For most any domain, the most fundamental (and simple) resources are the locations, upgrades, and units that that you add. Generally speaking, these will take up the vast majority of your domain. However, the support resources you use greatly shift the direction and strategy of your army.

Goals of support resources Support resources serve to balance your weaknesses and imbalance your strengths. In this way, they are like a manager—one who's goal is to motivate and strengthen employees' most valuable skills, while also helping them sharpen their weaknesses. Which direction you choose to lean is up to you. (The more you focus on balance, the less likely you are to be completely demolished by an enemy that focuses on your deck's Achilles' heel. The less balanced your deck, the better you will succeed in your core strategy, but the less you will be ready for a variety of opponents.)

Supporting resources consist of items, actions/spells, and conditions. Each serve very specific purposes.

Items
Items enhance your mercenaries, most often through strike and armor bonuses. Items include weapons, armor, shields, helmets, and accessories. Consider using items in your domain if you have a lot of mercenaries and want to overpower the opponent, especially quickly. Items in a nutshell:

Strengths

1. When you use items, you have the versatility to boost the mercenaries you want to, when you want to.

2. Most items have no cost to sustain, or additional costs, aside from the initial cost to equip them.

3. Items can be transferred between mercenaries.

Weaknesses

1. Items can only equip during your campaign phase.

2. Items can only equip mercenaries, not creatures, and additional restrictions sometimes apply (e.g., pay Xg to equip a warrior).

3. Items are less versatile than actions, because you have to commit them to a specific unit ahead of time.

4. Some actions can easily ruin items.

If you have a lot of mercenaries and would like to take quick dominance of the war without paying too high of costs to sustain your units, items are the perfect way to go.

Actions/Spells
Actions and spells are the most versatile of the support resources. They can be performed during either commander's campaign phase, and can often be directed at any unit, even those in your opponent's locations. Therefore, they are a very tempting choice for dealing with unexpected situations.

Your actions and spells should be selected based on your domain's shortcomings. If you've been beaten by wizards hiding in your opponent's locations, consider a powerful direct damage spell. If you're afraid of facing a massive, well-equipped warrior, use some spells that can ruin items.

The biggest drawback to actions and spells is the cost of stored income. To make many actions and spells worthwhile, you need to have income (often mana) available at various times, especially during your opponent's term. This can get you into tough situations where you have to choose between building your army (through units, upgrades, and items) and saving back income for actions and spells that you may not even use that term.

Conditions
Conditions are probably the most complex of the support resources available. Unlike items and actions/spells, which are fairly versatile, most conditions meet a very specific need or goal. For this reason, use conditions when you have a specific strength or weakness that you need to address.

• Empower your strengths. Conditions let you strengthen all your units' stats, speed up your attacks, or enhance certain resources of yours.

• Balance your weaknesses. Conditions can hinder certain types of resources your opponent is using, slow down enemy forces, or weaken opposing units.

Because conditions are so situation-specific, they should be used sparingly, and bartered if needed.

Conclusion
All of the supporting resources address unique needs, and some of them address the same goals and challenges in different ways. For a balanced domain, you might feel quite comfortable using all of these types of resources. If your domain seeks a very specific goal, however, you'll want to use supporting resources to tackle the most difficult challenges you might face. The best way to find out what supporting resources are best for you is to face different opponents, and enhance your domain to conquer each of these strategies!

Which supporting resources are your favorites? Email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .