Option 2

You decided to wait.

As you skipped your first turn to use an action card Emma smiled and buffed it even more: 1100 strength.

As you skipped the next she buffed it all the way up to 1300 strength.

And you skipped again, this will be your downfall she said and played a card that would allow her next fight to deal double damage to the enemy’s LP.

Emma now only had 2 action cards in her hand. With a smirk that would have been infuriating had you not been able to wipe it off her face instantly with mage’s hand.

Her 1300 strength sharknado could have won her the game right then and there, and all it could do was wait.

Combat stopped and the game continued, in your advantage no less.

Turn 2: your time to shine.

Phase 1: you drew a field card: EMP, upon activation activates all surrounding field cards without triggering their effect.

Perfect you thought, as you placed it right next to all of Emma’s fields.

Phase 2: you placed 2 creatures both with technological affinities. You didn’t want to show your affinity yet and let Emma keep thinking you were arcane based but you had no more arcane creatures and thus you had **** in the matter.

The first was a little robot with a big red magnet on his head. You had a card in your hand that would allow you to move one of Emma’s creatures to his field card. You placed him on the empty field card Emma put down earlier. He had 500 strength.

The second creature was a humanoid figure covered in bits of metal imitating crusader armor, he also carried a shield and spear. With 550 strength you felt confident to put him on the EMP field.

As no combat was started and you had no cards you wanted to use you ended your turn.

Turn 3:

Emma once again placed a field card down but put no creatures on it. Instead she put 2 creatures to challenge 2 of yours.

The first one was a phoenix, she placed it to challenge your magnet robot and had 500 strength, you also knew of its special ability. If defeated instead of being discarded it would simply return to its owner’s hand with 50 less power. This was Emma’s third elemental creature and her boost activated giving her +150 strength to all of her creatures, which made her phoenix 700 strength strong.

Combat began:

You had a suspicion that she didn’t just pick the reviving creature for no reason. It was fairly likely that she was going to either use it as some type of suicide bomber or she just wanted to activate her buff but had no valid locations on the field.

You assumed it was the first because of her sending out 2 creatures. It also was unlikely that she had the card that would allow her to do that with her limited hand. The most likely scenario was that her field card was a natural disaster card —> kill any creatures on the field upon activation, neither side captures this field after activation. This would normally be a reckless move but Emma has a rushdown deck and so far hasn’t captured even a single field and she’s most likely running out of steam.

Phase 1) you where the defending player and if your guess was correct you did not want to activate your field card.

Phase 2: your suspicions where proven correct when Emma didn’t activate the field card herself and instead used: growing strength —> every time an action card is used during combat your creature gains +25 strength bonusses aquired from this card stay in effect if your creature wins the fight.

Phase 3: it was now that you had to make a decision, you had enough cards that you could basically guarantee a victory against Emma’s phoenix, this would leave you with fewer cards however.

You could also risk it and use the card unique to your magnet robot: Magnetic ****—> choose a direction, all creatures on the field card next to your field card (in the chosen direction) are pulled onto your field card. If you used this you could get rid of Emma’s 1300 strength sharknado as well as her 600 strength golem. If your guess about her field card ends up being incorrect you would lose the fight and take 1300 damage and Emma would gain a field card so you would lose the game in 2 turns. Which make victory near inachievable.