Tiderunner
Tiderunner is an unlockable ship. Tiderunner starts with Warp Prep, Tide Runner, and Mooring Line. Tiderunner is six tiles wide, with two empty scaffolds in the middle.
“Is this thing functional in space? It’s surprisingly nimble for something made of dead trees.”
Strategy
Thanks to the Tiderunner's unique profile and ability to dodge with card plays, it is one of the easiest ships to defend with. With good planning, enemies in the early game should not be able to hit you most of the time. As such, you can draft more offensively to ensure that you can win damage races, or with an eye toward the late game. Evade can help supplement your evasion and can give you more flexibility but isn't as necessary on this ship as it is on others. Its low hull does mean your margin for error is quite low, however, and if you're too passive, an early Solar Flare can easily end your run, particularly on Hardest, where you start with just 3(!) hull.
This ship does come with a dangerous downside — the Anchor, which locks you into place until it's played. Note that if it's on the left/right side of your hand, you'll move left/right when playing it. If you're particularly unlucky, this may not be a direction you want to go. Beware playing card draw effects mid-turn if drawing the Anchor is a possibility, unless you don't need to move any more this turn. In the worst possible scenario, mindlessly playing card draw with 0 Energy left over could leave you unexpectedly paralyzed, and possibly dead depending on where it happens. Mooring Line V2 is a very nice boss artifact you can pick up to mitigate this, making Anchor less punishing to draw as well as allowing you to hold it between turns when that makes sense to do. It generally increases your flexibility quite a bit.
Both this ship's upsides and downsides heavily encourage you to draft low Energy cost cards — they both improve your ability to take maximum advantage of its movement and also give you the flexibility to play Anchor as it arises. On the flip side, 3-Energy cost cards are worse on this ship than others, as you may draw them with Anchor on a turn when you really need to dodge. Also, beware letting your deck size get too low on this ship, as it means you'll draw the Anchor more often and waste more Energy and card draw that way.
Character-specific interactions:
- Dizzy: It appreciates some Shield as a compliment to its natural evasion, though its low Max Shield usually rules out heavy Shield builds.
- Riggs: This ship certainly appreciates Evade to increase its flexibility further, though this isn't as necessary on this ship as on others. Drawing cards is double-edged on this ship because of the possibility of drawing Anchor.
- Peri: She can have a field day on this ship, using her powerful offensive cards to kill the enemy quickly while this ship handles the defense.
- Isaac: He appreciates the distance between this ship's Cannon and Missile Bay, and how easily it can move to give him space to deploy. He can protect the left side of the ship with Midrow Objects quite well.
- Drake: This ship does not have hull to spare, so Heat is generally quite bad. She struggles on this ship. (Her dialogue is quite self-aware, wanting no part of a ship that's so flammable.)
- Max: He has some ways of Exhausting the Anchor, which can be very helpful for longer fights. He can also change the positions of cards in your hand, which can change which cards move the ship. It's hard to go infinite on this ship because of the Anchor, and its movement renders his Autopilot cards redundant.
- Books: Crystal Shard adds to this ship's ability to maneuver, and this ship's survivability gives Books time to set up her Shard.
- CAT: Many ways to use 0 cost cards well plus .EXE cards adding cheap cards to the right side of your hand give you plenty of ways to use this ship to manuever.
Patch Changes
- Patch 1.0.6 (2023-12-20)
- Tiderunner gained +1 hull.
- Tiderunner’s starting artifact has been split into 2 artifacts, to be easier to parse (Tide Runner and Mooring Line).
- Before: Tide Runner's effect was, "Immediately after you play the leftmost/rightmost card in your hand, move left/right 1. At the start of combat, add an Anchor to your draw pile." Mooring Line did not exist.
- After: Tide Runner's effect became, "Immediately after you play the leftmost/rightmost card in your hand, move left/right 1." Mooring Line was introduced with this effect: "At the start of combat, add an Anchor to your draw pile."
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