Having come back from a long hiatus, I find myself always overwhelmed when constructing characters/teams and to better speed up the process, I was thinking about archetypes/packages. While not looking to specific items, being able to search for specific phrases would be a huge help. Wizards feel like the easiest to articulate as you can skew towards a lot of specific niches. "Wall building", "Forced Movement", "Single Target Ranged Damage", "Frost/Encumbrance", "Acid/Anti-Armor" and "Burning" all being examples. What archetypes exist for other classes?
Welcome back. $:^ ] In my experience, wizards are more likely to be described by their damage type. I've unintentionally skipped a month or so of play, logging in again today (yay), but last I checked: Cold is all the rage, especially with Instant Snowman. Fire still has its place. Silver mostly means True Silver. Punishing Bolt is practically its own damage type, ha, as opposed to saying the Arcane type. Sparks mostly mean Deadly Sparks. "Burst" is an archetype but not as popular as some years ago due to rebalancing. Otherwise, "control" is so important because of years of unchecked meta-defining progress on the movement/positioning war, that the "control archetype" is usually 1. squeezed into a wizard's deck as a near de facto given subtype, 2. less commonly the entire premise of the wizard's deck, or 3. (to go with #2) offloaded to another wizard, such as for the sake of a pyromancer being able to increase Fire density on Arcane Items instead of muddying it with 4–8 Telekinesises. Telekineses. (Dedicated control often mixes with Terrain.) Priests mainly have vampires (and I don't mean the Form) and support. Support is healing (chiefly Greater Heal) and/or buffing (plenty of Frenzy cards to help here) and/or draws (a huge reason Humans are so often support priests, although Subterranean Ferocity is also a thing). Less popular, but extant, is support via debuffs (curses, Entangling Roots, Radiation). Form offensive (Spark Of Undeath, Walpurgis Night) are utterly loved and utterly hated and see less play due to difficulty for most people to make them work. Priests are really the biggest, mixxest $;^ ] bag of all. Warriors? Almost all warriors are the fast, aggressive archetype, usually with lots of movement and damage all around; therefore, I'll list a bunch of subtypes. Range 2 Stabs. Range 1 Pulverizings. Steps; Nimble Strikes are almost their own Step category; Steps are akin to Vengeance; Steps are related to Vanguard; this all relates to team movement, too, like Push Assists. Werewolf supplements, especially Howl. All Out Attack can be its own subtype. Other archetypes? You can build a tank or a controller, but they're rare to see on the battlefield. Ah, that said, I just realized, I've been typing almost entirely from the PvP perspective. In campaign, you'll most often see the efficient runners with Firestorm Wizards, Vampire Priests (again, not the Form), and Ready To Strike Warriors. Plenty of other things exist vs. Gary and company, though, since there's generally so much less pressure. I hope this helps! $:^ J
