Artificer Deck Construction in EBR

This is part of my deck construction series in which I work through the starting cards in each Specialty and Background. I don’t discuss Reward cards or get too deep into synergies between Specialties and Backgrounds. I don’t want these to get too complex and lengthy, but at the bottom I do offer some deck combinations for you to look over for ideas and inspiration. I may expand these posts in time to include more discussion of the different possible combinations.

Deck Construction Series

Artisan Deck Construction in EBR
Shepherd Deck Construction in EBR
Forager Deck Construction in EBR
Traveler Deck Construction in EBR
Explorer Deck Construction in EBR

What makes an Artificer unique?

The uniqueness of the Artificer shines through all the gear. Shiny shiny gear. And Tech. These guys are the evolved version of all of us sitting on our phones. Of the 12 cards in the specialty, 8 are Tech and 7 of those are Gear.

What the Artificer wants to do with all this gear and tech is one of two things. Either make yourself into an Energizer Bunny with boundless energy or make yourself into Spiderman, strategically navigating the environment. As we go through I’ll try to illustrate how different cards slot into these archetypes.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Before that, however, I want to look at the strengths and weaknesses from an Irix’s eye view.

An obvious strength are the several excellent gear options available in this specialty. The Infusion Canteen and Memorill Sketchpad give you a ton of energy and effort flexibility and are so multipurpose you may even want two in play at a time. These two cards would form the core of your Energizer Bunny build. Camoweave Cloak is another excellent all around utility card.

And then you have the more specialty items, like the Wrist-mounted Darter, Spiderpad Gloves, and Memlev Trekking Poles that could help you navigate a tricky tableau of path cards. These can help you pull off those big climactic turns when you clear a predator, ignore a couple obstacles, and traverse your location and travel at the end of the day (if you can somehow manage to equip all that beefy gear… (looking at you Pocketed Belt Pouch).

As great as some of the gear options are, the weaknesses of the Artificer are also tied to gear cards. In all this gear, not one has the Expert trait, which means that only Artificers who take it during deck construction can include it in the deck. This raises the very valid question of why do you need to start as an Artificer at all if you can freely swap in any of these gear options by trading with Ren Kobo or at the Carbon Forge or another mid-campaign opportunity.

Another weakness is that the some of high aspect cards (the ones that require 3 in that energy from your Aspect) are a bit underwhelming. Dayhowler and Thoroughly Prepared don’t jump out the box at me. They feel situational at best, extraneous at worst and I think other cards are better. This has the effect of steering you away from particular Aspects and towards others because you want your 3 Requirement card to be really strong.

Roles

So why should you be an Artificer if you could just swap in gear during your campaign? The obvious answer is the Artificer Roles and what they enable you to do. Or rather what the Exceptional Tinkerer allows you to do because it is the clear winner to me.

The Tinkerer’s ability makes it possible to sustain your Tech throughout the day, which really makes the cards you want to use frequently shine, like Infusion Canteen, Camoweave Cloak, or the Trekking Poles. Unless the gear has a Response effect on it that allows you to add tokens (most don’t), you are faced with a dwindling supply and rationing your remaining tokens. The Tinkerer solves that problem. I should emphasize here that not all tech is gear. For example the Carbonforged Cable is Tech and the Tinkerer would allow you to keep a big predator perpetually exhausted. There is Tech sprinkled in other background and specialties but the majority of Tech belongs to the Artificer.

The Masterful Engineer is sort of the opposite in that by readying your tech, you draw down its tokens faster because why ready if if you don’t intend to use it again. You obviously get to use it twice in a turn, but outside of the more fringe situations, using a gear card twice per turn doesn’t really help you all that much. Your playstyle as the Engineer could be to include two copies of every gear and just use it up as needed, discard, and equip the other copy. I’m not sure that’s a great idea because you could use those deck slots in other ways.

Cards by Sphere

Awareness

Awareness is the most underwhelming of the spheres in Artificer and don’t add much utility or oh-**** get me out of here ability to your deck (except for Carbonforged Cable).

This is a pretty underwhelming card and torpedoes AWA as a valid high stat for an Artificer.

I don’t like that you have to discard it which makes it a one-shot deal and until you use it, it does nothing for you. Also, since you need 3 AWA to take this card, you could be using Avoid often and building up a ton of charges, far more than there will be beings in play when you discard it.

The only possible saving grace for this card is Moment of Desperation from the Artisan background which allows you to discard a gear and deal harm equal to the tokens on it. As a gear-heavy Artificer Moment of Desperation might come in handy with other cards, but it seems silly to plan to throw your high stat card away like that.

This seems like a pretty effective card to nullify a big predator (without having to chuck your Dayhowler at it in a Moment of Desperation). Being able to keep a predator exhausted (for three turns, or longer if you are the Tinkerer) really frees you up to do other things with your energy on your turn.

An exhausted predator won’t trigger any of its challenge effects and you can interact past it without incurring fatigue. You can still place progress and harm on a card that is exhausted (as well as perform any test listed on the card itself) so you can still work towards clearing it.

Ferinodex is a pretty marginal card. The high equip value (2 gear slots) really hurts when all you gain is a boost to your Avoid test. There are better ways to Avoid/Exhaust cards than dedicate 2 gear slots to Ferinodex.

Fitness

The Fitness sphere cards are a bit more intriguing than the Awareness cards and have a place in an effective deck. They are not necessarily cards you will use every turn, but they help you be Spiderman and artfully navigating a tricky situation instead of Hulk-clearing every path card that comes out.

The more I consider this card, the more I like it. I like that there’s no consequence for failing as with other weapons where you take fatigue or even an injury if you fail. I like that you can target a being anywhere on the board, dodge all the cards between you, and take no resulting fatigue.

Most of all, I like that it uses FOC for its test. FOC powers the least useful common test, so having a way to use your FOC energy to do something useful is awesome. It also frees up your FIT to Traverse or accomplish other things.

Spiderpad Gloves is a bit of a subpar card for solo play because of its test. Moving your Ranger token to an obstacle benefits other rangers performing tests on that card by adding an effort, but if you are a solo Ranger, unless the Obstacle clears with presence tokens, that does you no good.

That leaves you with being able to ignore obstacle keywords which can be situationally helpful. Its only benefit is allowing you to interact past an obstacle for a test (which normally you can’t do). But since the travel phase happens not on your turn, you would still have to clear the obstacle to travel. A 2 equip cost is a bit high for what you get.

This is a really nice card. I love that it only requires one FIT in your aspect because it is most useful to Rangers with only 1 FIT. It synergizes well with other cards that target the Trail trait. I like that it works on both features and the location.

The slight downside is that you only get two uses out of this card (unless you use Mother of Invention from Artisan), so use them wisely.

Focus

The Focus sphere has some pretty hefty gear (looking at you Memlev Trekking Poles) but they are all excellent. Overall this is the strongest sphere in this specialty, no matter what Aspect you use. To make these Focus gear shine, you probably need to include Pocketed Belt Pouch from the Artisan background in your deck (at construction or through progression)

One big problem with high focus builds is what to do with all your FOC energy, since the Remember test isn’t all that helpful. This card gets around that by letting you use FOC to do one of the most useful things – place progress on features and locations.

The Poles are hefty at a 3 equip cost, but the Belt Pouch could help with that. Another valid approach would be to hold back playing the Trekking Poles until you really need them, maybe discarding a Gear you no longer need, so you aren’t locking down your gear slots unnecessarily.

This is part of your Energizer Bunny build. You can add Inkrills through the Response or as the Tinkerer and once you do, you can empower any test you perform that interacts with a feature. Traversing becomes easier, as well as any test listed on a feature card. Helpfully, this ability is not an exhaust. You can use as many Inkrills as you want for multiple tests on a turn.

Effectively, this card allows you to bank an energy as a potential effort (if you add a token through the Tinkerer) and it builds positive momentum on itself through clearing features.

Energizer Bunny again! This provides an excellent way to boost up a low stat with turn-to-turn flexibility for when you deploy it. You could run just one in your deck. Or, if you are a junkie of whatever is in that canteen, you could run two and be awash with energetic options. To do that you will absolutely need the Belt Pouch.

Energizer Bunny build: Belt Pouch, 2x Infusion Canteens, 2x Memorill Sketchpad

Spirit

Lastly, the SPI cards of the specialty. These are not as strong as the FOC sphere, perhaps equal with the FIT sphere depending on what you need in your deck, but definitely not as weak as AWA. The theme for the Spirit cards is fatigue avoidance and soothing.

This card sounds great and I want it to be better than it turns out to be. Unfortunately it’s pretty situational and there are much better ways to soothe fatigue over the course of a day. Think of this card not as a fatigue soothing card, but as a fatigue avoidance card. Incurring fatigue shortens your day, even if you are able to soothe it later. Avoiding that fatigue is beneficial and, if you are at the end of the day and have a Traverse test to travel but would exhaust your deck and end the day through fatigue, you can play this card to avoid that.

It’s a one-shot moment, get out of jail free card useful in particular situations. I just want my high stat card to be something less situational.

This is the turn-to-turn fatigue-avoidance version of Thoroughly Prepared. You can avoid fatigue from tests, Ambush, or challenge effects on path cards. Since it does not exhaust you can use it as many times as you have charges on it. Fantastic. That will really add up over the course of the day if you can keep it sustained as the Tinkerer. And it only costs 1 gear slot!

This card is a little more situational to get its full effect. Exhausting two for the price of one can be helpful, especially if you have a big predator but can target a 1 presence being instead (then use this card to exhaust the predator). It would synergize well with Carbonforged Cable. You wouldn’t trigger fatigue for exhausting the second being since this is a Response, so that being could be anywhere in the environment.

Aspect Considerations

I would not recommend being a 3 SPI or 3 AWA Artificer because Dayhowler and Thoroughly Prepared are a little underwhelming and situational for a high stat requirement card. You’ll get much more use out of the Trekking Poles or Darter and they effect the game state in much more powerful ways.

Either a 3 FOC or FIT Ranger would be a good choice. The Trekking Poles solve the problem of how a high FOC Ranger can effectively add progress to features or locations. As a 3 FIT Ranger, the Darter is a good Weapon and gives you good energy flexibility by using FOC instead of your FIT.

What should your low stat be? Any of the energies could work. But because of the poor choices available to a 1 AWA or SPI Ranger, if you don’t go 3 FIT, I might recommend doing 1 FIT because Trail Markers is so functional to a 1 FIT Ranger. With this aspect and 2 AWA and 2 SPI you can still take Carbonforged Cable and/or Camoweave Cloak, two very useful cards.

If you are choosing between 1 AWA or SPI, I would recommend 1 AWA and 2 SPI. I think Camoweave Cloak is better than Carbonforged Cable, unless you have an alternate plan for fatigue, and the Connect common test is more useful than the Avoid test.

Artificer & Artisan

I know I said I wasn’t going to do too much specialty background conversation, but because of the real obvious benefits to the artifice or of the artisan background, I think it’s worth pointing that out. You get a lot more use out of your gear and attachments through the artisan, the artisan background. So I’ve mentioned pocketed belt pouch. I haven’t mentioned mother of invention, where you basically can reuse an attachment.

And as in the artifice, you’ve got these two nice attachments, trail markers, carbon forge cable. So you’re, you’re able to use those again moment of desperation gives you another way to use this gear that might have a bunch of tokens on it. You can deal some harm to a being that way. And then favorite gear is a really nice way to soothe fatigue.

So as an artifice or you’re going to be using a lot of tokens from gear and this is would be an amazing way for you to soothe fatigue. You basically would never have to worry about fatigue. I think if you were running even just one favorite gear in your deck.

Deck Starting Points

Artisan – Artificer : Spiderman
Forager – Artificer : Puffercrawler Disciple or Energizer Bunny
Traveler – Artificer : Just Say No (to Fatigue)
Shepherd – Artificer : Biggest Tableau Ever

Conclusion

So I think I think I’ll leave it there for the art officer.

Hopefully this gives you some directions to think about whether you want to be the dual canteen sketchpad, energy, Energizer Bunny, or you want to be this sort of like Spider Spider-Man jumping around obstacles in shooting shooting beings with your darter kind of kind of player. I think you could do both within this specialty and this tinkerer really just it again, it’s it’s the superior of the rolls, in my opinion.

It’ll give you so much more use, sustained use out of your out of your gear, especially these ones that there’s no way to get tokens back on it other than to just play the the gear again. So thanks for joining me. And until next time, happy gaming.