When to Go Down a Stone

Sometimes in a game of Sigil we need to make sacrifices in order to advance our longer term plan. This can be ceding territory, letting our opponent claim a contested spell, or even going down a stone for a strategic advantage.

Of course, since Sigil is won by ultimately having a stone advantage, whenever we go down a stone, it is with the intention of ultimately regaining that advantage.

Below are some of the more common strategic reasons you may voluntarily go down a stone. 

Claiming a Mana Advantage

The most common reason to go down a stone is when you can regain it in a subsequent turn – and parlay that into a longer-term advantage.

The most common way to do so is to dash or cast Comet to claim a mana.

Pseudo Lost Stones

Sometimes your stones get surrounded, but your opponent hasn’t had the opportunity to crush them.

You can sacrifice these stones to a dash. While they cost you a stone, in most cases the stones were already doomed.

Liberating a Spell

3-node spells hold an interesting role in Sigil as having a single stone on them allows you to cast them on a turn. That is, you can place a stone, and then dash to fill the spell.

Blue could dash to push Red off of Fireblast

Sometimes sacrificing a stone to dash and fully push your opponent out of a spell is advantageous compared to leaving your opponent access to the spell. This often also leaves you with two or three stones on the spell allowing you to threaten the spell.

Removing the Threat of Activation

Spells like Fireblast and Hail Storm can be especially troublesome due to their threat of activation. They can curtail your expansion, or threaten a huge number of stones in close combat.

Sometimes you need to force your opponent into a position to fire off their spells before they’d like to. When combatting Fireblast this might mean threatening your opponent in close combat – even if it means they can cast the spell for a stone advantage.

Similarly, when combatting Hailstorm, sometimes it’s better to force your opponent to cast a Hail Storm for a single stone advantage, rather than sit on the spell for potentially more damage later.

Gain a Tempo Advantage

A game of Sigil can sometimes turn into a race where you and your opponent are striving to execute a powerful play before the other.

Last week we talked about tempo advantage – or how far away we are relative to our opponent in executing our plans.

Dashing can buy us tempo advantage at the cost of going down a stone.

Problem of the Week

This problem is from a game I played against idontplaythisgame on Thursday Night Sigil. You’re red, it’s turn.

What’s the play?

Our opponent is offering us an opportunity to cast Starfall for neutral stones. The issue is that they will be backfilling into a powerful Fireblast (while we fight over Flourish), and we don’t have a good follow up. We might be able to fill Grow and then recast Starfall, but it’ll be a precarious situation. Another option is to wait to cast Starfall. The issue is that our opponent then gets to use Flourish to claim Fireblast and move towards the neutral mana. I thought that this was a good opportunity to go down a stone for a strategic advantage, casting Starfall, and only destroying one of blue’s stone’s. In game I opted to Starfall into X2 and V2 (the bottom right node in Fireblast, and the empty node adjacent to Flourish). However, I think the optimal play would have been to Starfall into X3 and S1 (the bottom left node of Fireblast and onto Comet). This play puts us down a stone now, but it gives us an advantage with a well-positioned claim on Fireblast, and longer term hemming in of our opponent.