Month: February 2017

About me:
My name is Thomas Dixon, though my user name will be Samoht Noxid on the app. I’ve been playing card games since the early 90’s, heavily concentrating on Magic: the Gathering. I’ve spent times with many other systems, but competitively I haven’t strayed much from M:tG until recently. It all started for me a few years ago walking the halls of GenCon where I stumbled across Darwin demo’ing Star Realms. Downloading the App and playing on my off turn through Round 1 let me pick up the game quickly and I ended up winning the tournament, but more importantly learning a lot about White Wizard Games. When EPIC was announced I was excited for an LCG model. I grabbed myself a set and really got to work when they announced the $100,000 World Championship. I organized a bunch of old M:tG ringers and we formed Pluck U. Of the four members to play in qualifiers, we had a 100% success rate of converting to invites (even though it took Sullivan winning the LAST last chance qualifier). I am one of the few players already qualified for 2017’s World Championship by virtue of my win at the First Chance Qualifier event held on Monday while the top 8 was going on. I focus heavily on Constructed, and in that Control as an archetype. One of my favorite aspects of EPIC’s rule structure is the various ways in which the timing of effects take place.

In so many different ways, EPIC is a binary game. It’s not just because of the 1’s and 0’s, but also in how things happen. When one person can cast spells or use abilities, the other can not. It is elegant in design in that this negates many timing issues that present themselves with other games. Yet it doesn’t decrease the complexity level, it just shifts the decision tree points a bit further up the path. Often when describing the timing rules, I reference Captain Jack Sparrow’s speech to Will Turner, “The only rules that really matter are these: what a (person) can do and what a (person) can’t do.” Due to the binary nature of the games interactions, traditional evaluations of card mechanics or interactions from other games fly out the window. Damage based removal is significantly better while pump spells get dramatically worse. A damage spell will always kill the target, where as a pump spell can no longer be used to save a champion that would die to damage. While you can no longer respond to a pump spell with burn equal to the base stats of a champion, you can still use any other number of methods to deal with the attacker like bouncing, direct breaking, direct banishing, or removing from combat. Counterspells don’t even exist at all! It’s a whole new world that you really have to explore to extrapolate maximum value of your cards.

Beyond the timing complexities of playing cards, there is an element of timing that instead focuses on when do you want to be playing your cards. If you understand the game to be a war, and each turn a battle, then the player that uses their gold first in any given turn almost always loses that battle. They have ceded control over the gold resource for the turn and thus lost the ability to heavily impact the game any further while allowing their opponent to make the highest level of impact with their gold while the proverbial defenses are down. Tom has written much content on how to spend your gold effectively from behind or ahead on board, and he captures the essence of the struggle quite well in doing so in his Getting Ahead and Staying Ahead article.

I find the most common mistake of newer players is looking for the most powerful 1 gold cards and then fleshing out their 0 cost cards with cantrips. This is severely problematic in any game that you fall behind in, because your hand quickly fills with 1 gold bombs throttling you to 1 card per turn. I typically start my decks the other way around. I want the most impactful 0’s on the board, and mold my 1’s to keep my hand from running empty or recover from unmanageable board states. By doing this, I can easily pressure my opponent to spend their gold on my 0’s or fall behind.

Further, there is another restriction on when you can play your champions. Most champions in EPIC may only be played on your turn. However, Ambush champions can be played any time you could play an Event. This makes any champion with Ambush very valuable. When constructing your deck, in any of the various formats, making sure you maintain strong off turn plays is critical and Ambush champions go a long way in doing that. Further, they are great ways to punish your opponent for spending their gold on their turn before you. Doing this enables you to likely have your Ambush champion ready to attack and threaten them into using their gold first on your turn too! Certain champions, like Thought Plucker in particular, have punishing effects for allowing them to deal damage to an opponent. Other champions, like Vampire Lord or Angel of Mercy have great on turn abilities that are exploited exceptionally well by waiting until your opponent’s gold is down on their turn and utilizing their Ambush capability.

This power is even contained in one of the most popular Events in the game, Surprise Attack. Initially touted as one of the best cards by many early adopters of EPIC, Surprise Attack has been a main stay in competitive events. After much experimentation, I have found Surprise Attack to be significantly weaker than I had initially evaluated it to be. At first I thought it was one of strongest cards in Constructed like everyone else. My problem became that I was trying to play the strongest non-Ambush champions with it in order to make its use the most potent. Sadly they felt like they were stuck in my hand when I didn’t have Surprise Attack while Surprise Attack often felt stuck or wasted without them. Keeping enough impact champions without Ambush in my deck to get the payoff made me come way down on Surprise Attack as a card. With Tyrants and Uprising bringing a plethora of powerful Ambush Champions and establishing Events, Surprise Attack has fallen out of most of my constructed decks. Heck even on my turn I’m looking to cast Blitz champions, not slow ones in most of my Wild decks. Any deceleration of threat tempo allows many of the control (mostly Kark) based decks the opportunity to turn the corner and establish themselves in the game.

The biggest gap between the high level players is gold management and understanding its impact on timing issues. If you tune into my stream on twitch, https://www.twitch.tv/dazedyoubro I will be playing some decks that exemplify the value of Ambush and timing.

This is a continuation of my ratings of all cards for Dark Draft.

A link to my full tier list may be found here. My reasoning for each card can be found here.

Final 8 Tyrants Cards

The Gudgeon Rating
Always Acceptable

Card draw is essential in limited formats. Getting a 2/1 unblockable champion that protects you from most burn (Flamestrike not Draka’s Fire), most discard pile banish (Amnesia/Grave Demon/Keeper of Secrets not Guilt Demon), and some discard effects (Psionic Assault/Thought Plucker-tribute not Knight of Shadows or Thought Plucker-deal damage trigger) is a nice bonus.

Generally, it is also much safer to draw 2 cards on your turn than your opponent’s. Unfortunately for The Gudgeon though, it competes with the other slow champions/on-your-turn effects like Kong, White Knight, Army of the Apocalypse, Divine Judgement, etc.

The best part of The Gudgeon is its interaction with Soul Hunter and Plague Zombies (to a lesser extent Fairy Trickster, Ice Drake/Frost Giant, and Scarros). For example, say you have The Gudgeon in play and your opponent has Soul Hunter in play. You Lightning Strike their Soul Hunter. What happens?

Yup, since you are untargetable, and your opponent must target a player to be affected by Soul Hunter‘s non-optional effect, they must target themself. Pretty nice. Soul Hunter and Plague Zombies are particularly nasty because it is less likely that the official take back rule will apply. If an opponent plays Plague Zombies (while you have The Gudgeon in play), attacks with a zombie, and then passes initiative, if you break all their zombies, it is too late for them to take back playing Plague Zombies, so your opponent must take the Plague Zombie damage to their face.

 

Cards that do not target a player are not stopped by The Gudgeon. This includes Blind Faith, Raxxa Demon Tyrant, board clears like Apocalypse, etc.

Zealous Necromancer Rating
Situationally Acceptable

Ambush + tribute -> draw a card is nice, but 4 defense with only 3 offense is not.

That being said, if your opponent can’t remove Zealous Necromancer or board clear you, this card can take control of a game. Gaining a zombie after each and every non-zombie champion breaks, including your opponent’s champions and both players non-zombie tokens, means that you can have a hard to exhaust horde of chump blockers if nothing else.

This is particularly nasty against decks with human tokens because you can block their human token with a zombie, break the human token in combat, and then gain a new prepared zombie token to block the next attacking human token. In addition, if your opponent chump blocks your champions with any non-zombie champion, you still get a zombie.

Zealous Necromancer has won games both for and against me, but I still don’t like drafting/playing it much. If I’m going tokens or I expect my opponent to be going tokens (or if the rest of the pack is bad), I’ll draft this.

Second Wind Rating
Always Desirable

5 health with recycle can frequently be just enough to keep you out of burn range for an extra turn or two. This is especially strong because a lot of burn wins can revolve around using 2 1-cost burn cards in a row, one at the end of your turn after you’ve spent your gold, and a second at the start of their turn before you can spend a gold. Not only can Second Wind save you here, but it punishes your opponent for wasting an entire turn not affecting the board with their gold.

Second Wind’s recycle is also indirectly stronger after Uprising because, with the addition of Erratic Research and Grave Demon (plus a seemingly faster game pace), it is much less likely to win by drawing through your deck. I particularly like this card with Memory Spirit.

Without recycle this would be so much worse.

Urgent Messengers Rating
Always Desirable

Off-turn draw 2 with a perk (usually 2 chump blockers). Great.

Temporal Shift Rating
Always Acceptable

A weaker Erase, usually. As fast bounce removal that maintains both players’ handsize, this can be a nice tempo play, and can theoretically be stronger than Erase in discard-based control decks. However, draw 2 is usually better than forcing your opponent to choose 1 card from their hand to banish.

An alternate use of this card is to target an opponent’s token. Not only do you remove the token from play, but your opponent still has to banish a card from their hand. While this is a nice trick and a reasonable card, I would still rather have Erase.

Vanishing Rating
Always Desirable

This can be brutal.

Use this to return an ambushed in Lurking Giant to hand, remove an ambushed in token chump blocker, return a slow champion like Thundarus to hand, or even return your own Rampaging Wurm (that started the turn in play) for a second attack. All of these uses are excellent.

Even when used to return an opponent’s champion to hand (net -1 card in hand for you and +1 card in hand for your opponent), the board advantage this can give you is huge. It’s also Sage and can draw 2.

Smash and Burn Rating
Always Desirable

One of my favorite cards.

9 times out of 10, I use this purely to draw 2 cards largely ignoring the +5/+5 buff. Then, a few turns later, I trigger it to break one of a plethora of 6 or less defense champions including Avenging Angel, Strafing Dragon, Thought Plucker, etc. This alone makes this one of the best “draw 2 and” cards in the game. Even if you only have 3 other Wild 1-cost cards in your deck, you’ll still probably get the trigger, or at least force the use of a discard pile banish card after you’ve already resolved the draw 2 effect.

+5/+5 can be nice too. I have used it to buff a champion to win a combat on multiple occasions, but I almost always do it only after my opponent spends their gold. It would be pretty awful to use this to buff a champion just to have your opponent Erase or otherwise remove it before it can do damage.

Wolf’s Bite Rating
Always First Pickable

One of my most included cards in constructed, and it’s pretty great in limited formats too.

This breaks Muse and recycles and gives you a wolf.

There are few cards that can trade with a Muse and put you ahead, for that reason alone, this card is amazing. It can also be used to enable Feeding Frenzy, finish off a damaged champion, create an emergency chump blocker, or even convince an opponent to make a game losing block.

I love this card.

Conclusion

And with that, I have finally re-rated all of the cards up through Uprising.

I still want to go through and clean up the now 46,032 word beast of an article with all of the ratings though (Epic Card Game: Dark Draft Card Ratings). I’ll make another post to let everyone know when it is complete…at least until the next expansion releases…followed by the inevitable re-rating of at least that expansion…

Forward

This article follows the progression of my core-set-only Incremental Targeted Removal deck. I start by explaining how I created the experimental, untested deck (in preparation for the core only alpha for Epic Card Game Digital). Then, I plan on updating this article with an analysis of how the deck performs, in addition to explaining any changes I make to it (assuming it performs well enough to update).

Other decks in this Epic Card Game Digital series include: Core Evil Tokens, Core Sage Army, Core Wild Champion Overload, and Core Epic Humans. They are all built following my Epic Constructed Process.

(Extra 5 decks: Core Token Control, Core Sky Force, Core Feint, Tom’S Core Discard Deck, and Tom’S Core Aggressive Burn List)

Current Deck List

As I update the deck list, I’ll update this picture and written list (currently prototype deck list).

Evil (9)

Slow (3)
3x Inner Demon

Fast (3)
3x Drain Essence

0-Cost (3)
3x Guilt Demon

Good (27)

Slow (9)
3x Avenging Angel
3x Banishment
3x High King

Fast (9)
3x Angel of Light
3x Angel of Mercy
3x Noble Unicorn

0-Cost (9)
3x Priestess of Angeline
3x Watchful Gargoyle
3x White Dragon

Sage (18)

Slow (3)
3x Blue Dragon

Fast (9)
3x Ancient Chant
3x Lying in Wait
3x Memory Spirit

0-Cost (6)
1x Amnesia
3x Forcemage Apprentice
2x Ogre Mercenary

Wild (6)

Slow (2)
2x Rampaging Wurm

Fast (2)
2x Lightning Storm

0-Cost (2)
2x Fireball

Prototype Explanation

Conclusion

Yeah, we’ve got a ways to go before this.

Foreword

In this article I list the cards I expect to see the most play in the Epic Digital core-set alpha. Then, to explain those lists, I discuss a bunch of Epic concepts.

Cards I Expect to See or Play

Below I list the cards I expect to see significant play. Afterwards, I list the cards I expect myself to play the most.

Most Expected Cards

These are some of the most generically powerful and generically popular cards in the base set, by my observation. I expect to see these cards a lot, and if you are looking for extra cards to add to your deck, these are always worth consideration.

Drain Essence, Erase, Muse, Sea Titan, Thought Plucker, Flame Strike, Flash Fire, Kong

Other Expected Cards

I expect these cards will also see play across a lot of decks; however, they are more specialized and therefore won’t appear in as many as those above.

Evil (6): Army of the Apocalypse, Dark Knight, Final Task, Guilt Demon, Wither, Zombie Apocalypse
Good (3): Avenging Angel, Gold Dragon, Inheritance of the Meek
Sage (5): Amnesia, Ancient Chant, Frost Giant, Hasty Retreat, Wave of Transformation
Wild (5): Fireball, Lightning Storm, Rampaging Wurm, Surprise Attack, Triceratops

Alignment-Specific Expected Cards

These are cards that I expect will appear in most decks that focus on each specific alignment (and rightfully so). Most are incredibly strong Loyalty 2 champions.

Evil (4): Angel of Death, Necromancer Lord, Medusa, Murderous Necromancer*
Good (5): Palace Guard, White Knight*, Angel of Mercy, Noble Unicorn, Angel of Light*
Sage (5): Juggernaut, Steel Golem*, Psionic Assault, Ice Drake, Forcemage Apprentice
Wild (7): Raging T-Rex, Hurricane, Rain of Fire, Strafing Dragon, Cave Troll, Fire Shaman, Rage

(*I don’t expect to see a lot of these cards, but they are/can be strong)

My Most Common Cards

These are the cards I am most likely to include in any deck I make. (All of them appear in at least 3 of the 4 core decks I’ve made so far.)

Drain Essence, Guilt Demon, Amnesia, Ancient Chant, Forcemage Apprentice, Fireball, Rampaging Wurm

Other Cards I Really Like

This is a list of other core cards I like a lot. (Some are stronger/more playable than others.)

Evil (6): Dark Knight, Demon Breach, Medusa, Murderous Necromancer, Plentiful Dead, Wither
Good (7): Angel of Mercy, Avenging Angel, Banishment, Lord of the Arena, Noble Unicorn, White Dragon, White Knight
Sage (8): Blue Dragon, Crystal Golem, Djinn of the Sands, Juggernaut, Memory Spirit, Steel Golem, Warrior Golem, Winter Fairy
Wild (3): Cave Troll, Raging T-Rex, Triceratops

Notable Mechanisms/Archetypes

In this section I break down why certain cards/mechanisms/archetypes are inherently powerful. I also discuss the weaknesses of those cards/mechanisms/archetypes e as well. Many of the concepts are interconnected.

Return Champion(s) to Hand from Play (Bounce)

Control (Board Clears)

1 for 1 Targeted Removal

Burn

Discard Effects

Health Gain

Human Tokens

Discard Pile Removal

0-Cost Cards

Expend -> Remove Champions

Blitz Champions

Tribute -> Draw a Card Champions

Deadly Raid/All-In/Finishers/Cheese

Conclusion

Let me know if you agree with these lists of cards and/or explanations of Epic aspects in the comments below. Or, if I left out anything in my ramblings that you would like me to touch on, feel free to let me know, and I’ll probably have a long answer for you.

Foreword

In this article I explain my Epic constructed deck building process. I start with an idea, gather the cards, apply my distribution quotas for tuning (the meat of the article), and then repeatedly playtest to tweak. In anticipation of the Core-Set-only alpha for Epic Digital, I will be focusing (primarily) on Core Set cards.

I am a midrange player that likes to build a balanced deck in an unbalanced shell.

Deck Idea

I build a lot of decks because I love to experiment. Most of my decks are built around a specific idea that I want to exploit:

• Build a Good Alignment deck: Combative Humans
• Build a Demon deck: Uprising Demons
• Build a human token deck: Human Token Swarm *outdated*
• Build a deck with champions that can’t be broken by Drain Essence: Brute Force
• Build a deck with an overwhelming amount of champions that can be broken by Wither and similar effects: My World’s Pyrosaur Deck (and multiple others)
• Build a deck that plays “draw 2 and” champions on my turn and plays threats off-turn: 4 Color Army

Gather Cards

Once I settle on an idea, I’ll know at least 15 of the cards I want to include for sure. I put those cards in a list. Then, I go through all of the cards in the game (Card Gallery + Cards not added to gallery yet), and throw any cards that might fit into a second list.

From there, I will be able to determine the bulk of the cards I want to include for the individual deck idea (possibly going over 60). At this point, I want to make sure my deck contains enough of specific effects to make it function smoothly.

Distributions

All of my decks want 10 effects in certain amounts:

• 30+ cards that can draw/recycle/recall/etc.
• 20 0-cost cards (the max)
• 20- slow cards/cards I only want to play on my turn
• 33+ cards of an alignment in which I have Loyalty 2 effects
• 3-9+ On-turn Gold-Punishers
• 3-9+ Off-turn Gold-Punishers
• 1+ Mass Discard Pile Banishes
• 3 Drain Essences (the max) or comparable, deck-synergistic health gain
• 3-9+ Muse/Thought Plucker 0-cost answers
• A plan for beating Sea Titan/Bounce effects

A decent amount of these requirements are already filled naturally by cards I want to include anyway. In addition, individual cards can fulfill multiple roles.

30+ Cards that can Draw/Recycle/Recall/Etc.

In order to ensure that I can spend my gold every turn (my turn and my opponent’s turn), I want at least half of my cards to be able to either draw, recycle, recall, or similar.

The most reliable types of cards for this distribution are:

• “Draw 2 and” cards
• “Or Draw 2” cards
• Recycle Cards
• Tribute -> Draw a card
• Loyalty 2 -> Draw a card (in an alignment with at least 33 cards in deck)
• Break this card: Draw 2 cards

 

Ideally, the deck will contain 30+ of these reliable draw cards specifically (any 10 unique cards x 3, approximately). If you don’t want 30+ of these cards, other unreliable draw cards can take their place. These are cards that aren’t  guaranteed to draw you additional cards:

• Non-Plentiful Dead Recall Cards (they could get banished from your discard pile before you can recall them)
• Necromancer Lord, Angel of Mercy, etc (cards that can bring back champions that can draw cards)
• Pyromancer (cards with a way to spend extra gold)
• Muse (cards that can draw cards if not immediately removed)

 

If I do decide to rely on unreliable draw cards, I generally would want more than 30 reliable/unreliable cards. 27 reliable and 6 unreliable would be fine for example.

Another way to strengthen your drawing resiliency is with Ancient Chants (add Lesson Learneds if desired too). Ancient Chant is great.

• Use it to draw 2, then recycle it and draw another card off the “leaves your discard pile” trigger (draw 3)
• Discard it to Thought Plucker, then recycle it
• Recall it to draw a card and return Ancient Chant to hand for a rate of 1 gold/net +2 cards in hand. This is a better rate than standard draw 2 cards because they only net +1 card in hand. (-1 card in hand to play the draw 2, then +2 drawn cards = net +1 card in hand)
• Play Lesson Learned targeting Ancient Chant in your discard pile to draw 4 (click for an explanation about why this works)

For all of these reasons, whenever I am worried about my deck’s card draw capability, I consider Ancient Chant. Even as essentially just a draw 3, it is great for enabling you to supply a consistent stream of pressure.

20 0-cost cards (the max)

Part of the reason I insist on 30+ cards that can draw is the fact that I want to run 20 0-cost cards. While 0-cost cards are significantly less powerful than 1-cost cards, timely 0-cost cards can (and frequently do) win games. Being able to play more than 1 card a turn is incredibly powerful.

Due to the pivotal nature of 0-cost cards, a lot of consideration should go into choosing exactly which 0-cost cards you want to bring. In addition, running 20 0-cost cards means you need to be very deliberate in which 1-cost cards you bring, in order to get access to the 0-cost cards you want.

Many people pick their 0-cost cards first before choosing their 1-cost cards. I do a bit of both. When determining core cards, I look at both 1-cost and 0-cost cards, and then I fill in the gaps as I go.

20- On My Turn Cards

On my turn cards are non-ambush champions and select events that almost exclusively want to be played on my turn. (I do not include symmetrical board clears like Apocalypse in this because I use the “or draw 2” option more than I use the “if it is your turn” option, for most decks.)

 

While Epic Card Game has no resource screw (mana screw/flood, curve screw, etc.), it can have Slow Card flood. If you can’t spend your gold on your opponent’s turn because your hand filled up with cards you can’t (or don’t want to) play on your opponent’s turn, you will quickly fall behind. I have found 20 to be a good top end for slow cards to largely prevent this from happening.

33+ Primary Alignment Cards

Loyalty 2 cards are incredibly powerful. Basically all decks want to include some amount of Loyalty 2 cards. Due to their inclusion, decks want to run a sufficient amount of cards of the same alignment to be able to get the Loyalty 2 effect. Personally, if I run a card with a Loyalty 2 effect, I want at least 33 cards of that alignment in my deck. (36+ is preferable though.)

Yes, this means that I do not like decks with Loyalty 2 effects in multiple alignments. While gaining access to multiple alignments’ Loyalty 2 effects is quite powerful in theory, the deck’s inconsistency can (and will) straight up lose you games. When you draw perfectly, these decks can be great. But, when you don’t draw perfectly, they can fall apart, even more so than other decks.

However, this is definitely not a consensus view. Multiple other Worlds players disagree with me. Some think that Loyalty 2 cards can be included with less than 33+ cards of that alignment and do run Loyalty 2 effects in multiple alignments.

One nice thing about 33 is that it allows you to bring 9 cards of each other faction (3 0-cost cards and 6 1-cost cards per faction). Other distributions work as well.

3-9+ On-Turn Gold-Punishers

I firmly believe in my Get Ahead, Stay Ahead Epic philosophy. One key aspect of that philosophy is: if you can get your opponent to spend their gold before you on your turn, punish them for it.

The most common way to punish them is to play a 1-cost blitz champion and attack. Without their gold, they are significantly less likely to be able to stop your blitz champion from hitting them in the face. This is a great way to push damage through to your opponent.

In addition, this is a critical aspect for defeating control decks. Many control decks rely on generating significant value by using board clears to remove multiple champions at once. If you have no way to push damage after they use a board clear on your turn, you will have an incredibly difficult time dealing enough damage to win.

In addition to blitz champions here is a list of Core Set on-turn gold-punishers:

Army of the Apocalypse, Final Task, The Risen, Courageous Soul + Secret Legion, Deadly Raid (with non-deploying champions in play), Psionic Assault (alternate punish), Turn, Mighty Blow (with at least 1 non-deploying champion), and Wolf’s Call

The Risen is a solid punish if your opponent uses Zombie Apocalypse.

Wolf’s Call is a solid punish if your opponent uses Wave of Transformation.

3-9+ Off-turn Gold-Punishers

Another aspect of my Get Ahead, Stay Ahead Epic philosophy is: when your opponent spends their gold before you on their turn, punish them for it. While using this opportunity to draw 2, gain health, or something similar is not bad (especially if you are already ahead on the board), slamming an ambush champion or off-turn board clear can be incredibly powerful.

Your opponent was forced to board clear on their turn. Play your Angel of Mercy and start next turn with a 4/5 airborne champion and your best Good champion from your discard pile. Pretty nice.

Admittedly, this isn’t a distribution I watch too much; however, that is largely due to the fact that I naturally include a plethora of off-turn punishers, since they are generically powerful. Off-turn punishers are primarily ambush champions and off-turn board clears, but Fast targeted removal and other Fast effects work too.

1+ Mass Discard Pile Banishes

In constructed your opponent is not going to deck out, almost certainly. That being said, I still like the safety of having 1 Mass-Discard Pile Banish card in my deck. You won’t draw it in many games, but you should eventually get to it in any game where you need it. If you do need it, be sure to recycle it as soon as possible after you use it (even though it is even less likely you’ll need to use it a second time).

Thankfully, these are powerful cards in general (turning off recycle/Army of the Apocalypse/etc.). Cutting it wouldn’t be the end of the world though, especially if you run cards like Guilt Demon. I love Guilt Demon.

Meta Acknowledgment Cards

Some cards/decks are so powerful and/or prevalent that I include specific answers to them in all of my decks. At the very least, I design my decks to not be locked out by these cards/decks.

3 Drain Essences (Or Comparable Health Gain)

Decks that rely on burn cards like Flame Strike or Lightning Storm are common. Without any health gain, they can kill you quickly with little chance of losing. While there are multiple ways to attack this strategy (out-race them, make them discard, negate their champions, etc.), Drain Essence is one of the most efficient.

9 damage is enough to break a large number of champions. Burn decks specifically run multiple champions that Drain Essence can break (Strafing Dragon, Hunting Raptors, etc.). In addition, this is Fast removal that gives your opponent nothing if you play it on their turn!

Being able to break their champion, off-turn, and gain 9 health is frequently enough to slow them down enough for you to win. This was the most played card at Worlds 2016 for a reason.

For some decks, particularly Good decks, this card can be cut if you are already running significant health gain (Angel of Light, Inner Peace, etc.). However, even in that situation, this is still strong enough removal that you might still want it, unless you absolutely can’t afford the Evil slots.

3-9+ Muse/Thought Plucker 0-Cost Answers

Unanswered Muses and Thought Pluckers are 2 of the strongest cards in the game. Muse is a 0-cost card that draws a card at the start of each of your turns. Thought Plucker immediately draws you a card, forces your opponent to discard, and threatens to do this again on each of your turns. Both of them also have ambush so they are more likely to trigger their effects.

The most important part about these cards is the fact that they are incredibly difficult to efficiently stop, unless you specifically include cards for that purpose. Muse is a 0-cost card that never needs to attack to give a card draw each turn (shouldn’t be removed in combat). Thought Plucker is unblockable so it also shouldn’t be removed in combat. And, if a 1-cost card is used to remove either Muse or Thought Plucker after their effect triggers, those cards have already more than paid for themselves. (Final Task on Thought Plucker can be brutal.)

In addition, since neither rely on Loyalty or Ally triggers, they are easy to include in any deck. Many people do (or at least did). It’s no coincidence “Pluck You” is the name of a team that sent a player to top 8 at Worlds.

Unless you have one of these specific answers in hand when either card is played, you will be in trouble:

Core 0-Cost Answers for Either:
Unquenchable Thirst, Wither, Forcemage Apprentice, Fireball, and Flash Fire

Core Thought Plucker 0-Cost Answers:
Spike Trap, Lash, (Plague Honorable Mention)

You may have noticed that Good has no way to deal with either of them efficiently in the core set. Good thing you can splash easily.

Muse/Thought Plucker’s Weaknesses

It is well-known that these are two of the strongest cards in the game, and I am not the only person that specifically builds decks to counter them. Due to this meta shift, they are frequently less effective than they can be.

Muse’s Weaknesses

If you remove Muse immediately with a 0-cost answer before it can draw a card, at worst it is a 1 for 1 trade. If Forcemage Apprentice or the Expansion cards Wolf’s Bite, Flame Spike, Raxxa’s Curse, or Siren’s Song are used, the Muse player ends up on the bad end of the trade. In addition, if the Muse player was relying on Muse to draw cards, they might run out of resources if all of their Muses are immediately removed.

Thought Plucker’s Weaknesses

In addition to the possibility of a quick removal of the 1-cost Thought Plucker to a 0-cost card that might generate more resources, Thought Plucker can be countered by including cards that want to/don’t care if they are discarded.

Soul Hunter is the all-star in this role. “Oh, you’re going to force me to discard? I’ll just throw Soul Hunter in the discard then. No discard pile banish? Oh, too bad. Thanks for the free 1-cost champion in play on my turn though!”

Ally -> Recall cards are also not too much of a problem to discard either, since you can potentially get them back for free with the next card you play. Other core cards that might benefit from a forced discard: Army of the Apocalypse, Final Task, Necromancer Lord, Angel of Mercy, Ancient Chant, Warrior Golem.

 

To attempt to counter this trend, Thought Plucker decks do frequently run a lot of ways to banish cards in discard piles. But, forcing them to use extra resources to enable their resource generating cards is not bad.

Kark Meta

With the success that non-Muse, non-Thought Plucker Chamberlain Kark decks had at Worlds, it is possible we are starting to see the shift away from Thought Plucker and Muse (when playing with the expansions). If it continues to trend this way, I may eventually remove (or at least lessen) my amount of mandatory Muse/Thought Plucker answers. However, in the Core-Set-only Epic Digital alpha, I expect to see a lot, a lot a lot, of Muse and Thought Plucker.

Anti-Sea Titan/Bounce Plan

Ridiculous card. 11/14 is a big body. Untargetable makes it even harder to remove. The fact that it returns a champion to hand when it enters play make this one of the strongest tempo plays in the game. It is also one of the strongest control champions in the game. If you rely on attacking with non-airborne champions to win the game, you will need a plan to beat Sea Titan. Even though it isn’t as popular as Muse/Thought Plucker, it still sees significant play and can lock out the unprepared.

Sea Titan’s Weaknesses

The simplest way to remove Sea Titan is a board clear like Apocalypse. Other Core Set answers include: Thrasher Demon (unreliable) and Lying in Wait.

 

Aside from removing it, you can chump block it constantly since it can’t be Lashed or Raged. Plentiful Dead is fun to watch Sea Titans players deal with.

Offensively, you can use airborne champions to get around the big blocker too. Champions with powerful Loyalty and Tribute effects are an effective bounce (return to hand) disincentive as well.

In other words, Sea Titan is a powerful card, but due to the meta shift towards powerful Loyalty and Tribute champions, it is less effective than it can be. Still, making sure it can’t lock you out is worthwhile for those decks that do run it.

Distributions Wrap Up

Meeting all of my distributions generally isn’t too difficult, and it leads to decks I enjoy playing. I like being able to apply pressure consistently, maintain a large handsize, and aggressively punish my opponent for spending their gold first on any turn. These distributions work toward these goals.

If you are looking to play a more control or combo oriented deck, on-turn/off-turn gold punishers are less important. Aggro decks don’t necessarily need as much card draw. Most people don’t build quite as heavily against Muse as I do. etc. etc. etc. In other words, this works for me, find what works for you, and I’d be happy to discuss it in the comments.

Playtest and Tweak

Once you’ve completed your prototype deck, test it and tweak it a lot. My World’s Pyrosaur deck looked very different in its original Citadel Raven form. Don’t be afraid to make changes and potentially even drift away from your original idea. Most of my decks generally pull back from my initial extremes.

Two of my favorite decks do maintain their all-in on anti-Drain Essence and anti-Wither plans though. One is skewed to be all 10+ defense champions to make my opponent’s Drain Essences largely worthless. The other is screwed to a ton of 3 defense champions to exhaust their supply of efficient answers. Both are packed with answers to a wide range of potential strategies.

I love me my balanced decks in unbalanced shells.

Upcoming Articles

In my next article I plan on discussing which cards/strategies I expect to see the most play in the Epic Digital alpha. From there, I plan on talking about my 4 mono-loyalty alignment decks.

Let me know in the comments below if this article raised any questions. I’m also always interested in hearing disagreements (and also having people agree with me). If there is anything specific you would like me to cover, let me know.

This is a continuation of my ratings of all cards for Dark Draft.

A link to my full tier list may be found here. My reasoning for each card can be found here.

16 Tyrants Cards

Raxxa’s Displeasure Rating
Always Desirable +

Most of the time this breaks all champions on your turn, pretty nice. However, if you are able to pick up a significant amount of demon cards (Raxxa’s Curse, Reaper, Spawning Demon, Raxxa Demon Tyrant, Demon Breach, Guilt Demon, Infernal Gatekeeper, Medusa, Succubus, Thrasher Demon, Trihorror-ish, Word of Summoning, Grave Demon, Raxxa’s Enforcer, Rift Summoner, Winged Death), this can be an on-turn, one-sided board clear which is incredible. It also still works with unbreakable on your turn cards like Dark Knight. If you are drafting a demon deck, or an Evil deck in general, this is a highly desirable card.

If you believe your opponent is drafting a demon/Evil deck, counter-picking this is seriously worth considering. If they get it, it could blow you out. If you get it, you can’t rely on it as a board clear, but you can always just draw 2 with it.

Reap or Sow Rating
Situationally Desirable

I love board clears, but trading the “or draw 2” option for “put 4 zombie tokens into play” makes this significantly worse.

While board clear effects are powerful, I generally use the “or draw 2” option more frequently, unless it is a one-sided board clear like Raxxa’s Displeasure. Therefore, trading the “or draw 2” option for a non-blitz Wolf’s Call (with zombies) hurts a lot.

If I’m going wide with a lot of tokens, I might take this. Or, if I don’t have any board clears late in the draft I will take this. Not a big fan though.

Reaper Rating
Always Desirable

Great card.

9 defense on a champion that can theoretically break (almost) any champion each turn is unparalleled, especially since you are guaranteed to get the tribute -> break effect. This card has to be removed with a gold, it survives all unassisted 0-cost removal (at worst it gets bounced), and it survives most damage based removal.

Since it does leave behind demons, it effectively can’t stop a chump block. (However, if it is in play, you can trigger it with a 1-cost Evil card to break a potential ambushed in airborne blocker though). In addition, those demons can actually be a threat to you, especially if your opponent was already going wide. Further, you can’t clear those demons with Raxxa’s Displeasure. Still, I’d rather start by dealing with Kong/Thundarus/Draka and then deal with the demon later.

Another use for Reaper is to upgrade your tokens into demons. You play this and then the next time your activate it your opponent has no champions in play? Target one of your expended zombies and trade it for a prepared demon.

Spawning Demon Rating
Situationally Desirable

I am a fan of this card. My favorite way to use it is to play it off-turn, when my opponent’s gold is down, and then follow it up with an Evil 1-cost draw 2. Draw 2, pay 1 health, and get 2 demon tokens, awesome. Also, if your opponent doesn’t remove it, you threaten to keep gaining demons.

If I’m not going Evil or even just don’t have sufficient 1-cost Evil draw 2s, I don’t want to draft this. Fun with Medusa too though.

Important note: Spawning Demon is not buffed by Raxxa, Demon Tyrant, but the demon tokens it spawns are buffed.

Quell Rating
Situationally Desirable

I go back and forth on this card a lot, and I’m still not certain where I stand on it.

The first group of times I played with Quell, I was able to cause massive blowouts with both of its options, even in decks not built around it.

• I only had 0-cost champions while my opponent only had 1-cost champions:
  So, it was a one-sided, on-turn board clear.
• I only had 1-cost champions while my opponent had a bunch of tokens and other 0-cost champions:
  So, it was a one-sided, off-turn board clear and drew a card.
• I’ve also used it as a banishing board clear while I had unbanishable champions like The People’s Champion in play.

Other people have used it quite nicely against me as well. In other words, it has had promising play results.

However, I’ve had multiple situations where I didn’t want to play it because I had both 1-cost champions and 0-cost champions I didn’t want to banish in play. In those situations, the lack of an “or draw 2” option made this largely a dead card. I could’ve drew 1 with it, but I’d have lost my Muse, Little Devil, Dark Knight, or other 0-cost champions in the process. In addition, it can’t answer an opponent’s mixed board completely.

Currently, I think it is desirable to draft if you are going wide with tokens and 0-cost champions. Otherwise, I want to just force myself to draft it more to see how it shakes out for me now.

Rabble Rouser Rating
Situationally Desirable

This is a card that must be removed or it will produce greater than exponential amounts of human tokens (since you get a free one before each doubling). If unremoved, some of these human tokens can slowly push damage through while others chump block. In addition, they can mass up for an Insurgency, Revolt, etc.

Unfortunately for this card, it has 5 defense so it breaks to a lot, including damage based board clears like Draka’s Fire that sweep up the tokens along with it. If you have multiple ways to go wide quickly, adding another one can strain your opponent’s ability to board clear you, which can be quite strong.

Revolt Rating
Situationally Desirable ++

This is by far the most important and best card for human token decks.

A 0-cost event that gives +2 offense to all Good champions can turn any human token assault into a major threat, whether those human tokens started the turn in play or you just played Insurgency/Secret Legion. It’s an all-star.

Unless you are desperate, you should not use the “or draw 2” option in a human token deck because the main effect is too valuable. Unfortunately for human token decks, the “or draw 2” option does make this incredibly easy to counter draft. Even just a 3/1 ambush chump blocker can be useful, in a desperation type of way.

Memory Spirit, Reusable Knowledge, and Citadel Raven are worth extra consideration in a human token deck with this card. Revolt is that strong.

Royal Escort Rating
Situationally Acceptable

5/9 Ambush means it’s never terrible. It also gives a guaranteed 3 health gain, but, since its ally trigger is Good, it probably won’t gain too much more. Making all of your other champions untargetable can be quite nice though with specific champions, particularly low-defense ones: Guilt Demon, Dark Assassin/High King/Murderous Necromancer/Reaper/Elara the Lycomaner, Necromancer Lord/Angel of Mercy, Avenging Angel/Gold Dragon, Muse/Spore Beast, Thought Plucker, Winged Death/Citadel Raven/Pyrosaur, and The Gudgeon is another fun one.

One thing to be careful about is that you can’t target your champions either. No Brave Squires, Rages, etc. for you (unless you Vanishing/bounce your Royal Escort first of course).

Lesson Learned Rating
Usually Desirable

This card is as strong as your best event. If I’ve drafted Ancient Chant (to draw 4), Drain Essence, Flame Strike, and/or Erase, I would be happy to draft this. If I haven’t, or it is early in the draft, I don’t want to take this with the hope that I will. Admittedly, the odds of not getting at least a few worthwhile events is fairly low though.

At the very least, Sage draw 2.

Click here for an explanation of why Lesson Learned -> Ancient Chant draws 4 cards/how cards technically resolve in Epic.

Mist Guide Herald Rating
Situationally Acceptable ++

This card will usually be acceptable, but in a deck with fewer champions, or only a few strong establishing champions, I wouldn’t want this. If you hit a strong establishing champion when you play this, and you used Mist Guide Herald as an establishing champion, it is better than just playing that establishing champion.

In most other situations, it is worse than just playing a champion you legitimately want to play in that situation. I play this as an establishing champion but I only turn up gold-punishers, gaining a 3/2 airborne body is not enough to offset the poor timing of the gold-punishers. Or, I am trying to dig to one specific champion, and I don’t get it, playing/drafting something else would probably have been better. Worst case scenario is you play this and reveal no champions. On-turn gold for a 3/2 airborne champion tribute -> show my opponent 5 cards in my deck, terrible.

I’d much rather have a more reliable card in most situations, but I’ll take it if there aren’t any better cards in the pack.

Mist Guide Herald does combo great with Final Task/Necromancer Lord/Resurrection and Dark Offering though. (I especially love it with Dark Offering.)

Shadow Imp Rating
Situationally Desirable

Strong in a deck with a lot of 1-cost Sage cards. Works great as a free 2 damage unblockable attacker each turn. At 3 defense it survives multiple 0-cost removal cards like Wolf’s Bite and Flash Fire. In addition, it gets to hide in your hand at the end of your turn (assuming you play a 1-cost Sage card); this lets it dodge opponent’s on-turn board clears.

It also works as a free chump blocker. Your opponent attacks, you play this, assuming it isn’t removed, you block with it, then assuming it isn’t removed again, you play a 1-cost Sage card to return it to hand unscathed. The blocked champion remains blocked.

One bad thing about this card is that it can force you to use your gold before your opponent, especially when used to block. While you can block a champion that started the turn in play, if you use Shadow Imp’s free block trick, you open yourself up to an on-turn gold-punisher. At least you can always just replay and chump with Shadow Imp if needed.

Temporal Enforcer Rating
Situationally Desirable

I haven’t been as impressed by this card as I was expecting, but I did have very high expectations. Bounce is especially strong in limited formats, the ally ability can both remove opponent’s tokens and protect your 0-cost champions, ambush is always great, and 6 unblockable offense is no joke.

However, the 4 defense is still not great. That being said, this card has performed pretty well for me on multiple occasions, particularly against demon decks. I think my primary reservation about this card is the fact that it is a 1-cost bounce card that doesn’t have a strong defensive effect with it, unlike Sea Titan and Erase. It is more of an aggressive tempo card, but 4 defense on an aggressive, 1-cost, tempo card worries me.

Feeding Frenzy Rating
Situationally Desirable

I haven’t played this card much in draft, but it has been incredible in my World’s Pyrosaur constructed deck.

Best case scenario with this card is to use it after attacking with Draka, Dragon Tyrant or Pyrosaur as a 0-cost break anything. It can also work nicely with Fire Shaman, Fire Spirit, Flash Fire, Wolf’s Bite, Lightning Storm, Rain of Fire, Smash and Burn, etc. In theory, it can even be strong in a token deck. Attack with a token, they block it, you finish off their champion with this (hasn’t happened for me yet though).

Without any of these specific scenarios, it becomes a lot less reliable and a lot less effective. Using 2 non-recycle cards to break 1 champion isn’t ideal (Fireball into this), nor is getting your 1-cost champion broken in combat in order to finish off the champion that blocked it. Not being able to use the effect on your opponent’s turn keeps this card from being too crazy.

If I have a few of the cards mentioned above, I would prioritize this highly, if not, it’s at least an “or draw 2.”

Fire Spirit Rating
Usually Desirable

Tribute -> draw a card is one of my favorite abilities. 9 or less defense is also significantly less important in limited formats than it is in constructed (Max 1 Drain Essence).

In addition, the ally trigger of Fire Spirit is pretty great. It can incidentally take out most 0-cost champions and some 1-cost champions just by being triggered. This + Rain of Fire, Smash and Burn, Feeding Frenzy, Pyrosaur, Draka’s Fire, etc. can let you semi-incidentally take out 1-cost champions too.

This card significantly overperforms my expectations.

Great Horned Lizard Rating
Situationally Acceptable

It’s both an on-turn and off-turn gold-punisher, but I am not a huge fan of it in either of those roles.

Reverting to 8 defense after being played makes it susceptible to more removal than I like, and 7 offense isn’t amazing even with breakthrough. 10/11 is a strong off-turn blocker and 10/11 breakthrough, blitz is no slouch on-turn either, but it doesn’t give as much to me as other on-turn gold-punishers.

For example, Rampaging Wurm hits harder and leaves a 14/14 in play. Avenging Angel and Gold Dragon are airborne, gain me some health, and largely need to be removed. Draka, Dragon Tyrant is a 9/9 airborne champion that sweeps away a lot of 0-cost champions every turn it attacks. Djinn of the Sands can draw if I don’t need the airborne 8/8 blitzer. Knight of Elara and White Knight draw me a card. I would happily take any of these over Great Horned Lizard, even though Great Horned Lizard is the only one with breakthrough.

Tribute -> +3/+3 to dinosaurs could be nice, especially with Ankylosaurus and Triceratops, especially since this can be played mid-combat as a combat trick, and it has worked great for multiple people I know. But, the AoE dinosaur buff has never made a difference in any game I have played.

Lightning Strike Rating
Always First Pickable

One of the best 0-cost cards in the game.

5 damage breaks:
All tokens (removing chump blockers), Little Devil, Raxxa’s Enforcer, Winged Death, Corpsemonger, Rift Summoner, Spawning Demon, The Gudgeon, Zealous Necromancer, Angel of Death, Corpse Taker, Dark Assassin, Dark Knight off-turn, Dark Leader, Drinker of Blood off-turn, Guilt Demon, Necromancer Lord, Soul Hunter, Succubus, Thrasher Demon, Vampire Lord off-turn,

Bodyguard, Village Protector unprotected, Brand Rebel Fighter, Noble Martyr, Paros Rebel Leader, Rabble Rouser, Angel of Mercy, Courageous Soul, Faithful Pegasus, High King, Priest of Kalnor, Priestess of Angeline, Standard Bearer, Watchful Gargoyle, White Dragon,

Citadel Raven, Fairy Trickster, Citadel Scholar even with a draw 2, Elara the Lycomaner, Knight of Shadows, Mist Guide Herald, Shadow Imp, Temporal Enforcer, Forcemage Apprentice, Juggernaut off-turn, Keeper of Secrets, Memory Spirit, Muse, Ogre Mercenary, Thought Plucker, Time Bender, Warrior Golem, Winter Fairy, Blue Dragon,

Pyrosaur, Spore Beast, Bellowing Minotaur next turn, Cave Troll, Hunting Raptors, Wurm Hatchling if played without ally trigger, and Fire Shaman

It can also draw 2 instead.