Image courtesy of Equinox

Hello everyone, and welcome to my unfortunately last Altered article on Card Gamer. Though it was unforeseen, I decided to make my final article one that I hope can stand the test of time, so here are a list of resources, guides, and general tips on how to get better at Altered.

Decklists:

39cards.com is your best friend for just the sheer volume of information it provides you with, with decklists feeding down to well past the Top 8. There’s even an area to filter for specific heroes in case you wanted to look for inspiration to build your own decks, though I’ve found that there’s some slight issues where it automatically displays the lowest placing decklist if there are multiple of the same hero from the most recent event. The advantage though, is that there’s some small information about each event, whether it was played on BoardGameArena or in a physical store, or whether there were any additional rules such as no uniques allowed. There’s also attached links to Twitch VODs or any type of coverage where applicable, so it’s the ultimate resource in terms of being able to retrieve and parse decklists from events everywhere.

The major downside is that some events with lower participation numbers may skew some of the performance of certain decks, and the top performing decklists by each hero also won’t take into account any additional rules imposed on any specific event. So really, 39cards is the forest from which you need to find the specific tree for your needs and purposes. The interface is intuitive enough that anyone can navigate it with ease, so don’t feel intimidated by all the information it presents you with.

BoardGameArena Replays

If you’ve interacted with the digital aspect of Altered, you’ll no doubt have at least seen, if not played on the BoardGameArena client. The website hosts the official online client for the game, as well as a whole host of board games and also has some features that make improving your game much easier. While a free account locks a lot of the more premium features such as the ranked data of yourself and other users, the replay feature is really what you’re looking for.

 Navigating to it, however, is quite a mess, and requires going to your profile, clicking on ‘My Activity’ and then clicking on the tiny ‘username’s game history’ in the top right corner of the games played box.

Doing so will bring up a new screen with all the games you’ve played ever on the website, though you can filter by game for just Altered.

After that you can click on each individual game, and then click on the grey ‘View game replay’ button. You’ll then be presented with a text copy of the play-by-play, but if you click on ‘Choose this player’ next to your opponent, you’ll view the game from their perspective, including the deck selection process where their entire decklist will flash on the screen. The replay system operates on each game action, so it will pause on the decklist screen and you can see what that high-rated opponent you just lost to was playing.

That was a lot of clicks just to get to there, and you may be wondering, “But I don’t play on BGA, what’s the point of this?” Well, you can also navigate to the main page for Altered on BGA and look at the leaderboard for the highest ranked players for the season, and then do the exact same thing and look at them or their opponents’ decks! This is great for seeing what the best players online are doing, what heroes they’re playing, or even what types of unique effects they’re prioritizing in order to inform what you should be doing.

Optimizing Your Turns

For my last parting thought, I want to leave with you what I think to be the greatest asset to an Altered player’s game. I think in the short time that Altered has been around, the greatest constant in its gameplay and deckbuilding is the concept of tempo. While tempo is this nebulous term that’s often thrown around in the card gaming sphere to really mean anything that you want, so I’ll  offer this alternative. The best way to level up your Altered play is to understand the speed at which your deck operates and understand the difference between playing to win versus playing not to lose.

In other card games, playing to win often means taking the line that will give you the best chance of winning versus playing not to lose, which is often the line that will result in survival, but oftentimes just delays the inevitable if you’re already on the back foot. This usually results in playing for your own board presence or advantage as opposed to holding parity with your opponent in a game state where you are behind. However, in Altered, this dichotomy ends up resulting in the play which stalls out the game for longer being the move that plays to win.

If you are offered the scenario to tie your opponent on one side or advance the other expedition in a trade-off, I’d almost always recommend tying and forcing a draw on a single expedition. The amount of information gained from knowing what attributes to fight for in a subsequent day is extremely vital when many decks are playing characters that are usually stronger in two out of the three attributes, and being able to deny both players of that information in comparison to the scenario where you both advance one side and flip the Tumult card ends up benefitting you in the early game so much more. Once the board has advanced and there’s some level of discrepancy and static Noon effects in play, the game will quickly devolve into stat-checking and trying to eke out tiny wins in an expedition, but holding down the early game can be influential to the outcome when playing against decks that can scale as hard in the later turns like Sigismar.

Understand your deck’s game plan and speed it wants to play at, understand the same for your opponent, and play to the board in a way that generates as much value for you, whether it be in the sense of cards, board state, or a mixture of both. That is the key to winning in Altered.

Concluding Thoughts

While it was a shorter time than I anticipated, I had a great time talking Altered with everyone through Card Gamer. It’s a genuinely fun and unique (hah!) game that rewards deckbuilding, gameplay, and strategy all in different ways and has a charm that seems to be rare in today’s TCG landscape. Big thanks to my editor Andy as always for making my work as legible as it is, and to Card Gamer and the Space Cow Media team for allowing me to write about my passions for so long. I’ll still be around on social media on BlueSky @lutrilover9000.bsky.social‬ and Twitter @LLover9000 and am always happy to talk Altered and any other card games. Until next time, it’s been a fun ride.