Quick winning principles
- Spend all essences each turn—unspent essences are lost actions.
- Draft artifacts that produce essences, not one-shot VP.
- Race to two monuments before opponents stabilize their engine.
- Collect sets of three different essences for the +1 bonus each round.
Ideal strategy
- 1
Essence economy: produce 4 essences per turn by round 3; spend on creatures that produce more.
- 2
Artifact timing: Vault or Earring on turn 2 accelerates every future turn.
- 3
Monument rush: Dragon Monument plus any two 3-cost monuments ends the game at turn 8.
- 4
Creature synergy: familiars that reduce essence costs chain into expensive creatures same turn.
- 5
Draft denial: take the last gold essence card when opponent needs it for their monument.
- 6
Endgame: 10 VP in monuments plus one creature row beats 12 VP with no recurring production.