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Echoes Guide

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teasel:
allright,i think i've got enough experience with echoes that i feel confident enough to write some lines about it,i hope this will make more player try echoes...

Basic

1) echoes game feature five new special achievement,of those four are gotten through board expansion,echoes also feature new effect that get added to the effect of your top card when the echoes card is in the same pile and the echo symbol of that card is shown... these two things combined make board expansion and card that can tuck or meld massive amount of cards very important in echoes games

2) when you have an echoes card in hand,you can't draw more echoes card in hand... card that drew and meld therefore gains a new significance as they are the only one who are fast enough to search for specific echoes card as normal drawing is just too slow,card that let you discard and draw or score from your hand and draw also help

3) echoes card usualy tend to have less symbols overall than base card,especialy annoying are card that come with both a bonus AND an echo effect... echoes effect also tend to be more  outlandish... so the moral of the story is do not forget about base card only because there are new spiffy card to draw

4) be wary of opponent who can't score,even if you can't score you can always meld a card with a bonus and then claim an achievement with the score given by that

5) splaying left isn't usualy considered a good idea in base game but in echoes,there are a lot of nice echo effect that are on the right side of the card and therefore show up only when the pile is splayed left or up

teasel:
Age 1

early echoes card don't tend to have great effect with some exception,but they make up for it by having very usefull echo effect,2 of these card (bell and flute) not only make for a pretty nice combo when put together but can also instantly win you the game if you draw a specific age 7 card,noodles it's also an amazing scorer given the right situation,if you use card like sailing and domestication they can help with pulling card from the echoes deck, just remember that each echoes card you draw is a card from the base deck that isn't getting draw which can delay an eventual jump to age 2

Scoring

Umbrella - Echo:Left/Up - Umbrella is sort of like a weaker Perspective... if you have a big hand full of age 4-5 card then it can be worth to give up some of them to score the remaining one,unfortunately by the time that happens Umbrella has probably been overmelded already making the card main effect useless most of the time,the echo effect is more helpfull and combine nicely with the wheel/paper giving you an effect similiar to mysticism but more controlled,it's also easy to get with just a use of code of laws,flute,philosophy or paper

Noodles - Noodles is one of the power bomb of the age 1 echoes card,drawing and scoring is huuuuuuuuuuge and many Noodles game often end up with both players drawing the whole age 1 deck just so that the other one doesn't get to use it... Noodles has a lot of weakness though,not only you have to be carefull of card that destroy castle card like the usual engineering/gunpowder but card that attack your hand like machinery are going to screw you up too,if your opponent also starts with the wheel chance are he'll easily catch up in 1 before you can do much,still when it works it's an amazing card,it's also a decent card to share as you draw two 1 to your opponent single 1

Plumbing - Echo:Right - plumbing is eh... it's a worthless card early in the game,it comes with only 1 icon and the effect is basicaly impossible to use at the start of the game (although if you share it you can force your opponent to unsplay a pile like the aforementioned the wheel/umbrella combo). Later in the game,if you get to splay your red pile and tuck some high age cards (like say... with industrialization,since it does both) then it's echo effect can be a decent scorer

Bell - Echo:Left/Up - Bell ability to foreshadow an age 2 card is frankly quite useless and in all my game i've never seen it used (although of course foreshadowing 2 means a chance of getting fermentation/math first and it also helps a lot with abusing a certain age 4 card) the echo effect let you score a card from your hand,while not really worthwhile alone,it's an amazing effect when combined with purple card that draws,Novel + Bell for example is an amazing combo (coincidentaly novel can also splay your card left)

Drawing

Comb - Comb let you choose a color, draw 4 card and then keep all the card of chosen color... so what's the best color to call? well if the game just started,then it's just a matter of personal preference but as far as i'm concerned green is the best option since all the green base card are gold,if you use comb later in the game then the best thing to do is watch the board and try to predict which color are still in the deck,if your opponent has already played three age 1 blue card then there is no reason to call blue anymore for example... while comb can find a decent card by itself i'm not a big fan of it,very few things feels as demoralizing as using comb and finding no card of the chosen color

Board Building

Dice - Dice is okay but not great,if you are going to draw an echoes card then drawing a card with Dice is a better alternative than just using a draw action,then after drawing with dice you roughly have a chance of 35% at melding a 1,a 14% chance of melding a 2 and a 7% chance of drawing a 3... the chance of teching up is pretty low (in fact i've seen the jump to 3 only once) so most of the time it just end up being a more restricted version of mysticism as you are forced to get rid of the echoes card in your hand before being able to use it again

Bangle - Echoes: Up - Bangle is the Oars of echoes,in fact it might be even worse,foreshadowing a 3 isn't that great (although the echoes age 3 deck has a lot of really good cards so i guess if you aren't in a rush of doing other stuff it can be still worth a shot) and tucking a red card is pointless at the start of the game... of course later the effect can be helpfull but the echo effect only show up when the red pile is splayed up,that's it you won't see it before Age 8,Age 7 at best and by that time you probably don't need to tuck a red card anymore,the effect isn't even optional so you might even be forced to tuck something you didn't want to tuck in the first place (although that can come help once in a blue moon into screwing with an opponent plan)

Tech Up

Perfume - Echoes:Right - the demand of Perfume is pretty simple "if you tech up,i'm catching up with you" and it's utterly annoying! you can usualy stop perfume by giving your opponent a blue card but of course most blue card itself are tech up card so you might end up giving your opponent more tech advantage... one nice trick you can do is to make the demand when the only age you can steal has it's own deck empty,then your opponent will be forced to meld a card from the next age,which you can then steal again with perfume! the echo effect is the first of many "tuck a X" these are nice as they give you a chance at extra echo effect or just more symbols but not really that great,the fact that you won't see the effect before age 4 also diminuish it's value

Ruler - Echoes:Left - Ruler is basicaly Writing but with an echo effect instead of a crown symbol,the tradeoff is pretty good and the echo effect is easy to get since a lot of the early card can splay the blue pile left including paper,drawing card with echo effect can be a double-edged sword,while more card in your hand translate into more option and more scoring when it comes to stuff like lighting/currency and the like,drawing a card can also means drawing an echoes card and being forced to interact with base card for the rest of the effect... for example if your blue pile consist of ruler + atomic theory then you automaticaly give up melding age 7 echoes card (which include some really big powerbomb) as you are forced to draw an echoes card before the meld happen,one nice thing about these sort of effect is that if you share a "may" effect then your opponent is forced to give you a free card as he's forced to draw a card and therefore giving you the free draw action,in fact shared ruler + math is a quite annoying way to quickly tech up

Ice Skates - Ice Skates isn't as powerfull as Noodles but it's still interessing enough to be put into the "notable card" list,basicaly you give up two or three cards and then keep the best 2 you pulled off your hat getting a tech up,or you give up three cards and foreshadow three 3,thus being three times as better than that stupid Bangle,returning your highest top card is a penality (mostly there so you don't just return a single card) but it can be used to your favor,if your math get covered then ice skates can remove the obstruction,and if your opponent has more crown than you but no card in hand you can share the effect and he'll be forced to return a card from his board without any positive effect at all

Candles - Echoes:Right - teching up to age 3 is nice but it only happens when you are losing,the other effect is basicaly fedaulism and nobody ever use that (although i guess since candles is an age 1 card it can at least steal opponent tech),the echo effect is worse than other draw card echo effect in that it requires a condition and it can screws up industrialization for the same reason i explained above with ruler,overall i don't like this card at all

Splaying

Flute - Echoes:Left/Up - Flute is an all around good card,it splays one of your pile,gives you a chance at discarding a card from your opponent hand and draw you between 1 and 2 card,now the non echo effect are nice and all but the real kicker here is the echo effect,all you need to do is use flute effect on the purple pile itself and presto! you can now overmeld flute and get to splay your other pile without trouble,mysticism is especialy nice for this as it melds the card required to make a splayable pile

Special

Puppet - you score 1-2 point with metalworking and/or clothing and/or other bonus then you play puppet and achieve 1 before your opponent achieve it first OR you draw it with dice and tech up to age 3... occasionaly it's a nice card to feed at card that cares at bonus value (like watermill for example) but otherwise it's mostly useless

Chopstick - Echoes: Left/Up - Chopstick is the first of the many new cards that let you make an achievement avaiable again,this one makes 1 avaiable,1 are special in that being the age with the lowest score requirement they are also the easier one to achieve multiple time... that's it,if you can achieve 4,then you can also achieve 1 four times,unfortunately while the card has a lot of potential by the time you have the score to abuse it,the age 1 pile is probably empty (although it can always be replenished by returning 1 in your opponent score pile or in your hand with pottery for example) the echo effect also force you to draw a 1 which means the deck requires at least 2 card in it before you can make use out of it... still when it works it gives you free achievement and those are great,chopsticks echo draw you a 1 and yadda,yadda,everything that had to be said about drawing card with echoes effect has already been said... oh yeah it combo's nicely with domestication as it gives you more control over it

Soap - like Chopsticks,Soap handles you free achievement,Soap is easier to use as it's not dependant on your opponent action and can be used to achieve any age as opposed to just 1 but it's still tricky to use,soap like both having a big hand and a big score,so for example something like the paper/perspective combo (though of course you'd need to hold soap in your hand as both perspective and soap are yellow) is a nice supplement to soap,occasionaly you don't care about the second effect and just want the first one as being able to tuck 3-4 card from your hand is a pretty big effect anyway,just ask reformation

teasel:
Age 2

age 2 is mostly host of a bunch of decent but not amazing card,all of the good card like watermill and chaturanga like to use bonus in a way or another so if you still have puppet from age 1,congratulation! he's finaly going to get some action

Scoring

Glassblowing - Echoes: Left/Up - foreshadowing a card is nice when paired with another action but usualy not worthwhile when it's the only action you are taking (that's it unless you are foreshadowing card from the same age you are in,then it's not much different from actual drawing and it might save you actions) so what's the other action you get to take? you score a card with a bonus from your hand... that's nice in that it rids you of your echoes card in your hand so that you can draw another one but otherwise bell does the same and it's without limitation so it's a little disappointing,at least the echo effect is easy to get. if you don't have any 1 on board you might still consider using glassblowing as echoes age 5 has some pretty amazing card too

Scissor - Echoes: Right - Scissor echo effect take a card buried somewhere on your board and gives it back to you,this can be a good effect especialy if you are into tucking but this early in the game the chance of this being worthwhile is praticaly null and so the echo effect end's up being more bothersome than anything else as it ruins your splay and eat at your icon,then you get to either meld two card,score two card or meld one card and score one... all of this are decent but not really amazing either,as a last added effect you get to ruin paper... that's actualy decent in that paper is a highly annoying card that can give huge advantage especialy now that flute is a thing but it's also a pretty situational effect,the paper ruining effect also work if you don't have the castle lead but in that case it will be your opponent which will score it's own paper so consider that... the echo effect comes midway trough the game and as i said it can help getting you back a certain card but most of the time you are just punching yourself in the face,to make matter worse scissor can lose you the game later if your opponent ever get and use rock (age 9) as that's one of the new instant victory condition's introduced with echoes so overall i don't like it

Crossbow - it's a oars that target only one card in my hand,i can't seriously think of a worse idea,i guess at best it can stop chaturanga abuse or it can feed watermill/chaturanga so you get to jump to age 3

Board Building

Watermill - Watermill is quite a good card,you feed it a card with a bonus and then it usualy ends up tucking you 2-3 card and giving you the occasional tech up,once in a blue moon it will heavily tech you up making you jump from age 2 to age 7 in a single swoop,then all the card you tucked all counts toward powering up crossword (age 8 ) sudoku (age 10) and giving you a chance at the wealth achievement

Chaturanga - Chaturanga is sort of like watermill in that it feeds on cards with bonus only instead of tucking them,it melds them and then you draw 2 card,depending on the bonus those 2 card can be of higher age so basicaly it melds,draw and tech you up making for an all amazing combination,best of all one of the card you draw is bound to have a bonus letting you repeat the whole thing multiple times! if you don't have any card with a bonus it instead foreshadow a card based on how many color you have... i'm not a fan of just foreshadowing but as i said many times,age 3 is truly where all the echoes magic happens so if you only have 3 color you might want to consider that

Pagoda - i'll be frank,i've never got to use Pagoda in any of my games so this is all speculation,but basicaly... the more card you have,the more chance you tech/board up so i guess it would combine well with something like the wheel or if you keeped around multiple colored card from age 1

Toothbrush - Echoes: Right/Up - Toothbrush splay your card left therefore joining the team made by flute/philosophy and the other,that's a decent effect but the real prize comes with the other two one,the first effect is that it makes a 2 avaiable as an achievement again,this is not as good as chopsticks as 2 are harder to achieve (with 20 you can score two 2 but four 1) but it's still low enough that you can achieve it twice or thrice,the 2 deck also tend's to be less ravaged than 1 even tough it's still possible that it ends up empty
the last effect (it's echo effect) let you tuck all card of a single value and if you draw a huge amount of card that have all the same value with the wheel/reformation then this can be a nice way to build your board overall,as an echo effect i don't like it much for a single reason,there is no "may" before the effect,if you trigger your yellow pile and are saving a bunch of 6 you drew with physics then you are forced to tuck them all as soon as you trigger your yellow pile which kinda sucks

Tech Up

Lever - Echoes: Up - Lever is basicaly alternate math,where math discard one card,lever discard two,where math meld the new card,lever just put it in your hand... lever is overall slower than math so it's not as good but it's still quite good,as an added bonus with each use of lever you draw two 2 for the echo effect,these 2 can then be instantly traded into a 3 (so actualy if you used lever 3 times you could jump to 4 without taking a stop to 3 where playing a 3,then drawing two more 3 and using lever would take you more actions although you might want to stop at age 3) the echo effect rarely come into play as splaying your blue pile up it's a somewhat hard task and even when it does it just draws you card you probably don't need too much barring some lighting trick

Linguistic - Echoes: Up - well it draws you 2 card,one of those 2 card is of age 3 and therefore it tech you up,unfortunately the only age 3 card with a bonus of 4 is almanac so it's impossible to get to get to age 4 with it,still if linguistic is still there when you get to stuff like clock and lightning rod it's an option for possible tech up... the other alternative is that you draw one card and foreshadow a 4,this can be a decent solution too and it helps with setting up what is the best echoes card in all the game,although there is no real amazing card in the age 4 echoes deck... like with lever the echo effect is good but rarely comes into play,although i must say

Score/Board Stealing/Screwing

Horseshoes - Echoes: Up - and here comes the first stealing card and... it's surprisingly decent,it can steal a wide array of cards and as castle becomes more and more rare on your opponent board it becomes easier to use,of course the fact that it steals a wide array of card is a double edged sword as your opponent can just give you what he wants but most of the time you should be happy with the trade... the echo effect foreshadows a 2,personaly i love echo effect that foreshadows as they let you draw without actualy drawing therefore letting you draw big amount of echoes card but since it requires the red spile to be splayed up it comes into the game late and it can be hard to get

teasel:
Age 3

as i've said many times earlier,age 3 is where all the echoes magic happen,cards in age 3 include almanac (an amazing scorer and easily the best age 3 card) deodorant (which is basicaly super sailing) and novel (super wheel)

Scoring

Almanac - Echoes: Left/Up - Almanac foreshadows a 4 for his echoes effect,then if that 4 has a bonus you get to score it and forecast a 5 or a 6,and if that 5 or 6 has a bonus you get to score it,and foreshadows a 7 or 8 and so on and on and on,if you are lucky you get to foreshadows a card with a bonus of 10 or 11 and WIN THE GAME AT AGE 3,that's how freaking powerfull this card is... even if you don't luck your way up to 10,you still score a truckload of points,as each application of almanac ends giving you between 4 and 6 points (with the occasional 0 when you have no bonus) oh and each step also get you closer to the destiny achievement,almanac like democracy also scores card higher than it's own age,the end result it's that it's totaly possible to have huge tech up with cards like canal building and translation (even though translation also destroy your score) the echoes effect is just the sprinkles on top of the cupcake

Sunglasses - Echoes: Up - well as long as you splay a pile right,then this card becomes metric system and as soon as you splay a pile up,this card becomes flight.. that's pretty nice for an age 3 card but unfortunately it needs some work,the echo effect is basicaly bell with a limitation,nice when used on top of drawing but not that good alone... the limitation is annoying but not that hard to fulfill

Liquid Fire - meh,if you get a usefull card your opponent will put it in your score and if you get a useless card it will go in your forecast,it's rare to find yourself in a situation where both choice screw your opponent so hard that it makes this card usefull,the only good part is that it's red and it comes with 3 lightbulb which makes it an oddity

Drawing

Novel - Echoes: Left/Up - Novel is The Wheel if The Wheel 1) draw you 3 instead of 1 2) drew you card even after being overmelded 3) splayed his own color left 4) occasionaly gave you a free achievement,Novel is awesome and makes for an amazing 1-2 punch if you have Bell tucked under it,even without Bell it still draws you a nice amount of card and of course since it splays itself getting the echoes effect is super easy

Board Building

Deodorant - Echoes: Right/Up - Well if you have a castle this turn into super sailing melding and drawing you 2 cards,that is huge,unfortunately doing so is bound to either cover deodorant or the card with the castle,the alternative of melding a 3 and drawing a 4 is decent too and an improvement over similiar effect so both alternative are actualy pretty good... the echo effect is a mixed bag,while it's a good effect and gives you free icon and echo effect,it risk covering a key card meaningless tough if you are sharing that means your opponent risk doing that too

Sandpaper - Sandpaper has basicaly two use,the first is that it trades your 1 and 2 for 3,this can help with scoring more points when it comes from scoring card from your hand and for searching paper,machinery and education... the other use is to trade your old echoes card that is not almanac for a new spiffy card which is hopefull almanac... otherwise it's a pretty lame card

Tech Up

Magnifying glass - Echoes: Left/Up - the echoes discard a card and draw you a 4,discarding let you get rid of an echoes card you don't want but otherwise it's pretty lame compared to other card that just draw,the effect is basicaly super lever,you discard three card of the same value and you draw one of a value two higher,unfortunately if lever was already sort of slow to abuse,this is incredibly slow,sure if you can get some abuse with stuff that draws you a lot of card like paper then by all means this card can let you do some pretty big jump in tech but otherwise it's pretty hard to use

Score/Board Stealing/Screwing

Homing Pigeons - Homing Pigeons is the first of many score destroyer echoes card that hits 2 card in the score pile which make them all much better than anatomy ever was,this one requires for you to have a card of the same value of the card you want to kill,it's a pretty easy to fulfill condition as long as your opponent hasn't teched up too much which makes this a decent card,as a bonus it also splays color

Katana - Katana is like engineering in that it destroy and scores card with castle,unlike engineering it also foreshadows card which actualy makes the card better overall

Special

Charitable Trust - Echoes: Right - Charitable Trust draws you a 4 so i tought of putting it into the tech up card,but if you meld that 4 you also get to achieve a green card from your board (usualy Charitable Trust itself) and actualy that's the real effect here,there isn't a lot else to say,by this point splaying right start to become possible,you already know the rest about drawing card from echoes
 

teasel:
Age 4

age 4 has a few decent card with clock being the best but is otherwise a huge step down from the amazing power of almanac and the novel+bell combo,at least things go up again by the time you reach age 5

Scoring

Chintz - Chintz is in the decent card group,while having an empty hand can be hard (especialy with echoes effect drawing you extra cards) the reward for doing so is scoring a 4 which is actualy a decent reward,as such chintz if you have a way to get rid of extra cards (tuck them with toothbrush for example) can be a good scorer

Tech Up

Slide Rule - Slide rule is sort of hard to use... if you have a lot of piles then chance are that one of them has a 1 on it rendering it useless but if you only have 2 piles splayed at top it only gets a single 5... still when the planet aligns and you have all pile splayed and with a 4 on top of them slide rule draws a 9 making for the biggest jump in tech you have ever done,one cool trick with slide rule,if you share it with an opponent who has the tech lead chance are it will end the game... as such you should be carefull about taking the lightbulb lead against an opponent who has Slide Rule

Barometer - Echoes: Right/Up - Barometer is a pretty sad card,transfering a 5 to your hand isn't bad but most of the time it's probably better if it stays in the forecast,the first time you do it,you do tech up which at least is usefull... the effect is also not optional so once you splay it you might end up with card you didn't want in your hand.
The actual problem is getting the 5 there,option include Chaturanga with all the color played,Glassblowing with no 1 on board,Telescope or Barometer itself when you have a bonus of 3 on your board,because that's what Barometer does,it foreshadows you a card without any other cool added effect which is pretty lame,also it gets you destiny if you have five cards in your forecast... usualy you get destiny with seven cards but surely if you can manage five of them,getting two more is usualy easy so that too is snooze-worthy

Pencil - Echoes:Right - Drawing a 5 doesn't do much but some of the echoes 5 can be pretty powerfull so this is like writing in that it's sort of worthless but could get you a very usefull card,the other effect you get to foreshadow a card,by discarding cards from your hand,the more you discard the more choice you get to pick... if you discard your just new drawn 5,you then get to foreshadow 6 and as such get a crapshot at industrialization but otherwise it's a somewhat unreliable card and i don't like it that much

Score/Board Stealing/Screwing

Clock - Echoes: Right - well the first thing clock does is that it splays your biggest color right,that alone would be pretty big but if your pile all have the same amount of card then clock can splay all your colors exactly like metric system but without the annoyance of sharing it with your opponent,that alone is pretty big but then comes clock second effect,your opponent draws three 10 and then you steal all the cards of age equal to the number of clock shown from his score pile and hand,this can lead to huuuuuuuuuge shift of power as your opponent suddenly has no more score or cards in hand and you suddenly have a score of 40,note that clock most probable number are 3,4 and 5 so the best scenario involve either when the opponent has tons of different value or at least big quantities of one of those three numbers

Toilet - Echoes: Right - Toilet has the chance of being as good as vaccination,unfortunately the highest bonus on your board is a quite fickly creature which changes a lot making this hard to use,not to mention that by this point that bonus also tends to not be 1 which also decrease the value of this card,the other effect let you tuck a 4 (okay) and trade a card in your hand for another (usefull for shifting through echoes card) it's good when it works but it usualy won't work and even when it works it's not as good as clock

Shuriken - basicaly it's Societies,it comes earlier but also steals castle which you probably don't want (barring the occasional fermenting that's it) it's okay

Splaying

Globe - Splaying 3 colors in a single action is nice but by this point you either have a bunch of color already splayed left or probably want to start splaying right (barring some amazing pile full of echoes effect that's it) which somewhat diminishing the value of the card... the foreshadow bonus is a nice effect as 6 is the number with industrialization and as we have estabilished in the basic section tucking massive amount of card is a huge advantage in echoes,the card also comes with factories symbols thus making the setting up for industrialization even easier

Kobukson - Echoes: Left/Up - Kobukson echo effect is basicaly flute in case you missed in the first place,by this time splaying right becomes more desiderable but kobukson also work on your opponent card and as such you can remove all their hard work by simply forcing them to splay right,the actual effect is sort of similiar to gunpowder,but they get to tuck a 4 in compensation and you get to tuck a 4 for every 2 cards removed... while i can see that number being decently high in a 3P game,in most 2P game that number will be either 1 or 0 making this card sort of bad outside of it's echo effect

Special

Telescope - Echoes:Left/Up - if you foreshadowed a lot of 2 or 3 trough ice skates,bell or err... bangle then this is your reward,telescope has the potential to let you achieve a lot of extra cards which is amazing but unfortunately it's somewhat hard and unpractical to use as a lot of the foreshadowing card pick high age card (although there is always the scenario where your opponent get to the high achievement before you of course) almanac is a nice crime in partner to telescope,get to a score of 50 then achieve twice all the 3,4 and 5 you have been pulling off... echoes effect that foreshadow are my favourite and this one is quite good that so even in the worst case the card is still worth melding for the echo effect

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