Sharp Fangs Behind the Leaves/Antistone's Opening

Setup: Try to put your second starting presence in a land where you'd like to push something with Terrifying Chase; all else being equal, choose a non-Jungle (to hedge your bets against the first invader card).

-1- Growth 1: +1 energy, gain a power (minor) Growth 2: Place 1 presence (from bottom) Cards: Prey on the Builders (gather 1 beast; invaders do not build) Terrifying Chase (push 2 explorers/towns/dahan, +2 per beast; 2 fear if invaders pushed)

Learn a power with animal element if possible (~87% chance); if not, your second choice is plant. If got an animal, you may play it instead of one of the above. If it does not have animal element, then you should play it instead (to save another animal for next turn).

Prey on the Builders should obviously be used in a land where invaders are building; you can either choose a land with just an explorer to render it safe from the ravage, or choose a land with explorer + town to stop a city and plan to destroy the town next turn with your innate.

Terrifying Chase can be used to interrupt an invader action chain or get Dahan into position for a counter-attack next turn.

Both of those powers are range 0, which makes it a pain to target both on the first turn if the invaders don't start with jungle. However, they trigger part of your first innate (Ranging Hunt), which can be used to reposition one of your presence during the fast phase for better targeting. Also, since Terrifying Chase is slow, you get a second chance for the invaders to coincidentally explore into one of your starting terrains before you have to target it.

-2- Growth 1: +3 energy Growth 2: Place 1 presence (from bottom) Cards: Too Near the Jungle (destroy explorer, 1 fear) Teeth Gleam from Darkness (add beast + 1 fear, or 3 fear) minor power with animal element (or whatever you saved last turn)

This gives you 3 animal + 2 plant to fully trigger Ranging Hunt. If it looks like this will come up 1 damage short of whatever target you have in mind, remember you can often place your new presence in the relevant area and then immediately replace that presence with a beast.

If you don't need the extra beast for that, then place presence in a new jungle to give yourself more targeting options for Too Near the Jungle. You want to use this in a way where destroying the explorer will stop a whole action chain, so think about which terrain types remain to be drawn this turn and where you'll want presence in each case.

Teeth Gleam from Darkness should generally be used to add another beast--preferably some place where you want to use Ranging Hunt next turn.

-3- Growth 1: pay 1 energy, reclaim all, gain a power (minor) Growth 2: Place 1 presence Cards: Too Near the Jungle Teeth Gleam from Darkness any animal element

This turn, try to choose your minor power so that your two minors combined have at least 1 animal and 1 plant (if you got animal on turn 1, that means you want plant now). If you can't have both, go for plant.

If you got 1 animal and 1 plant among your minors, place presence from your bottom track both this turn and next. That will get you to 4 card plays on turn 4, and by reclaiming one of your plant+animal starting powers (probably Too Near the Jungle), you can reach 3 animal + 2 plant on both turns (and probably every turn for the rest of the game).

If you got 1 plant but not 1 animal, then you can still trigger Ranging Hunt both turns by placing 1 presence from your top track and 1 from the bottom (and reclaiming a plant+animal starting card, as above).

Either way, you can generally place a presence every turn while alternating your other growth between 3 energy and reclaim.

If you didn't get any plant in your first 2 minors, you can try again on turn 4 by choosing to gain a power instead of taking +3 energy, but this will leave you with only 2 energy to spend, and probably prevent you from placing presence on turn 5 (because you'll need to choose both +energy and reclaim).

ALTERNATE OPENING

If you happen to get a minor with both plant and animal elements during your first growth on turn 1, then you can switch to this alternate opening in order to fully trigger Ranging Hunt every turn of the game (whereas the opening above typically triggers it every turn except turn 1). It leaves you with fewer card plays for a long time, though.

-1- Growth 1: +1 energy, gain a power (minor) Growth 2: Place 1 presence (from top) Cards: Too Near the Jungle (destroy explorer, 1 fear) Teeth Gleam from Darkness (add beast + 1 fear, or 3 fear)

You may substitute your plant+animal minor for either of the above. Your presence uncovers an animal element, so with animal+plant on both cards you have 3 animal and 2 plant so you can do damage with Ranging Hunt.

-2- Growth 1: +3 energy Growth 2: Place 1 presence (from top) remaining plant+animal power any other remaining power (probably Prey on the Builders)

Now you have animal+plant showing on your presence track, so you just need 2 animal and 1 plant from power cards.

-3- Growth: Reclaim

Variants: In the alternate opening, you can delay the reclaim to turn 4 by gaining a power card on either turn 2 or turn 3, but in that case you probably won't get damage from Ranging Hunt on turn 3, which in my mind defeats the purpose of this opening. (You'd need to draft a second plant+animal power in a row; that's one of the rarer element-pairs, showing up in only 36% of 4-card draws, and since you just removed one from the deck your odds are probably even lower for the second one.)

Remarks: The first elements on the top presence track look helpful, but they actually offer very little, because once you reach the "reclaim one" space on the bottom track you'll probably have as much animal+plant as you need on every turn for the rest of the game. Unlike most innates, Ranging Hunt can't "level up" into something better with extra elements.

That's painful, because Sharp Fangs could really use some extra energy generation, but you need to place 3 presence from the top track just to get +1. That's tough to justify when every presence on the bottom track (after the very first) is giving you +1 play, reclaim one, or both.

So...I suggest you keep an eye out for useful zero-cost powers.