Deckbuilding 108 - Turn of Seasons

Turn of Seasons

Turn of Season is the second Path unlocked, at Level 6, or the end of Chapter 1. Like all of the Paths, you read it for the first time and say, "What?"

In practice, it is really quite simple; it provides one of four effects at the start of each of your turns. It is the "default" Path, the one to be chosen when nothing else fits. That makes it uninteresting, but important. It was a good decision by Rhino to reward this at the end of the tutorial to ensure every deck has a viable path.

What are the requirements?

To have no better options. Other Paths are chosen because they grant a specific bonus for the deck. Turn of Seasons is chosen because you read through the other four Paths five times and couldn't find a way to make any of them work better.

What makes it good?

Just because it is the last choice for your deck doesn't make it bad. One of the four effects is "Draw a card", arguably the most powerful three-word-phrase commonly used in CCGs. Turn of Seasons is guaranteed to draw an additional card every four turns.

What makes it bad?

Turn of Seasons is the only Path with an obvious drawback. Winter grants all of your minions Fragile 1 for an entire turn. This is NOT GOOD. Your opponent will punish you for it and it will cost you games. Is it worth the extra card? It's not easy to say for certain, but I don't think the answer is always "Yes."

What archetypes?

Turn of Season most frequently appears in midrange decks. These decks lack the required minions, or they die infrequently enough, to benefit from Journey of Souls. Also, in midrange decks the cards in the deck tend to be higher quality than those in the Boneyard.

Some control decks also settle for Turns of Seasons. These decks often don't have sufficient Artifacts or Enchantments to choose one of those Paths, or enough ways to break the symmetry of DIsk of Circadia.

What Powers?

None of the Powers have any direct interaction with Turn of Seasons. Midrange decks play minions, and Infuse/Impel are the Powers of choice for midrange decks, so likewise they are going to be the most common.

Occasionally you will find Turn of Seasons control decks playing Foresight or Mend

Playing with Turn of Seasons

Pay attention! Winter is Coming. It is known. Magmataur will kills your x/4's, ignition will kill your x/3's, and overrun will hurt even more, Don't let your opponent get easy kills on your powerful minions.

Spring & Summer, the heals are small, but they may affect your combat options.

Fall. More cards! Quick play them...

Pay attention! It's Winter again. How is it always Winter? Am I missing a season?

Playing against Turn of Seasons

Pay attention! It is often correct to save a damage based removal spell until winter, or to oppose their minion in fall. Be patient.

Spring & Summer, the heals are small, but they may put a minion, or your opponent out of lethal range.

The end to the never-ending cycle

The tone of this article may have given you the impression that Turn of Seasons is the worst path. Guess what? It's not! It's perfectly fine and competitive with the other Paths. It just feels bad because we don't choose it.

We have two Paths left to examine, Fires of Creationa and Disc of Circadia. One is powerful but narrow, and the other is kind-of-sorta-bad. I'll try to wrap those up this week so we can move into some articles examining some more advanced deckbuilding ideas.