Spreadsheet: Slow Champions
Category: Establishing Draw (C-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: E-Tier
Spreadsheet: Card Draw
Category: Slow Champion 1-Draw (C-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: E-Tier
Tier 5
Finding time to play a slow, 1-cost, 5/5 champion, whose board presence relies on having other Wild champions in play (especially a lot of Wild champions and/or Breakthrough champions) seems effectively impossible to me, even with the card draw attached. Further, even if you were able to play it, your opponent can immediately end the effect by removing this card, primarily with Scarros or Smash and Burn trigger (also potentially Lightning Strike, Draka’s Fire, Whirlwind, Hurricane, Kong, other re-establishing cards). That being said, since it doesn’t need to attack, it is effectively immune to combat removal and Spike Trap-esque effects. While it might be slightly harder to get rid of than I was originally thinking, it seems so hard to fit it into a required Wild shell.
The fact that this and most 0-cost Wild champions (wolf tokens) gets swept up by Scarros, Draka + 0-cost 2-damage effect, Draka’s Fire, etc. is devastating. You invest a bunch of time an resources into setting this up, and then your opponent incidentally stomps it all out doing what they want to be doing anyway, brutal. Further, against fast Wild decks, if you spend a turn doing nothing immediately impactful like this, you’re dead. Against control, they’ll usually be able to board clear you before you can gain significant value, although the card draw effect helps offset this, against Kark and eventually Scara’s Gift, you still don’t have the time to waste. Finally, Wild just doesn’t have other synergistic tools for extending the game long enough to potentially extract value from this. For instance, all of its in alignment board clears clear this too. Great with Hunting Pack though.
All of this being said, this has been played against me multiple times, and it has felt oppressive and terrifying. But, I won all of those games. … (I think. Correct me if I’m misremembering.)
Okay, so after I finished this and wrote up my rating for Howl dismissing the idea of a wolf deck, you can probably guess what happened. I made a new wolf deck. Got to say, deck has some legs (about 258). But in all serious, deck might have potential (if I could find more human opponents to test it against). I finally caved and put it in a Raging T-Rex, Brach, Smash and Burn shell, and the deck as a whole has felt solid so far. Boosted constructed tier from 7 to 5.