Welcome to the third 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.
The Lyra are artistic nomads who use everything in the world around them as their canvas. They are frequently struck with moments of frenetic expression, and whether through visual, verbal, or written works they put their entire souls into the channeling of their craft. The Lyra live eternally in the present, not caring to make intensive future plans or be weighed down by the past.
Mechanics
As far as faction mechanics go, Lyra has some pretty unique ones! These are what I would consider the essential components of the Lyra faction:
Dice Rolls
Dice rolls are undoubtedly the most iconic of the Lyra mechanics. Lots of Lyra cards use random dice rolls to trigger their effects at varying levels of success. The most common form of this is with two possible outcomes, as seen on Ouroboros Trickster for example. With a roll of 4-6 the card will gain 2 boosts (3 in the rare version), while a 1-3 only gives a single boost. There are also cards such as All In! which care about any result you may roll. These random effects may turn off some more competitively-minded gamers, but it adds a unique layer of fun and excitement to the faction.
The Lyra Bastion is especially important for decks focused around dice rolling, as it gives you a much higher chance of getting a favorable result. For the cards which require a 4+ result, rolling a single die is a 50% chance of success, while rolling two dice is a 75% chance. If you manage to get two Bastions in play the odds increase further to 87%!
0 Statistics
Every creature in Altered has three expedition stats corresponding to the three regions types – forest, mountain, and water. For a majority of creatures in the game these stats are all close to each other, occasionally favoring one stat in particular, but Lyra makes a habit of only including two of the three stats on its creatures. Over half of the common creatures have a zero for at least one of their stats. These creatures usually come with above average values in their two remaining stats, so Lyra players can gain consistent advantages as long as they are paying close attention to the order in which regions appear. There are also a few cards in the game which specifically synergize with zero-value statistics on creatures.
Reserve/Support
In the first faction article discussing Axiom we saw how much that faction takes advantage of the reserve mechanic, featuring lots of resupply and ways to put cards directly into reserve alongside cheap reserve mana costs. Lyra takes advantage of the reserve a little differently. It has creatures such as Anansi and Ouroboros Inkcaster which reward you for playing excessive cards into reserve. Most notably there are plenty of support abilities on Lyra cards. As a reminder, support abilities are effects printed on the bottom of a card which can be activated for zero mana by discarding the card from your reserve. Lyra has more of these at common than any other faction, and a ton more on its rare cards. Through these effects Lyra can mitigate the risk of putting too many cards into reserve, using them to generate free effects over the course of the game.
Strengths
Lyra’s biggest strength is its flexibility as a faction. Two of the three heroes provide some form of card advantage, and there is a good amount of resupply, sabotage, and card draw throughout the faction, so you are often able to keep your options as you go into the late game to either play strong creatures or respond to your opponent’s moves. Lyra’s removal options are excellent to support this – Cloth Cocoon is one of the stronger basic removal spells for creatures, and Twinkle Twinkle and A Capella Training are really cheap for the value they provide (especially as non-fleeting spells).
Another strength of Lyra is that its creatures usually have high stats to make up for their 0s in their third statistic. This also forms part of their weakness that we will discuss in the next section, but it does also mean that with a combination of card advantage and careful play you can always have an edge up on your opponent in a given expedition.
Weaknesses
Lyra’s weaknesses lie in its inconsistencies. This is especially easy to notice with the die-rolling mechanic. Most cards in the game have a single known effect when you activate them, but the various die-rolling cards can fail you entirely, wasting your mana and possibly your entire round. Now not every Lyra deck has to include dice cards in the deck, so this weaknesses can be sidestepped.
The other consistency problem is more embedded into the faction, which is the awkwardness of the 0-stat creatures. These make up enough of the faction that every deck will have to include some sizable number of them, and this means there will be many gamestates where your creatures just do not line up with the expeditions you are trying to move in. If your token is in a water-only zone and you have a Tanuki and a Mad Hatter in hand, you have no way to progress. Similarly, the zone on the other side may be a water-forest zone and you can still play those creatures to advance, but your opponent can play a cheap creature with a small water stat and tie you in that expedition.
As discussed in the strengths section this problem can be mitigated with good play and even turned into a strength, but it does mean that Lyra can be a much more punishing faction to newer players who are not used to planning out multiple turns ahead. At the GenCon learning event the Lyra starter deck had the lowest winrate of the six, and this could be attributed to the particular card choices in that deck, but I believe it also reflects the subtle complexity of the faction.
Heroes
Lyra’s three heroes are all incredibly diverse in their effects, and they provide some fun directions to take a deck in. This section will give a brief overview of the main playstyle of each hero, along with a sample decklist.
Nevenka & Blotch
Hero
Character
Spell
Permanent
Nevenka is the go-to hero for dice shenanigans. This deck includes almost every card that has a die roll effect alongside several ways to influence the outcomes of these rolls. The Lyra Bastion is the best way to ensure you are getting good outcomes, and we play the rare effect to ensure we can get it into play as early as possible. Rare Martengale is also incredibly valuable as a way to raise die outcomes over the course of two turns. It’s especially notable that Martengale guarantees that Nevenka will never hit the dreaded 1 roll while it is in play. With a combination of your high Lyra stats, boosts almost every turn fro, Nevenka, and then big lane swings such as All In or Kadigiran Mage-Dancer, this deck should be able to put nice aggressive pressure on your opponent until you build up to your big finishers.
Auraq & Kibble
Hero
Character
Spell
Just like Nevenka, Auraq tells you exactly what you should be including in your deck via its hero ability. But what is the actual goal of the deck after putting all these 0-stat creatures in? Weirdly the hero I think Auraq bears the most resemblance to is Kojo, who also benefits from significant tempo swings via playing a free creature at noon. While Kojo gets to do this as early as the first turn, Auraq has to build up in time and mana before she is generating value. It should be noted that a good Auraq deck can often start triggering her effect every other turn once you do have enough mana, at which point she really is stronger than Kojo!
To get to this point in the game we are playing as many cheap creatures with a 0-stat as we are able, and relying on the ability to hit extra cards off the top of the deck to push our gameplan forward when a low-cost aggro deck would normally begin running out of steam. Remember that the card you play with Auraq’s effect adds a counter to her if it also has a 0 stat, so as long as you are playing two creatures regularly a turn you will trigger her every other turn.
Fen & Crowbar
Hero
Character
Spell
Fen is without a doubt my favorite hero in the entire game. Her effect turns the resource system of Altered on its head, taking away any agency in your mana decisions but giving you an extra half a card a turn. The longer the game goes the more advantage she can give, so Fen decks usually end up skewing towards the slower side, grinding the opponent’s resources to dust one resupply at a time.
While there are many ways to build Fen, the list I have included here is a straightforward midrange list meant to emphasize flexibility and individual card strength. Something really important to keep in mind when building a Fen deck is that half of your draws will only be playable from reserve, so play-from-hand effects lose a lot of value relative to reserve and support effects. As such this deck does not play any hand effect cards (aside from Lyra Skald who also has a support effect), and over half of the cards in the deck have either a play-from-reserve effect or a support effect. Hathor and Ouroboros Inkcaster let you pick up important pieces from reserve if you need to play them an additional time. This deck may not have any special flashy combos, but it always has efficient creatures to play and tons of options going into the late game.
Conclusion
I hope you have enjoyed this analysis of Lyra! There is a lot to keep in mind when building around and playing with these heroes, but they provide unparalleled power when mastered. Next up in this series will be Muna!
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