Spreadsheet: Slow Champions
Category: Re-establishing, Single Target Big (S-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: E-Tier
Tier 8
While technically an alignment-independent re-establishing champion, 3 health on a 1-cost champion (especially a slow one) is a massive liability which threatens to remove the actual “establishing” part of the card. Since it can die to a lot of high-quality 0-cost removal or incidental effects that your opponent will generally want anyway, it becomes only a bit more than on-turn removal, that can’t be used in combat, and doesn’t have an “or draw 2” option.
In the current draft meta, 0-cost champions are valued significantly more than 1-cost champions, so having a 1-cost champion that generally aims to remove another 1-cost champion could leave you with a dead card for a while. Further, 0-cost cards that can answer this effectively like Wither, Consume, Fireball, etc. are all drafted highly, to answer those highly valued 0’s, so your opponent will be more likely to have an easy answer to the body.
In constructed, 3 damage sweeps are also common (Draka, Scarros, Draka’s Fire), as are 3 offense ambush champions (Brand and Mobilize). I haven’t even had much success with Palace Guard performing the same role, since reacting by spending your gold first just to remove 1 champion and gain a 6 offense champion (or 8) with no evasion is so unimpactful.
So fun to read a review almost every day!
I was a bit disappointed with this card, the title promises something cool, like you gain 1 gold when it kills something 🙂 could be really cool.
Or what about dealing aoe damage and drawing a crd (or just being allowed to recycle) for each enemy killed by this.
The actual cards seems like a much worse version of palace guard. They could have given it for example righteous to make it a but more exciting.
In general, I would love to see them be a bit more crazy with the card design. They are quite timid and for a game called epic. Still loving the game though! 🙂
Glad to hear that this output schedule is enjoyable as it has been much easier on me to follow then trying to get out a bunch at once as I did before. (The next one is a particularly spicy one.)
Yeah, that name is not particularly impressive with this card, especially with the Mandalorian going on right now. Maybe Vengeance Seeker could have worked better to explain the high offense, low defense and general mediocrity of the card.
With regard to the simplicity, to be fair, this is from their Duel Deck set designed to be as simple as possible for new players, so I can give them a pass on that. These are spoilers from their next core set and card packs and there are a ton of interesting cards coming: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1172937197/epic-jungle-with-star-realms-high-alert-add-ons/posts/2944945
Looking at them again though, the effects are fairly mechanically simple, but their implications are pretty crazy.
Also to be fair, I think we may have gotten used to the Epicness that is Epic. The fact that you can play a 14/14 blitz or a 30/30 on turn one is pretty epic, as is the fact that a 1/1 that costs the same and relies on attacking is much better. Things that also cost the same, Banish all champions on your opponent’s turn and give them four 1/1 tokens, put all champions in all discard piles into play, put a 4/4 into play that makes a 2/1 every other turn (okay maybe not that one).
This is still a 1-cost champion that can be played on turn one that threatens to attack for over 1/4 of your opponent’s health after removing a 1-cost champion. The equivalent of about a 1-mana 5/2, when this champion enters play exile target champion (to be fair its mana cost is more accurately X where X=all the mana you could produce this turn). However yes, most of the cards are very mechanically simple with the exception of a few of the Drinker of Bloods, Army of the Apocalypses, Teleports, Village Protectors, Spore Beasts, Fairy Entrancers, etc.