Fairy Unchained: The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
“After a long and exhausting battle, the Immortal Princess Kaguya has won the war and thanks to a new ritual she sealed the Cthulhus in human bodies, depriving them of their power.
The enormous magic power that was unleashed during the battle reactivated the Akashic Records, a manufact as old as the universe itself, which contains the power to see into the past and the future of the world...”
With this intriguing opening we welcome you back to this new episode of Force of Will's spoilers. Today we'll have a look inside the Akashic Records and we'll go back in time, to meet some of the protagonists of the first war against the Cthulhus, whose deeds we've only read in the tales of the previous expansions.
Our attention is immediately captured by the protagonist of the two wars against the Cthulhus: the world savior herself: Kaguya.
This new version portrays her before the start of the war, namely when she still hadn't drunk the elisir of immortality that changed her in the Immortal Princess that everybody knows today.
Kaguya, the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter shows up as a good support ally, she appears to be fragile but she's actually quite lethal.
Her first ability allows us to pay a generic will and rest her to add a Knowledge Counter to a resonator with race “Six Sages”. Her second ability, on the contrary, allows us to remove three of these counters on any resonator we're controlling to remove a target resonator from the game.
To balance this enormous power, her attack and defense values are really low, and that forces the player to be really careful and to prepare all the necessary defenses to prevent the opponent from killing her quickly.
During “Moon Priestess Return” we only met two of the Six Sages that followed Kaguya during the first battle for the salvation of the world. With the new expansion we can go into the past and get acquainted with the other four, before they sacrificed their lives to create the True Magic Stones. The first one we reveal is:
Almerius, the Magus of Light has a high will cost when compared to her attack and defence values, but all her strenght resides in her abilities. First of all she has Quickcast, like Fiethsing and Zero do, that allows her to drop on the battlefield even during the opponent's turn, or in response to his spells.
When she appears on the field she automatically adds to herself a Knowledge Counter and she gains another one every time someone in her team is played.
The thing that makes her really dangerous is her Activate: removing a counter on Almerius allows us to remove an attacking target resonator from the game. This ability, coupled with Quickcast, makes the Magus of Light a real nightmare for our opponents, for they will have to think it thoroughly before attacking, especially if we have on the field four or more magic stones ready.
Even though at the beginning she was reluctant at the idea of collaborating with the other Sages, Almerius has made a precious friend during the war against the Cthulhus and with whom she teamed up to make a cohesive and lethal duo:
Zero, the Flashing Mage-Warrior is the same Zero corrupted by darkness that we met in “Moon Priestess Return”. Before all this happened, this young mage used to be the shining example of loyalty and fully incarnated the power of light.
Just like her friend Almerius, she has Quickcast and the possibility of gaining Knowledge Counters when she enters the field and when another member of the Six Sages is played.
Her ability differs from her comrade's: removing a counter will prevent the next 300 damage the are inflicted to a target resonator. Just as we've seen before the combination of the activate ability and Quickcast puts our opponent into a risky situation where a single mistake can result in disadvantage.
The sinergy between the two Sages and Kaguya is really simple: the two sages give Knowledge Counter to each other when they enter in game and they have a great control on the clashes. The Moon Princess has, on the other hand, the duty of providing them counters to exploit to remove annoying resonators from the game.
The symbol of their perfect teamwork is:
Duet of Light, which is a really good card that follows the theme of the two Sages we could see so far. At the low cost of only one Light Will we'll be able to remove a target resonator from the game simply resting two of our Light resonators. This is a good alternative to the Activate ability of Kaguya, which allows us to save the Knowledge Counters for our opponent's turn.
In the end, directly from the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, we find the place where it all started:
Shining Bamboo is an excellent card in many ways. First of all it's a Treasury Item that costs only a single will and that thanks to its Enter allows us to add to our hand a copy of Kaguya Tale of the Bamboo Cutter directly from the deck. Even if it can seem pointless, deploying Kaguya on the fied as soon as possible can make the difference against really aggressive decks, because assigning extra counters to the Six Sages allows us to activate their effects several times.
Secondly, the Bamboo itself lets us increase the number of counters being played since resting it we can ready Kaguya to use her effect once again.
What's left to say? Even in the past Kaguya and her allies knew really well how to keep at bay their opponents. Undoubtedly they are perfect resonators for the players who prefer to avoid direct encounters, using those tactics and abilities to clear their way to the opponent's life points.
For today the visions granted by the Akashic Records have ended. Hoping the past has amazed you, we say goodbye and we're giving you an appointment for the next journey.
