So you may be wondering, why didn't we get any Dinosaur cards? Apparently because FoW wanted to support Beasts. Interestingly enough, the "Beast" race is full of dinosaurs and lizardmen. I don't know what to make of this anymore. This stuff is about a cluster too late, since most of the Beasts were in Alice Cluster, although it makes for a good Wanderer deck. Red is also trying to support four different races with this set; Dragon, Dragonoid, Dinosaur, and Beast. They're stretching themselves way too thin, but hopefully they'll just stick to these four and flesh them out over the course of the cluster.
The cards themselves aren't bad. Apprentice Beast Tamer is a little awkward to use, since it's a 3-drop that gives another card swiftness, so you'd be investing a ton of will into getting this guy and another card out. At the very least, he's a 4/4 buff to another card for a turn. For three will, though, that's really not that great.
Eruptiphant is more like it. He passively gives all your Beasts swiftness, including himself, which gives you a lot more flexibility, and will pump himself 1/1 every time another card attacks. That doesn't look like much, but it can help him skirt over some other on-curve resonators. He's a little weak for being a 3-drop, but he certainly has a place in a Beast-themed deck. As does Master of Faithful Beasts. Another 3-drop, but he'll let you search your deck for any Beast. That's a tad late in the game to start developing your hand, and we don't have that many Beasts right now, but he's one of those cards that can only get better.
Here are the two Battle Arts we got in the set, and honestly they're not all that impressive. Vanish in Fire is a more expensive Dragon Breath, but only hits the opponent's cards, and hits things with flying. It has the added benefit of removing from the game anything it kills, but the fact that it's an expensive field wipe kind of kills it. Field wipes are only so useful, since not many decks flood the field with resonators. Most of the strong on-death cards were from Alice Cluster too, so the RFG clause doesn't add too much utility.
Flying Drill actually provides a ton of value. For only one will you can burn a flying card for 1000, and for three strength counters you can do another 1000 to a second flying card. It isn't as good as Gale Force, since it doesn't flat-out destroy the card, but it does provide Red a cheap way to deal a lot of damage at once. Flying seems to be the focus for Reiya Cluster's win condition resonators, and while strong cards like Gwiber won't die to it, you can count on one hand the number of Flying cards in New Frontiers that can survive a hit from this. Griffin is really the only notable card out of that group, so Flying Drill won't have to worry about not being able to kill its target very often, and being able to kill two of your opponent's heavy hitters for such a low cost is insanely good.
These were cards spoiled in the first article for Red, but they're still some of the best things we got from the set, and they've put the Strength Counter deck in a good place. The biggest thing I noticed in playing the raw starter deck was that pretty much all of the spells that needed Strength Counters used them in bulk, so you really only got one card out of a full stack of counters. Food Supply lets you refill your counters without having to make a Ruler recovery play, was well as giving you an option to refill counters after you flip Kirik, which is easily the deck's biggest weakness. High Speed is just an all-around good card: Cheap, remnant, and the swiftness component lets you get aggressive early or cheese a win late. The awakening gives you a way to use a low-number of counters, and it's a respectable amount of player damage for it to have remnant on it.
Dragon Call is your best turn 1 play. The fact that it can pull from three different races means your pool is huge, and it lets you set up whatever play you want to make later. Flute's Water Dragon is a Dragon (obviously), so if that's a deck build you want to look into, Dragon's Call ups the consistency like mad.
Overall, Red is in a nice place. The huge Beast focus on the cards in the set was a bit disappointing since they aren't actually all the great right now, but the starter deck was such a solid base that the couple good cards in the set were really all it needed. Despite the lack of Dinosaurs I'd have to say that I'm happy with Red, especially since it was in such a weak place for such a long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment