While the TRS website is down KG is partnering with Noah to bring a few of his more important articles to KG so that they can remain available for future players.
Here is the first of those articles:
One of the more interesting aspects of Mythgard is the use of Lanes. A frequent question I've seen come up from newer players looking to optimize their play is "Well, where do I play my first Minion?" so today we'll be discussing that topic a bit. There are many ways to approach your turn 1 Minion placement and each of those approaches have their benefits and their own disadvantages as well.
The first placement we'll look at is what I see most people defaulting to. This is the "middle Lane placement."
This allows you to establish yourself in the middle of the field and is generally seen by newer players as the go-to placement. However, this placement begins to fall apart a bit as you start to learn more about where to pressure the field. There may be times where your opponent just tries playing to the outside of the board and giving up the middle to just race you.
An important thing to think about when choosing where your minions should be played is not only where they will be on the field but also the parts of the board they can directly affect; their "area of impact" per se. Remember that minions can both attack into and block attacks from the 3 opposing Lanes. Let's look at the area of impact that this placement allows you.
So with this placement we can directly interact with any minions placed in Lanes 3-5. This still gives our opponent the choice to play to either side of the board without allowing us to return aggression.
Alternatively, you can also choose to play your Minion toward either side and look to establish a side of the field with which to pressure your opponent. This is a "side-claiming Lane placement." Such an approach can be used to essentially "give up" the middle of the field, should your opponent wish to then try to take control over it, with the strategy instead being to focus your power in a more confined area and pressure for damage. This has a great effect on your area of impact as well.
We've now chosen to let our opponent with a few options. They can try just racing us by playing to the left side of the field. They can come over to this right side of the field, where we've already established priority, and try fighting to keep us from pushing damage there. They can also just try to establish the middle of the field while we are contesting it and then try advancing their gameplan outward from there. This opening can be especially useful when we have a hand similar to what we see here. There is ample removal to not let our opponent establish the middle of the field, and ample damage to out-race them with.
There may also be times where you wish to play a turn 1 Minion that needs to be protected as much as possible. This would be when playing all the way to either side in an "outer edge Lane placement." Minions that you want to keep as safe as possible for as long as possible benefit most from this opening. We'll take a look at an example of one such card now.
Maze of Iyatiku is a Minion that you really want to keep as safe as you can to make sure you can get the most of its ability to draw cards. Using an outer edge Lane placement will affect our area of impact in a much more defensive manner by limiting the Lane placement of our opponent, should they choose to contest our Maze.
The only Lanes that can attack this Maze are 1 and 2. This opening has reduced our own area of impact in an attempt to force our opponent to hard commit to one side of the field if they wish to contest our Maze of Iyatiku.
The last placement we will be discussing is my preferred placement for most situations. This is the "one-off center Lane placement." By playing a Minion in a Lane adjacent to the center, you allow yourself to still contest the center, should your opponent choose to try fighting you for it, or you allow yourself to flush your Minions to the side and establish the pressure that the side-claiming Lane placement allows as well.
I've chosen to use Freki Scout for this image as Freki Scout and other Swift units take advantage of this opening very well. By having an extra move action on your second turn, establishing this opening with a Swift Minion allows you to greatly increase your area of impact. You can move it toward the outside and attack into Lane 7 or you can move it toward the inside and attack into Lane 3.
This particular opening allows you to pressure 5 Lanes at one time when used in conjunction with a Swift Minion. You've essentially forced your opponent to clear your minion, play a stronger minion than yours, or play on the other end of the field. This puts you in the driver's seat when it comes to dictating the early pacing of the game and often forces your opponent to give up priority on a large portion of the field.
That should pretty much wrap up the basics of Lane placement on turn 1. Did you learn any new strategies from this? Do you have other openings you prefer? Hopefully this has helped you either in identifying how you should be playing or even how your opponent is playing, so you may better respond to their plays. There are lots of decisions to make in a game of Mythgard and I hope this article has helped make one of them a bit esaier for you.