Welcome to the sixth and final article 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.
Yzmir
The Yzmir are a deeply spiritual group who seek to understand the fundamental nature of the world they inhabit. The world of Altered is constantly evolving, with more and more incomprehensible forces making themselves known, and the Yzmir believe that they alone understand the truths yet to be discovered. Their experiments with dark arcana hopefully allow the rest of humanity to live in comparative peace and ignorance of the terrors that lurk within and beyond.
Mechanics
Yzmir has some nicely unique mechanical spaces within the world of Altered. This section will break down the mechanics that best define Yzmir as a faction.
Spells
Of course every faction in the game utilizes Spells, as they are one of just three card types in the game. Yzmir stands out as the main faction to include cards that directly synergize with the use of spells. This includes creatures like Kadigiran Mage-Dancer or Flamel that reward you for having multiple spells around, as well as cheap card advantage spells like Magical Training or Spy Craft to keep you moving through your deck. The exact spells you include in your deck will influence the way your deck plays, but most Yzmir decks will have a higher spell composition than most factions. We will explore specific examples of this later in the hero section.
Sacrifice
The idea of a sacrifice deck is a classic one seen across many TCGs. The basic concept is that you play cheap creatures (especially ones that benefit from dying) as well as cards that destroy these creatures to give you benefits beyond what normal cards would do. Yzmir’s best sacrificial target is Moonlight Jellyfish, who costs only 1 mana and still goes to reserve when sacrificed, allowing it to be used for two different sacrifice costs. There are plenty of payoffs available in the faction too – Kuwat has great stats for its cost, Gift of Self provides fantastic card draw, and Baba’s Isba can mimic an entire hero power. The sacrifice archetype shines through the faction’s rare cards too, as a lot of the sacrifice cards become noticeably more powerful. Yzmir Stargazer is a simple vanilla creature at common but a fantastic sacrifice target if you go for the rare version.
Control
This is less of an explicitly defined mechanical space than most, and more a consequence of the direction of Yzmir’s card pool. A combination of having great card advantage and powerful lategame spells means that Yzmir can play a very long game of grinding down an opponent’s resources while building up its own. Creatures like Baku and Baba Yaga make their home in these kinds of decks, providing additional card advantage while holding down the early game. In the late game you can drop powerful removal followed by one of these cheaper creatures to secure a lane, or go big with bodies like The Kraken and Sakarabu which can entirely change the pace of the game on their own.
Strengths
The biggest strength of Yzmir is easily its card advantage, as has been mentioned in multiple sections already. Yzmir has so many cards that either draw multiple cards or provide advantage through other ways (discard, removing multiple characters). These effects let Yzmir play a flexible game where you always have more options in hand than your opponent, allowing you to choose your proactive or reactive effects as necessary based on your opponent’s more limited plays.
Weaknesses
As is common with control-based factions in TCGs, one of Yzmir’s weaknesses is the limited scope of its proactive plays. A faction like Muna or Bravos have the option to simply play a massive 5-mana creature to win a lane if uncontested. Yzmir has to either play multiple smaller creatures, set up sacrifice synergies to make up stats, or use kill spells to take out bigger threats in a lane. You will usually have enough cards to make something work, but on average you will have more decisions per round than other factions, and this also means more opportunities to make a mistake that costs you the round or even the game.
Heroes
Yzmir has three heroes with super distinct abilities. This section will cover the basics of using each hero along with a sample decklist.
Akesha & Taru
Hero
Spell
Character
Permanent
Akesha has a pretty hard ability to put a value on. It is the only hero power in the game that does not come with a tangible benefit to your gamestate – the only advantage is that you get to ensure you are the second player every single round. Many card gamers may be used to this being a bad thing – it is traditional in many TCGs to want to be the first player as often as possible. But with the way boardstates develop in Altered it is actually much better to be second most of the time. Going second means you can look at your opponent’s first 1-2 card plays and decide exactly which response is best. Maybe they play two creatures in the same lane and you can just play one in the other lane to reach parity. Maybe they play a single large creature that you can play a removal spell on. Maybe they pass earlier than expected and you now have time to play card draw spells without worrying about loss of tempo. The hope with Akesha is that you can maximize these moments where you are in control of the pace of rounds.
Akesha naturally fits into decks which are more controlling, with higher concentrations of reactive effects. A big removal spell really wants to be played after an opponent plays their threat after all. This deck utilizes cheap creatures that can be snuck into lanes as well as removal spells ranging from the cheapest in the game to the most explosive. In the very late game dropping a Yzmir Bastion can create an incredible mana advantage that is impossible for any opponent to recover from. It should be noted that most expensive locations are risky because you are committing your whole turn to playing them, but the Bastion allows you to use it the same round to play whatever spell you want from your hand. Celebration Day is the perfect spell to pair with it – you guarantee you are not losing any tempo that turn, and now you have the rest of the game to utilize your free spells to push lanes forward.
Afanas & Senka
Hero
Character
Spell
Earlier we discussed how one of Yzmir’s weaknesses is its lack of proactive plays with big stats, and Afanas is an easy solution to that. Every single creature you put onto the table can now become a terrifying threat if you get enough spells piled onto it. The core of an Afanas deck is creatures that can maximally benefit from these boosts. Spindle Harvesters and the seasoned creatures can carry boosts over multiple rounds, effectively doubling the benefit of your hero power. Helping Hand is especially synergistic with these seasoned creatures – not only does it provide another boost on its own for them to keep, it allows you to get three or even four rounds out of playing them!
Playing this deck is simple at its core, but also requires a lot of careful planning over multiple rounds. The mana-making decisions are especially complicated – the ideal ratio of cards left to play is 1-2 creatures depending on if you want to go for multiple lanes, and then plenty of spells to buff those creatures up as much as possible. But you also have to consider that your opponent can kill your creatures and undo all of your progress. If you keep too many creatures around to make up for this you may not have enough spells left to turn them into meaningful threats. At all times you want to be thinking about how your opponent can respond to your plays and do your best to keep your anchored and seasoned creatures dominating the game as long as possible.
Afanas has some weird deckbuilding restrictions when trying to optimize a list. Many of the best creatures for the hero as well as some of the best utility spells are out of faction cards. You will notice that all 15 rare slots in this decklist are dedicated to out of faction cards. This unfortunately means that some in faction cards that would be nice upgrades, like Magical Training and Mage-Dancer, are stuck in their common versions to make room. Thankfully these cards are still strong enough as commons to get space in the deck, but if you are lacking any of the out of faction cards for this deck these make excellent alternative rares.
Lindiwe & Maw
Hero
Spell
Permanent
Character
Lindiwe provides an incredible amount of consistency to the sacrifice strategy. Knowing that every round you will have a body to feed to effects like Kuwat or Gift of Self makes them much safer to include in large quantities, as otherwise you could risk a hand full of sacrifice effects without any good creatures to sacrifice. One really interesting aspect of the Maw token is that it not only provides a cheap body at all times to sacrifice, but can also grow if you do have other creatures to sacrifice instead. Feeding your Tooth Fairies and Studious Disciples to your engine cards and making a 4/4/4 Maw is a great way to overwhelm multiple lanes at the same time and bury your opponent in advantage.
This deck also makes use of some nice out of faction rares. Boom is much more powerful in this deck than it is in an Axiom deck, and now you have cheap flexible removal on top of ways to grow your Maw. Ordis Carrier means you will have even more consistent access to sacrificial targets, which further means allowing your Maw to grow. Overall this deck is a hybrid between a control strategy and a proactive one, utilizing solid removal and disruption effects on top of the ability to drop efficient stats out of nowhere.
Conclusion
I hope you have enjoyed this analysis of Yzmir! This faction is a personal favorite of mine, and while it can be challenging to learn it is perhaps the most rewarding for dedicated players.
And with that we reach the end of this series of faction articles! Check out the earlier articles if you have not had a chance to, alongside their accompanying in-depth hero guide articles, and we will have plenty more exciting content coming to you soon.
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