By Michael Stadermann
Dog Soldiers
Thunder Braves
Cost: Mon 3
Provides: Mon
Fighting: 4
When this card turns to attack, you may unturn a Power-generating Site you control. (No card can unturn another card more than once a turn.)
Today, we’ll take a closer look at the Dog Soldiers. This SSG card comes with a combo card in the same set: Mah-Jongg Parlor. But while the Parlor is a good card even without the Dog Soldiers, the Soldiers themselves seem a bit bland. In this article, I will talk about the right type of site for the Dogs, and look into ways of making them better at what they do.
Ideally, the types of site you put in to the Dog Soldiers deck are active sites, meaning you control when to turn them. Better still, they are sites you want to turn every turn, or even multiple times per turn. Power generating sites are the best example: you want to turn them as often as possible during your turn to gain power. While other power-generating sites produce more power than Mah-Jongg Parlor per turning, they also all have drawbacks. Boot Hill and Monkey House are probably worst; not only do you have to be losing, you also need to discard every time you want to generate power, and you may not have enough cards of the required type in hand to use the effect more than once a turn. Gambling House is better, since it only requires matching designators on the board, but still not as reliable as the Parlor. Disco and Golden Mile are right out, since they turn in response to something that you have no control over and that, even worse, happens during the opponent’s turn, so you can’t go and attack to unturn the site and use it again before your turn. Bandit Hideout is a decent choice, but will not benefit from your first attack.
With a little bit of effort, the efficiency of Mah-Jongg Parlor can still be outdone, using… Proving Ground! But, it produces no power, you say, and is thus not eligible? Sure, the bare Proving Ground produces no power, but with a little help from Yung Chang, Ornamental Garden, Mutator, or Probability Manipulator, Proving Ground can at least temporarily become eligible for the Dog Soldier’s ability. Dog Soldiers have a very low resource requirement and can easily be splashed into an Architect, Purist, or Hand deck. If you play with Proving Ground, you’ll of course want to play large amounts of characters so that you can benefit from the unturning as often as possible, and hand size increases or additional card draw are welcome. Good cards to add would be Memory Palace, Rapid Response Team, State of Emergency, or Orange Senshi Chamber, to name a few.
But there are other sites that turn that you may want to use multiple times per turn. Any site that turns deserves a second look: The Bazaar, Paradox Garden, Desolate Ridge, Night Club, RedGlare Chapel and so on. Ideal sites, however, can be turned before an attack, and may help with attacks. Green Senshi Chamber would be such a site, giving a potential Toughness: 4, or Toughness: 2 to two attackers. Wudang Mountain and Sacred Heart Hospital are likewise good. The Dogs let Four Sorrows Island prevent two characters from intercepting, and since we’ve discussed the synergy with Purist already, why not add a few Cognitive Spirits to really prevent all potentially harmful characters from blocking?
If you can attack multiple times per turn, cards that turn at the beginning of every attack are a great choice. Two good ones to think about are Arcanoseed and Coral Reef. Also, remember that unturning turn-and-maintain sites after the first attack can allow them to do double duty. You can, for example, attack with your first character, pump him with your Bomb Factory, then attack with a second character and a Dog Soldier, unturn the Factory again and pump the second character. That one point of damage may be the difference between taking and not taking the site! You can also turn your Dog Soldiers into a 6 fighting character until the end of the turn with the Manchu Garrison.
You may still want to think about including sites that turn in your opponents’ turns, because even those can benefit from Dog Soldiers. Once you’ve used your Fox Pass/Kinoshita House/City Square for the first time, you can join the next attack (provided it’s not against you) and unturn your site, ready to use it again. Be sure to have some way of removing your character from the attack, such as Tactics.
Now that we’ve discussed the sites you want to play, let’s look at other cards that go well with Dog Soldiers. Obviously, your opponent will not be happy with power generation sites that unturn multiple times per turn, so he will either try to fail your first attack, or even worse, just kill the Dog Soldiers. Two abilities come in very handy: Tactics and Independent. Tactics keeps your Soldiers alive, while Independent allows you attack in waves with your Soldiers. Both of these can be obtained from sites which turn, incidentally: Hanging Coffins and Cataract Gorge. While the Gorge is a good card, the Coffins are not, and some other source of Tactics is required. Lord Shi provides Tactics easily, as does CB Radio. There are other states that provide Tactics, but most of them are Limited/Standard, and way overpriced for what they do, but some of them don’t require any resources. Also bear Hovertank in mind if you’re playing the Dog Soldiers in an Arch deck. Alternatively, you can use Occult Kung Fu to copy Palm of Darkness onto the Dog Soldiers. Apart from the Gorge, the best source of Independent is probably Ting Ting’s Gambit. If you play Dragons anyway for the CB Radio, toss in a couple of Gambits. Dragon also has Real Bad Cat and Cavalry Regiment, which are also good ways to get Independent characters. When you plan on failing your attacks anyway, think about adding Feeding the Fires to your deck.
Now that we’ve discussed all the cards that enhance the Dog Soldier’s ability, let’s talk about another interesting feature: their designator. Yep, these guys are 3-for-4 Soldiers that don’t suck. They can be returned with Training Camp. They can be pumped with Wilhelm Reiger. They can be unturned with Blitzkrieg to attack again and unturn more sites (but don’t forget that each Dog Soldier can unturn every site only once per turn). And they can be played out of turn with General Olivet. Add Darkness Warriors, who are also Soldiers, as your foundation, and the Dog Soldiers fit right into the Architect Soldier deck. Monarch resources are good for the Soldier deck anyway, since they provide event protection in form of Brain Fire. Dog Soldiers will also enjoy those Battlegrounds that you’re packing for Reiger: when the opponent seizes them, they provide an easy, usually undefended target that the Soldiers can attack to unturn your Proving Ground (remember to bring the Probability Manipulator), and you can net up to 4 power (2 for the Proving Ground, 2 for seizing the Battleground) in a fairly safe attack.
Likewise, the Dog Soldiers do well in a Manchu deck. The synergy with Manchu Garrison was already mentioned above. They unturn Manchu Officers when they enter play, and if you have General Senggelinqin in play, you can sacrifice you those Dog Soldiers that you already pumped with the Garrison and that will die due to damage anyway at the end of turn to play an Officer for free from your smoked pile.
I think that the Dog Soldiers are a card that already has a lot of potential, and will only get more interesting as more sites that turn are printed.