2 Assassin Strategies, 1 Game! | TTRPG Sparks of Eternity: Emanation

Transcribed content from our recent YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-zk16nPM6A

Transcription

Assassin Strategy

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[00:00:00] Welcome back to Eternity TT RPG YouTube channel, where I go over different happenings in the tabletop role-playing universe from D&D to the game that my husband and I are creating. So this go around, we wanted to take a moment to, um, focus a little bit more on the game that my husband and I have created.

If you followed, followed along, if not, here's a quick rundown. So he's been creating a tabletop role-playing game for thirty-plus years, like, his entire life, and we found a way for it to be accessible as, like, a fifteen-minute card game just focusing on combat. So we went ahead, had that produced. We have the physical version of it.

It is called Emanation. And then from there, we worked with a friend of ours, and he was able to put this entire card game online. So now there's online Emanation. So it plays the exact same. It's just a matter of if you want the physical copy or the online version. Um, so what we thought [00:01:00] would be cool is that there are six classes in this game, right?

And every class, I feel like, um, has a different strategy or multiple strategies to it that you can use to play it and see how you succeed. Um, so I thought it would be fun to go over those strategies. However, what we're gonna do is my husband is gonna go ahead and take one of the classes, go over his strategy, I'll go over mine.

We won't see each other's videos until, you know, I edit it and throw it on here. But I just wanna see if we line up, if we do different things, um, and if you guys can resonate with either one or if you wanna try it out and find a new strategy. So with all of that being said, the first class we're gonna do and the only class we're gonna focus on this, um, this go around is gonna be the assassin, okay?

So with all of that being said, I'll pass it off to [00:02:00] him

Hey guys, this is Jacob. It's been a while since I've been on the channel. I just wanted to give my perspective on the Assassin class. So when you come to this website which is play.sparksofeternity.com, we'll put the link in the video

You get this page and it's free to play

All you have to do is put in your email address and you can play against friends, you can play against computers. It's, uh, really, really awesome. But I'll just go through for those of you who aren't too familiar yet, maybe you've played one or two games, maybe you, be you haven't played at all, and I'll give my perspective on the assassin class.

I think the plan is we'll be doing this for all the classes, so hopefully you get an idea of maybe some strategies that you can use. And if nothing else, I hope it tempts you to try the game for yourself So when you hover over each of these abilities here, you can see what it does. So Sparks of Eternity: Emanation is [00:03:00] a TTRPG combat card game.

It basically takes the classes of fantasy RPGs and puts them into a card game feel. I'll probably play a couple rounds of this even, but every turn, basically you get more options that you can choose from as your character levels up, and it gives you just more cool things to do.

Once you reach level one is when your character starts getting unique powers for the class. So at level one, you'd have Assassinate, and this is just a small chance to do a ton of damage to somebody. I usually like to play this just for fun because if you happen to hit it, you might knock like the summoner out of the game because they have very low number of life sparks or hit points.

By level two, you end up getting Rupture. So this is actually slightly different from the physical version currently. We changed some of the order for what will be our future prints and for online to make it a little more streamlined. We [00:04:00] put this ability next. So this ability gives you lethality, which is a spending resource that you can use towards Assassinate.

So for every one lethality that you use, instead of hitting, you can see on a 16 to 20 with Assassinate, you would drop that number by one. So Rupture gives you five. So on turn two, I would usually Rupture to start building up lethality so that later in the game I can use those resources to more e- easily hit with Assassinate.

Uh, by late in the game, you could have, you know, 30, 40, 50 lethality and just do multiple turns in a row of Assassinating and, um, especially if you end up generating second actions and so forth, which is, you know, some classes can give you, uh, you could very quickly win a game from out of nowhere, which is kind of the idea of the Assassin.

Uh, by turn three, you pick up Assassin's [00:05:00] Blades, and you can see here this is a passive effect. So in Emanation, every class has these passives that are, that are totally unique to them, but it's what makes the class feel like that class. Once passive effects are played, they stay in play and every single turn they give you some effect that can happen.

So many of those effects are rolled dice effects. You, you roll a 20-sided dice and if you roll within the indicated range, an effect will occur. So with Assassin's Blades, it's just a chance every turn to deal damage. Um, usually by turn three once this comes up I play this immediately. Uh, same goes for Assassin's Poisons on four.

It's another passive effect. Basically, whenever I get passive ef- effects I just play them because then the value of that ability just compounds over time. So Assassin's Poisons can daze somebody, which means they can't play any other actions. They can't play any actions for the turn unless they defend

Turn [00:06:00] five is usually a little different. You get Unassuming, which makes you untargetable for three turns. It also gives you a large number of life sparks. Sometimes I play this right away if I, if I'm taking a lot of damage from especially like a, a summoner or a berserker, and then you can use those terms, y- turns that you can't be targeted to stack up ruptures to get more lethality going.

Sometimes though, I'll save this for the last three turns of the game, and I'll just make it so that I, I heal six life sparks and

then the last three turns of the game I just can't be targeted. Sprint on turn six is kind of a similar thing. You defend for two turns. So when you defend in Eternity, it just means that you can't be targeted So Sprint gives you a two-turn defend, uh, during which time on their second turn you can actually still attack someone.

So it's very powerful. Sometimes, you know, at the end of the game I was mentioning how I play Unassuming. If you chain that together with Sprint, you could have, like, five [00:07:00] turns where you're completely untargetable. Um, combined with the healing from Unassuming, that's a very powerful effect. Alternatively, like I was mentioning you play it earlier in the game, you build up ruptures, you sprint, you can even assassinate your second turn of- while sprinting.

Uh, Cold Blood is another one, though, that I play immediately as, as soon as it becomes available because you start building up stacks of lethality every turn. It's your final passive effect as assassin, and it gives you a fifty percent chance to give basically the rupture effect every turn where you gain five lethality.

So as soon as I get this, I usually play this just to start, um, building up my late game assassinates. Premeditate's one of my favorite abilities because it sort of lets you see what your opponents are going to do. So right off the bat, you gain one lethality, and then you roll a D20, and if you roll within the five to 20 range, you get to take a second action.

So the reason this is very [00:08:00] valuable is because if someone's using a really powerful attack against you, um, say another assassin is trying to assassinate you or a summoner is using Oblivion, uh, their big, powerful attack, or Judge is using Hammer of Elysium, their big, powerful attack, a second action actually takes place before those incoming effects would.

So it lets you see what your opponent will do, and then if it's really dangerous, you can use a defend or you can use Sprint or Unassuming and avoid that attack. Um, similarly, if your opponent's not defending and you have a lot of lethality, you can check to see what they're gonna do with Premeditate, basically see their action and then follow up with as- an assassinate or a big attack of your own.

First Strike, it kind of extends the power of your assassinate, and we'll be updating this a little bit soon. Uh, but basically at, at the moment, the, in, the, the heart of the effect is that you play it, next time you cause someone to take damage they take more damage, so it makes your [00:09:00] assassinate even bigger.

And then Feint is actually a card that I see players use very infrequently but I think is one of the best cards in the game, uh, unless you're playing against a druid or someone who can attack through defends or punish you for defending. So Feint, there's, there's so many instances in Emanation where you take a damage and then there's about to be ten different, 20 different rolls for passive effects happening.

Like Berserker has multiple effects per turn like Assassin's Blades where they roll to see if they do more damage to you Same with Summoner, same with Druid, and so forth. So if you can Feint after taking damage and you have the Presence of Mind to play it, you'll defend for the rest of the turn while still allowing you to do all of your cool effects, all of your own passive effects, finish out your own ability.

But then it'll protect you for the rest of the turn against all [00:10:00] those other passive effects, second actions, and so forth. And then cost of this basically is that you're dazed on your next turn, and so you probably end up defending on the following turn as well, which is sometimes good, sometimes, sometimes bad, mostly good.

But I've had turns where you Feint and then you take, you know, one damage, but you actually end up preventing like three or four, and all of that damage gets redirected to somebody else, and it ends up being a really powerful play. So the Assassin has a lot of options to stay in the game. So, uh, usually, I guess with the passive effects, I play them as they come in.

Sprint, Unassuming, First Strike, Feint, these are all like utility kind of cards, and you play them when you need to, when it's gonna give you the most advantage. I tend to premeditate a lot of turns unless I'm very confident about what I want to do or what I want, what I think my opponents will do, and I don't think there's gonna be a punish for not checking what they're going to do.

There's always the chance you miss [00:11:00] that effect and you only get one lethality for the turn, which is pretty bad. But, um By the end of the game, I'm usually just premeditating most turns, keeping up my first strike, and then you're just building up enough lethality and kind of gauging how much life sparks people have left.

And then you're timing your unassuming and sprint and just pouring out assassinates at the end of the game. You might get two, three, four assassinates at the end of the game. And, uh, I would say especially against the computers currently, but against a lot of players too, they have a hard time tracking your lethality even though it, it's listed, right?

When, when you're playing your character, it'll list your lethality next to you, so they could check it at any time. But the assassin does just tend to be a very surprising class. You don't really know what's gonna come for you until it hits you. And when you get hit by an assassinate, your opponents get hit by assassinate, it's, it's an absolute game changer

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So like I said, I have no clue at all what he was just talking about when it came to his strategy for playing the assassin. So I'm just gonna jump right in with my thoughts around the assassin, how I would play it, my strategy going into it. Um, the assassin among the first six classes, I feel like is pretty evenly matched.

I'd put it like right in the middle of everything, um, especially in like your one-on-ones and your free-for-alls. I feel like it's [00:13:00] great. Um, I think it could play well in teams as well. I just don't really know what would work as a good pairing for it. Um, I don't feel like we play tested enough for me to really comment on that, at least in this case.

Um, as always, with any class, you start with three things you can do as your like turn zero level zero, right? So that's your attack, defend, and no action. Um, with assassin, I definitely go to attack first because you wanna, um, get as much damage on someone as quick as possible, so that way when you go to have a final blow, it definitely hits and you can end the game quickly.

Like I have seen people end games in three turns with an assassin, and it was super impressive. It came down to dice rolls, but still, that's pretty amazing. So moving on, you typically get assassinate as your first, um, ability when you turn level one, and with that it comes down to a [00:14:00] dice roll 16 through 20.

Your opponent loses, uh, four life sparks, four hit points. And you know, this is really fun to play on your following turn right away just to see like, "Hey, if I get lucky, I get lucky and this person's out," right? So I will attack first turn, assassinate second turn, and keep going, right? So next thing that you get as an assassin is gonna be something called, um, rupture, which allows you to gain lethality.

And lethality is something specific to assassins, and you collect lethality to lower your hit chance on assassinate. Um, so thing to remember with this is that you use your lethality before the dice roll. So that is a commonly asked question. That is something I'm trying to clarify right here. Say how much lethality you're gonna use before the dice roll, okay?

[00:15:00] Excuse me. So Um, with the rupture ability, you gain lethality, you gain five lethality. You basically take your turn and just, like, spam that, right? Because you want to get your hit chance as low as possible and potentially auto hit on your assassinate. Um, however, this is gonna be, like, your... You're on turn three now, you have access to this ability.

Um, I would read the field that you're on, right? So if you're playing against, say, the druid who has a lot of healing abilities, um, it may not be worth it to, like- Um, to assassinate them because you know they have a lot of healing, they're gonna come into a lot of healing, and no matter how much damage you do right now, they're still gonna go up.

Um, so, like, if you're playing against them, I would probably rupture this turn and gain some lethality so that way I can, um, you know, try to hit them harder later. If I was [00:16:00] playing against, like, the Summoner, who I already know has low life sparks, and they don't come into, like, gaining any extra health really easily, I would definitely try to assassinate again, right?

So following turn, you gain access to something called Assassin's Blades. You do gain a hit point off of this for yourself. Um, so that does move your health up, and this is something that you get a roll every single turn, and it's just a chance to do damage. So this is where you can start popping off with different things potentially.

So I would go ahead and take the turn to play that and, um, have a chance to hit people, and then it stays out the rest of the game, right? Following turn, you do have another passive effect that comes available to you, and this is Assassin's Poisons. You have a chance of gaining... Or excuse me, you do gain hit points from this, but then you have a chance to daze your opponents.

Um, and dazing means that the only thing they can do is defend, and if you [00:17:00] have cards that can get through defend, that's really important. Um, as an assassin, off the top of my head, I don't remember if they have anything that can get through defend. So it feels like just a quick way to, uh, you know, have them stop attacking you so you can get your lethality up using rupture.

Um, next ability you get is called Unassuming. Um, you do gain a lot of hit points for this card, and then it basically makes you invisible to everyone around you, and you can't be hit unless you initiate first, and this happens for three turns in total. So the thing about this card is you can absolutely play it right away and, like, just take that time, build up your lethality while you're unassuming and not target anyone.

Um, or what I prefer is that I hold onto it until close to the end of the [00:18:00] game. Um, so if I am not hurting for health, needing more sparks or any of that kind of stuff, I will hold onto this as long as possible. Because if I can finish up to round sixteen, play this card on round seventeen, and gain six hit points and then nobody can target me, it seems like a no-brainer, right?

Because more than likely, you will end the game with more hit points than everyone else, and you win. So that's one of the biggest things with strategy for the assassin that I think comes into it is how to play this unassuming card. So I do wonder if, um, Jacob played it any different than I did. Um, moving on, you start to get abilities like sprint and feint.

So sprint is like, uh, it's a You know, you just run away from everything for two turns and can't be targeted, and you're defending. So basically, what I view the Assassin as is, [00:19:00] like, okay, I'm gonna hit you really hard, and then I'm gonna run away until I can do it again, which is really fun and whatnot. And then there's an ability called Feint, where you have to take damage initially, but then you can instantly, like, say, "Hey, I'm not taking more damage this turn.

Y'all can't get me." So yeah, I start to think about, like, tag as kids a little bit. Um, other abilities that you get is, um, like, Cold Blood, and this is another way to gain more lethality, along with Rupture. Um, Cold Blood is also a passive, so once you get access to that, you're rolling it every turn, and you should be able to gain so much lethality that you can auto hit probably multiple times in your entire game.

Um, another card that comes up is Premeditate, which allows you to immediately gain lethality and then have a chance to use a second action. So you can do that to potentially gain six lethality in a turn. You can [00:20:00] do that to gain a lethality and then assassinate. Um, you can do a lot of things in this case.

Um, finally, the last card that I am going to mention is called First Strike, which is the next time you cause a target to lose life sparks, um, they lose an additional one. So this card, I don't personally use it very often. Um, reason being is that I tend to play the Assassin with the, like, hey, let me, uh, get you, and then I'll run away.

And I'm not taking the time to really plan out my attacks, I guess, with the Assassin. Um, this card, it feels like you really need to think it through, like, hey, how much can I potentially hit my target for? How many hit points can I do damage for? Um, and just see what happens. So with the Assassin, the most damage I've seen in one [00:21:00] turn was six in total, but it's really hard to get that to pop off.

So I rather attempt to assassinate and get a guaranteed four, depending on my lethality, than potentially try and go for six. Um, so anyway, I don't know how much of that lines up with what Jacob said. Maybe we're saying the same things, but that is a rundown of how I would play the Assassin. Um In upcoming videos, we are gonna hit the other five classes that are available in the base game of Emanation, which is the Berserker, Druid, Judge, Oracle, and Summoner.

Um, and we'll see how all of that lines up. Like I've said, Assassin is a really fun class to play. You're gonna have to let me know if that's a class you enjoy or if one of the other ones that I mentioned will be more interesting to you. And also, check out the game in play. See if you, like, agree with our strategies, if you find a new one.

Just, uh, let us [00:22:00] know. Drop comments, ask questions. As always, like, comment, subscribe. Let us know how we're doing and we'll catch y'all next time