power level (with Alpha, Delta, and Omega being the exceptions here as they generally need 2 defenders).

• Moving upward, we have cards in the Loop. These are much more important, because they haven’t yet received the benefit of their ability. Cards in the Loop must be weighed for their potential if someone is trying to counter it.

• If they play a Cancel on your Coax, do you really need to Fade their Cancel? The point of the Coax was to get a card out of their hand either way, and making them spend their Cancel is a pretty good trade.

• If an Explode or Overhaul was played, don’t play cards until after they activate, because otherwise you are just adding more targets to be Exploded or Overhauled, and wasting them as potential attackers or defenders. (Though, there is a fun exception to this which involves using Feast to eat all of your dragons before they become board wipe fodder.)

Lastly, we have the cards in your hand. These are the holy grail of your card playing potential. If your opponent hasn’t used a Peek or Coax, they are even more important. Each unrevealed card in hand is a very powerful trap waiting for the right moment to be sprung on your opponent. If you have 4 cards in your hand and they have 2, chances are you can win the game that turn, or the following turn – especially if they’re currently the attacker. The cards in your hand can be used in multiple ways, but as soon as you play the card, those options are gone to you.

• For example, maybe you activated your Alpha before your Explode? Well now Alpha is just another board wipe victim, courtesy of your own Explode. This is why you let your board wipe activate before your big attack play, to leave your attacker intact.

• They played their Feast on top of your Explode in the Loop? Well, I hope you can afford to lose that much treasure! Should have saved the Explode until it could be used as its own sort of counter for a Feast play or a deadly attack.

Honestly, you should really only play a card when it is required to stay alive, or if you have hand advantage and a potentially game-winning combo. They’re playing an Alpha? Sure, let it happen. Stopping it in the Loop does you no good when you could just as easily use something else to get rid of it from the battlefield, which saves your Loop counter to negate something more devastating.

The Strategy of “Playing”

The main goal of playing a card is to force your opponent to play a card as well. If you play two in a row, you are losing the ever valuable “card advantage” and most likely overplaying. You must only play a card when you can gain a net positive advantage by doing so.

• Okay so how do we do this? Well, Breach is an excellent example. This is because it not only takes a large portion of their treasure when it activates, but it also has enough power to finish them off if they have no defenders.

• This means when you play a Breach to an empty game board, your opponent MUST play a card at some point that turn, or simply lose. If they play some sort of counter to stop Breach in the Loop, you should be fine with that! They just spent one of their best counters and you now potentially have access to that powerful counter card through Again, Bounce, or Wild.

• You should not fight for the Breach, even though that 9 treasure lead seems very enticing. It’s generally not going to be worth it, because you will be spending more cards and losing card advantage, only for them to potentially just play an Overhaul or Null and ruin your plans, leaving you with no Breach, and now missing a powerful Loop counter that might have saved your butt later!

• Another good example of gaining net positive advantage is by playing something like Bury, Banish, Peek, or some other card that draws you a card and puts an attacker on your battlefield at the same time. If they allow one of these to activate, you will get the card replaced in your hand, and can now try to attack them with that Bury or Peek on the battlefield to gain a decent treasure advantage. Basically, play a draw card, keep the card you draw from it in your hand, then try to chip away at their treasure pile with your battlefield minions.

The best strategy in SCALE is mostly focused around getting your opponent to run out of cards, so that you get to do whatever you want with your remaining dragons. If they are trying to draw cards in response to your potential winning ability, generally they’re looking for a way around whatever you’re doing in the Loop. This is a great time to use a counter, as it deprives them of new answers, and keeps the card advantage in your favor.

The Strategy of “Passing”

Here are some cards you should usually pass on:

• Bloom
• Bust
• Chaos
• End
• Expand
• Loot
• Greed [only if you both will Draw 2]
• Rot
• Tax
• Sleep
• Charity
• Expand
• Terraform
• Vanish
• Explode
• Rage
• Overhaul
• Alpha, Delta, and Omega

Obviously there are specific cases where you will need to stop one of these in the Loop, but you should always try to find a creative way to do so. Playing a Cancel against their Explode is almost never recommended, unless doing so will win you the game. It’s much better to use a Save to counter the Explode, giving you card advantage on the battlefield AND conserving your Cancel for something more important.

There are a million exceptions to every play, and every game of SCALE is unique, meaning there will never be a truly comprehensive “guide” on when exactly you should play or pass on a card. This is because it depends so heavily on things like how many cards are left in each player’s hand, who has the battlefield advantage, who’s turn it is, what the treasure count is, and what sort of effects are currently active.

• My best advice that is generally helpful regardless of the situation: try not to play cards if you are down on card advantage, and if your battlefield is full, you should probably just try to move into the attack phase if it’s your turn. If it’s not, then you already have plenty of defenders and shouldn’t be playing cards unless they will net you a win through their treasure stealing abilities.

• If it’s their turn – only play the least powerful cards you have, and only when you have to. Only play enough to make sure you can defend their incoming attack, because after they attack and their turn ends, you get to draw a card, meaning you will gain some card advantage!

• Sometimes Cancel is the best card for the situation, but many times it’s something less obvious like Cute or Banish, but you won’t see that if you don’t hold onto that card until it becomes truly powerful based on the current board state.

If you aren’t sure if you should play a card in a certain situation, then don’t! It will serve you much better if you wait to get to a point where you NEED that card specifically.

Thanks for reading, and as always, thanks for playing!