Month: April 2020

I was extolling the virtues of Resurrection in Discord today before my drive back from work. By the time I got home, I’d realized I had so much more to say, and that I needed to write an article about this very good card. (Ha ha Martin, for the first time ever it’s actually a Good alignment card too.)

Why This Card Sucks

Many people think this is just a trash draw 2. The bottom effect only works when

• a non-token champion of yours breaks (Sorry Scrap Tokens),
  • Banish effects (Palace Guard) don’t enable it
  • Bounce effects (Erase) don’t enable it
  • Transform effects (Wave of Transformation) don’t enable it
• your gold is up,
• your opponent doesn’t immediately banish it from your discard pile before passing initiative (Amnesia)

Also, it can only target something the same turn it was broken. If you don’t meet all of those above conditions, at the exact time a champion you actually want to resurrect breaks (while also having Resurrection in hand) …

Further, in limited, you are less likely to have amazing champions to return to play with it, and it’s in by far the worst alignment for loyalty effects. (In app there are only Brand, Kark, Markus, Angel of Light, High King, Priest of Kalnor, and White Knight.)

With the incredibly narrow use case for its main ability and the fact that it is in the worst alignment to commit to overall, how could it possibly be one of my favorite cards?

Basic Strength and Some Examples

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In general, Resurrection’s strength comes when you are able to meet all of the above conditions to resurrect a strong 1-cost slow champion off-turn. When that happens, it’s essentially as if you Surprise Attacked that champion into play; few two card combos in Epic are as strong as Surprise Attack -> Kong.

Other great targets include Raging T-Rex, Mist Guide Herald, Raxxa, and Silver Wing Savior. (When you use Resurrection to bring back Silver Wing Savior, the Resurrection you played is in your discard pile when Savior’s Tribute ability resolves, so you can return that Resurrection to hand for infinite recursion with no loss in net handsize.)

I frequently run it in constructed alongside another 1-cost Good card (Urgent Messengers/Justice Prevails) to enable me to run three 0-cost Good cards (Second Wind/Brave Squire). The best case scenario is excellent, and the worst case scenario is draw 2.

Get Ahead, Stay Ahead Intersection

The main thing I wanted to touch on with this article is how well Resurrection works within my Get Ahead, Stay Ahead playstyle. Until today, I hadn’t thought about this, but it quite clearly illustrates why I love this card and keep coming back to it.

Brief Recap

Quickly, my Get Ahead, Stay Ahead strategy revolves around three points

• On an empty board: either play an “Establishing card” or pass
• When Ahead on board: attack then pass, if opponent spends gold -> “punish”
• When Behind on board: play a “Reestablishing card” to get ahead or empty board

“Establishing cards” are effects that give you immediate value that your opponent has a hard time completely/efficiently removing for only 1 gold. Raging T-Rex is the best 1-cost example because no matter how your opponent removes it, you’ve still at minimum gained +1 net card in hand. Token producing cards like Murderous Necromancer can establish because they are hard to completely/efficiently remove off-turn for 1 gold. 0-cost champions (especially blitzers, Little Devil) can establish because they put a threat into play without depleting your gold.

“Pass,” in this context, refers to attempting to end your turn while both you and your opponent still have your respective golds available for the turn. Either your opponent makes a play or they go to their turn both golds unspent.

“Punish” or “on-turn and off-turn gold punishers” are cards that are especially strong to play while your opponent’s gold is down, and they are likely to provide extreme immediate advantage, mainly damage to your opponent. “On-turn punishers” are primarily blitz champions with 6+ health (Dark Eyes) because they can immediately deal damage to your opponent while your opponent can’t Drain Essence, Zombie Apocalypse, or otherwise remove them with a 1-cost card. “Off-turn punishers” are typically ambush champions (Rift Summoner).

“Reestablishing cards” are effects that ideally both remove an opponent’s threat(s) in play and create your own (Sea Titan). Since you generally play “Reestablishing” and “Establishing” cards when your opponent still has a gold available, they need to have incredibly powerful immediate effects to prevent your opponent from punishing you! If absolutely necessary, board clears (Apocalypse) can be used to re-empty the board, but if your opponent’s gold is up, expect to be punished.

For a more in depth explanation of why and how all of this works, check out my full article (it’s one of my best).

The entirety of Get Ahead, Stay Ahead revolves around getting you ahead on board with your gold available. From this position, your opponent has to act, usually spending their gold, or they will eventually lose. When they’re forced to spend their gold to deal with one of your threats, immediately getting that threat back into play, especially off-turn, can be back breaking. At minimum, they will need to spend another gold to deal with that champion again. We are going to look at two of my decks that currently run Resurrection and break down why it is particularly powerful in both.

Sage Untargetables

Brief Overview

This deck was specifically designed to beat Wild decks in the March 2020 monthly tournament. It is a brutal Get Ahead, Stay Ahead deck that relies on using Kong/Sea Titan to get ahead early and then Steel Golem to win games before we can get burned out. The untargetables negate potential disruption such as Erase, Hasty Retreat, or Spore Beast. Mist Guide Herald is included to get us to these cards either by putting them directly into play with its tribute or by getting us past 5 other cards.

Resurrection is mainly included, in combination with Angel of the Gate, to get us access to 3 copies of Second Wind to help us outrace heavy burn. It also functions as our 28-31 card draw effects (not counting Surprise Attack). The only champions we actively want to Resurrect are the four above. Ice Drake and Juggernaut are situational Resurrect targets. Angel of the Gate, Crystal Golem, and Helion usually are not.

Everything else is included either to support Kong/Sea Titan/Steel Golem or because they synergize well with them.

Why’s Resurrection Powerful Here?

Our Kongs and Sea Titans are our best cards against Wild. They immediately swing the board back in our favor after Wild arrogantly establishes with some of the best establishing cards in the game (Raging T-Rex, Brachiosaurus). Against Wild we never want to spend our gold first and, if possible, we always want our first gold spent to be a Kong or Sea Titan response.

Once we’ve played a Kong or Sea Titan ideally while our opponent’s gold is down (possibly off-turn with Surprise Attack), Resurrection acts as 3 additional copies of either that can even be played off-turn. Wild decks in general and aggressive Wild decks in specific, basically just can’t beat two plays of Kong/Sea Titan (especially Sea Titan). After initiating with Kong/Sea Titan, Steel Golem becomes the main untargetable threat, and even if the Wild deck can manage to deal with it once, they generally won’t be able to do it again in the same game.

When we don’t get lucky enough to start with any Kongs or Sea Titans, Mist Guide Herald (and Resurrection) step up. MGH, even if it doesn’t find Kong/Sea Titan on its first try, at minimum digs us closer to them while providing a 3/2 airborne blocker and probably an intermediately helpful extra champion. When we cash in MGH as a chump blocker, we can rip our Resurrection to bring it back and do some more digging. Going through 10 to 15 cards (if we hit a second MGH) makes our chances of finding our game winning bash brothers (Kong/Sea Titan) that much more likely while also blunting our opponent’s aggression.

For our situational cards, lets start with Ice Drake. The main reason we would want to Resurrect Ice Drake is to give us a second turn in a row of expending our opponent’s board while we work towards finding our necessary pieces (Kong/Sea Titan or Deadly Raid). How it works is we Ice Drake our opponent’s board the first turn they present a threatening attack. If we can’t then kill our opponent on the swing back attack on our turn, we can save Ice Drake as a blocker for their next attack. When Ice Drake breaks, we Resurrect it, expend their board again, and launch our next swing back. Extra copies of Ice Drake can give us a massive edge in racing champion based decks.

Juggernaut is not a card we actively want to play against Wild unless we can finish them off with it. That 3 health is too vulnerable to too much of what Wild has, and we can’t afford to go down a gold in play to them. However, Juggernaut is one of if not our best card against control, specifically Kark. As a breakthrough blitzing threat that draws a card when it comes into play and attacks for 9, it is super threatening. Further, since it is unbreakable on our turn, it dodges Zombie Apocalypse and 0-cost breaking removal like Consume while our gold is down. By the time Juggernaut loses its unbreakable, we have our gold back up and ready to Resurrect it, if the control player can only remove it by breaking. It is fairly unlikely they would have double consume early in a game unless they know the matchup and got lucky. So, if they want to deal with the Resurrected Juggernaut, there’s a reasonable chance they’ll have to spend their gold on it.

Angel of the Gate can be Resurrected if it’s our opponent’s turn and we either need to gain health and/or they have no airborne champions. Crystal Golem can be Resurrected if we just need an untargetable champion to launch a Deadly Raid. Helion can be Resurrected for its excellent Loyalty 2 ability, but the only time it would generally get broken would generally be to a board clear where we want to get something else back, to desperation, or when it is our only champion in play. In that final case, spending a gold to get an 8/8 back usually isn’t worthwhile enough.

Deck Conclusion

Resurrection is particularly powerful in this deck because getting even just one extra play of our incredibly powerful champions can be game winning, especially off-turn. Further, since our deck relies on such a small spread of champions, Resurrection gives a bit of redundancy we are otherwise lacking.

Even though Final Task works the same way on both MGH and Ice Drake (to a lesser extent Juggernaut), it is no substitute because maintaining the body of Kong/Sea Titan is necessary to make multiple attacks or hold off our opponent’s potential attacks while we look for Deadly Raid. Also, we really want Second Winds for the health gain and the recycle to get us to our Kongs/Sea Titans. 

Midrange Wild

Brief Overview

This a fairly typical unrefined Wild midrange deck I’ve been messing around with to potentially run next constructed monthly to hunt Kark. It is a Get Ahead, Stay Ahead list shifted to the extremes to fight the aggressive Wild matchup and the Kark matchup with cards that are great in one but potentially quite bad in the other. There are some similar supplemental  packages to the Sage untargetables list but we trade out the Sage untargetable package for the Wild package (Raging T-Rex, Brachiosaurus, Smash and Burn, Strafing Dragon), 0-cost breakthrough effects, and Scarros as big burn with a big body.

Resurrection is once again included primarily to get access to Second Wind. Angel of the Gate is significantly more questionable without Sea Titan working together with Kong to create situations for off-turn gold punishers. It is also the only 1-cost champion we wouldn’t potentially want to get back with Resurrection.

Why Resurrection’s Powerful Here?

Champion-based Wild Midrange is just that: champion-based. It relies on playing the best establishing champions (Raging T-Rex, Brachiosaurus) and the best punishers (Strafing Dragon, Draka Dragon Tyrant, Draka’s Enforcer, Scarros Hound of Draka). There are 3 Kongs for Reestablishing against Wild decks, but they are quite weak against control, without a breakthrough effect. Since we will be establishing immediately, our opponent, particularly control opponents, will frequently spend the first turn drawing cards. This lets us move into the next turn ahead on board with a gold available: the perfect position to play either a gold-punisher or Resurrection.

Once again, Resurrection potentially gives us 3 more copies of our powerful cards, but this time the deck has a bit more redundancy built into it, so we’ll either have more opportunities to use it, or we can patiently wait to get it on the exact right champion. I’ve Resurrected a fair amount of Raging T-Rexs and that grinding card advantage is oppressive. Works by Resurrecting Brachiosaurus + a draw 2 too. Scarros to clear a board of tokens, hit the opponent for 5+, and then threaten an attack of 11 potentially with breakthrough can quickly chew through an opponent’s health. As can Strafing Dragon. Draka just ends token decks by removing their board and clocking them at 9 damage a turn. Draka’s Enforcer is a card we’re happy to play off turn anyway. Finally, we of course have Mist Guide Herald. It can find the most important 1-cost card for the matchup, and Resurrection can either help us dig for it twice or potentially Resurrect that card after we get it.

Deck Conclusion

While this list isn’t refined, it does do a reasonable job in demonstrating how Resurrection especially with MGH can reinforce the strength of champion-based decks. This is especially true for this deck since many of its champions are oppressively powerful against specific decks. That being said, unless you are actively looking to include 0-cost Good cards, Resurrection’s unreliability could be too much a liability. Part of the strength in running it right now is that your opponent isn’t expecting it, so they frequently won’t drop the Amnesia after clearing your board. If the card does get more popular, there are plenty of ways to play around it.

Overall Conclusion

Resurrection deserves much more credit than it is given, particularly if you play the Get Ahead, Stay Ahead way. It is one of my major fallbacks in constructed when I want those sweet, sweet alignment-independent Good 0’s.