Another day, another article. We're gonna churn one of these bad boys out every. single. day. until I've done the whole set! That's a lie, I'll be gone this weekend so I definitely won't manage that. But forget about that, let's talk about some water cards! I'll be finishing up Pandora's stuff and giving my final thoughts on her, as well as washing my hands of all the Shaela stuff.
Here are the big three for Pandora's stuff that we haven't seen before. Obviously Pandora's Order is still a great card for the deck, but we've already seen it before so by effect it's boring and old new. First up to bat is Alternating Current Crystal (try saying that 3 times fast), and you'll notice it isn't a Golem. You could have made some cool plays with Pandora's Order or even just search for it with Sacred Temple, which I guess FoW thought would be too powerful? Who knows. It has no ATK value but packs a respectable 1000 DEF, so killing it with non-kill spell will be an ordeal. As long as its alive, all of your Golems will be mobilized, making it a good choice for early game when Pandora is still on her Ruler side or late game after she's been killed as a J-Ruler. It can also cheese a Golem in with its second effect, so you can make some fun plays by dropping an Atmos on your opponent's turn, or just accelerating your board by throwing down a big guy for cheap.
Speaking of big guys, we come to Magic Sound Warrior. He's a whopping 12/12, and since he's a Golem you can cheese him in with Sacred Temple and the aforementioned Alternating Current Crystal. His one effect will recover him whenever your opponent plays a chant, which is actually a trippy effect. You'd think it would only make him good for blocking, but it also pseudo-prevents your opponent from dropping removal or battle tricks on you during your turn. If he's already attacked, for the rest of your turn your opponent has to think "Do I want to play this card bad enough that I'd eat another 1200?" and that can definitely trip some people up. Obviously he'll be the first target for those kind of effects, but you can always just make more Golems. Magic Water Warrior is the last heavy hitter Pandora got. He's a pretty simple 9/9 flier, but the flying alone may warrant a few spots in her deck.
Overall, Pandora has a really solid deck. Most of her playmakers are a tad expensive, but her ability to cheese big resonators in is pretty unparalleled, and once she flips your opponent will have a hard time killing off your army. I'm a big fan of the Atmos spam strategy she seems to be pushing, and while the Mobilize mechanic isn't my favorite, there are plenty of ways around it. I don't know how competitive she'll end up being, but she'll certainly pack a wallop in casual matches. Plus, she naturally runs Light/Blue, which translates to Dawn of the Earth, which is just the best card ever, and gives you access to Barrier to keep the Atmos Pain Train going.
Here we have the most "noteworthy" of the previously unspoiled Water cards. Mega Thunderfish is actually really cool; 8/8 on a 3-drop body is standard, and he can spin another resonator when he dies. This makes him a scary blocker, since he can stop one attack and then remove a second. If it's raining, he'll set the opponent back a turn too. This makes using removal on him sub-optimal, which is always a good thing to look for in a card. If the weather is Thunderstorm, he beefs himself up and gets swiftness. We currently have no way to make thunderstorm weather, so I have no idea where FoW is going with this. I've seen some theories that Shaela's sealed ability will make thunderstorm, but I have very mixed feelings about that. Rain is already a mediocre mechanic, she doesn't need to compete with herself for two mechanics. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Spinning Aquasol is a graveyard version of Memory of Disappearance, and for as cheap as it is, that could lead to some neat gimmicky decks. The first thing that comes to mind is Amaterasu's Foresight, which is annoying enough with only 4 copies. It also synergizes well with just about any removal or disruption spell. Song of Sympathy is a nice callback to water's early Alice Cluster days of stealing resonators, although requiring two Mermaids and four water will is a very hefty price. But we're one step closer to a Wanderer deck where every card is dedicated to stealing your opponent's stuff, and I'm 100% ok with that.
Here are what I think may be the best cards water got this set. Seabed Investigation is like a cheaper Ancient Knowledge that can net you just as many cards if you control a Mermaid, although you're giving up quickcast in exchange for halving the cost. Shaela's Foresight is one of those choose X spells, but pretty much all of the options are good, and it gives you a choice of any 3 of them. Keez's Call is an amazing disruption card: Shuts down pretty much any on-enter effect, replaces itself, and only costs one will to play. You really can't ask for more.
One very noteworthy card is Aquamarine, Panda Diplomat. I love cards like these that encourage the blending of weird deck combinations. I'm hoping someone will come up with a neat Mermaid/Gem hybrid deck and make good use of this. Mermaid tribal seems to be a pretty self-contained deck anyway, so it has splashing potential.
As a whole, though, I'm severely disappointed in the rain mechanic. Most, if not all, of the cards only get minor stat boosts while its raining or get a basic keyword, but they're almost all costed to where they're under-performing cards if it isn't raining. Very few, if any, have real effects or play making potential. Shaela herself does virtually nothing except make your deck average vanilla beats instead of sub-par vanilla beats. None of the rain effects are really worth mentioning, and even the set gave us mostly Mermaid tribal, which doesn't have any noteworthy effects to speak of. The card design here seems to be "Take normal cards, make them bad, then require rain to make them normal again" as opposed to the "Take normal cards, require rain to make them good" that it should have been. Water has a good selection of bouncing/return-to-deck effects and a couple of beaters they can use, so it by no means has performance issues, but I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to find a more boring and droll deck to play. That's water's real crime this cluster: There isn't anything exciting about it.
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