Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Dreamscape, and all the ships at sea—

They say that the defining action of a madman is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

The truth of this maxim is clearly reflected within Dreamblade philosophy. Madness is all about being able to try again when you fail. Your Malborn Croc got dispelled? He's got 15 life, send him back in! Your 2-cost weenies got trampled? It's okay, they Regenerate, summon them again! Your favorite guy somehow bit the dust? Don't worry, Doctor Ape will just bring him back! And you just keep charging towards the scoring cells, over and over and over. Eventually the result will be different—the dice will favor you this time—and you'll be sitting pretty on the best real estate in the game.

And yet, at the same time...Dreamblade philosophy stands firmly opposed to this idea, just as clearly. This is because the Madness of the Dreamblade world is no static, whimpering thing; it is the Madness of genius, the holy fire of creativity. It's got too many great ideas to try them all once, let alone twice. That's why it's got so much diversity, what with its efficient weenies and its power beaters and its locations and its gigantic range of utility tricks. It's the other factions (especially Passion and to a lesser extent Valor) that are basically one-trick ponies. If you're Mad, and you fail, your Madness offers you a whole slew of alternative options to choose from the next time.

It seems we have a contradiction.

The rational thing to say, of course, is just that these two philosophies represent two different aspects of Madness within the game. But we're all bozos on this bus, and we're not going to believe an obvious little thing like that. Our genius transcends petty paradox. No, we will look past the troublesome walls of logic, to behold the secret synthesis of opposites.

There are a lot of failed ideas out there, ideas that have proven themselves over and over again to be just absolutely terrible. You know, like the pirate movie, which has (on a per-movie basis) drained more money from Hollywood coffers than any other genre of film. Or randomized miniatures. Who'd want to hunt through expensive booster packs, when he could just play a game that let him pick out whatever he needed? Only an idiot would even consider picking up an idea like that.

But only a lunatic genius would figure out what it takes to make such an idea work.

Thus it is that Gore Verbinski figured out how to distill the best parts of the pirate genre—by relegating the romantic hero to the sidelines, putting an over-the-top Johnny Depp center stage, and replacing the traditional cheesecake wench-in-distress with a competent and interesting character—and thereby created one of the best movies of the age. And the Mad boys at WotC realized that fans would put up with randomized figures if they had quality paintjobs, an enjoyable and easily accessible game associated with them, and ties to beloved franchises.

Part of the Mad ethos is a willingness to overlook the obvious inference, which so often turns out to be totally false. Why do you keep trying again and again, expecting a different result? Because this time you've figured out how to get one.

So there's this trick that collectible-game-makers have been using for years, basically since the genre began. And every time the players have tried to capitalize on it. And the vast majority of the time, they fail miserably.

It's called artificial synergy.

Usually, when there's a combo—when two game pieces work especially well together—it's a natural outgrowth of the rules. For all you Magic players: Lord of the Pit and Breeding Pit are a classic (if ultimately inefficient) combo because one naturally serves to cover the other's drawback. In Dreamblade, if your creature has a powerful blade ability, he naturally works well with high-power creatures that can roll lots of blades for him. Finding these combos is an unavoidable part of the game experience, and it's something that a good player has to learn to do.

But sometimes the combo isn't natural; sometimes it's there because the designers say it's there. The oldest example of this, once again from Magic, is Plague Rats. Plague Rats work well together because there's actually text on them that says “this card has an advantage in multiples”. The tribal mechanic from the Onslaught block is similar, as is Kamigawa block's Arcane mechanic—the relevant cards form combos only because they have little modifiers saying “these cards belong in a combo”.

It's important to realize that these are the single most obvious combos in any game; the pieces come right out and tell you what other pieces you should be using. “Splices onto Arcane”? Well, golly, I'd better find some cards that say “Arcane” on them!

The thing about artificial synergy is that it never works, at least not in well-designed games. The combos just aren't strong enough. It's not that they can't be (I gather that some bad collectible card games have artificial combos that say “you win the game”), but good designers don't really want them to be. After all, if the strongest combos in the game are printed right on the pieces, why would anyone ever use anything else? The players are supposed to find the super-synergies that the designers hid—or, ideally, the “broken” ones that were created unintentionally. The synergies that they get handed on a silver platter simply shouldn't be good enough to make creativity a waste of time. Of all of Magic's artificial synergies, only one (the goblin subset of the tribal mechanic) ever really made it to the big leagues.

Only an idiot would even consider picking up an idea like that.

In Dreamblade, the artificial synergies are called “lineages”.

A lineage affiliation, after all, is just a label. It has no intrinsic power. The lineage-based abilities reference the label rather than the effect; it's obvious what the other pieces of the combo are. Your Steelborn Lion can Reinforce Bloodcut? Sounds like you should be playing some creatures that say “Bloodcut”! There's no thought involved.

The designers wouldn't just come out and tell you what pieces work well together.

Would they?

Well, we're Mad, so we scoff at the impossible. And there's only real way to find out...

At first glance, it looks like Madness doesn't play well with lineages (at least as of now). Of all the four aspects, it's the only one that doesn't host a Unique “lineage leader”. Its home-team lineage, the Lost, has a grand total of one mini (albeit a good one). The Chrysalis Spinner also belongs to a lineage, but a) it's a Fear-based lineage with a single grey-based representative, and b) there are no Hiveling-related abilities whatsoever in the game.

Fortunately, Madness also has its hand in one other lineage—the Janus Legion—and it's the best lineage in the game.

It's not surprising. After all, the Janus mercenaries are the only dream lords who actually went to school to learn their dream lording; those of other lineages are just kind of making it up as they go along. It just goes to show the value of a good education.

(In all seriousness, the Legion is the best lineage around, at least by some standards. This is provable objectively. Doing so is left as an exercise to the reader. I look forward to seeing what the forums have to say about this...)

So we have what we need; it's time to embrace our Madness and make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. We're going to break the artificial synergies of the Janus Legion.

In theory it would be possible to create an all-lineage warband, at least for the big seven-piece lineages: just put in three of every miniature in the lineage, and then find five pieces to get rid of. But this obviously isn't going to work. The designers aren't stupid. If the artificial synergies were that strong, there wouldn't be any need to think about warband construction, and the game would suck. So we're going to have to do what Gore Verbinski did with Pirates—we're going to have to figure out exactly what makes the Janus good, and then we're going to have to build a warband that exploits that, while discarding all the chaff. Drink up, me hearties, yo ho.

So what do we have to work with?

The key pieces are the ones with lineage-specific abilities. Without them, there's no point to picking miniatures for their lineage affiliation, as opposed to some other criterion (such as raw efficiency.)

All-Seeing Mage is one of the most interesting miniatures there is. Stats-wise, it's just terrible; simple math reveals it as the single least efficient creature in the base set. But its ability is a killer.

I'm a sucker for the Warpstrike; it's always useful. But Janus Warpstrike in particular is phenomenal, possibly even more so than Book of Nothing's multiblade Warpstrike 3. With Crazy Uncle Gene, you have control over how powerful the attack is; with the Mage, you have control over how efficient it is. A single blade, in theory, can give you 16 dice of damage. That's not going to happen very often, needless to say, but even Warpstrike 6 or 7 is impressive for a single blade. And that repetition of the ability isn't a typo...he can do it twice. It's not quite multiblade, but it's the next best thing. With the right setup, the All-Seeing Mage can wreak annihilation on the enemy army.

And all you have to do is make sure that you've got a bunch of Janus guys clustered in the same part of the board. Isn't it nice that the high-value scoring cells are all clustered in the same part of the board?

Sir Glorious, somewhat obviously, plays into much the same strategy. His Bolster ability encourages you to give him an entourage of Janus creatures...and it lets you breath much easier when you're playing those easily disrupted Madness guys. A 4-defense Mage is much more stable than a 2-defense Mage. Twice as stable, in fact.

Thus far, sadly, this isn't much of a warband idea; the Janus Warpstrike is great, but we don't have any tactics to hang it on. Keeping a bunch of guys close together just isn't a way to win games. Your opponent will be swarming all around your little band of brothers, gobbling up valuable territory.

Enter Knight of Strife and Joy.

The Knight of Strife and Joy is a beast. I should know; tons of opponents have used him to stomp all over me. His stats are amazingly good for his cost, and he's got one of the most utile abilities in the game. Skirmish isn't flashy, but on a battlefield as small as the dreamscape, movement can basically cut off an opponent from doing whatever he wants to do. Skirmish 2 is, of course, almost twice as good.

Using a Knight of Strife and Joy—or better yet, two, so that they can help each other Skirmish—a single band of creatures can stomp all over the center of the board, attacking cell after cell in a single turn.

A “single band of creatures”, eh?

Now we have a strategy. We form a band of Janus creatures featuring the Knight and the Mage, we use Skirmish to drag it from one cell to another kicking ass, and when we have any spare blades we give them to the Mage and blow something up. Extra attacks per turn confer an enormous advantage; in theory, a movement-centric warband can roll five or six times as many dice as a (slow) opponent over the course of the game. Sounds good to me. Now we just have to figure out what else Janus has to offer for this sort of band.

Spellbound Scissors, as always, is in. It's ridiculously efficient, and it's so cheap that you can use it as an early scout to grab territory. Plus, in conjunction with Sir Glorious, it's a little terror. 2/4/5 for 2M is a nightmare for any opponent, particularly if it recurs.

The situation with Jack-in-the-Box is similar. Jacking its defense from 3 to 5 makes it vastly more survivable, and the cheap power is invaluable in a deck that needs a ton of blades. It's annoying to have to keep lugging it out, but this band is already shaping up to be quite cheap—of the key pieces mentioned so far, none costs more than 6V—and you'll have the spawn points to spare.

Mirrorman is just bad, and doubly so in this band. Paying extra for souped-up defense makes no sense; that's what we've got Sir Glorious for. Scratch him.

Inscribed Axebeast, of all the Janus dudes, is the toughest call. Movement-based warbands, particularly aggressive ones like this, are momentum-driven...if your opponent has gotten to 3 turns, you're in a very bad way. In this instance, prevention is much better than remediation. Still, once the Axebeast hits the board, he's nigh-undefeatable—he may be able to provide a backstop for the slide into defeat, holding the line until you can get your nifty little glass-jawed critters back into the fray. That's worth a single space in your warband. Let's say we'll use one Axebeast, for the time being.

What else do we need?

Well, one of our key pieces has Defender. If we can't get our Knight of Strife and Joy into combat, the dance-from-cell-to-cell strategy won't work, and the Knights can't get there themselves. That's a sign that Advance is called for. How's about a Scarab Warcharm or two? Those little things are well-costed, and their abilities fir perfectly with a band like this.

It's worth noting that spawn points are a resource that we can play fast and loose with, given how cheap most of our creatures our. We should capitalize on that with a spawn ability. I'd recommend Whirlwind Dervish. She ties in perfectly to our fancy-footwork-in-the-center-of-the-board theme, and Teleport can pull you out of some very messy scrapes.

Setting up a Pearlthorn Castle in the middle of the board seems like a good idea. It can drag creatures into the right places to help out the Mage...or to be saved by Sir Glorious.

And finally...we need more power. Those blades won't roll themselves, and the only real beater we have right now Fades away when you hit anything. Plus, it seems like a good idea to have something in the high-end-spawn-cost range.

As usual, Iron Thug is ready for duty. He hits things real hard, and he won't Fumble when he has all those Knights and Mages and Warcharms to help him out. Heh. I love Iron Thug.

So the warband ends up looking a little bit something like this:

3x Spellbound Scissors (2M)
2x Jack-In-The-Box (4M)
2x All-Seeing Mage (7M)
2x Iron Thug (9M)
1x Pearlthorn Castle (3VV)
2x Scarab Warcharm (4V)
2x Sir Glorious (6V)
1x Whirlwind Dervish (8VV)
1x Inscribed Axebeast (10V)

It's pleasing to the eye...but not to the pocketbook. That's a lot of rares. The Warcharms and the Boxes, in particular, are likely to make the thrifty player wince in pain. They really are the best options for what they do...but if it comes down to it, you can always use a Knight of Tomorrow or a Twilight Scout for your Advance needs, and there are other big Madness beaters (although not with the Janus labels). Think functionally, and make what substitutions you have to. As built, however, this warband has met with tremendous success.

Looks like we managed to find a use for that artificial synergy after all. Gore Verbinski would be proud.

Arrrr.

Next time, expect less two-facedness...but just as much Madness.