Spell Showcase: Power Link

Power Link. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

And it's your job to figure out when. When it works, it is a matter of eating away your enemy while keeping your health up. It destroys shields and can be a constant dot (damage over time) spell with enough of them in a deck. In conjunction with things like Empowerment and Sir Lamorak, you will constantly be a turn or two away from casting more link and knight spells at any given moment. Small steady damage that will tear down even the biggest opponents (but make sure to have a couple of Reshuffle spells as well).

When it doesn't is when you can't outpace your enemy's damage. It breaks shields, true; but it also is a smaller spell not given for big hits. Blades are effective, but traps a lot less so. It will take a fair amount of time to kill off your enemies, and some enemies later in the game average out to 300 to 500 damage in a turn. Even if you put some Colossal and Sharpened Blade spells in your deck, these enemies can take the bigger hits that you cannot.

Take for example Ezhua Bad Taste in Tierra de Brea. I could plainly see he was Death school, and didn't bother looking him up on the web before starting the fight. He had a Thunder Horn Ghoul minion which was also death, so I equipped gear that was resistant versus death, swapped for my newly-tuned damage over time deck, and charged into the fight. My deck consisted of one or two Rains of Fire and Fire Dragons, and many Scalds, Empowerments, Sir Lamoraks, Pixies, and of course, Power Links. I did have a couple of Colossals, Fireblades, and Sharpened Blades as well.

I didn't know that he had mastery of Ice. And Ice nearly did me in. The first part of my plan worked quite well. I dispatched the minion easily and had most my life up at this point. Sir Lamorak was dishing most of the damage, and I was using the Power Link to keep the damage steady and constant as well as keeping my life afloat. The problem was eventually that I did enough damage to Ezhua that any newly cast knights couldn't get his focus back to them. This is the part where I realize that I should have equipped Tranquilize and Mega Tranquilize (perhaps I will do that tonight!). Now, I'm getting hit with Frost Demon and Ice Wyvern spells that are doing 500 to 700 points of damage each time, and this boss has a nasty habit of getting some critical hits past my defenses. I defeated him after a half hour while I held on with a mere 14 health. I got so very lucky that his final cast wasn't stronger. The card I hit him with at the end? Power Link.

This fight should have ended worse.