In my history of preview writing, it seems that I always get assigned cards that let you search your deck (my previous previews were Join the Club! and Ahmed Samsarra, White King). This is kind of awkward because, in R&D, TBS is known as the guy who loves to search. Patrick Sullivan and I have a running joke that when you search for a search card, you are “TBS’ing” your deck. Still, I like to hit my drops as much as the next player, and in Vs. System, you need some number of search cards to make sure that you can spend all your resource points on every recruit step. So, when lead designer Andrew Yip was giving preview assignments, I wasn’t surprised to get assigned The Great Refuge.

The first thing you’re probably wondering is, what is terraform? Terraform locations have the following payment power:

Reveal this card à You may return a face-down resource you control to its owner’s hand. If you do, put this card face down into your resource row. Use this power only during your recruit step and only if this card is in your hand.

Basically, it’s a reverse reservist for locations.

When Will Terraform Help?

Let’s say you draw your opening hand and have characters with costs 1 through 4. Do you mulligan? I would always want to keep that hand. Your draw phase gives you two more characters with costs 5 and 6. Does that mean you have to choose which character drop to miss? Not if you draw a terraform location on the next turn! Reveal a terraform location from your hand to return the character you built as a resource to your hand.

There is a rules change that Paul Ross will explain on Sunday, but here is the short version: Revealing the location from your hand goes on the chain. So, your opponent has time to respond, and then on resolution, a face-down resource goes to your hand and the location with terraform goes to the resource row.

If you don’t control a face-down resource when this effect resolves, it does nothing. There is nothing in our game that turns opponents’ resources face up, but if in the future we make cards like that, if you don’t have any face-down resources upon resolution, the terraform location will go from the chain back to your hand.

Now, let’s think about replacing resources. If you have ways to replace your resources, then every time you terraform, you technically draw one extra card. Some of my favorite decks during testing replaced my resources using various effects and then terraformed to get an extra card. So, while terraform is around, you should never be scared to replace your next drop or one of your silver bullet characters into your resource row. Terraforming after replacing technically says that you draw three cards while your opponent draws two.

The Substructure is also being previewed today, at Pojo. Click here to check it out!

How much do you hate putting characters in your resource row if you’re not playing a reservist deck? Don’t worry—you will never be frustrated again as long as you draw a terraform location.

Another application of terraform is in location-based decks. How annoying is playing with Deep Green or League of Assassins when your draw phase yields two locations? While playing with terraform locations in your deck, you will never again fear this happening to you.

Inhumans and Terraform

Imagine that your goal is to have every resource face up for your deck to work. The Inhumans team cares about their resources being face up. The best way to get lots of resources face up is to play locations or ongoing plot twists and not play time-sensitive cards like Acrobatic Dodge. The fewer face-down resources you have, more powerful your effects will be. In R&D, we call a row with no face-down resources the perfect row. When you have the perfect row, an aura appears above the table, letting your opponent know that you have reached the threshold and he or she is in for some trouble. Terraform locations allow the Inhumans to get a perfect row more easily and help them fight effects that replace your resources, too.

Let’s get back to The Great Refuge. This searcher is as good as many of its earlier counterparts. Looking back, we don’t like making search cards that don’t require a discard cost. Some of the cards that haven’t had that clause are Bat-Signal, Wild Ride, Mountain Stronghold, and Faces of Doom. All of those cards were staples in Constructed decks upon their release. The Great Refuge not only allows you to achieve the perfect row with terraform, but it also allows you to hit your curve and gives you card advantage. Card advantage search cards aren’t printed too often. Discarding is a real cost and having more cards to fuel other discard costs is very important during the playing and deckbuilding process.

’Til next time, I hope you’ll have fun having all your resources face up.

Cheers,