Some Friend cards have no game text at all and just provide their power (remember, that’s the number in the top-right corner of the card) for solving Problems. However, lots of Friends have useful game text that provides various effects. For example...
Berry Dreams has an automatic effect in her game text. As soon as you play her the effect happens, in this case drawing you an extra card into your hand. These automatic effects can be written to trigger at other times besides when played, such as “when you move this card” and “when you confront a Problem with this card.”
On the other hoof, Twilight Sparkle, All-Team Organizer has an effect that you purposely activate. The bold “Main Phase:” is there to tell you when you can use the effect. These effects are always completely optional, and should be used at strategic times! They often have some kind of cost, but the variety of effects is endless. In the case of this Twilight Sparkle card, you would activate her ability when you want one more action token to spend on your turn, at the expense of leaving her exhausted (unable to help at Problems or faceoffs) until your next turn.
If you’re anything like me, you see that there are all sorts of different effects and the first thing you think is, “How can I combo cards together to do cool things?” Here’s a basic yet very effective combo you can find right out of the starter decks:
(Quick reminder: Resource cards like "Too Much Pie" provide ongoing effects. The first line of text on a Resource tells you where to play it.)
Let’s say that your opponent has played Twilight Sparkle, All-Team Organizer from above for the cost of 3 action tokens (the 3 on the left side of the card), and she’s being used to solve Problems. You want to put a stop to that, so you spend just 1 action token to play Too Much Pie on Twilight, overfeeding her and giving her the ongoing effect on Too Much Pie: -5 power during the Score Phase. This means that she’s no longer useful at Problem solving, and you spent 2 fewer action tokens to do it than the opponent paid to bring her into play.
Now, let's say that during a future turn your opponent plays Big Mac, and they're going to use him to solve a lot of Problems. So, what can you do? Play Granny Smith to a Problem where she is useful, and as an extra benefit, use her game text: move a Resource from one Friend to another. In this case, take Too Much Pie from Twilight and put it on Big Mac, rendering him powerless when it counts!
Personally, my favorite way to use Granny Smith's text is to turn the tables on someone. What if it was YOUR Big Mac that the opponent had given Too Much Pie? Just play Granny Smith and move the offending pies to one of your opponent’s Friends instead!
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| (aka Big McLargehuge) |
Check in next time when we’ll tell you everything-you-wanted-to-know-and-more about faceoffs, including how to defeat Troublemakers, and discuss a deck building strategy combining the powers of everyone’s favorite super-smart purple pony and a certain famously obnoxious blue unicorn. See you then!
