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This card is one of the best cards in Duels. It is a Draw 2 And ambush champion. The fact that it is a champion is enormous. It means that you can grab it with Tier 1 card Mist Guide Herald. You can also replay it if bounced, unlike Urgent Messengers or Flanking Maneuver. Finally, unlike the other Draw 2 And champions (The Gudgeon, Raging T-Rex, Garbage Golem) you can inherently play it off-turn to draw 2.
In draft it is a bit worse than some of the other Draw 2 Ands because its And is a bit less impactful.
This is technically a board clear, but it can only be played on-turn and returns all of your opponent’s champions to hand. So, if they were swarming you with a bunch of 0-cost champions, they can just replay them. If they had strong Tribute/Loyalty or Blitz/Ambush champions, they can just replay them for value. Strictly as a board clear, it is pretty much only reasonable if your opponent has a bunch more 1-cost champions in play than you do, or they have a bunch of tokens. The reason why similar card Reset is so much better is because that one can be played off-turn to disrupt any 1-gold assault, especially token (Insurgency) or untargetable/unblockable assaults (Steel Titan).
However, you don’t bring this primarily to clear your opponent, even though it does tack a discard onto your opponent as well, you bring it because it lets you return your own champions to hand. For example, play a bunch of 0-cost champions with Blitz (Dark Knight) or Tribute/Loyalty effects (Javelin Thrower), attack with the blitzers, play this, replay your 0-cost champions, gain double value. Combine this with Time Walker and Reset for redundancy, and you have a base for a deck. The fact that this returns your opponent’s champions to hand is more of a bonus effect that buys you time against non-blitz, non-burn champions.
The discard frequently won’t be super relevant because bounce and discard effects generally have anti-synergy. If you are returning a bunch of non-token champions to your opponent’s hand, they probably will have plenty of cards that they don’t mind discarding one. They might even have a Markus, Soul Hunter, or Smash and Burn to gain value out of the discard effect.
Only have three 0-costs slots and you can’t decide if you want Vanishing or Hasty Retreat? Why not both? This. This is both. More importantly though, breaks Muse/Thought Plucker.
I honestly don’t have much more to say about this card. If you want to be able to return a champion to hand for 0 or deal 2 damage, take this card. The fact that it doesn’t have card draw on it does make it a bit harder to fit into decks as opposed to Hasty/Vanishing, but if you already have solid card draw, the versatility of this card is much greater than either. Further, you can finish people off with this card.
The discard a card from your hand drawback can also be exploited with cards like Soul Hunter, Noble Martyr, etc., and, if you wanted to, you could even play this on your opponent’s turn when there are no champion in play just to discard a card from your hand.
Card is great. … …
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Okay fine you all know I can’t leave any interesting card like this with so little analysis. The main decks that would want a 0-cost card that can return champions to hand are exceedingly quick decks like Aggro-Burn/Blitz-Kark and/or tempo based decks like my Untargetables deck revolving around Sea Titan/Kong and gold-punishers. Essentially, decks that don’t care about giving your opponent the possibility of gaining additional gold value, either because you want to end the game before they can reasonably spend another gold to replay the card, and/or because you can destroy them if they spend their gold first on a turn. This card is great at removing: an ambush potential-blocker during an attack, an off-turn gold-punisher like Angel of the Gate, or an on-turn gold-punisher like Draka (all without needing to spend a gold).
This card can even return one of your own champions to hand to replay, like Brand Rebel Fighter, possibly even after it has blocked something (either before damage if Brand would break or after if Brand would do the breaking). Tricks like this enables Disappearing Act to help blunt attacks by Untargetable champions that it normally couldn’t. Similar to Spore Beast, it is also great for removing one big defense champion after it solo blocks your breakthrough champion, to push through all that sweet damage.
Solid single target removal for limited. When played on-turn, it gives a slight advantage, particularly helpful against aggressive, burn-heavy opponents. That advantage can also be gained on turn 1, unlike No Escape, so it can effectively function as removal for your blitzing 0-cost champion against Master Zos, etc. Further, since my playstyle generally isn’t trying to burn my opponent out, the off-turn downside is practically non-existent in most drafts. Sure they gain 5 health, but they can’t (directly) affect the board with that.
Constructed almost never wants single target removal, unless it has a major upside that can be gained off-turn (Erase/Drain Essence) or a massive body attached (Kong/Sea Titan). Single target removal is just too unimpactful by itself for an entire turn’s gold in constructed. That being said, it is an Evil Draw 2 which has value—due to the power of their Ally effects and cards like Zannos Corpse Lord, Unquenchable Thirst, and even Herald of Scara. I think I experimented with this a bit, and it was okay enough that I don’t rule it out as a constructed possibility.
One of the best off-turn board clears in the game, possibly the best in limited generically? It most circumstances, you will be able to clear off all of your opponents’ relevant threats and leave them with next to nothing, since incidental tokens are so common/powerful. Further, since you know you will want to be playing this, you can maneuver your board to be nothing but worthwhile champions, by trading off your tokens for instance. Stand Alone wishes it was this card, especially since this is strictly better in the situation where you only have a Sea Titan in play. You need to be aware of this card’s existence so you can play around it.
Because this card is so powerful that people need to be aware of its existence, if you play in such a way to apparently set it up, your opponent might play around it, such as not blocking that weird human token attack of yours. However, this does open a potential bluffing avenue. Good…Sage stuff.
There are also ways to guarantee your opponent will have a token in play (Invoke Pact, Necrovirus, etc.) so you can play this, but I view building for that potentiality as largely just overkill. Soul Storm is strong enough on its own.
This is a re-establishing card, yet I don’t actually like it that much. While it can block all tokens, which is important, it at best trades with all relevant 1-cost airborne champions and loses to most. It can still fly over non-airborne champions to break a board stalemate, but at 4 offense for a 1-gold card, it isn’t all that threatening.
The other main reason why I don’t value it higher is the current state of the limited meta: 0-cost champions. If my opponent is destroying me with 0-cost champions, targeted removal probably isn’t going to save me, which is why I value cards like War Machine so much higher as re-establishing champions. Kong and Sea Titan stay relevant though because they’re also enormous threats. I’ve even demoted Palace Guard and Reaper&& to B-tier alongside this. Still perfectly reasonable cards, but I would rather commit my slow champion slots to other cards.
I tried this in my Airborne demons deck, and it did stay in for quite a while, but at the end of the day, the targeted removal and 4 offense were just too unimpactful. Further, the demon type currently only benefits from Raxxa’s Displeasure, and Raxxa’s Displeasure doesn’t synergize great with a lot of targeted removal.
I stopped doing my reviews in alphabetical order for this card. Initially, I thought it was a pretty strong Dark Draft card but a mediocre constructed card that I could effectively dismiss. A 7/7 airborne, ambush champion that kills small things and gains some health is almost all of the things I want in limited; bundle them together for a gold and you’ve got a happy Tom. However, offer that to me in constructed, and I’ll disgustedly raise my eyebrows at it. The main reasoning behind this dichotomy is the radical difference in deck composition between the two formats.
In limited, the current meta dictates that you flood your deck with 0-cost cards and use your 1-cost cards to draw more/support them. Establishing/Re-establishing 0-cost champions that you can play when both golds are up are particularly strong/popular like Thrasher Demon/Shadow Imp and Javelin Thrower/Forcemage Apprentice. Dark One’s Apprentice is great against those cards. You can reasonably play Dark One’s Apprentice either while your opponent’s gold is up, to immediately remove that threat before it can finish attacking, or when their gold is down to incidentally remove it while gaining some health and putting a sizable evasive threat into play off-turn.
Spending your gold before your opponent is frequently a terrible idea if it can be avoided, but a Dark One’s Apprentice played in the right circumstance is an exception (especially on the first turn going second). At minimum, you guaranteed-remove a small-threat card and gain three health. If your opponent responds with a re-establishing card like Kong, they’re probably down two cards in hand to your one, and you draw a card to replace it on your turn. If they respond with an on-turn, 1-cost, blitzing gold-punisher, you have at minimum a hard-to-remove 1-cost, 7-defense, airborne chump-blocker that can block practically anything if absolutely necessary, or, generally better, a 7/7 airborne champion to attack and race with for next turn (your opponent is also still probably down two cards to your one). Frequently more likely on the first turn, your opponent will just draw 2 cards and can’t apply more 0-cost pressure because your 7/7, immune to Raxxa’s Curse, airborne champion blocks almost any of them. In a format so dominated by 0-cost cards, favorable card-in-hand trades can frequently be more important than gold-for-gold trades.
In constructed, I initially assumed it didn’t do enough since constructed is so streamlined to not allow reasonable Jack of All Trades cards. It doesn’t immediately deal damage/apply pressure or remove particularly relevant targets against Kark, and it’s both too small and provides too little health gain against Wild. I did have a eureka moment though, where I remembered both this and similarly initially-underwhelming Herald of Scara are demons. I thought I might be able to build an airborne demon deck that relies on token chump-blocking (Plentiful Dead) to stall my opponent’s attacks long enough to blow them out with Raxxa’s Displeasure (or to outrace them in the air). Preliminary testing showed promise, and by the time I finished my monthly constructed run I realized Dark One’s Apprentice is actually … fine … to mediocre.
It was an okay off-turn threat, but I was frequently in situations where I wanted an off-turn threat, but I couldn’t get real value out of the tribute. Rift Summoner would have probably been better in most of those situations. The best I could frequently do was play it into an attacking airborne champion to trade and gain 3 health; so, a worse Drain Essence that I could pull from Mist Guide Herald and return from my discard pile with Scarred Cultist. The only spot where it was decent was to clear out potential chump-blocking Mist Guide Heralds when I needed a threat. I did end up cutting the Raxxa’s Displeasure to shove in The Risen and Demonic Rising to have more play against Kark, only to proceed into a tournament with no Karks. Overall, I still view it favorably for draft, and if you include it in your constructed deck I’ll only raise my eyebrows questioningly, so progress.
(I did bump The Risen up to tier 4 from 5 and Herald of Scara up to tier 5 from 7 due to the mentioned Evil deck.)
It’s a draw 2 And. The +2/+2 to a wild champion hasn’t mattered for me yet, so the And effect is therefore about half as strong as Urgent Messengers’, so still an amazing card. It does provide more support to wolf decks and enables Hunting Pack to deal 8 damage, which while certainly relevant for breaking airborne champions like Draka’s Enforcer, isn’t enough to break Draka nor Raging T-Rex.
I like tokens. I like card draw. This is both. I like it.
The on-turn board clear that gives both players tokens is also quite interesting. It can be a bit hard to exploit due to the fact that most one-sided small board clears are tied to Slow champions, but cards like Champion of the Wicked and Fireball can break the symmetry. In most situations (unless your opponent has one of those small board clear champions like War Machine/Raxxa), your opponent will just attack into your zombies, and you’ll trade with them, but, you don’t have to trade.
For instance, if you’re at 30 and your opponent is at 15, you can just take the first hit in preparation to swing back unblocked on your turn, especially if you are holding a slow small board clear effect. If you do take this line, you need to pay careful attention to how your opponent reacts to determine your next line though, especially in app.
If you opponent immediately attacks with their next zombie, especially if all three are queued up in an attack separately queue, there is a reasonable chance your opponent will follow up by breaking all zombies in play (Flash Fire/Wither etc.). Therefore, you probably want to block the next two attacks, unless you think they made a mistake and didn’t even consider the fact that you wouldn’t block.
If your opponent spends some time to think after you decline the first trade, they probably weren’t expecting that. If they don’t attack with the others after that, this generally means that they actively want to trade so they’ll wait until you attack to do so. If they do attack with the next zombies, it could mean that they either do have a way to clear all champions, especially if they are low on health, or, if high on health, they might be accepting the trade of 6 damage each turn. Deciding which scenario is more likely based on the current board state, cards in hands, health total, and opponent’s preferences will determine whether or not you should block. (Your opponent also might decide to keep attacking out of fear of you playing a small board clear on your turn to blow out their blockers.)
If your opponent spends a significant amount of time thinking before making their first attack, they are most likely considering what to do just in case you choose not to block, so they can immediately react after you make your decision. This is partly done to make sure attacking is the correct play, but also to negate directly giving you the information above. (However, they’ve still given you some information this way.)
While it is frequently “correct” to trade zombies for zombies, taking 2 damage from that first hit can be valuable, even if it ends up “just” gaining you insight into your opponent and their potential cards in hand.
In draft, this is reasonable both after your opponent spends their gold, as a punisher, and even potentially before. It can give you a chump blocker for a non-evasive attacking champion (that your opponent can’t use a slow champion to answer before blockers), draw you closer to a more appropriate answer, and give you two more back-up chump blockers just in case.
In constructed, it is excellent in token decks (especially combo token decks) because it gives you tokens, draws you a card, and provides a board clear in case things go really poorly, like Brachiosaurus -> Brachiosaurus -> sadness. There is also the potential to board clear with this on-turn into off-turn Plague Zombies/Surprise Attacked Drinker of Blood -> Wither/Flash Fire. Overall a solid card. That being said, using this against a wild player into them responding with Draka, Dragon Tyrant on their turn is brutal, since you just handed them an extra 6 damage a turn, but Draka is always going to be brutal against tokens.
Every time my opponents play it against me, it is amazing. Playing it to an empty board is excellent, as is playing it to a contested board. You get a 5/5 body that hits hard and bullies demon tokens, and you get two human tokens that can pump your damage to 7 a turn (from a 0-cost card) or chump block. So, it can theoretically chump block your big 1-cost champion for three turns, and the 5/5 body means at least one chump block is effectively guaranteed, if needed. The three bodies you get make you resilient to targeted 0-cost removal and, since War Priest is a 0-cost champion, it is incredibly resilient to bounce effects (AoE bounce in particular). This is a card that is deceptively powerful (or at least it initially deceived me as to its power). And yet, I still continue to draft cards over it and then get frustrated when it bodies me, like Thought Plucker.
Moving into constructed, it is a solid addition to human tokens since Secret Legion and Demonic Rising immediately weaponize it, as will Ambush Party, Rise of the Many, and Bold Leader. It can also theoretically just chill on an empty board whether before gold is spent or as a follow-up start after a board clear (following your opponent’s next gold expenditure of course). War Priest might be decent in other constructed decks as well, but it is currently difficult to fit a bunch of 1-cost Good cards into non-Good decks, and there is a bunch of competition for 0-cost cards for Good decks.
