Took me 30 hours for the credits to roll. Seems like there's a bit of postgame.
The credits roll 3 times IIRC! I think you finally have access to all cards after the second time they roll.
At first I used the holy word dice fixers since invading seemed pretty difficult, after that I transitioned to Dryad based deck to quickly build up chains after I figured out how to properly invade high level lands. I used that deck to clear the last third of the main game missions.
Holy Word is less about invading and more about forcing your enemies to land on your high value lands. If you see they are within range of a Holy Word, you can cast it on them and then level up that land at the end of your turn to make it sting more, and harder for them to deal with due to the land effect. I never play without at least HW1 and 3. Those are the most useful because many maps have intersections with choices of which way to go, and your enemies could just turn a different way. Some barely have an unbroken 6 or 8 steps.
The game is less about invading and more about grabbing land and holding onto it, defending it, making others pay your tolls. Obviously play the way that works best for you but defending is often easier than attacking.
I didn't use any resources while playing the game aside from a few rule clarifications, so I wonder close my deck is to a standard deck people use? Here's my decklist.
One of the most common "builds" for a deck is 20 creatures/10 items/20 spells, it's good to stick close to that and you're pretty close.
Scrolls are very effective weapons in this game, even more so than past Culdcepts. Ignoring that land effect can be devastating. Regular base scrolls do 40 damage and that can instantly kill like ~80 unbuffed creatures out of ~240 in the game.
I notice you don't have any defensive items, that might be something to consider getting a few of. Some really high value armor you can just hold onto as soon as you get it, as a backup plan if someone lands on your space.
Your spells could use a lot of work, but I think that depends on the type of cards you have available to you. Things get crazy in the latter two card packs. I guess just think about what cards you use and which you tend not to use and why. Personally I used to run with Disease and then realized I was generally discarding it before using it, because the problem with stuff like that is you have to somehow land on that diseased creature to be able to take advantage of it. I could sooner buff one of my own creatures and benefit from it immediately. Heck your debuff might even inadvertently help out a third or fourth player other than yourself! Plus when an enemy sees a debuff on their creature they will try to fix it any way they can, including really simple steps like moving one space or replacing the card. If you buff your creature,
they have to override it somehow. My favorite buffs aren't even bubble effects like that, Growth Body and Fat Body are amazing for making extremely defensible cards with high HP.
Let's see...Shatter is a good card, sometimes you need to take something out of their hand. Manna I don't think is a very good card, it's generally a pretty low amount of free money that's not going to be a huge game changer. I've already said I like the Holy Word spells so I'd say put some in. Other than that feel free to put in more of a variety of spells, you don't need 2x-4x of every card. Almost all my spells are one of a kind in my deck. I recommend Prophecy if you can get it, you can choose what type of card you want, creature/item/spell which is awesome for getting what you need.
I still don't like the ability to see what cards other players are holding but not read them and I'm not sure if that's a typical culdcept thing. Also, I don't know if it is simply bad translation but there are many times where cards don't work the way I expect them to.
In old Culdcepts you couldn't even see a list of what other players had, you just had to memorize it based on what you saw briefly when their hand came up, and think, "man did they have any armor or not...?" So this is way better. I think it adds more to the strategy, being able to take that into account.
The games typically have a bit bad translation in one or more aspects but you learn what things mean over time. Like, one card says Neutralizes: Attacks First, and you have to learn that "neutralizes" means "cards with this effect deal no damage," and not just that it means they don't get to attack first. Stuff like that. You'll pick it up.
