The Amazing Spider Tank

The Amazing Spider Tank
Spider-Tank, Spider-Tank. Does whatever a Spider-Tank does. Can he swing from a web? No he can't, he's a tank. Look out! He is a Spider-Tank!

Friday, December 2, 2016

Epic Dark Draft Decisions (7)

Here is the 7th Epic Dark Draft Decisions. For the new readers, here is what I'm doing:

I use a random card generator to generate a hand of 5 cards from a complete singleton set of Epic, which includes the Core, the Tyrants, and new Uprising sets. I will then analyze the hand and decide what I would tend to pick if I were to draw that hand in the Dark Draft format of play. I will decide which card to pick if I got that pack, as well as which 2 cards I'd pick if I got the remaining 4. For the sake of consistency, I will assume this is the first pack I open.

For your information and as a reminder, here are the Dark Draft rules from the official website:

Dark Draft (2 players)
  • Shuffle a stack of at least 120 cards. Deal 5 to each player.
  • Each player takes 1 card out of their hand of five cards and drafts it, then passes the other 4 to the other (at the same time).
  • Each player takes 2 cards out of their new hand of four cards and drafts them, then discards the remaining two cards into a shared face-down discard pile.
Both players now have drafted three cards. Repeat nine times to get to a 30-card deck, shuffle and play.
This is a fun, fast, and skill-testing draft format for two players. Many of our competitive events use this format in the playoff rounds. This format is used in our World Championship. Source: http://www.epiccardgame.com/formats-draft/
So what do we have today?

 

 

Holy Flying Sage Batman, that's a lot of blue. Almost the entire pack has airborne, which is a very nice ability to have in Limited, and almost the entire pack is Sage, which is typically considered to be the best faction.

Blue Dragon is a fun champion. Besides the amazing art, and very good alternate art if you were able to get one from Spiel 2016, it's the only direct-damage-to-face dragon we have. Not only does it replace itself with a card draw and deal 2 damage to anything, but every other 1-cost Sage card allows you to do an additional 2 damage. The 6/4 stats are rather lackluster but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

Citadel Raven is still a bit on an enigma to me. I believe it was Derek Arnold at Worlds who used this card with 2 Go Wilds, which is pretty hilarious. Still though, the Raven is an ok card. I don't value it too highly as it will almost assuredly die before using its ability again.

Guilt Demon is one of my favorite Epic cards in the game. It has so much flexibility. Need a blocker? Need an attacker to draw out gold or punish after gold has been spent? Need a flier? Need to remove a pesky card from your opponent's discard pile or maybe even your own Ancient Chant to draw a card? Guilt Demon can do it all. I usually try to make room for it in most of my decks.

Mist Guide Herald is one card that I personally don't value as high as most people it seems. There were a lot of decks at Worlds that ran 3 of this. It's a solid card that can grab you what you need at the time, and it leaves a body that can attack or defend, but most of the time I personally would rather have a different Sage card. Then again, I didn't qualify for Worlds so what do I know, lol. It's better in Limited I think since you have less control of your deck, and this gives you some control when you need to get a body on the board.

Warrior Golem is something I never thought too highly until Qualifiers for Worlds and then at Worlds. This thing is pretty decent. I'm always a fan of 0-cost Blitzers, and although it requires loyalty, its ability to recycle when it goes to the discard pile is very nice. There were many times this annoying guy dealt 4 damage to me, gave my opponent a card he needed, or practically forced me to block in an unwanted way.

If this was my first pack, I think I might have to go with Guilt Demon. A close second is actually the Mist Guide Herald, but I think Guilt Demon edges it out. It makes me sad to give my opponent so much Sage, but Guilt Demon is just too good and he fits easily into any deck since it doesn't require any loyalty. Discard pile removal is very important in Limited as well.

If I received this pack, I would one, be very happy. And two, I think I'll be looking harder at Sage stuff, lol. It's actually quite the toss up between what I'd go for. Mist Guide Herald feels obvious to me. I think I will go with Blue Dragon as well. I like direct damage and champions that also allow you to draw a card are great for pacing. The jury's still out on Citadel Raven.

What do you think? I hope you enjoyed this edition of Dark Draft Decisions and happy gaming!

1 comment:

  1. The reason Mist Guide Herald is so good, to me at least, is that it's an extra copy of other creatures in your deck. That's how I view it. It's better in constructed than in limited.

    The deck I qualified with ran 3 Mist Guide Heralds and 18 'heavy hitter' creatures I was happy getting with Mist Guide Herald. This gave me approximately 80% of hitting a 'Heavy Hitter' creature when I play a Mist Guide Herald and I had a 90% chance of hitting any creature, so 90% of the time it was at worst 2 bodies for 1 gold. That's on a 55 card remaining deck and no other creatures in my hand. That number fluctuates quite a bit during play.

    But running 3 Mist Guide Heralds gives you 3 more cards that have a chance of being Kong or Sea Titan or whatever. It's a deck filter.

    ReplyDelete