Welcome to the second in a series of faction guides! Each of these articles will take a dive into one of the six factions within Altered. We will begin with an overview of the central mechanics in each faction, analyze their biggest strengths and weaknesses, and then look at each of the three heroes currently available alongside some sample decklists.
Bravos is a faction full of adventurers who embrace the perilous world they inhabit and face their challenges head-on. They are constantly pushing themselves past their own limits, and pushing for a world that will be better for themselves and their peers.
Mechanics
Bravos has a simpler playstyle than most of the other factions in the game. It’s cards tend to be a more straightforward and highlight core effects of the Altered TCG. Here are the mechanics that are most heavily emphasized:
Boosts
Boosts are a mechanic which is present in all factions quite a bit, but in Bravos they really make their home. Bravos is the main faction which gets access to the mechanic seasoned, which lets creatures keep their boosts when going to reserve. Cheap seasoned creatures such as Bravos Bladedancer or Red become awesome threats after two play cycles of boosting effects. A card like Helping Hand or the rare version of Bravos Vanguard can keep your seasoned creatures gaining value even longer. The rare versions of these creatures can gain additional benefits from their boosts as well!
Ramp
In TCGs ramp is generally defined as effects which increase the amount of mana available to you. In Altered this comes in the form of making additional mana orbs or permanently reducing your card costs. There aren’t too many of these effects in the game so far, but Bravos has its hands on quite a few of them. Mana Channeling is perhaps the simplest version of such an effect, providing you with an extra mana orb for the rest of the game as early as the first turn. There are also creatures such as the two Jinns that can become mana when leaving the expedition zone.
After making all of this extra mana you will want something to do with it, which is why Bravos comes with some of the largest creatures in the game! Shenlong and Kaibara are massive piles of stats that should automatically swing any lane they end up in. Atlas is a nice expensive creature to play as well, as his gigantic effect makes any boosts you put on him effectively worth double.
Strengths
As alluded to in the previous paragraph, expedition stats are a huge strength of Bravos. What the faction lacks in strategic versatility it makes up for in its ability to make numbers go big and go up. Not only are there tons and tons of ways to boost your creatures, but there are a lot of vanilla creatures (creatures without effects) that have high expedition stats for their cost relative to other factions. On average you would expect your Bravos cards to outcompete similarly costed creatures from other factions when just looking at their expedition stats.
Weaknesses
The biggest weakness of Bravos is its limited capacity to interact with the opponent’s side of the board. There are only two common cards that affect any cards your opponent plays (Intimidation and Mana Eruption), and one of these is a temporary effect as opposed to a permanent answer. So Bravos may have no trouble putting stats on the board, but it has to hope that the opponent doesn’t counter with a similarly strong board.
Heroes
The three Bravos heroes are pretty simple conceptually, but do fit well into different types of decks. This section will give a brief overview of the main playstyle of each hero, along with a sample decklist.
Kojo & Booda
Hero
Character
Spell
Permanent
Kojo’s hero ability creates a powerful 2/2/2 token every other turn. This creates an interesting play dynamic where your deck is much more powerful on specific turns than on others. Ideally you use the turns where Booda joins the expedition to make powerful pushes on both expeditions. The list provided here is especially aggressive and meant to allow you to push for advantage on both sides of the board. The deck does not have a lot of card draw or resupply effects, and the hope is that the Booda token will essentially act as an extra card played in a lot of cases.
Basira & Kaizaimon
Hero
Permanent
Character
Spell
Basira directs you to the ABC strategy of Altered – Always Boost Creatures! Her ability is not only a great source of stats, but is also more versatile than it may appear at first glance. A lot of her power lies in the flexibility of choosing which creature you boost with her, as opposed to the Muna hero Teija who must boost the first creature played each turn. Kelon Cylinder and Haven, Bravos Bastion let you boost your creatures at no additional mana cost, making it easy for Basira to trigger every turn. There are plenty of Seasoned creatures in the deck as well to gain persistent value from these boosts. The deck is meant to be played quickly and aggressively, pushing for early lanes with cheap cards boosted to unreasonably high stats.
Atsadi & Surge
Hero
Character
Spell
Permanent
In contrast with Kojo and Basira, Atsadi does not provide value right out of the gate. His ability lets you draw a card once you play a creature which costs at least five mana, and triggers again with a six mana creature, and so on. Card advantage is not one of Bravos’s strong suits, so having assurance that you will draw extra cards guaranteed over the course of the game makes Atsadi a really powerful choice for grindy decks.
This list is designed to get you playing 5+ mana monsters as quickly as possible, with plenty of ramp effects playable as early as the first or second turn. With all the extra card draw you should have no trouble playing a mana orb every turn up to ten mana, or even a little beyond, allowing you to start playing two of your large creatures every turn to contest both lanes or really dominate in one. The spice of the deck is Mind Apotheosis, which is almost like a weird form of card draw in that it gets you two creatures from a single card play.
A few quirks to keep in mind with this deck – firstly, putting creatures into play with Mind Apotheosis does not let you draw cards with Atsadi. This is because of the distinction between “play a creature” and “put a creature into play”. Secondly, as a quick strategic note, it is best if possible to try and play creatures which match up to the exact number of Heroism counters. For example, if you play a six mana creature while you have five heroism counters, you effectively skip ever drawing a card with a five mana creature. If you end up with hands that don’t let you sequence for maximum draws that is fine, but when given the option I recommend playing the creature which has the exact right amount of counters. Every card draw counts!
Conclusion
I hope you have enjoyed this analysis of Bravos! It is a faction that really exemplifies the core strategies of Altered while still having a lot of variety in playstyles. Next up in this series will be Lyra!
You can also check this video (in French) to learn more about Bravos:
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