How to win at Children of Zodiarcs — Character, Cards, Deckbuilding and Dicebuilding guide

How do I build a strong deck with Nahmi in Children of Zodiarcs?

Nahmi is the main character of Children of Zodiarcs and, arguably, the strongest. She is the only character who has regular free action symbols on her dice and that should give you a clue about what she’s supposed to do on the battlefield. Through those dice and abilities on certain cards Nahmi is capable of chaining large numbers of actions together.

The flip-side of this is that Nahmi is very restricted in the range of her abilities. The vast majority can only hit orthogonally adjacent squares. That makes positioning even more vital for Nahmi than for other characters. Always envisage the best-case scenario for her; if you can chain a whole bunch of attacks off, where can you put her in order to take full advantage of that? The dream is to have her orthogonally adjacent to two or even three enemies (although that comes with its own risks if the chain breaks and leaves her isolated).

A side-effect of her effectiveness at chaining is that you will often be left in a situation where Nahmi has killed every enemy she can reach. On these occasions, you’ll make use of the generic Guard and Draw Cards actions. Combine that with the sheer number of dice she will roll in a turn and you don’t need to worry too much about card draw with Nahmi. A couple of draw symbols on dice and the generic action should see you through.

Below are each of the cards available to Nahmi and where they fit into her builds:

Blitz – From the first mission of Children of Zodiarcs, Blitz is Nahmi’s cornerstone card. The award of a free action on a star means that Blitz will almost always keep a chain going. It only adds shield dice to your roll which means it doesn’t do the most damage but those dice do make it good for softening up targets from the front as it will mitigate some of the counter-attack damage. Always have plenty of these in your deck.

Blend Into Darkness – The other cornerstone of Nahmi’s deck is her ability to shroud. Excellent both defensively and offensively, there’s just never any reason not to be in shroud if you can. Early on, this card presents a bit of a risk to the chain as you’ll be relying on rolling a lightning bolt to keep it going but once it upgrades to generate a free action with a couple of stars you’re off to the races. Later on, you may need a couple fewer copies of this due to Deceitful Strike.

Knives Out – The holy grail; a card that can hit an enemy who isn’t standing right in front of Nahmi! Knives Out will upgrade to level two very early on and will then stay that way for a long time (if it upgrades to level three I have yet to see it). Fortunately, level two Knives Out is fantastic. Letting Nahmi hit enemies on the diagonal or two spaces away orthogonally will let you chain much longer than without it and that really is the name of the game here. Knives Out also has a good bit of tactical flexibility to boot. Being able to Hold an enemy for one star is very easy to trigger and can keep big melee enemies in positions where they will struggle to be effective. You will want a few copies of this.

Risky Strike – When this card first turns up you won’t know why it’s called Risky Strike but, at later levels, it will come with a negative Shard die as well as the blue shard die it starts with. Risky strike makes for an excellent finisher, particularly from shroud. Pierce Armour and +20 attack make for a mean combo. Having said that, Risky Strike does literally nothing but stabbing. There are no incidental benefits or support abilities, it will not help you to chain or draw you any cards. For that reason I think Risky Strike is a must-have but not in high quantities.

Deceitful Blade – Ah sweet, sweet Deceitful Blade. How do you make Blend Into Darkness better? Stick it on the end of a knife! Combining an attack and shroud into one card is extremely efficient and will do wonders for getting maximum value from your cards. For all that, don’t get rid of Blend Into Darkness completely. Deceitful Blade needs a target to be used and there will be some situations where you just want to shroud Nahmi, not to mention that Blend Into Darkness is easier to keep chaining off. Quick note on this one: if you are in shroud when you use Deceitful Blade (for that delicious Discard 3 ability) Nahmi will shroud again afterwards if you get the two stars.

Thief’s Habit – This card is the first where I think it makes a difference what level the card is at. When you first get it, Thief’s Habit will do a run-of-the-mill stab and draw you two cards. It’s nice to have but Nahmi doesn’t struggle much for card draw and, at the point you get it, chaining is a little bit tougher to pull off, relying on dice a lot. Level II Thief’s Habit, however, draws you X cards (up to 4) and is a free action if Nahmi is shrouded. It doesn’t sound like much but the reliability of the chain and the 100% increase in cards drawn brings Thief’s Habit back into the realm where you will want to consider having a couple in your deck. The easier it is to chain, the more card thirsty Nahmi will be and a small number of big card draw abilities can be just the pinch of salt your deck needs.

Just You Wait – I did wait. I kept waiting and waiting for Just You Wait to level up to the point where it became good. At first it looked great to fetch all your Blitzes out of the deck but you soon realize that only makes the first copy any good. Once you’ve got every Blitz out of your deck then further copies of Just You Wait are simply an incredibly underwhelming vanilla attack ability. At the point you get it it’s not worth it and by the time you upgrade it Thief’s Habit is better.

Blinding Rage – On the plus side, Blinding Rage is one of only two abilities Nahmi has that can hit anything other than orthogonally adjacent enemies. On the down-side, it doesn’t have much else to recommend it. Enemies will rarely line up in such a way that you can hit more than one of them with Blinding Rage and the extra ability of the Cursed Shard Dice is unexciting. Nahmi is all about killing enemies, not debuffing them. You want abilities that can hit enemies at odd angles but there’s no reason to take Blinding Rage over more copies of Knives Out.

Will To Live – I don’t think I used Will To Live at all at level one. A solo target healing spell that does nothing else is not exciting and was mostly a dead draw through the early missions. Will To Live is another example of a card that takes a huge jump at later levels though. Level Two brings area of effect healing and, crucially, a bonus shard die buff. Level Three brings a bonus star die to get the shard die buff off more easily and provides Regen on all allies if used from shroud. Will To Live becomes one of the best buff spells around and should be an essential part of your early-battle ritual to get your squad up to speed. Having said that, it’s another card you don’t need a large number of copies of as it can be a dead draw if no healing is required and the shard dice buff is already active.

Infamous Heroine – A support ability that draws cards and, at later levels, will fish Will To Live out of the deck is all just a bit unexciting. Blitz, which you should have plenty of copies of, already draws Will To Live from the deck and Nahmi is not in need of card draw enough to have an ability in the deck that does nothing else. Not to mention the fact that the AOE is large and indiscriminate and it’s easy to have your enemies draw cards off this ability too. Hard pass.

Nahmi’s deck is not really about vastly different builds so much as it is about how much you want to prioritise the chain. The sample deck presented below chains easily but lacks some of the raw killing power of decks that have higher numbers of Risky Strikes.

• 4x Blitz
• 3x Deceitful Blade
• 2x Risky Strike
• 3x Thief’s Habit
• 3x Knives Out
• 3x Will to Live
• 2x Blend Into Darkness
  Total – 20 cards

For Nahmi’s dice, in my plays of Children of Zodiarcs, I just get as many lightning bolts on there as possible. They show up infrequently enough that it’s not really possible to have too many of them. I would also advise trying to get one die with two or even three on, if possible, as if you miss on your first roll, having one die that you can re-roll that gives a decent chance of success on its own is valuable.

Beyond the lightning bolts, Nahmi really just wants damage and stars. A small smattering of the other symbols should be enough to see her through as she’s going to be rolling so many dice that they will come up during her turn. Shields, in particular, are an easy one to avoid or remove as Nahmi will be backstabbing fairly frequently as well as getting some hefty shield dice off Blitz and Deceitful Blade.