My roommate Paul2520 and I have reestablished a weekly Epic time, Monday evenings. We’ll be focusing on testing the aggro/aggro-combo constructed decks I’ve been experimenting with recently. Afterwards, around 9pm CDT or so (updates through twitter), I plan on regularly doing a stream discussing the results of those sessions as well as potentially playing the app a bit (if there are challenges or an interesting Arena [like Dark Draft this week]).
Finally, I have been working on some more blog content, but I’ve decided to rework my 3 article series from [depicting my failure-filled progression to my “Escorting the Insurgency” human tokens aggro-combo deck] to [3 individual deck techs discussing the 3 pillars of Epic constructed as it stands today focusing on Sam Black’s Midrange Wild deck, The Flocks/The Lad’s Scara’s Gift deck, and my Escorting the Insurgency deck]. Below is the start of the previous progression that I have decided to scrap if curious. (I couldn’t figure out how to/remember enough to effectively make that format work.)
After over a year and a half of no physical Epic tournaments I could compete in, no new cards, departure of two of the most visible employees in the community (Ian Taylor and Andrea Davis), minimal Epic playing in general, and even less official communication from WWG, my enthusiasm for the game was almost completely depleted. So much so that the eventual announcement of the upcoming Kickstarter with a lot of new content and the $10,000 tournaments (to replace the 50K digital tournament which was broken off of the $100k tournament) had little effect on me, which showed in my lack of blog content. I was considering dropping Epic, depending on how Origins went.
All of that helps to inform my prep for Origins, which I began one month out. However, as I prepped, I gradually rediscovered my love of the game, and Origins was absolutely amazing. Playing in person is infinitely better than playing in an alpha app with long queue times to find a game. I’ve even begun streaming again (with plans to edit highlights and put them on Youtube), I’m blogging currently, and I ordered have received my second full constructed set.
“Screw it, I’m playing Priest of Gold Dragon”
While, in the moment, I was (and still am) incredibly proud of myself for making top 8 at Worlds 2017 with Pluck U’s Wild Combat Tricks deck, especially since it created one of my favorite Epic moments which I want to write about at some point, the fact that I played a deck that I didn’t create and ultimately lost anyway, slowly ate at me. I had/have this vision of myself as a clever, innovative jank player that I wanted/want to honor, but at the same time I thought of myself as a weaker constructed player, largely “because I held myself back with that mindset.” So, when my desire to win surpassed my desire to be seen as the clever jank player, and my team (led by Tom Dixon) helped move me past my mental hurdle of not playing the “best deck” and I lost anyway, I couldn’t hide behind that excuse any more.
For Origins, I initially regressed behind that hurdle because my motivation to put the work in, was not there, and I semi-consciously wanted an excuse to explain potential poor performance away. I stubbornly decided just to play the deck that I was going to play at Worlds, my Priest of Gold Dragon [PoGD] deck (despite the fact that I thought it would be even more disadvantaged in a Best of 1 format). To be fair, the matchup against Evil in our testing for Worlds 2017 did seem slightly favored for me. But, the Wild matchup was not. I figured I would test against Sam Black/Mike Sigrist’s list, and if it was anywhere near close, I’d call it good enough.
It was not close.
That’s about as far as I was able to get.
Next article will be explaining how/why Sam Black’s Midrange deck pushes out all other midrange decks (that I’ve tested so far). For a taste of what that will look like, you can check out my deck tech for my 2016 Worlds Pyrosaur Deck.
Planning on doing a lot of brewing, figured I might as stream it if anyone is interested. So, this Saturday (6/22) starting at 8am CDT (13:00 UTC) I will be streaming at twitch.tv/tomsepicgaming.
Due to playing my aggro-combo Human tokens list into 1st seed at the Epic Origins 10k (knocked out in first round of top 8 by eventual winner Hampus Eriksson), my eyes have been opened to the possibility of non-midrange Epic decks. I plan on
Going over the entire card pool and reevaluating it based on my new understanding both from prepping for and playing at Origins
Building lists for at least an Evil Aggro-Combo Zombie Deck and multiple flavors of aggressive Sage decks
Answering any questions (which could theoretically take me down long tangents about things I may or may not have covered before)
I plan on keeping the stream going for as long as my inspiration lasts (to an absolute maximum of 10pm CDT with breaks for food, although probably won’t last anywhere near that long)
If you plan on watching and have any questions/topics you’ll want to discuss, let me know in the comments below if you want me to start thinking about them. Or, feel free to save them if you’d prefer for me to think them through out loud.
I might upload some edited highlights to youtube afterwards at youtube.com/channel/UCPl_lZxUz8-KcpaWfj8KEcQ. (I’m also planning on writing a multi-article series about my Origins Prep, discussing my three stages of that process: Failure, Replication, Revelation)
Ian Taylor, the Douglas Adams-esque writer of Spindle, Mt:G judge, original WWG lore/rules/organized play dude, and handsome Australian man, is Kickstarting Widget Ridge until April 27th. It’s already funded, I’ve backed it, and if you’ve found your way here, I think you’ll want to too.
Coal-Powered Battle Corset on Wheels
Widget Ridge is a two-player deck building game where you build completely reasonable and totally non-magical constructs, with Star/Hero Realms inspirations. (It will also support 1 – 4 players.) I have not played it yet myself, but a friend of mine has said it is a great game and he’s the type of person who absolutely wouldn’t if it wasn’t, so it is.
What has me so absolutely, ridiculously hyped though is all of the flavor and lore Ian has built up and presented around the game. He’s building a world I’m impatiently eager to explore, starting with the actual cards. Here’s a few more: Static-Powered, Racing Trebuchet, With a Parachute.
A while ago I was trying to think of the craziest construct I could make with the cards I had seen so far. The idea of a Coal-Powered, Battle Corset, On Wheels…, well, if you listened to the audio at the start of the article, you know how that makes me feel. I look forward to playing the game and creating even crazier constructs. In the mean time though…
ALL OF THE LORE
Widget Ridge is absurdly amazing, and I mean that literally. It is absurd, and it is amazing. We have our overly self-assured Victorian British engineers thrust into a world of magic which they obviously and immediately understand better than the locals. From here, they develop as you might expect, into a multi-engineering-church hierarchically-dominated society with ridiculous, physics-violating inventions, introductory versions of which are provided to children on their 6th birthday.
In this backdrop we are presented with characters such as Maximilian Ward, “the best kind of idiot. The kind that wants to learn,” and his three legs in “The Ghost that Stole Lightning.” As well as his sister, the Lady Luna Ward, in “The Fire in Which We Learn” where she emphatically courts the lover she’s never met, by utilizing her exceptional aim.
To play off of these characters we have: the prodigious engineering survivor Amelia Pettengill with trust in her instincts and her beloved widget Scraps, Knight-Captain Martine Covington-White the City Chief Defender and non-engineering, competitive practicalist, and Alistair Gaines the enthusiastic experimenter with a bravery derived in equal parts from talent, experience, and luck. With all of these elements, not only does Ian make me laugh (repeatedly and continually), but he also manages to tell grounded, honest stories of the diverse human experience. As I’m writing that, I know it sounds pretty cliched and stupid, but read all the way through “The Fire in Which We Learn” and tell me I’m wrong. Regardless, the energy/inspiration it gives me to do my own ridiculous things is real. I love being inspired to do ridiculous things, and…
there’s the story of the Coal-Powered Battle Corset on Wheels that gained sentience after consuming Spark-laced coal. Which then went on to terrorize the denizens of Widget Ridge; bursting into workshops, devouring all of the coal, injuring innocent bystanders while everyone, particularly the injured witnesses, refuse to acknowledge the Battle Corset’s existence because a sentient Coal-Powered Battle Corset on Wheels is impossible. This, of course, leads the sentient Battle Corset into a depression spiral as they agonize over why they were given life and their purpose in it, until they finally open a low-tech ceramics studio (because they have always been intrigued by a broken pottery wheel fraudulently trebucheted in a piano launching contest); where the Battle Corset, now going by BC, has acquired some level of adoration by their pupils, even though the pupils continue to actively refute BC’s existence in The Coal-Powered Battle Corset on Wheels.
Playmat of the Jank
When I originally saw the small version of this on the kickstarter page, I was not particularly impressed (especially when compared to the awesomeness that is the Rampaging Mechanical Bison playmat). However, while impatiently trolling through the Widget Ridge website late at night, looking for more lore to satiate my hype from watching everything on the kickstarter page, I came across the Art of Widget Ridge page from which Ian links to interviews with two of Widget Ridge’s artists. In the one with Matt Burton, he mentioned designing this playmat with the goal of creating two different perspectives of the scene, so the player and their opponent would get something different. Thinking this was neat, I quick copied the image, threw it in paint, and flipped it.
And oh my god yes, absolutely yes, this, perfect, this is me, oh yeah, I need to have this, yes. Yes.
I love how this looks “upside down,” and the implication of it “right side up.” When viewed “upside down” it seems like the quintessential personification of Jank. I’m putting together all of these crazy parts that absolutely should not work together but are, to an extent, all though they might not hold for quite long enough, perfect.
My original thought was that I would just get this and play with it upside down, so I can see this amazing jank view and remind myself of what I’m doing, while presenting to my opponent the “right side up” view that makes it look like I have everything reasonably under control and everything is going reasonably to plan. Then I thought about it and realized, assuming I use this in Epic (which I absolutely will be doing), most of my opponents are at least tangentially aware of me and my jank ways. Therefore, if I played with it “right side up,” they could see the visual reminder of my jankness, and they might give too much respect to my ability to include anything, like a couple of Rampaging Wurms in a demon deck. (I’ve absolutely done that with those being my only 1-cost Wild cards with no way to give them breakthrough. It… worked great.) But then I thought no, I do want them to see the reasonableness, to hide my actual, inevitable jank. Eventually, however, I came to a decision. I’ll just constantly rotate it throughout the match depending on the state of the game and or my mind. Solved.
In other words, if you are a fellow jank player, I’d recommend backing Widget Ridge even if just to at minimum get this perfect playmat as an add-on to the $1 tier.
Conclusion
I am more hyped for Widget Ridge than anything else right now. If you share my enthusiasm and would also like to get in on this now, possibly to get access to the kickstarter exclusives/stretch goals, you can back it until April 27th at www.kickstarter.com/projects/furioustreegames/widget-ridge. There is more information on the gameplay there as well. Ideally (and selfishly), I’d love to unlock a few more stretch goals. (Ian’s mentioned one that isn’t on the site yet that I absolutely want to happen.)
Further, “fraudulently trebucheted” is one of the best phrases I have ever written, so I am seriously considering making shirts. Below is an incredibly rough outline of what I was thinking with public domain art (the trebuchet should have a piano loaded up), a stolen Widget Ridge logo, poor color scheme and underwhelming word art. If I were to move forward with this (and clean it up significantly) are there any equally ridiculous people who might be interested?
Finally, I’ll answer the questions I’m sure you’re all asking.
No: that is not the first time I have recorded myself laughing Yes: I did record multiple takes for this one, which I have not deleted.
If you have any other questions (unlikely because I’m fairly confident I just answered them all) feel free to ask below.
**Update: Back the new Widget Ridge Kickstarter and expect some more Widget Ridge related content before the campaign ends on Sun, November 22 2020 11:00 PM CST**
I’ll update this link when this story is inevitably written and becomes cannon (even if I have to do it myself for my own headcannon)! Also, support the inspiration.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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 @cbusconventionspic.twitter.com/w1vofTjRlg
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.
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.
Brad Minnigh recently revealed the full spoiler of the final two pantheon packs Riksis vs Tarken and Shady vs Valentia on his Amazing Spider-Tank blog. While it has been difficult, I have restrained from viewing the spoilers as of yet (aside from the earlyspoilers). I have done this because I want to stream my first impressions (and potential long tangents) live on Twitch on Sunday, June 24. This will also allow anyone to ask questions about any of the cards, or my tangents, as we go. (I also plan to eventually edit this footage down into one or more videos.)
These times are a bit flexible, so if desired, I can adjust them a bit. I have no idea how long each session will last. I expect I will spend significantly more time talking about some cards than others. Let me know if you have any questions or recommendations.
A few highlights (since it is pretty long):
Card I most wanted to rant about, Muse.
Card I least wanted to talk about, Chamberlain Kark.
Card I most wanted to talk about, Silver Wing Savior.
Card I spent the most time on, Drain Essence.
So…was the 5?! month wait worth it?
I’ll also be posting something by the end of this week with my plans for the future of my Epic content, including seeking input on what you all want to see. Feel free to let me know what you want to see before then too.
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
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.)
If played off-turn, your opponent gains +2 cards in hand, from your gold (unless they only have token champions in play)
If played on-turn, you get a clear board and gain +1 card in hand (assuming you have a non-token champion in play)
The – or – option is a slightly better version of the 0-cost card Second Wind
Control Implications
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
Give your opponent back their best champion in play with a bonus +1 card, absolutely horrendous
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
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
Same as control, amazing
Unlike control, since you are just trying to survive until you can outright win, this is not that bad
The off-turn effect is so much stronger for combo, largely irrelevant
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
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?
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
Aggro go face on-turn, bad
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
Potentially reasonable, if your opponent overcommits and spends their gold first on a turn
Since you are trying to apply consistent pressure to run your opponent out of answers, any card you draw them is a problem
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
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.
Production is taking a while to complete for this video, but I am nearing the end (a few more weeks to go). At that time, I’ll also be making some more announcements and looking for feedback about what you all want to see next. (I have a decently long list already.)
