If there's one thing we love as TCG players, it's that feeling of excitement when our favorite game is about to reveal what's coming in its new set. With summer finally settling in, Ravensburger has just given us plenty to think about for our upcoming evenings around the tables at our local game store. The next set, Attack of the Vine!, doesn't just bring new cards: it's changing our perspective on a well-established mechanic that we might have thought was unchangeable: Shift.
The Arrival of Team Shift
The major new mechanic that will undoubtedly be the talk of the town is the introduction of Team Shift. For the first time, we'll be able to play cards that bear the names of two distinct characters TOGETHER! We're keeping our fingers crossed for Woody and Buzz or Yzma and Kronk, but in the meantime, we're already thrilled by the announced cards.
The Flexibility of Team Shift
Take the Belle & Beast card. To play it in a Shift, you can place it on top of a Belle card or on top of a Beast card, thus doubling the chances of benefiting from the card. And, as with a classic Shift, if the base character was already ready to take action (dry), the new Team Shift card can exercise as soon as it enters play. In the case of Belle & Beast, this allows you to instantly recoup all the ink spent to play them! So ultimately, you only needed the ink to play it at the cost of an exert. This is the kind of synergy that immediately makes you want to rethink how you build your deck to incorporate it!
Cards like Belle - Always Reading will notably see a slight increase in popularity by making it easier to enter play with ink costs.
And that's just scratching the surface of what's new with Shift. Because the mechanic has been deconstructed into several other variations!
Other Variations
The designers clearly set themselves the goal of pushing the creative mode as far as possible, and we think they've succeeded by offering increasingly sophisticated variations of Shift. It's by re-exploring established mechanics and bending the rules surrounding them that we, as players, truly make the game our own, and these new variations make that possible:
Duo Shift
This is perhaps the variation with the highest risk, but it also offers a very high reward if executed well.
Take the new Mickey & Minnie card, for example. To play this card in Shift, you must place it on top of a card named Mickey AND a card named Minnie simultaneously. So not only do you need to have both cards previously played, but you also have to sacrifice them to play only one replacement card. However, its Shit cost is zero, and it can Quest for 5 Lore.
Even better, if the Mickey & Minnie Duo Shift card is banished, it and all the cards below it go directly into your inkwell.
The Combo Shift
If you're looking for flexibility between the last two mechanics, this is what the Combo Shift provides. You can choose to perform a Team Shift (on only one of the two names) or a Duo Shift (on both characters).
This is the case, for example, with Sully & Boo. The ability is also a good representation of a level of flexibility since when the card is banished, its ability allows you to immediately replay its Shift bases for free. And since the cards below it were considered out of play, all their On Play effects trigger again. This negates the usual disadvantage of Shift and allows you to consider whether triggering multiple Sully or Boo can help you stay in the game.
Temporary Shift
The set also marks the arrival of characters from the recent film Turning Red. And, to fit the story where the characters temporarily transform into red pandas, an exclusive mechanic was created: Temporary Shift. Because, as the designers so aptly explained, they were bothered that these characters couldn't switch between states once Shift was triggered.
For example, with the protagonist Meilin Lee and her Temporary Shift card Popular Red Panda, she can shift to a card of the same name for a much lower cost than the usual 2 ink reduction, but at the end of her turn, it returns to your hand. It also removes all its damage counters so that the base remains the same.
It's an aggressive and very economical option to surprise your opponent while giving you the ability to have a character who can absorb damage.
What's next?
Between these new ways to play with the ink's tempo and the return of beloved mechanics (for those in the know, we already had a glimpse of them in Azurite Sea), the game is poised to become more dynamic and unpredictable, which will help reignite the spark in some players and fan the flames in others!
All these new mechanic variations are just waiting for our deck-shuffling sessions to reveal their full potential. See you around the table in the coming weeks to start imagining our future decklists!
Attack of the Vine is coming much sooner than you think!