• Greetings! In this guide I will approach Armello, a boardgame about opportunities and trade-blows in a chaotic and harsh all by 4 deathmatch, in which victories are never for granted and backup plans are always welcomed . Also it tends to be a very unforgiven gameplay, be prepared to lose, get rekt and walk it like a champ.

The Hero.
Brun's is a warmage, bruiser that can highly buff himself, with both damage and defences, for a single battle while maintaining a large Health pool.
This wizardly way of a fighter is thanks to his Scarcaster abilty, in which it gives him +1 fight for each spell casted for a duration of the end of the next battle/turn. While having this powerful and versatile power in mind you can:

• Combine different kinds of beneficial buffs to yourself (yes buffs do stack).
  
• Buff your Fight (and sometimes Wits/spirit though Evil Eye/Focus) to easily succeed in quests with good rewards.
  
• Cycle though the spell deck for a Banish/Spirit Strike(or any other damaging spell) in hopes to stop a player that entered the castle, ready to kill the King.
  
  
• Also with Amethyst (the ring) you can easily burn spell cards that are either less desirable or too expensive, to maintain your mana even with 3 spirit for a game-season.

Through a game I, always, tend to first pick a Wits quest and buff myself for it, or a Fight quest if the reward is particularly good.
And after, a Wits quest (or sometimes a Body quest if the reward is really good) to guarantee a strong 5 cards hand right at the beginning. Later, again, a Fight quest and a Body quest (the order doesn't matter that much).

TLDR: normally: 6 Sword/7 Body/5 Wits /3 Spirit.
In this way I guarantee that my character is a bruiser to live up for his name.


Note: Stats mostly serve to complement your gameway and so it's something of personal, yes this is just an example.. Yet there'r some basics:

• at least 5 Fight if you aren't a mage.
  
• 7 body or higher makes you a tank/bruiser.
  
• a mininum of 5 Wits for a 5 card-hand.
  
• Spirit should only be leveled up if you'r going mage.

As for jewerly I normally start with an Amethyst ring and a Think/Resist amulet .
The Amethyst Ring ensures good mana management while also giving you a good reason to burn useless /expensive cards like Malice rising/Call of the Worm/ Lighting Strike/ Crystallise.
Other rings that I find less decent but sometimes I use them:

• Aquamarine (a great early on damage boost and always helps in perils, sadly it's easy to unlucky get a point of rot)
  
• Jade (3 mana at dawn can be really powerful, it means at least 6 mana which is more or less +3 fight in buffs yet being obligated to be in a forest can be a bit awkward.
  It's a ring I grew fond of.

As for the amulets I only choose Think since having at least 4 cards is mandatory and it gives you freedom to choose which quests you want.

(further discussion of stats in the Quests section)

Quests are very important, they can give great treasures if succeeded (hero's shield/ Royal shield) yet it doesn't mean you should always risk going for an non important stat.
Imagine a spirit quest with 30% chance of giving you an Helm of Heroes. You'r basically losing a fight/body point for something that, if not succeeded , it's more or less useless. In short you should normally aim for the stats that you need.

(Here's a list of the best treasures, NOTE: this list is based on Brun! a figher hybrid mage):

• Royal shield
  
• Lionhearth Breastplate
  
• Masquerade Mask
  
• Silver lance
  
• Hero's shield
  
• Helm of Heroes
  
• Poppet
  
• Wyldfyre Staff
  
• Royal Banner

Money tends to be a flow of easy come easy go. Rapidly spent on items while reappearing through your journey, from dungeons to the golden touch of sunny dawns.


While Mana is an important resource, to cast out/cripple players in the castle, aside from other things, it doesn’t mean you should give it a greater importance when you Spirit stat is low(two to three points).

Yet there’s a character that even with three points of Spirit can and should focus on magic. Brun, as you probably know, can decently cycle throw the magic deck but even more astonishing is his ability to replenish mana with the Amethyst ring (or Jade but is not as efficient. So it’s possible to focus on Wits while still being both a mage and a fighter( in terms of stats..)
With this there’s a pretty neat trick to consider: Small Cycling and Big Cycling, in which it provides multiple fighting orientated buffs and also raising Fighting while having a low mana pool.

• Small Cycling, draw five spell cards and burn enough to cast the combat based spellsin hand(yes buffs do stack) . If in presence of shield cards consider save them for the Final battle.
  
  
  
  
• Big Cycling, same process as the smaller version, but since Bruns passive lasts until the next round/battle you do the process twice(yes it's hard but broken)!

Like I referred on the first chapter Armello is a chaotic and unfair game, trying to create logic out of luck or trying to replicate good moves isn’t certain to work or even healthy to the player. In this section I will aboard not just the interaction with the other players but, most importantly, the relation between oneself and the game, having fun while still interacting with the meta.


First of don’t think about the ideal gear, winning is a combination of good gear, life saving symbols in your hand and a ceased opportunity, because there’r many ways of winning so seek for those opportunities and math those probabilities. Also it tends to help remembering that the other players are humans, they have feelings, different personalities and react differently. In that case engaging in constant combat is not just tiresome for your journey but especially frustrating for them, in which it creates both good and bad rewards.
Because normally a stressed player would make more mistakes and especially confuse unluckiness with bad plays they will likely be less of an problem through the game, yet obviously they will always be a treat to you. And if you play the other way around, being passive, for one perspective is easier to seek, see, find allies and also having a more stable game, and concentrating on other things too like what the actual game has to offer (think about the variables, opportunities of a game-match as a market of opportunities).


So, as a final topic, enjoying a game-match especially the way you want to, like to, it’s the most important thing since this game is not like a normal game, the luck aspect is very big but also are the interactions between players.