Category: Epic Card Game

Runek, Dark Duelist

Draft: Always Acceptable
Constructed: Tier 8

Bad in constructed because it’s too small to race Wild, it has no evasion against Evil tokens, and it doesn’t provide any additional value (even though it does survive on-turn board clears). It is the only Ambush Ritual of Scarra enabler, but that’s not unfair enough to justify inclusion.

In limited, it’s a reasonable on-turn or off-turn gold-punisher. It breaks almost anything it blocks or is blocked by and survives attacking into anything. And, like all reasonably-sized ambush champions, it can be strong against attacking 0-cost blitz champions (especially since I’ve started to “disrespect” the turn one play and attack with a blitzing 0-cost champion while both players’ golds are up).

Turn-One 0-cost Blitz Champion is Over-Utilized

This tactic’s obvious strength lies in the fact that it allows you, the current player, to apply pressure without spending your gold. In most cases, your opponent, not wanting to spend their gold either, just takes the damage for free. In this most basic scenario it is amazing, but it relies on your opponent both knowing and respecting the danger of spending their gold first (in addition to not having a 0-cost answer).

If your opponent does spend their gold to deal with your 0-cost blitzing champion, for instance by playing Runek, Dark Duelist in an attempt to block, what then? Well, if you hadn’t thought that far ahead, you might just be trading a card to get your opponent’s gold down, while also getting yourself behind on the board. In this case, you both end up at 4 cards in hand, but your opponent has a flipped champion in play. I’ve been catching opponents in this state repeatedly. Further, I’m rarely punished for attempting it.

The real potential of the turn-one 0-cost blitzer is only unlocked when you can actually support it, by punishing your opponent for having the audacity to spend their gold first on your turn.

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Fast Removal

Opponent ambushes in a 1-cost champion to block your 0-cost blitzer? Remove it before it can block. This usually enables your 0-cost champion to go unblocked, deal its damage, and survive until the next turn. The best card for this is Banishment because it also replaces itself, keeping you at 4 cards in hand (dipping down to 3 is a dangerous low).

This support is ineffective against cards like Medusa or Hunting Pack, fast 1-cost removal that leave one or more bodies.

Finishing Blow+

If you can’t remove the 1-cost ambush champion before the block, finishing off the blocker and gaining another strong effect can be just as strong, if not stronger. Buffs such as Smash and Burn or Winds of Change are nice to draw cards and protect your 0-cost champion. Restablishing champions (such as Kong) can avenge your 0-cost champion and retake control of the board. Cards like Blue Dragon are especially powerful here because they can potentially finish off the champion that blocked, leave you a threat in play, and replace themselves in hand. The best version of this type of support is Pelios, Storm Lord.

Pelios, Storm Lord

Draft: Situationally Desirable
Constructed: Tier 7

While bad in constructed because it does nothing incredibly well (no evasion/breakthrough, not enough tribute-damage to break most things by itself, and draw one isn’t enough to make up for the other two issues), in limited if already in Wild it’s actually quite solid because it does a lot of things reasonably well.

As previously alluded to, the best use scenario for this card is to play it after your opponent spent their gold for the turn to finish off a weakened champion. It can also be used as just a straight up establishing champion (effectively a better, Wild-only Mythic Monster), and/or it can pick off a Muse/deal damage to the enemy player directly. Overall, it’s just above average in a lot of different potential roles. One downside though is that if you do use it turn one to finish off an ambush champion that your 0-cost champion ran into, you end up revealing half of your 4 card hand

Aggressive On-Turn Gold Punisher

My favorite support for the turn-one, 0-cost blitzer is undoubtedly the on-turn gold-punisher, but only ones that can draw a card. While 14 damage from a Rampaging Wurm is ridiculous, I’d much rather use a White Knight and lose out on 5 of that damage to maintain a 4+ card handsize. Either way my champion will probably be removed fairly quickly and an extra card is frequently more impactful than 5 health. (The extra card gives you more options and enables you to go longer before needing to play a draw 2.)

On-turn gold-punishers are my favorite type of cards, and we just got arguably the best one in the game, which is also perfect in this situation:

Watch Dark Eyes (oh man) from TomSEpicGaming on www.twitch.tv

Dark Eyes

Draft: Always Desirable+
Constructed: Tier 3

This is my favorite card.

It’s an evasive, blitz champion, that can draw cards, and hits the most important stat-breakpoints. Dark Eyes is the epitome of an on-turn gold-punisher: if your opponent has a gold available, almost all removal can deal with it, but if they don’t, playing it advances your board state, reduces your opponent’s health, and draws to replace itself/advance you towards decking out. In other words, it advances you in all aspects of the game.

The fact that it draws a card whenever it hits your opponent is critical for a few reasons. Against control decks, you absolutely need to deal enough damage to kill them. The main difficulty, however, is being able to supply a consistent stream of threats/damage to outpace both their answers and their healing, both of which are usually more efficient than any of your sources of damage. If you try to just force them down with non-replenishing threats and/or burn, you will eventually run out of cards, which forces you to spend time drawing, in turn enabling your control-opponent to stabilize, which almost inevitably leads to them winning. With Dark Eyes against an opponent who spent their gold, it either hits, which is amazing, or it essentially forces them to discard a 0-cost card to negate the attack. Either way, Dark Eyes will still be there to threaten them next turn.

Due to this, there is the possibility that Dark Eyes could draw more than 1 card for 1 gold. This is particularly strong if you are drawing 0-cost effects that help Dark Eyes continue to get damage through, Wither or Rage for example. Think of it this way though, it’s a Flame Strike, that drew a card and threatens to do both again next turn. If 1 card and 1 gold can deal 16 damage and draw 2 cards, you should win. Finally, having the card draw tied to damaging the opponent (and the blitz not tied to loyalty) makes it incredible with Army of the Apocalypse.

The reason this card might actually see constructed play, however, is because WWG gave it an aggressive statline. 7 defense means there is no 0-cost card that can remove this by itself (aside from Hasty Retreat/Vanishing). Further, 7 defense also means that it can’t be incidentally removed by
Smash and Burn the turn after it has its initial effect. Your opponent must spend a gold specifically to remove this. Even further, in combination with its 8 offense, it’s a monster in the air. Since the standard strong airborne statline is 6/8, Dark Eyes is positioned to beat a significant portion of playable airborne champions, and it even takes out Rescue Griffin.

This card has consistently been amazing for me. I used it repeatedly in limited to great effect, and I’ve even had some early success with it in constructed (significantly more testing required though).

Conclusion

Overall, I’ve seen a lot of people playing 0-cost blitz champions with no worthwhile follow up, and I’ve been punishing them for it. If your best follow up to a contested 0-cost champion is an “or draw 2,” it’s probably better to just hold that champion for later. However, this has gotten to the point where you can potentially bluff highly experienced players. If I know, that my opponent knows, that I know that I shouldn’t play a 0-cost blitz champion without support on turn-one, I can do it anyway and they might not risk spending their gold.

Also, Dark Eyes. Oh man, Dark Eyes, oh man.

Foreword

It’s taken me a while, but I’m finally getting around to writing up my thoughts about the final two Pantheon packs, since my first reaction video on Twitch timed out and I’ve had some time to think about and/or test these cards. I also decided to break these out into smaller chunks (because I realized I could go into more depth/go on longer rants this way and you’d be more likely to read them as opposed to if I put them all together) to make them more accessible.

In addition, Origins 2019 has announced that there will be a 10k Epic tournament this year:

#Origins2019 show co-sponsors, @wwizardgames, will be giving away some serious cash prizes! Players will compete to win their share of $20,000 at the @StarRealmsOrigins $10K Championships and the @EpiccardgameOrigins $10K Championship! Join us, June 12-16 at the @cbusconventions pic.twitter.com/w1vofTjRlg

— Origins Games Fair (@originsgames) December 20, 2018

WWG has not yet provided any further information such as what/which formats, etc.

Card Ratings

Carrion Demon Rating

Limited: Always Desirable
Constructed: Tier 5

Great in limited for all of the reasons you would expect: 0-cost blitz champion, 4 defense, and mass discard pile banish. Currently unplayable in constructed because it’s a 0-cost champion (Raxxa’s Curse), it has no immediate effect, it has no evasion, and the deck that cares about its discard pile the most (The Flock’s Gift/Tatian’s deck) has blockers that don’t mind trading with it. The “Break any champion damaged by this card” allows this to “trade up” with 1-cost champions and activates Ritual of Scarra synergy, but neither of those enable it to compete for the finite constructed 0-cost slots.

Limited

Carrion Demon is better than the guaranteed mass-discard pile banish cards in more aggressive/”get ahead, stay ahead” decks, but it is worse in more control/deck-out focused decks. This is because control decks are frequently “threat-light” meaning that your opponent is more likely to have a better answer saved up for this card when you eventually play it. Therefore, it is less likely it will actually be able to hit your opponent, and as a control deck, you basically need a mass-discard pile banish effect, especially if you are trying to win by decking out. In non-control decks, it is primarily another immediate 0-cost threat in your onslaught, meaning your opponent is less likely to have a strong answer to it, and if they are forced to throw a 1-cost champion in front of it to protect their health and discard pile, trading your 0 for their 1-cost champion is a major tempo advantage.

Constructed

In an environment with plentiful chump blockers, Raxxa’s Curse, and fast enough decks to ignore your 3 attack minion (and their own discard pile), this just isn’t impactful enough. It does have the Demon tag for Raxxa’s Displeasure synergy and what not, but if it can’t connect with the opponent, it’s just a worse Little Devil or stronger-starting but non-growing Thrasher Demon.

Rant

I spent a lot of time thinking about and trying to write this rant about how Carrion Demon illustrated the midrange-tech 0-cost problem, related to the lack of constructed-playable 1-cost discard pile removal, and the non-viability of Sage-based decks due in part to the meta-shift towards punishing discard effects (Plucker). But I couldn’t figure out how to do it adequately.

The gist of it was that if you wanted to consistently attack an opponent’s discard pile, against Scara’s Gift or Nashville’s heavy-recycle combo-Kark-like-decks, you needed to commit at bare minimum six 0-cost slots (Guilt Demon, Keeper of Secrets, Amnesia/Heinous Feast); this in turn prevents you from including otherwise synergistic 0-cost cards, which locks this line of attack off for most decks. Erratic Research and Grave Demon are technically 1-cost cards that can attack your opponent’s discard pile, but they seem just too weak to be worth much: they are one-time effects (so they’re pretty ineffective against decks that consistently burn through their discard pile and keep it at only a few cards at a time) and a draw 2 or an 8/8, evasion-less champion, isn’t worthwhile for most decks.

However, I kept running through potential scenarios that potentially invalidated these thoughts. For example, hard control decks could theoretically run Erratic Research since they need to use draw 2s throughout the game (but hard control is currently ill-positioned against the crazy draw potential of Wild/Sage midrange). An aggressive Raxxa’s Displeasure/Dark One’s Fury/Rift Summoner deck, on the other hand, might be able to run Grave Demon (assuming it can actually break through Scara’s Gift decks before running out of resources). However, even if neither of these are true, I’m not even sure if it would be desirable for every deck to have reliable options to attack discard piles, especially since Amnesia is still reasonably popular anyway.

So, I don’t know…

To address this potential problem, I have been fantasizing about a midrange/aggressive, 1-cost Sage champion with a Sage-specific, repeatable, targeted discard-pile banish effect. Such as

• “Ally->banish 2 cards in a discard pile”
• “Whenever a (Sage) champion you control deals damage to a player, banish a card from that player’s discard pile,” accompanied by a Loyalty effect that deals damage multiple times
• A Carrion Demon effect attached to a 1-cost Sage champion with either unblockable + loyalty 2 -> blitz or ambush + loyalty 2 -> unblockable (probably at 4 or 5 toughness).

Dark Prince

Limited: Frequently Desirable
Constructed: Tier 7

It’s an 8/7 airborne blitz demon. Solid gold punisher, matches up great against 6/8 airborne champions, and you can effectively ignore the expend text, because it’s bad. However, without the demon tag, this would be Tier 9 for constructed because there are better blitzing airborne champions.

Ritual of Scarra

Limited: Situationally Desirable
Constructed: Tier 4

A couple reminders,

• This only counts your evil champions (yo Dark Leader or more practically Zannos)
• It does make your evil champions do the damage, so if you have a “break any champion damaged by this card” champion in play (Carrion Demon), this is effectively a 0-cost “break target champion” (even off-turn)

Therefore, if you have any of those cards in draft, this card is nuts (especially since it’s also an “or draw 2”). Even without those, it is solid in an Evil deck.

However, all of the champions with “break any champion damaged by this card” are weak in constructed. It can still be decent in aggressive, wide Evil token decks because it can let you focus your 1-cost cards on offense (Plague Zombies), but in chip-damage-based control decks it is generally either a worse Consume against small champions or a win-more card when ahead.

Red Mist

Draft: Always Acceptable
Constructed: Tier 6

The dream: play Ice Drake on your opponent’s turn then play this on your turn. The reality: 1-cost Evil draw 2.

I may have used the non-draw effect on this once, and it was a pain to set up, just to break one or two champions. The fact that you generally can’t even attack before playing this, to give your opponent a chance to spend their gold first on your turn (since this would expend one of your champions), holds this back even more.

… … … Reboot Successful.

I received this Pantheon card yesterday to do a spoil/review of it in anticipation of the ability to acquire the final two Pantheon packs at Origins this year, and it fried my circuits if you will.

It’s a funky, off-turn full-tempo-clear, with a positive/negative value backend.

General Implications

1. This is the first off-turn board clear that removes almost all competitive-viable champions and leaves nothing in play on resolution (unlike Wave of Transformation, Martial Law, etc.)
2. If played off-turn, your opponent gains +2 cards in hand, from your gold (unless they only have token champions in play)
3. If played on-turn, you get a clear board and gain +1 card in hand (assuming you have a non-token champion in play)
4. The – or – option is a slightly better version of the 0-cost card Second Wind

Control Implications

1. Off-turn board clear that doesn’t leave an opening for punishes from cards like Demonic Rising or the new card Rise of the Many, amazing
2. Give your opponent back their best champion in play with a bonus +1 card, absolutely horrendous
3. On-turn, Divine Judgement/Martial Law is generally better because your opponent gains nothing and you likely don’t have much of value in play anyway, mediocre 
4. Lol (drawing 2 will almost always be better because you can get to your stronger non-card drawing cards)

To expand on the second implication, control decks generally try to run their opponent out of threats while they slowly kill them. Therefore, giving your opponent back a threat and replenishing their hand is the complete antithesis of control. This is particularly true if you are forced to do this while their gold is up when they have a blitz champion in play. Strafing Dragon is a beating; Silver Wing Savior is potentially worse.

Overall, I see this card being passed up by hard-control decks because the value given to the opponent is too high a cost for the excellent tempo removal, and the weaker -or- option isn’t doing it any favors. (1 card will almost always be better than 5 health for control.)

Combo Implications

1. Same as control, amazing
2. Unlike control, since you are just trying to survive until you can outright win, this is not that bad
3. The off-turn effect is so much stronger for combo, largely irrelevant
4. Draw 2 is better for finding your combo pieces, but for specifically combo Kark decks, +5 health is certainly relevant, as is the ability to potentially keep you alive for one more turn, acceptable

Combo decks win by assembling their combo pieces with an acceptable board state and not dying. Everything else is inevitably irrelevant. While giving your opponent more cards can make surviving more difficult, a highly-effective short-term solution is probably worthwhile, particularly if you can get your opponent’s gold down first.

Further, being able to return utility 0’s like Watchful Gargoyle or Muse before you wipe the board seems quite nice. Ambush the Gargoyle in front of an attacker, draw out your opponent’s Rage, then use this: -1 Rage, free recycle, remove at least one gold’s worth of tempo from your opponent, value.

Also, this can potentially be a strong answer to the Demon decks that gave Kark trouble. If all of their threats are powerful ambush champions without aggressive blitz effects, this prevents those threats from actually being able to attack, even though your opponent can keep replaying them. (Zannos would still be a problem though.)

Royal Intervention seems great for Combo.

Aggro Implications

1. This might be worth considering as an answer to an early all–in by your opponent that also gives you back direct damage with a Strafing Dragon, Fire Shaman, or Little Devil, possible tech choice?
2. If your opponent goes to 0, it doesn’t matter how many cards they have, and it only draws 1 actual card towards potential health gain, reasonable
3. Aggro go face on-turn, bad
4. No, against all decks except other aggressive decks, your health is essentially irrelevant. If it gets to the point where a non-aggressive deck can beat you, you’ve almost certainly already lost

Royal Intervention might see some tech play in aggro, but probably wouldn’t be more than a one or two-of.

Midrange

1. Potentially reasonable, if your opponent overcommits and spends their gold first on a turn
2. Since you are trying to apply consistent pressure to run your opponent out of answers, any card you draw them is a problem
3. Draw your self an extra card while also resetting a board that gets out of hand and return your most relevant champion to hand, powerful
4. If you are at 7+ cards in hand consistently and are against a deck where the board clear isn’t going to be relevant, +5 health could be worth more than a card, particularly if you would have had to discard it anyway, begrudgingly acceptable?

Midrange wants to play this on-turn, for the most part, and midrange decks can use niche board clears like this that they can exploit. Unfortunately, banish makes it harder to protect more of your champions, but there are some clever things that can be done with this card. It can also infinite loop with Silver Wing Savior. I look forward to experimenting with it.

Conclusion

I love the design of this card, not thrilled with the -or- effect though. On a side note, I will not be at Origins this year, but, if I can maintain my pace from last weekend, I’ll potentially be able to get the video that I’ve spent the last couple months working on finished.

Foreword

Epic is a phenomenal two-player dueling game; I’ve spent excessive amounts of time writing about it because I love the mechanics/depth of play, it has the best limited formats I’ve experienced, and I can actually afford to obtain the cards to compete competitively for money. All that being said, it also has great art (something I can’t remember consciously caring about before).

Pantheon specifically, blew me away. When I was opening my packs at Worlds I just kept gushing about how much I liked individual cards over and over again. On a whole the set is great, but I reached out to WWG to see if I could get the full resolution art for 10 of my subjective favorites (in addition to the clear objectively best one, Cast Out, at the top of the page). Every image can be clicked for its full resolution.

#10

My favorite part of this piece is the use of past champions’ art to clearly illustrate the mechanical effect of the card.

#9

The detail on the titular champion in this piece stands out, and the underlying city in it works well too.

#8

Okay, so I’m biased on this one since it’s one of my favorite cards mechanically from the set, but the vanguard charge into the horde with the backup visibly framed by the champion works great.

#7

The mass gathering extending beyond the card boundaries, the detailed markings, and the ritual being cast create a haunting and intriguing scene.

#6

While I liked the original art on the promo version of this card, the new artwork is even better.

#5

I know people who actively dislike this piece, but I just think the art’s story works beautifully to depict the cards mechanics.

#4

The artwork exceeds the expectation of the card’s name.

#3

OH $#&T!!

#2

I initially thought this was my favorite card art in the set before I looked through them all again for this. The pose, the spear, the clouds.

#1

I would pay to read an Ian Taylor short story about this scene. Epic.

Afterword

These are my 10 (technically 11) favorite pieces from Epic Pantheon. Let me know your favorites either from this set or Epic as a whole. (Yes Cast Out is based on me.) Also not all of the Pantheon art is spectacular **cough**ScrapGolem**cough**.

In the meantime, I have started filming my Epic Constructed Tiered Card Ratings. I am also contemplating starting a massive scale project to work on concurrently. If I go through with it, it’ll probably take weeks to months but would be awesome (hopefully).

Foreword

Now that my Constructed Card Ratings are up (except for the card by card analysis videos), I’m more determined than ever to use/break low rated cards. Erwin here we come.

Decklist

Evil (30) [+3 Erwin]

Slow (11)
3x Angel of Death
2x Necromancer Lord
2x Steed of Zaltessa
2x The Gudgeon
2x Winged Death

Fast (9)
3x Drain Essence
3x Final Task
3x Medusa

0-Cost (10)
2x Corpsemonger
3x Guilt Demon
2x Little Devil
3x Scarred Cultist

Good (0)

Sage (24)

Slow (4)
1x Mist Guide Herald
3x Time Walker

Fast (12)
3x Ancient Chant
3x Erase
2x Fairy Trickster
3x Reset
1x Teleport

0-Cost (8)
3x Erwin, Architect of War
3x Forcemage Apprentice
2x Muse

Wild (6)

Slow ()

Fast (4)
1x Fiery Demise
3x Surprise Attack

0-Cost (1)
2x Hunting Pterosaur

Discussion

The potentially underrated cards that formed the core of what I wanted to do were Erwin, Time Walker, and Scarred Cultist. (Cultist got an incognito tier bump partially because of this). Erwin could theoretically let me hit loyalty in two different alignments which is interesting. Cultist seems like it could be quite powerful, but I wasn’t able to find a deck for it. Time Walker works with both, and it’s the card that keeps making me want to build a 30/30 Evil/Sage 0-cost champion deck. So, that’s where I started.

I’ve built 0-cost blitzer decks in the past (bounce-based and Banishment/No Escape-based), and the biggest hurdle is always Raxxa’s Curse. If I play Little Devil, attack, and it gets Cursed, I fall so far behind. Therefore, instead of focusing on blitzing 0’s for my bounce deck, I wanted to focus on value 0’s, namely Scarred Cultist, Hunting Pterosaur, and Forcemage Apprentice. All of these give immediate value when they enter play, are worthwhile threats if not removed, and are great to get back to hand. If one of these gets Cursed after I’ve already retrieved a card or broken a Muse/Plucker, I’m okay with that.

Next, I worked out which Loyalty 2 champions I wanted to pursue, since Erwin needs a justification for inclusion (beyond playing it before Time Walker/Reset for a free recycle). Obviously I needed to be able to hit Evil loyalty for Cultist, I always want Medusa if possible, Angel of Death is amazing, and Necromancer Lord has some nice tricks in this deck (Final Task, Time Walker, Scarred Cultist). For Sage though, the only particularly interesting one was Time Walker. Therefore, since it is impossible to get 33 of 60 cards in both alignments, I decided to focus on Evil (since I want to hit Evil Loyalty early and often) and drop my Sage count to 24, making room for the Hunting Pterosaurs.

While I seriously dislike including Loyalty 2 cards in factions with less than 33 cards of that alignment or 55% (see my Epic Constructed Process article), in theory, this deck has some tricks to subvert that soft-restriction. First, I only have 3 cards that need loyalty outside of my main faction. Second, these are cards I believe I’ll generally want to wait until a bit later in the game to use. Third, Erwin, once drawn, will spend most of the rest of the game in my hand, meaning I only need 1 more card to activate Walker. Fourth, Ancient Chant Recall off-turn can potentially provide that second Loyalty card, so can Scarred Cultist (although I cut most of my other 1-cost Sage champions…). I’ll be curious to see how well this works. I don’t want to play it safe and go down to 2 Walkers because it is one of the strongest cards in the deck. On the plus side, if I do draw all 3 Walkers, at least I’ll have loyalty for them.

So, the goal of this deck is to win by chipping down the opponent with 0-cost champions while outvaluing them by repeatedly playing incredibly powerful loyalty 2 champions. While less of a focus as in the past, playing a 0-cost champion and attacking or passing is a strong option for this deck. Where similar decks falter, however, is that they don’t have strong on-turn gold punishers to follow up. This is particularly true because Evil has historically had little to no worthwhile on-turn gold punishers. Steed of Zaltessa changes that. If your opponent spends their gold first on your turn, you get to hit them for 11 and leave a 7 defense airborne champion in play, incredible. (I think I want space for 3.) The fact that Evil now has a powerful on-turn gold punisher is a huge deal, and it is one of the reasons why a 6/5 version of Corpse Taker (Cultist) can actually be a powerful card, more on this in the constructed ratings videos. Winged Death is also a strong board-control gold-punisher.

Fairy Trickster is the final interesting piece of this build. Ideally, I’ll ambush it in off-turn, expend it to target my deck, and flip any of my 0-cost champions, effectively drawing and playing that card, not bad. I’ve used it in the past in similar decks, and it’s been okay, but I’m curious about experimenting with it in this deck. One interesting note is that if you use this off-turn and/or during combat and you turn up a slow champion, you can actually play that champion (effectively as if it had ambush). Surprise Attack on a body could be interesting, particularly with Winged Death, Necromancer Lord, Time Walker, Mist Guide Herald, and Winged Death. We’ll see.

Current Concerns

Right now, I’m a bit lighter on card draw than I like to be, especially since I’m being overly generous and counting Fairy Trickster as card draw. Theoretically, the AoE bounces from Time Walker and Reset could keep me stocked with cards, but I won’t know until testing. Due to this lack of card draw concern, I shifted a bit away from Mist Guide Herald, which can in theory be pretty strong when it hits Time Walker. Due to the decreased MGH count, Final Task becomes worse, as does Teleport.

If I continue with this deck, I would probably end up cutting the Tricksters, MGH, Teleport, and decreasing the Final Task count. The 2-2 Little Devil Corpsemonger ratio might shift too. Hopefully the final two as of yet unspoiled Pantheon packs will give the final cards needed for these slots.

Foreword

Below are the 264 currently-legal cards for Epic constructed divided into 9 tiers (Core, Tyrants, Uprising, and 4 of 6 Pantheon packs [not yet available for retail]). In constructed, the power level of each card is heavily influenced by the other cards that are being played, the “meta.” For example, if everyone is playing untargetable champions, non-targeted removal (Scara’s Will and Winged Death) are effectively better while targeted removal (Erase and Drain Essence) are effectively worthless.

Therefore, since I want this first rating to be relevant for as long as possible, I have tried to keep it as meta-agnostic as reasonable. Instead of rating the cards based on their power level at this exact moment, I have grouped them by relative power level that can fluctuate based on the meta. From these tier groupings, I plan on making around 9 videos (about 1 per tier) to explain the cards’ strengths and weaknesses and my rationale for their placements [edit: first video is up going over all of the top tier cards, future videos will be broken up into small packages of similar cards]. The videos also go over community terminology and key Epic concepts. I recommend focusing on tiers 1-5 when building decks. (I might also write a meta-based ranking to accompany this article that I can update as the meta shifts.)

If you disagree or want clarification on any of the cards’ positions below, let me know in the comments. I’ll plan on spending a bit more time talking about those cards in my videos. Also, I know this clashes with most players’ views on at least a few cards, so tell me why I’m wrong!

Since limited formats (like Dark Draft) are entirely different animals, I have a separate Dark Draft Card Ratings as well.

Videos

Below are the videos I have produced so far broken up by tier.

Top Tier

Top Tier Constructed Cards (I’ve set it to start on Muse, my rant.)

This video goes over a significant amount of the terminology and key Epic concepts. For the rest of these videos, I’ll assume that knowledge:

• Slow/Fast champions
• Card Advantage
• Board
• Bad Attack
• Buffs
• Chump Blocked
• Cycle
• Tempo (Swing)
• Meta
• Gold Punisher (On-turn/Off-turn)
• Board Clear
• Face
• Burn
• (will come back to the rest)

Ratings Formatting

The below formatting is as follow

Tier Name (# of cards in tier / # of cards total legal cards)

Brief description of tier

Alignment (# of cards in alignment in tier / # of legal cards of that alignment total) [# of cards in the alignment for this and all previous tiers]

Individual cards are searchable with ctrl + f / cmd + f. Clicking on a card name will currently open the card’s linked image in a new tab. Once the videos are up I’ll, ideally, switch the link to the timestamped video where I discuss it (this has begun).

Banned Cards (3/264)

These cards were banned from constructed largely because of their interaction with Chamberlain Kark Combo/Control decks.

Good (2/66)

Blind Faith, Ceasefire

Sage (1/66)

Fumble

Tier 1: Meta Shaping (28/261) [31]

These cards are absurdly powerful and/or have heavily influenced the meta at some point.

Evil (12/66)

Angel of Death, Demonic Rising, Drain Essence, Drinker of Blood, Medusa, Necromancer Lord, Raxxa’s Curse, Rift Summoner, Scara’s Gift, Scara’s Will, Soul Hunter, Zannos Corpse Lord

Good (4/64) [4]

Angel of Light, Chamberlain Kark, Noble Unicorn, Silver Wing Savior

Sage (9/65) [9]

Amnesia, Ancient Chant, Erase, Lesson Learned, Mist Guide Herald, Muse, Sea Titan, Thought Plucker, Wave of Transformation

Wild (7/66)

Brachiosaurus, Draka Dragon Tyrant, Kong, Raging T-Rex, Smash and Burn, Strafing Dragon, Surprise Attack

Tier 2: Powerful Support (31/261) [62]

These are cards that play important roles in powerful decks and/or cards not quite strong enough to make tier 1.

Evil (4/66) [16]

Dark One’s Fury, Dirge of Scara, Eager Necromancer, Guilt Demon, Street Swindler, Zombie Apocalypse

Good (12/64) [16]

Bodyguard, Brave Squire, Cast Out, Divine Judgement, Inheritance of the Meek, Inner Peace, Insurgency, Martial Law, Priest of Kalnor, Second Wind, Silver Wing Guardian, Silver Wing Lancer

Sage (5/65) [14]

Disappearing Act, Forcemage Apprentice, Force Lance, Frantic Digging, Hasty Retreat, Ice Drake

Wild (10/66) [17]

Draka’s Enforcer, Feeding Frenzy, Flame Spike, Hunting Pack, Hunting Wyvern, Kalani Woodreader, Lightning Strike, Rage, Scarros Hound of Draka, Spore Beast, Whirlwind, Wolf’s Bite

Tier 3: Powerful Filler (45/261) [107]

These are powerful cards that fill very specific roles for very specific decks.

Evil (16/66) [32]

Apocalypse, Army of the Apocalypse, Consume, Final Task, Forbidden Research, Hands from Below, Murderous Necromancer, Plague, Plentiful Dead, Raxxa Demon Tyrant, Reaper, Steed of Zaltessa, The Gudgeon, Unquenchable Thirst, Wake the Dead, Winged Death, Wither

Good (11/64) [27]

Brand Rebel Fighter, Faithful Pegasus, Gold Dragon, Justice Prevails, Markus Watch Captain, Rescue Griffin, Resurrection, Revolt, Secret Legion, Urgent Messengers, Watchful Gargoyle

Sage (12/65) [26]

Crystal Golem, Garbage Golem, Helion the Dominator, Juggernaut, Keeper of Secrets, Knight of Shadows, Shadow Imp, Siren’s Song, Soul Storm, Steel Titan, Vanishing, Velden Frost Titan, War Machine, Warrior Golem

Wild (10/66) [27]

Brak Fist of Lashnok, Fiery Demise, Fires of Rebellion, Flames of Furios, Flash Fire, Go Wild, Greater Lightning Wurm, Herald of Lashnok, Hunting Pterosaur, Hurricane

Tier 4: Tech Cards (44/261) [150]

These cards fill even narrower roles based on the meta and/or are linchpins in specialized decks.

Evil (9/66) [41]

Corpsemonger, Endbringer Ritualist, Heinous Feast, Little Devil, Necrovirus, Plague Zombies, Raxxa’s Displeasure, Scarred Cultist, Scarred Priestess, Spawning Demon, The Risen

Good (9/64) [36]

Absolve, Ambush Party, Angeline’s Will, Angel of the Gate, Arm, Courageous Soul, Imperial Cavalry, Master Zo, New Dawn, Noble Martyr, Paros Rebel Leader, War Priest, White Dragon

Sage (13/65) [39]

Aerial Assassin, Arcane Research, Citadel Raven, Deadly Raid, Djinn of the Sands, Elara the Lycomancer, Ethereal Dragon, Evict, Knight of Elara, Memory Spirit, Reset, Reusable Knowledge, Spike Trap, Steel Golem, Time Walker

Wild (12/66) [39]

Ascendant Pyromancer, Cave Troll, Draka’s Fire, Fire Shaman, Fire Spirit, Flame Strike, Flood of Fire, Forked Jolt, Hunting Raptors, Lash, Lashnok’s Will, Pyromancer, Pyrosaur, Savage Uprising, Stampeding Einiosaur

Tier 5: Reasonably Powerful (36/261) [187]

These are okay cards on their own. They might make it into competitive decks or find homes in highly synergistic decks.

Evil (7/66) [48]

Anguish Demon, Dark Knight, From Beyond, Grave Demon, Herald of Scara, Necromancer Apprentice, No Escape, Raxxa’s Enforcer, Word of Summoning, Zealous Necromancer

Good (10/64) [46]

Avenger of Covenant, Avenging Angel, Banishment, Dragonling, Helena’s Chosen, High King, Knight of the Dawn, Lord of the Arena, Palace Guard, Quell, White Knight

Sage (9/65) [48]

Erratic Research, Force Field, Frost Giant, Gareth’s Juggernaut, Gareth’s Will, Master Forcemage, Psionic Assault, Temporal Enforcer, Temporal Shift

Wild (7/66) [46]

Den Mother, Entangling Vines, Forest Dweller, Keira Wolf Caller, Rybas Canopy Sniper, Triceratops, Wolf’s Call, Wurm Hatchling

Tier 6: Might Play (22/261) [209]

These are the weakest cards I can feasibly see myself playing in a competitive deck.

Evil (6/66) [54]

Corpse Taker, Dark Offering, Dark One’s Apprentice, Deathbringer, Infest, Krieg Dark One’s Chosen, Reap or Sow, Run Riot, Thrasher Demon

Good (5/64) [51]

Angeline’s Favor, Angel of Mercy, Priestess of Angeline, Royal Escort, Silver Dragon

Sage (7/65) [55]

Alchemist Assassin, Fairy Entrancer, Mystic Researcher, Scrap Golem, Stand Alone, Teleport, Winter Fairy

Wild (5/66) [51]

Fireball, Howl, Lightning Storm, Mighty Blow, Mythic Monster, Rain of Fire

Tier 7: Might Experiment (26/261) [235]

These cards are the bottom of the barrel of cards I would theoretically play.

Evil (5/66) [59]

Demon Breach, Devour, Inner Demon, Succubus

Good (8/64) [59]

Angelic Protector, Feint, Hand of Angeline, Herald of Angeline, Imperial Commander, Standard Bearer, The People’s Champion, Thundarus, Village Protector

Sage (7/65) [62]

Blue Dragon, Citadel Scholar, Erwin Architect of War, Fairy Trickster, Helion’s Fury, Lying in Wait, Turn

Wild (9/66) [60]

Ankylosarus, Battle Cry, Bruger the Pathfinder, Burrowing Wurm, Forest Giant, Great Horned Lizard, Jungle Queen, Lurking Giant, Pack Alpha, Winds of Change

Tier 8: Effectively Unplayable (20/261) [255]

I can’t see myself ever playing these cards in constructed at this point.

Evil (4/66) [63]

Bitten, Dark Assassin, Drifting Terror, Saren Night Stalker, Vampire Lord

Good (4/64) [63]

Bounty Hunter, Forced Exile, Gladius the Defender, Rabble Rouser, Vital Mission

Sage (3/65) [65]

Chronicler, Ogre Mercenary, Time Bender, Transform

Wild (3/66) [63]

Canopy Ranger, Chomp!, Rampaging Wurm, Sea Hydra

Tier 9: Nothing to See Here (9/261) [264]

You can basically forget these cards exist for constructed.

Evil (3/66) [66]

Dark Leader, Infernal Gatekeeper, Trihorror

Good (1/64) [64]

Rally the People

Sage (0/65) [65]

Wild (3/66) [66]

Bellowing Minotaur, Forked Lightning, Rampaging Cyclops, Wolf Companion

Disclaimer

I am a better limited player than a constructed player. I tried to factor out my personal biases for these rankings as much as possible, but doing so completely is impossible and ultimately undesirable.

**Update 10/21/20: I am a much better constructed player now**

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