Unique Powers reminder

    

Opening

Similar to RedReVenge’s guide.

This is the standard opening for River. It exploits River’s strong, perfect-element Uniques to reliably unlock level 3 Massive flooding from the 4th turn on.

Growth

Turn 1

G2 bottom.

Play River’s bounty and another card. 12 elements (you could have 2, but it doesn’t matter as you can’t unlock level 2 of your Innate anyway).

Turn 2

G2 bottom. Reclaim River’s bounty.

Play 3. 23 elements.

Turn 3

Reclaim, gain Minor.

Play River’s bounty and the Minor. The Minor can be swapped as long as you keep 231 in hand.

Turn 4

G2 bottom. Reclaim River’s bounty.

Play River’s bounty and 3 more to have 341 and unlock a max-level Massive flooding.

Turn 5+

Reclaim loop, gaining Minors every turn and playing the cards you need to unlock your Innate.

If at any point you don’t need to reclaim (this usually happens somewhere around turn 7-9), take a G3 top and gain a Major (forgetting Flash floods is usually the best option if you have gained other cards with good elements, as it is too expensive for what it does), then keep reclaim looping.

Remarks

You might be tempted to reclaim something else than River’s bounty, but that is a mistake most of the time. River’s bounty is an excellent card (which is even better if you’re playing Travel River), plus you need the Energy. In multiplayer you can consider reclaiming Boon of vigor instead to give a lot of Energy to your teammates, which is very valuable.

On turn 5 an alternative is taking presence top+bottom to get to 2-4 instead of 1-5. This is generally a bad idea: you need to play your full starting hand for max-level Massive flooding, and having only 4 CP means you have no room to play anything else. If you have had luck with your draws you might have found another to replace Flash floods, but even then you’re still restricted in what cards you can play, and you’ll accumulate a lot of Energy that you can’t use. The only time you should consider going 2-4 is if you want to go for Majors on turn 6, which will however limit your ability to unlock level 3 of Massive flooding unless you are lucky with your card draws (you’d either need to find one of the 7 Majors with cost <= 4, or Cleansing floods if you’ve found a 0-cost Minor to replace Wash away).

Stats

Note that the Energy gained from Boon of vigor is not included, so the table works for multiplayer games as well (where it’s assumed you’re playing it on your teammates).

This table assumes playing 5 cards from turn 5 onwards, and forgetting from discard when gaining the Major.

Turn Growth Owned cards Cards in hand CE (growth only) CE (also including previous River’s bounty)
1 2 4 4 1 1
2 2 4 3 2 3
3 1 5 5 4 6
4 2 5 4 5 8
5 1 6 6 7 11
6 1 7 7 9 14
7 1 8 8 11 17
8 3 8 5 13 20
9 1 9 9 16 24

Pro and cons

Pros:

  • Highest CP.
  • Fastest unlock of max Massive flooding.
  • Consistent usage of max Massive flooding from turn 4 on while still allowing off-elements Minors thanks to 5 CP.

Cons:

  • Can be tight on Energy in multiplayer, especially if Events cause Energy loss.
  • Little presence placement past turn 4 requires careful planning on first turns.