First, it is important to understand how the hand and deck works.

Your army is 8 minis: 6 chosen troops, 1 leader, and 1 Kobold. Let’s assume we select the following: Hogger, Quilboar, Angry Chickens, Raptors, SAFE Pilot, Blizzard, and Huntress.

Entering a mission, the game will randomly select 4 of those to put in your hand, the bar at the bottom of the UI that you pick up and place minis from. The remaining 4 will be placed in your deck, in random order. So one possible hand is:

  • Hogger
  • Raptors
  • Blizzard
  • Kobold

and then for your deck, the remaining 4:

  1. Chickens
  2. Quilboar
  3. Huntress
  4. SAFE Pilot

When you play a mini, the top of your deck is drawn, and the played mini goes down to the bottom of the deck. So if we play our Kobold, the aftermath looks like:

  • Hogger
  • Raptors
  • Blizzard
  • Chickens

with a deck of

  1. Quilboar
  2. Huntress
  3. SAFE Pilot
  4. Kobold

So how does Charlga change things? Charlga splits each mini in two: The base cost of the mini, and the mini itself. So returning to the previous example, swapping Hogger for Charlga, we have the army of: Charlga (2g), Quilboar (2g), Chickens (2g), Raptors (1g), SAFE Pilot (3g), Blizzard (4g), and Huntress (5g). The minis are randomly sorted into one pile, and the costs into another. So our opening hand might look like:

  • Huntress
  • Chickens
  • Quilboar
  • Charlga

and then from the pile of costs, we randomly select 4g, from the Blizzard. This means that now all 4 of those minis will appear to have a cost of 4g. The remaining deck looks like:

  1. SAFE Pilot
  2. Kobold
  3. Raptors
  4. Blizzard

and the remaining deck of costs might be

  1. 2g (from Charlga)
  2. 2g (from Quilboar)
  3. 3g (from SAFE Pilot)
  4. 2g (from Chickens)
  5. 1g (from Kobold)
  6. 5g (from Huntress)
  7. 1g (from Raptors)

Still with me? Okay, now, let’s look what happens when we play a mini. We’re going to play the Chickens for 4g. The Chickens go to the bottom of the mini pile, and the base cost of the Chickens (2g) goes to the bottom of the cost pile. We then draw the top from each, resulting in a hand of:

  • Huntress
  • Quilboar
  • Charlga
  • SAFE Pilot

all costing 2g (from the top of the cost pile). The deck now looks like:

  1. Kobold
  2. Raptors
  3. Blizzard
  4. Chickens

and the cost pile now looks like

  1. 2g (from Quilboar)
  2. 3g (from SAFE Pilot)
  3. 2g (from Chickens)
  4. 1g (from Kobold)
  5. 5g (from Huntress)
  6. 1g (from Raptors)
  7. 2g (from Chickens)

What does this mean in practical terms? For the most part, it just means that you have to pay the piper eventually. If you keep cheating out expensive minis, you’ll eventually have to overpay for cheap minis. To avoid bricking your hand, I like to go for a ratio of four to two cheap to expensive minis for her armies.

Charlga offers the ability to squeeze more power into a small time period than any other leader. Because minis played in combination are much more powerful than in isolation, this allows her to make explosive plays to throw the opponent off-balance. In turn, care must be taken to ensure you are not too vulnerable during her down periods. The key to maximizing her benefit is remembering you don’t have to pay your debts if they’re already dead.