You've mastered 1v1, knocked out 2v2, and now you're ready to pick up 3v3 and the advanced techniques.
Let's use the entire starter deck to learn the rest of the skills you'll need.
Place your 3 champions in their starting locations.
You'll go through the match as normal, however, let's look at a few advanced concepts.
Charged Cards and Hyper Cards require charges to be placed on them prior to activation.
During your champions prep phases, you have an opportunity to add 1 charge to your stored card to keep them on the field. When a charged card builds up enough charges, you can send the Will used to charge the card, the CH, and the Will needed to activate the card, the WC to the Used Will Zone!
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2 CH
5WC
Note: Charged and Hyper cards are considered the same name as their normal variant when activated.
Example: Charged Maul and Maul can be combo'd by name.
The next concept is called unioning!
Certain cards can be combined from your hand to form a new card. Send the requirements from your hand to your Used Card Zone to retrieve the Union card from your inventory deck and add it to your hand.
Unions can be formed by rank or by straight depending on the requirements. Let's look at the 2 examples.
Straight Union
To form a straight union, you need all of the required cards in sequential order.
Example: Ultra Power Slash needs 3 power slashes of sequential ranks like J, Q, K.
Jokers can be used as a substitute for any rank in the combo.
This is NOT a straight union. Having duplicates of non-jokers or cards that are NOT sequential will prevent you from unioning.
Rank Union
A rank union needs all of the required cards in the same rank in order to form.
Example: Healing Rain needs Essence of Heat, Spark, and Beginning Snowfall all of the same rank.
This is NOT a rank union. Spark is a different rank than the rest of the required cards in this example.
Let's look at another unique card in the inventory.
Enhanced weapons!
Enhanced weapons can be identified by the anvil at the top left of the card.
To equip an enhanced weapon, you'll need to use a card effect or the baked effect of an Engineer.
The weapon with an [E] listed on the card must be equipped prior to the enhancement. The remaining requirements can be sent from your hand, library, or inventory.
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We touched on baked effects in our discussion on enhanced weapons. Each subclass has a unique effect built into the game.
Learn more about these in the S3CCG rulebook.
In 2v2 we learned about 'Last Stand', but what happens when a champion is knocked out but you still have 2 remaining champions?
The downed champion is...
skipped...
That's right!
In 3v3, losing a champion can be costly, you'll need to be more strategic about how you manage your resources and champions!
We've saved the best for last, Monarch!
Each champion has a mastery that can be activated to assist you in battle. Most effects can be activated at any point during the champion's turn, however, some have requirements that need to be met before their Mastery can be activated.
Let's look at two examples.
Esgaris' Mastery can be activated at any point during his turn since there are no requirements preventing the activation.
Ayleth's Mastery requires an opponent to activate a spell card that is level 2 or lower. Since this stipulation can be fulfilled during either player's turn, Ayleth's Mastery can also be activated during either player's turn.
Now that you've learned all the concepts and game types, you're ready to learn how to deck build. The starter decks are used as a base to understand the game. To become a true master monarch, you'll need to learn the art of deck building.
Test different champion combinations, Ally cards, and deck themes to find the ones that meet your playstyle. You can pair similar champions together, or build a completely unique experience!
Gain stronger decks by combining starter decks, obtaining monthly collectibles, and updating your decks as new champions and battle packs are released!
If you've made it this far, swing by the S3Coliseum via Discord to show off your skills!
Welcome to the world of Shining Shadows Saga!
Check out our Tutorial Match!
Follow along as two Monarchs go head to head and explain the rules as they go!