The staff types of Chaos Reborn

Overview

A short analysis on each of the staff types in Chaos Reborn, without reference to mega-spells. This guide contains tips for playing with and against all the staff types, and what aspects of the game to watch out for.(Image is a paceholder.)

Introduction

While Chaos Reborn is a game of probabilities, but there are many aspects tthat are far from random. The staff your wizard holds in his/her hand tells you a lot about the cards that you will receive in a match. The same holds for your opponent. While you cannot guarantee that a wizard using a Chaos staff will not have a dragon, the chances of them having it is low, and even if they do obtain one, they will be much more likely to burn that spell.
This guide is intended to help you understand a bit about what they are likely to have, and how that relates to ways you should play the game to win. I have minimised and abstracted the maths involved a little to make it easier to read, especially if you haven’t learned probabilities (as basic in school or advanced theory in university/online).

To Do:
= = =
– Fill out all staff types, add images.
– Add a separate maths and calculation section for prople who have to know.
– Question: Do people want a calculator for ratio matching and non-mathicng spells? While we don’t know the exact generation mechanic, it’s possible to make the easiest method of modelling an actual deck with draw probabilities..

Overview

The two things to know about staff types is that they increase the chance of you obtaining spells of a matching type, and double the amount of mana you can spend to boost the casting chance of a matching spell. The first means that you aren’t guaranteed to to receive any particular card unless you have a binding talisman. There will be games in which you should focus on playing non-matching cards because of your hand, or your opponent. The additional mana-boost for matching spells will then help you bring in cards without an alignment bonus. This is the nature of RNG.

There are currently twelve staff types in the game (v1.0), which can be categorised into the three alignment-based staves a new player can choose to begin with, and nine more specialised staves that focus on particular strategies. The Law and Chaos[www.lawandchaos.co.uk] fansite contains a non-official list of spells that are favoured according the staff type, so please check out that site for details I will skip over. The staff types are:

• Law favours all law-themed (blue) creatures and spells. The three basic staff types relies on players to use whatever spells they obtain to influence the match alignment.
• Neutral favours all neutral-themed (green) creatures and spells.
• Chaos favours all chaos-themed (red) creatures and spells.
• Air favours creatures that can fly and ignore terrain. This staff type is useful for maintaining mobility on a complicated battlefield terrain, and consistently picking better fights.
• Marksman favours creatures that have a ranged attack, and possibly magic bow. Ranged attacks are generally weaker, but enable tactics such as kiting and attack stacking against a single target.
• Mount favours creatures that the wizard can ride. Mounts protect the wizard from one successful attack, as they must be targeted and killed first.
• Attack specialises in offensive spells and abilitties to kill opposing creatures and wizards at range. Its opposite is Creature staffs.
• Growth specialises in area control using trees, blobs, and vines. It rewards skill in area control, and outlasting opponents via thick defenses plus additional mana and spells from magic trees.
• Speed specialises in creatures with 3 or more movement, focussing on outmaneouvring opposing creatures and rushes. This staff is neutral-leaning in the early game, and transitions into law/chaotic creatures late game.
• Creature specialises in creature summons, overwhelming the opponents with a larger and more flexible army. It’s opposite is Attack staffs.
• Armoury is a law-themed staff that specialises in buffing your wizard into a combat powerhouse. This is a high-risk, high-reward playstyle.
• Undead is chaos-themed staff that specialises in creatures that are immune to attacks from most living enemies, but are vulnerable to attack spells and paladins. The hard-counter nature makes this staff a difficult one to play against in the current meta.

I’ll detail each of these in the bulk of the guide, as I manage to write them.

Mechanics

I keep hard numbers out of the rest of this guide, because I think that if a reader already knows probabilties and distributions, they can already judge for themselves the basic tenets of Chaos Reborn using the Chaospedia and gameply experience without me to guide them. If your are curious about some of the technical details, however, here are some tid-bits.

Simplistically speaking, it doubles the chance that a matching spell will appear. More exactly (as far as we were told IIRC), it doubles the weight of matching hards without affecting the non-matching cards. This is less than double, although the difference is too small to care about.
More importantly, a staff cannot give you more copies of the same spell than you can possibly obtain with any other staff. You will need talismans or Magic Woods to obtain more than 2 copies of any card in a match.

Below is a table (~v1.5) of the spells in the game according to cast chance and staff type. This tells us about how specialised a staff is likely to be. The more matching spells that a staff has, the more likely that you will have your deck full of matching cards, and little access to others. Law/Chaos/Creature staves are the most specialised: if you need something from outside the staff type, I would suggest explicitly binding a copy. (e.g. I would consider Bloodtlust Totem as a Law player, and Magic Wood as a Chaos player.)
Conversely, there are many staffs with only 4~6 matching cards. This guarantees you a more random outcome, but means you can’t double-boost many of the spells in your deck. An Armoury/Undead player will probably end up with 4 to 6 matching spells in their deck, and never more than the 8 (as above). You will inevitably run out of matching cards in longer games, so it may be worth binding matching spells simply to have a spare. Note that these staves obtain slightly better better stats to compensate.

Staff stats

This is current as of version 1.0.
The mega-spell cost is dependent on the type of staff, the spell itself, as well as the amount of stats devoted to decreasing its cost. For instance, the cheapst possible Flight of Sapphire Dragons will cost a little less mana for more dedicated staff types: 50 (Armoury), 52 (Attacks, Creatures and Marksman), 54 (Air and Speed), and 57 (Law). However, a staff that has the cheapest possible mega-spell value will also have the poorest possible stats in hand-size and boost.

The cheapest possible mega-spell ever? A Swarm of Rats costing 27 mana. With this hypotheatrical (sic) staff You can burn 4 spells on turn 1 to cast 7 rats, 7 additional rats per mana sprite (+2 mana that you can scrounge up somewhere), and up to 9 rats from the Rat Packs in your deck. This does not count contributions from other talismans like Mana Vitatis and Exemplum Funus (only the first cast of Funus is cost-effective, costing you 8 mana and your opponent to also offer up Rats to be killed).

As a Forgemaster, players have 9 points to spend between increasing handsize, boost, or decreasing mega-spell cost. The same applies to randomly generated staffs, to our knowledge. Therefore, all staffs whether created or randomly generated, are on the same playing field, and can all be found in-game.

All staves have 1-3 binding slots, 0-1 minor buff slot, and 0-1 major buff/mana slot.

Law staff

Wielders of the Law have a better ability to improve their wizard stats without sacrificing the creature and attack spell repertoir. Law creatures also share an emphasis on defense, magic power, and ranged attack. It is thus easier to build up a solid army and use it to defeat an opponent up-front, using your wizard to reinforce directly on the front lines and taking down isolated units. Positioning practice with elves and dwarves are important to securing more wins long term, using their extreme range/defenses to deter enemies and secure a maximum number of hits on a critical enemy.

Key points of strategy
The main challenge for Law users is to ensure that the alignment is at least 10% in their favour. This brings the majority – 10 of 15 – Law spells above the 70% range before boosting, which will give the possibility of steam rolling with each successful cast benefitting the rest of their deck. With a matching law mega-spell, it is possible to see >50% alignments during the end game, especially if opponents are not able to effectively fight the alignment shift.
Law players are also more likely to have dwarves and archers in the early-mid game, both with ranged attacks and with higher casting chances than hellhounds and manticores. This creates a timing window where law players can control an area against early melee units. See the Marksman staff for details.
Due to the build-up time of alignment and the fact that Dwarves are slow to get anywhere, some patience is recommended. Don’t try to cast a Paladin immediately on 50% if you can build up the alignment safely. That Fountain of Life and Pegasus can wait until you have strong creatures worth saving. You don’t need that mana sprite as much as a Neutral staff user. Remember, every successful law cast increases the cast chance of your other law spells as long as the alignment does your way.
So, players should try to ensure that the majority of their Law spells are successful, casting neutral spells to fill in the gaps, while avoiding strong chaotic spells unless necessary. Don’t burn them all, however: in an average deck, you will have a couple of useful Chaotic spells, e.g. a Bloodlust Totem to make up for Law’s unimpressive attack values, or a skeleton to supplement defenses against undead.

Talisman options you may not have discovered

• Mana Corruptus – to guarantee your steamroll and get your dragons and paladins out early.
• Binding: Law shift – Keeps shifts in your favour.
• Argento – A good fallback if you’re not good at getting the right alignment. Or, summon a surprise vampire for your final push.
• Aelfscyne and Bind: Magic Wood – A second mega spell option to net you a dominating ranged advantage.
• various wizard attack talismans if you wish to go for a combat mage. The benefit to using Law over Armoury or Mounts is that you can boost both your weapons and your law mounts.

Fighting against alignment
When you are facing a superior opponent who is managing to keep the battlefield bathed in red, and have failed some important casts such as Law shift, there are two main directions of play (not exclusive). If you do not have several strong chaos cards in your deck or the opponent is primarily chaotic (defensive play), focus your mana towards boosting your mid-game law spells (Elf, Unicorn, Guardian Totem, Magic sword), or a relatively easy to cast megaspell (70% or above). Remember that 75% is 3 successes of every 4 on average, so you can still gain a solid army. Meanwhile, you are minimising their chances of casting the strongest chaotic cards. The second path (tempo play), if you are (un)lucky enough to have several strong chaos creatures, is to play aggressively and attempt to cast them before your opponent. A player with a Chaos Shift playing towards their Hydras and Vampires will want to cast the shift first. The turn when this shift happens is when your opponent gives you the first chance to cast your own Hydra/Vampire directly into the battle while a standard opponents will stay a bit back. A timely undead paladin is a fearsome creature. As the Law player you have better boosts towards mounts/magic gear, allowing you to stand a movement turn closer and contribute directly.
In both cases, you should aim to whittle down the opposing army before you run out of reliable reinforcements. A Hydra two turns away from combat is useless for two turns, and the talisman Exemplum Funus will help you gain critical lawful/chaotic summons along the way.
Never forget that it’s not possible for you to win 100% of the time. Winning or drawing unfavourable battles is what marks the greatest players, and it’s not bad manners to bow out before you resort to walling yourself in a corner with Tangle Vines.

Alignment-based staves require some additional boosts from the match alignment to really get going. As long as you can force your opponent to hard-cast their strongest spells at the 40~60% range, they will likely fail half the spells they cast, and you’ll stop the snow-ball. It is a desperate Law wizard who tries to cast a dragons at 40%.
Since Law armies are (1) good at holding ground, (2) not very fast, and (3) have access to both Fountain of Life + Guardian Totem, you may need to save your fast units to take down their structures before properly engaging. Against more aggressive players, it is possible to lure their units out of position

Chaos Staff

Wielders of Chaos emphasise strong attacks, mobility, disables, and zone control, starting with cost effective globins, progressing through various undead creatures, and finishing with a combat powerhouse known as the Hydra. Chaos decks circumvent the need for defense by directly removing the ability of their opponents to counter-attack, either through the natural immunity of undead creatures, or through disables via Hellbounds and Gooey-blobs. Their 3 growth spells can be used to create favourable terrain and block/delay units in order to gain a local advantage. The majority of early and mid chaos cards are primed to disrupt an opponent’s set plans until a crushing lead can be obtained.

Key points of strategy
Like Law, the main challenge for Chaos users is to ensure that the alignment is at least 10% in their favour. This brings about half – 8 of 14 – Chaos spells above the 70% range before boosting, which will give the same possibility of steam rolling with each successful cast benefitting the rest of their deck.
Chaos users have both the benefit and curse of undead creatures, who are powerful but are vulnerable to magic attacks. A skeletion on turn 1 is a very effective, but temporary opening: make sure you have a plan for when (not if) it dies. The same goes for lone vampires and hellhounds – unless you have an undead megaspell, you may not have the number of undead spells to outlast the counters. This is true especially against Attack staff users, where it may be more useful to pretend you didn’t draw undead, and goad your opponent into wasting their spells on Neutral creatures before you bring out a winner.
Unit placement and locations are important in a mixed living/dead army. Excepting the Hydra and buffed vampires, Chaos units tend to trade slightly poorly against equivalent units that can fight back. Chaos ranged attackers are also harder to cast than Elves, so players usually end up melee heavy in the midgame and have to juggle units.
Thus, keep in mind where your units should be. Match undead units against creatures that cannot fight back. Mob spiders and paladins with your living creatures instead, and use blobs and hellhound paralysis where necessary. The outcome of Undead vs undead fights can be a game-decider when one player runs out of counters, so know your %-chances.
Note on blob and hellhounds: Blobs use the attack and defense stats of the target, while hellhounds ranged attacks are defended by magic power. If you have to choose, blob Law creatures, and paralyse non-Law creatures.

The alignment build-up is very important. The core chaos units: manticores, hellhounds, and vampires, are all <= 50%. Manticores are your only chaos mount, so try not to waste the spell if you’re not on the verge of losing. Keep the alignment red, and every successful chaos cast will increase the success chance of your other chaos spells. You also have a slight advantage over Law players since undead creatures are their own counters. It will be tempting for any opponent to play their undead spells and feed your deathball, so convince your opponents to match you skeleton for skeleton (instead of using magic bolt), and you’re well on your way to a mighty Hydra.
Players should try to ensure that the majority of their Chaos spells are successful, casting neutral spells to fill in the gaps, while avoiding law spells unless necessary. Don’t burn them all: in an average deck, you will have a couple of useful Law spells. In particular, Guardian Totem boost the magic power of all creatures, while magic tree boost creatures adjacent to them. These will help your undead defend against incoming magic attacks.
Undead-specific notes will be kept for their special goat-skull staff.

Talisman options you may not have discovered

• Mana Corruptus – to guarantee your steamroll and get your best units early.
• Binding: Chaos shift – Keeps alignments in your favour.
• Argento – A good fallback if you find yourself losing the alignment battle.
• Exemplum Funus – opponents will often be forced to summon undead to fight your own. This is an excellent chance to trade up.
• Talismans that boost the magic defense of your creatures.

Fighting against alignment
When you are facing a superior opponent who is managing to keep the battlefield bathed in blue, and have failed some important casts such as Chaos shift, there are two main directions of play (not exclusive). If you do not have several strong law cards in your deck or the opponent is primarily law, focus your mana towards boosting your mid-game chaos spells (Hellhounds, Shadow Woods, Damnation, Bloodlust Totem, Blob), or a relatively easy to cast megaspell (70% or above). The strong chaos creatures all have <=50%, so it’s more difficult for you to summon your core army than a Law player playing against alignments.* This is why chaos players have several ways to create favourable engagements.
*With a maximum boost of 20 mana. We’re comparing 70% bloodhounds, 60% manticores/vampires versus 80% elves/unicorns/magic bows and 60% paladins/pegasi. Translating this to games, as chaos you might lose 1 game per 9 because you used 40 mana to fail two criticals summon in a row, while law players do 1 in 20. I would recommend a mana talisman, binding: chaos shift, and a staff with better boost than +10 for Chaos players.
The second path (tempo play), if you are (un)lucky enough to have several strong Law creatures, is to play aggressively and attempt to cast them before your opponent. While Paladins and Pegasi are not as game changing as Vampires. The contribute towards youre core army, and can be used to extend the life of your own army (using Paladins to engage other undead, and placing Pegasi so they can sacrifice for a hellhound).
In both cases, you should aim to whittle down the opposing army before you run out of reliable reinforcements. The talisman Exemplum Funus will help you gain critical lawful/chaotic summons along the way.
Never forget that it’s not possible for you to win 100% of the time. Winning or drawing unfavourable battles is what marks the greatest players, and it’s not bad manners to bow out before you resort to walling yourself in a corner with Tangle Vines.

Alignment-based staves require some additional boosts from the match alignment to really get going. As long as you can force your opponent to hard-cast their strongest spells at the 40~60% range, they will likely fail half the spells they cast, and you’ll stop the snow-ball. More than a Law player, a Chaos players needs your help to reach higher alignment, and should be trying to convince you to cast your chaotic spells to defend yourself from their starting forces. Avoid this whenever you can.
Try to save your attack/subvert spells for an inevitable undead creature. Even though a Chaos player will have plenty of neutral units in their line up, find another way to deal with that Spider or Eagle if you can. Unlike an undead player, they will not have many to throw at you (unless it’s their megaspell). If you can draw out undead creatures individually, they will be far easier to lock down or kill.
Hydras are not very scary if you can outmaneouvre them. A wizard on a fast mount will outrun hydras, and cheap units are very useful to sacrifice and tie up a hydra into moving only 1 tile per turn. Since they can’t fly like dragons, even a skeleon can do bodyblock duty.

Neutral Staff

Wielders of Neutrality and balance offer a very mobile opening army with 4 speedy creatures: Rats, Eagles, Lions, and Spiders, who are often used as auxilaries in all staff types. Theire core spells are free from alignment biases, allowing them to exclusively play against lawful and chaotic opponents with choice spells from the opposite. Taking a lawful/chaotic mount is extremely important for a Neutral player, as the Elephant is slow and offers less offensive threat/protection in practice due to a weaker magic power. Riding an elephant into battle invites your opponent to use their magic attacks to slay your ride, and then corner you.
To pay for not having to care about match alignment, neutral spells often require mana to gain a comfortable chance of success. To gain sufficient mana in each match, players will want to kill opposing creatures/structures, claim mana sprites, and burn the spells they do not need (or purposefully fail their cast). While all players do this, mana management is especially important for Neutral users.

Key points of strategy
At 0% alignment, neutral players will have slightly better creatures at equivalent cast chances, but do not have the staying power against a full Lawful/Chaotic army. Your spells have a higher %-chance and your creatures are fast, both for a good reason: you’ll need them to secure mana sprites in order to power your giant and elephant summons. You must also be at peace/zu frieden with RNG. For one, it is impossible to make your giants and elephants 100% successful, boosted or not. Two, neutral units have weaker magic power anyway, so they’re liable to being killed by magic attacks when you need them most. Plan for both of these.

One of your starting challenges to is find out the preferred alignment of your opponent, and play against it. Both Law and Chaos staffs will have a good chance to steamroll you once they get going, is it’s important to deny them both the alignemnt bonus and the mana sprites using your faster starting units. Against a fellow Neutral player, you will need good unit control to win fights reliably, while tricking them into boosting the preferred alignment of your non-matching spells

The second challenge is the master the fearsome Magic Bolt/Mega Bolt. The highest number of lethal attacks an mounted wizard can make is 3: the mount attack, the wizard attack, and a bolt to the face. Youll need to play the alignments to maximise your chances, but if you manage to mount a Manticore and have a Magic Bow on hand, you can reliably slay unmounted wizards 6 tiles away. Similarly, a Unicorn/Magic Sword combo will also do. This triple threat is most credible from Neutral/Attack staff holders and others who use bind: magic bolt.
The threat of a bolt is enough: until you’ve cast 2 (3 if you bind magic bolt as well) previous magic bolts, your opponent can’t be sure if you have yet another one, and must be careful to block themselves with terrain and creatures. Save them as your aces, because opponents will try to tempt you to bolt anything other than their face. If you have 2, why not hide one away and pretend to run from a skeleton? etc., etc.

It’s worth noting the parallel between a Giant and a wizard with magic bolt: both are high attack , one-use abilities. With both of these, you can effectively zone out even well-equipped wizards from where they need to be. So practice corralling your opponents and outmaneouvring their army.

Talisman options you may not have discovered

• Mana Mortificum and Mana Vitatis – Rat packs come in threes, and will significantly increase the use of these talismans in the mid-game.
• Cantio Secutus with Binding: Magic Bolt – A 4-range bolt is positively terrifying, more so if you happen to be riding a pegasus to become a range 8 finisher.
• Clementine – A good fallback if you’re bad at controlling match alignments.
• Televortis – The trickster plays: run forward to bolt a careless opponent and teleport back if you fail (make sure you have the mana), circumvent an enemy army via a manticore who was merely hunting totems.
• Talismans that boost the magic defense of your creatures.

Neutral staff users are the most mana-hungry in the game – on average, they will fail a couple of boosted spells in a match, and must make up for the difference. Therefore, one of your main goals is to fight over contested mana sprites. Prefer casting rats and eagles before dwarves and goblins so they will all arrive at the sprite on the same turn. At the start of the game, Spiders and Lions are generally worth subverting or magic slaying if they are threatening your plans. Otherwise target your magic attacks against Spiders, Giants, and Elephants (to a degree).
The neutral composition contains only one ranged unit, a Giant at 40%, with a single-use rock that leaves it with a weaker offense. Outfighting them with Elves and Hellhounds in the mid-game will severely hinder your opponent’s mobility, and provide openings to punish any mistakes in positioning.

You must also take care to preserve your units and growths so they don’t die needlessly. Even a gooey blob will give 2 mana when slain, so a carelesss blob can net your opponent almost as much as a mana sprite as their intact units farm away at the edges.

Watching against unit rushes and bolt rushes will gaurd yourself agianst foolish deaths (and a smug grin on your opponent). Click on the opponent’s creatures to double-check their attack range: Lions scale cliffs and eagles can fly 4 files, so you will want to control high ground and/or keep a pack of rats just to block off your wizard. If their wizard is mounted and armed, be extra cautious.

Armoury Staff

The Armoury Staff is an odd one, in a game where any successful hit on your wizard will kill it. The mature players who’ve been to casinos might imagine themselves going all-in on every second game – surely this is a disaster? Well, with a collection of talismans to aid the wizard and just enough creatures to fend off the difficult summons, you can and will be a powerhouse.
I declare here that my experience with this staff was before talismans in Earyly Access, and am still collecting the last pieces of the equipment (a good Armoury staff, and a couple of bindings). So please treat this section as being more tentative.

Key points
Your warrior mage will live and die by the equipment that he/she is wearing. That is, expect to be eaten by Rats if you insist on taking that “Heroic” bodyarmour with 50 Attack / 20 Defense. The main choice you want to make while gearing up is whether you want to use Magic Bow as a core part of your strategy. Here are some considerations:

• If you kill a creature with a Magic Sword, you will gain double mana from it to help power your talismans and spells. Your gear will definitely need as much Att as you can spare.
• If you kill with a Magic bow, you will not gain double mana. You don’t need Att for this.
• Your Magic Power stat increases you chance of survive a Magic Bolt, a Hellhound Paralysis attack, and success chance with magic attack spells.

So every stat on your body is agoing to be important for something. Having established this, here is a table of the three body gears with maxed Att and Def, with the only variation left being ratio of Magic Power to Deck Size:

If the numbers don’t mean anything, two common summons have comparable attack/defense: a Lion has 40/40, and a Dwarf has 20/60. You’ll be able to retreat as least as reliably as a Lion can.
Arcane gear is not recommended for melee attacks, but may be okay for a Divine Bow build, and extra cards are very useful. Vigilant is generally good, but you’ll probably become engaged at the worst possible time. Heroic gives you the best chance at breaking Spider Webs and adjacent Blobs, but its defense is not good without a Magic Shield. Both Heroic and Vigilant need are very vulnerable to Magic Bolt.
To Do: Obtain chance to be killed by Magic Bolt as a function of both wizard’s Magic Powers, and also chance to kill with Magic Attacks against priority creatures.

Of all of the common creatures, you will be most vulnerable to disables from Spiders and Hellhounds, which removes your attack and decreases your defense. Also, Dwarves are your ultimate bane as their attacks will remove, in order, your Bow, Sword, and Shield. They must be personally avoided or slain in first strike.
Having 3+/flying movement will help you guarantee a first strike, since the timing of your attacks and withdrawals is everything. You are the playmaker for the small menagerie of creatures you’ve summoned into battle: your chance to kill their Skeleton is high enough to charge it before it charges you, meanwhile your goblin blocks theit Elf from geting enough shots in to eventually find your eye. (P.S. I once lost 2 Hydras to 5 Elves over the course of 10 turns, just before cornering the opposing wizard.)) You can face off a Pride of Lions with gear, but if your oppoent is smart about avoiding your multiattack, you’ll want a Spider to disable the ones you’re not dealing with.

Side note: if you also went for a 80 Magic Power gear, you can kiss your 3x Magic Attack: Damnation/Justices goodbye.

Talisman Slots:
These slots are more important for an Armoury Wizard than any other, and so it is difficult to find Armoury players. Challeng 7A in the tutorial demonstrates how difficult it can be, but it does not demonstrate how easy it can be because the wizard had 2 Valor talismans instead of 1 Valor and 1 of the most powerful wizard talismans: Romero (60 mana, wizard becomes undead) and Draugar (35 mana, wizard gains leach like a vampire). These two talismans require that magenta/ying-yang slot found on ~25% of random body armours.
Recommended gearing then looks like this:

• 2x Valor vs. 1x Valor, 1x Tranmutation: Choose 2 of Pontacto(Elf-like range), Retrigarum(Paladin-like retaliate), Metafortis (Hydra-like multiattack), Bellivent (evades successful ranged attacks by retreating 1 hex!) and a bunch of other utility options. Or, switch out 1 Valor for the ultimates mentioned above: Romero is infinitely more defensive, but Draugar is very attractive and costs less mana.
• Sorcery Slots: Generally avoid, if you need to fill it, I’d suggest Baculum Obligo or Exemplum Funus.
• 1x Mana vs. 1x Major Buff: You will need the mana to buff your wizard, instead of soending mana to buff your creatures.
• 1-3 Binding Slots vs. 0-2 Minor Buff: Personally, I would suggest binding Unicorn/WindWalker, Shield, and preferred weapon, and forego any creature buffs.

WIP. Will fill this in as I get play experience..

Marksman Staff

The Marksman staff is dedicated towards supporting the player’s strategy with numerous ranged attacks. The staff-types leans towards a law-biased opening via Dwarves and Elves, which can be developed into an imposing army, or be adapted via talismans into other law-based openings: e.g. magic equipment, or magic trees looking towards the currently OP Aelfscythe talisman.

The endgame units are flexible but difficult to cast: Dragons, Giants, Hellbounds and Manticores. Without the solid backing of a aligned deck, these will require mana to gain any pretense of a “reliable” cast chance. Therefore, expect an army or mixed ranged/melee units in the majority of matches, often with 2~3 Elves/Hellhounds employed to crack open opposing lineups.

To practice playing for and against Elf-heavy matches, I recommend entering the Realm Amazonia by Kyriam, where all claimable settlements are elf+unicorns, and all AI allies are also elves (although spoiler: Kyriam is herself undead).

The main drawcard of Marksman staves is an emphassis on ranged firepower, not a guarantee. Since all your powerful units are <=60% and spread across the three alignemnts, don’t expect that every card you see will magically convert themselves into creatures on the field. Remember the twin tactics of mana boosting + random illusions, which is practically mandatory to bring out your unrivalled alpha-strike potential.

Mastering the intricacies of line-of-sight and move ordering is also important, especially since you’ll be the one using LOS. The rules are simple and documented in the game guide, but it might a few games before you manage to stop blocking your own ranged units from attacking.
Elves stand at height 3, the tallest of early game units, and so they are often capable of shooting over a blocking army at a mounted wizard (also at height 3 while mounted). Hellhounds are height 2, so unit swapping in and out of melee may be required to give them a chance to use their paralysis. They are also nimble enough to get around cover and flank your opponent. Dwarves are height 1, so they are best at hindering enemy melee units while you fill ’em with arrows.

In terms of map control, you should be fully utilising the 6-tile threat range to zone out your opponents from contested mana sprites and high ground, or kiting them to ensure multiple hits. However, keep in mind that ranged attacks are individually weak: even Dragons have an equivalent ranged attack to a Lion in melee. So it is possible for your opponent to advance under fire. What shouldn’t be regularly happening is allowing your opponents to strike first. Unless you are baiting (say, their lone elf into the range of your 2 elves,) you should be able to fully punish positioning mistakes, and reduce threats like Spiders/Lion rushes, before they can actually engage.

Lastly, with only 6 matching creatures you’ll obtain a surprising amount of flexibility in a given match. There’s a good cha nce you’ll obtain a couple of structure/growths, a couple of strong melee creatures, etc. that can be helped along by adjusting the match alignment to suit. Allow your starting hand to modify your strategy instead of burning them all to rush out your megaspell.

Talisman Options

• Penetronus – This is a goto major talisman to increase the ranged attack of your entire repertoir, boosting Att/Agi/MPow by 30/30/20 for a mere 20 mana.
• Aelfscythe – A talisman that costs 35 mana, which should really cost 55-60 for it’s current mechanics. It’s main advantage in combination with Bind: Magic Wood is to (eventually) give you 5 more Elves to play with, fully compatible with other talismans.
• Bind: Magic Bow – A thematic addition that allows you to reliably take out undead from a distance. Particularly skeletons, since they are the only hard counter in theopening turns. (On that note, I’m currently using Divine Bow on my marksman staff loadout.)
• Bind: Boodlust Totem – Armies with first strike will benefit far more from attack boosts then defense boosts. It’s also more difficult for your opponent to sneak around a ranged army without being exposed.
• Argento – A direct option to maximise the success chance of all your spells. Easier to pull off if you plan for Law -> Chaos, with additional law spell(s) bound, but the reverse is viable if you really want your dragons.

As with most turn-based games, playing an opponent with superior range is intimidating, even more so over open ground. So an obvious counterplay is to delay them with growths like Tanglevines and Magic Wood that can protect your wizard without pesky LOS mistakes leading to your early demise. Hiding behind a rock is only good if your opponent can’t just walk two tiles and expose you again – this is the part of LOS that’s not immediately obvious, and being aware of it will help you to avoid giving up contested mana sprites without a fight. If you do use a Vine, keep your Dispel on hand to open the way later on.

A normal flow of the game would involve you keeping enough units alive to outweigh the additional ranged units your opponents will have, and then charging in to force an engagement. Prioritise magic attacks against Hellhounds, as they compound the ranged advantage. Save your Eagles for the main offensive and use them to stop Elves from running away again, etc.
Rat Packs and Dwarves are surprisingly good at at advancing while hiding due to their 1 Height advantage (ability to hide behind a hill, instead moving onto it and be shot to pieces.) Keeping them alive will help you to finally engage a cautious opponent, and prevent them from running.
The Undead creatures are most suited to form the vanguard of an offensive by (partially) blocking LOS to your living creatures. This is because living creatures with sufficient offense/defense to push back, also come at <=50% cast chance: Elephants, Hydras, Giants, Paladins. The next best thing, Spiders, come with 50 Def, giving it a ~70% to surviving an average Elven arrow – not quite safe enough to make an attack by itself (think of all the times you’ve failed a 70% cast, haha…).

Creature Staff

A Creature Staff is the most flexible of all staffs when it comes to having the right summon for the job. Being able to boost any creature for double mana allows the player to more reliably pull off creature combinations that would be difficult for single-alignment staves, e.g. Elf + Hellhound combos for supreme ranged domination, or more rarely pegasus+undead to give them a second (third?) life.
The downside is, of course, fewer equipment and spells. Players must rely upon mounts to protect themselves from opponents, and must watch out for disables such as blobs since they probably won’t have a spare Magic Attack/Teleport to help themselves. Without a combat-capable heroic or vigilant bodygear, they will need to stay out of reach.

Key points
This staff will almost always give you too many creatures to summon them all, so you have the luxury of choice:

• For instance, a failed attempt at a turn 1 Giant isn’t much of a card loss to you, since there will (>99.9%?) be more strong creatures deeper in the deck. A tempo loss, sure, but one you can make up for with multiple 70-90% creatures.
• You can also afford to summon more illusions. A common advice is to summon at least 1 illusion in every game. With this staff, it’s not difficult to hide an extra one amidst the continuous stream of creatures. Spend 30 mana on an real 50% creature, and follow it up with a fake 60%, or vice-versa. Start off with two goblin holograms so you never get bitten by the 10% fail. There are many ideas to try, but don’t fake your Rat Pack, and don’t do the same tactic every game.
• Using Argento to flip the alignment will enable Law/Chaos combos rarely seen outside of 2v2. Although your opponent can see your talismans, and also save up their non-matching creatures (if they are wise), you can use your talisman then cast your spell on the same turn, unlike with Chaos/Law Shift. You could feed a Chaos/Law player, and then switch over the alignment before they summon half their army (rather, you should).

To summarise, A Creature Staff should be considered the archetype for staffs like Marksman, Speed, Air, and even Undead to a degree. Allow your starting hand to guide your decision making, and know your limitations: with so many creatures, you will rarely have an attack spell for the odd undead that breaks through.

In terms of mana use, the mega-spell on your staff matters less than a major buff slot. For instance, activating a Megamorus costs 50 mana, but buffs all of your creatures by 30-40% in attack, defense, and agility. In many games, this will be more helpful to your existing army on the field – your goblins will fight like Lions and your Lions will fight like Elephants. Other talismans options are available dpending on your mana preferences.

Talisman Options:
I will include binding options here because the Creature staff will not have reliable access to any non-creature spells.

• Guardian and Bloodlust Totems: the two totems aren’t creatures (they’re structures), and so will rarely appear in your hand if you don’t bind them.
• Magic Sword/Shield/Bows to become a battlefield commander.
• Argento, as discusse above.
• Magic attack spells, if your wizard’s magic power is high enough to use them reliably. (Hint: A wizard in classic mode has 100 Magic Power.)

Although an opponent wielding a Creature staff can afford to trade your creatures 1-for-1, they cannot cast spells faster than you can. Therefore, the first few turns will be played on relatively even terms, with the advantage slowly shifting towards your oppoent as you run out of easy reinforcements. Focus on keeping your army alive and together so that you can take more kills than your opponent (e.g. not taking a risky attack with an eagle, you might need that extra 25% kill chance later).
Your Neutral and Undead creatures will be safer since your opponent will have few magical attacks on hand. A timely Raise Dead* midway through the game will gain you a significant local advantage, and there’ll probably be a variety of options to choose from if you have been at all successful in trading creatures. An undead mount would be an excellent choice for defending your wizard, and permit him/her to assist in combat until your opponent finally finds a counter.
*I should warn you now: if you raise a Giant who has thrown its rock, it will be raised without a second rock. There are no freebies.
One more idea: use a Growth spell on the turn you engage in battle. The best time to lay down a blob against an army is when you are going to attack on that every turn – move your units up against theirs first so your blob doesn’t block important atttacking tiles. Similarly, deploy Vines and Shadow Woods to cut some units off from the action. At any other time, your opponent might as well stay back and find the right creature to farm your trees for mana.

Undead Staff

Undead staffs users focus on an extreme version of Chaos strategy, by placing all of their focus into three Chaos creatures and one spell (Raise Dead). Their desired endgame is specific and predictable: obtain a sufficient amount of powerful undead creatures, or one pimped-out Vampire, to overwhelm the opponent. The focus of realm and multiplayer matches will inevitably revolve around the number of undead that this player can still muster, versus the number of counter their oppoent still hold.

Key points
An Undead Staff is pure Chaos, so you should read through the alignment section for the Chaos Staff. Unlike a Chaos staff, however, you only get a maximum of 8 matching spells by default, so there is a lot less room for failure. Those undead spells need to succeed, real if there’s a danger of disbelief, and mana-boosted if you can spare it (decide on whether the mana is worth saving for a mega spell, i.e.whether you want to bet it all on that cast). Having a high Chaos alignment will make it all easier. If the field keeps turning blue, you will be a sad panda.

More than the other staff holders, you will want to do a little bit of card-counting and remember what spells your opponent has played and is likely to still obtain. Remember that a player can only have up to 2 copies (3 with a binding) of a card in their hand, then tick off the following list of 6 as they appear:

• (Law) Magic Attack: Decree and Justice (The mega spell for this is rare)
• (Neutral) Magic Bolt (Mega Bolt if they have it)
• (Neutral) Subversion (Mass Subversion is also rare, but viable)
• (Chaos) Magic Attack: Vengence and Damnation (The mega spell for this is rare)
• How many in total?

For example, a Lawful opponent might have 2 Magic Attack: Justice in their deck, but is unlikely to have 2 Magic Bolts or 2 Damnations. So, if your opponent has 20 cards according to his gear, and has cast 3 attack spells already (and is not holding an Attacks Staff), he may have just 1 more in his deck/hand, if he’s lucky. Although the actual probabilities are not known by the community, through play experience I believe 5+ attack cards in a standard deck is unlikely.* So, you can then plan your gear and strategy accordingly, e.g. offer your Skeleton for them to waste a spell before summoning and flying in your Vampires.
*In equipped and realms, players can have anywhere between 19 and 27 cards in a deck.

Talisman Options

• Mortor, Magilor, and Gardilor – having two of three talismans that boost magic defense is, in my opinion, highly recommended for Undead staff players.
• Choose an Undead staff that has major buff talismans or mana talismans. These provide the best options, rather than another binding slot. Megamagimus will make your udnead as resistant as Paladins(!).
• The talisman to make your own wizard undead is not only thematic, but also prevents a rushing strike from fast creatures.

Playing against alignment
Nope, without some serious RNG (like a hand full of blue cards or chain 50% succeses) you’re pretty gimped. 😉 Well…
…one thing you can do is to ask seriously which spells you want to keep, and start to burn and purposely fail-cast the others. Just remember that each burn yields you less mana than before until +1.

As with Chaos staves, a similar strategy should apply. Try to avoid feeding the alignment unless you are fully Chaotic yourself, as you would much rather your opponent failing 1 or 2 hellhounds, rather than summoning your manticore only to be chased down by creatures it cannot hurt. Even though you can potentially field your own, chances are you opponent will have more than you.
If you have a choice of attack spells, Subversion and Magic Bolt are more useful against Vampires and Hellhounds, leaving the Law/Chaos magic attacks for the weaker skeletons. A creature raised from the dead will have identical stats to its living version, which can be very troublesome if it happens to be Lawful. Playing Challenge 7B will help you understand playing with 3-range attack spells.
The wizard themself can also slay undead – the wisdom of this move depends on your gear and available equipment spells (all Law). If you opponent is being cheeky with their first skeleton, this can be the best move. Against stronger undead, a combat wizard should engage with both mounts and meatshields. Do not engage alone – if you have never tried Challenge 7A, you should probably do so, and see how difficult it gets against even living creatures.
The main non-Chaos spells that are important are Spiders(Neutral, 60%), Paladins(Law 40%), Pegasi(Law, 40%), Fountain of Life (Law, 40%), and Law Shift (80%). Those 40% numbers are why the alignment attle is so very important. Spiders can trap undead so that you or the Paladin can kill it unopposed, while Pegasi should stand unmounted behind them to allows its sacrifice ability to give an extra life.

Attacks Staff

WIP.

Like its thematic opposite, the Armoury Staff, Attack staffs are a curious choice in a game dominated by creatures and one-hits. Why prefer single-shot spells when you could have more reliable creatures that could attack again and again?

To pull off a mage-based strategy, you really need bodygear with good Magic Power. This stat will affect the success rate of your Magic Attacks and Magic Bolt (see bottom for details), so anything <120 both butters no parsnips. I would advise looking for Arcane gear with 10 Att (you shouldn’t need to hit anything with your stick), or something similar. With that in mind, here’s another table of bodygear:

The spells Magic Bolt, Subversion, and Magic Attack all work differently, according to their in-game descriptions. Bolts test against the target’s defense using your bodygear MAG to assist. Subversion tests against the target’s Magic Power without being benefitted by anyone’s bodygear MAG. Magic Attack depend upon your MAG, your target’s MAG, and your opponent wizard’s MAG.

Normal attack = ATT/(ATT+DEF)
Bolt = MOD /(MOD+DEF), where MOD = 50+your_MAG/2..
Subvert = 60/(60+creature_MAG)
Magic Attack = MOD/(MOD+creature_MAG), where MOD = (Power of the spell)*(your wizard’s MAG)/(your opponent wizard’s MAG).

The Magic Attack formula is more complicated, but if you and your opponent’s bodygear have the same MAG stat, they will work like Subversion. If there’s a noticable gap, however, then the success chances can be quite different. Rather than spam you with large tables (I do have one now after multiple trial games to figure it out), here are two screenshots, of a 150 v 110 MAG scenario:

Chance to hit for a wizard with 150 Magic Power against a wizard with 110 Magic Power

Compare the chances of the better wizard above with the magically inferior wizard below.
Chance to hit for a wizard with 110 Magic Power against two wizards with 150 Magic Power

The most noticeable difference are with the creatures in the middle, starting from Elephants on the right (70% vs. 56%) to Paladins on the left (49% vs. 34%). This is an 15% improvement to practically all the target’s you would both see in every match and want dead, including all three Undead summons. Not an OP number by any stretch of imagination, but just like mana boosts and alignment control, these little things build up.