Epic: The Card Game Pantheon Riksis vs Tarken Pack Analysis/Full Art Spoiler!

Welcome to the final pack of the Epic: The Card Game Pantheon Expansion, Riksis vs Tarken!

Riksis vs Tarken

Elder Greatwurm - 1 cost Wild Champion

30/30 - This card can't gain powers or abilities.

Ah, the banner child of Epic. The original champion from the Kickstarter, that after reading the rules and finding out that you only start with 30 health, makes your jaw drop. I like this art better than the original, although either can be used because he remains unchanged. We just need a way to Blind Faith our own champions so we could abuse him more. He's still ridiculous in Limited, as if your opponent doesn't have an answer, you WILL lose. Always fun.

Gift of Furios - 0 cost Wild Event

Target champion gets +6/+6 this turn. Or 1 gold - Draw two cards.

Minotaur on the front, it automatically moves up in my book. It's art is legitimately pretty awesome. +6/6 stats are pretty insane, and although I don't think it's as good as Rage, Lash, or Go Wild, it will still really hurt if my opponent gets this in Dark Draft and then hits me with an 11/8 Blitzing Unbreakable Dark Knight.

Rising Storm - 1 cost Wild Event

Deal 5 damage divided any way you choose to up to five targets. Draw a card.

I also got very excited when I first saw this card. It is basically a Lightning Storm that draws a card instead of being Recallable. The art is absolutely fantastic and is easily top 5 in the set. Only dealing 5 damage does hurt it a lot, especially with these last two packs giving us huge statlines. The card draw is amazing, but one of the biggest draws of Lightning Storm was its use in Limited, with that Recall ability. Without it, Lightning Storm wasn't used as much in Constructed, and I fear the same may be for this. It's still a decent Limited pick as it doesn't require Loyalty, draws a card, and can deal with a lot of little guys, which is always a common thing in Limited.

Carrion Demon - 0 cost Evil Champion

3/4 Blitz. Break any champion damaged by this card. When this card damages an opponent - Banish their discard pile.

My immediate thought upon seeing this card is a comparison to another venerable Evil champion in Thrasher Demon. They both have blitz, both have similar stats, at least starting out, and they both break any champion they damage. Now while Thrasher Demon can keep growing until your opponent is forced to spend gold to get rid of him, this little guy provides a much more useful and disruptive ability. He gets to banish an opponent's discard pile! Discard pile manipulation is a huge thing in Epic, as it can really control an opponent's options when it comes to recall abilities or retrieval, and it completely stops easy card draw with recycle abilities. In Limited formats, the lower deck size can lead to outright wins when an opponent draws all of their cards, but this card can halt that. It practically demands a block, and almost everything that blocks it will get broken, unless they manage to become unbreakable through another ability. It's another relatively simple card, combining stuff that is already in Epic, but together makes a great new card to play with. My only problem now is how to decide which 0-cost Evil cards I want in my decks, as there are so many great ones to choose from!

Dark Prince - 1 cost Evil Champion

8/7 Airborne. Blitz. Tap: Put a demon token into play.

Here is another Kickstarter exclusive card. I think I like the new art more, as it is a lot more dynamic and unique, but the old one is solid, and since the cards are the same, you can use whichever one you want! Airborne with Blitz is very common now, so I'm not really excited about that or anything, and tapping to put a demon token into play is something I would very rarely do. I'm glad he became legal, but I don't really care for yet another flier.

Red Mist - 1 cost Evil Event

Draw two cards OR If it is your turn, break all champions that aren't prepared.

This is an interesting card. This card really makes you think a lot of how it is used. It is an on turn board wipe, which is nothing too crazy, but it has a clause that you may be able to use it to make it a one-sided board wipe, which is absolutely huge! Josiah Fiscus spoiled this card and did a much better job explaining it than I could ever do, so just read this. In short: “If it is your turn, break all champions that are expended or flipped."

Rise of the Many - 1 cost Good Event

Your 0 cost champions gain +3 power and blitz this turn. Draw two cards.

I have always been a sucker to themed decks, and the human token theme has always intrigued me. There is something so satisfying about filling the board with a huge army, and wiping your opponent out. In the past, it has been difficult to pull off, but this card could help bring it back. This very simple texted card does so much. ALL of your 0-cost champions (not just human tokens), gain +3 power and blitz this turn. This helps everyone, so if you wanted to boost that Dark Knight and Demon Tokens, go right ahead! You have a Muse out as well? Don't worry, this will help her too! And then, to add on top of this, you get to draw 2 cards! This is what really sold the card for me. I love draw 2-and cards. Every one of them is amazing. In Epic, you need to maintain your hand size, and although the secondary ability of many events can let you draw 2 cards, it's cards that let you draw 2 cards AND do something else that can really help get you ahead in a game. What is also amazing about this card is that it does not require any loyalty or any other dedication to Good. This card can go anywhere where you have a bunch of 0-cost champions and it will probably shine. This card will also be a pretty easy draft choice in Limited, considering its flexibility. Plus, I really love the art on this card. It shows so many different characters on it, many of which are represented as 0-cost champions. I love it when a card matches its ability with the art.

Silver Wing Griffin - 0 cost Good Champion

3/3 Airborne. Blitz. Righteous.

Here is another fairly simple card. If you can combine this with any number of boosting events like Rage, Go Wild, or the new Gift of Furios, this guy quickly becomes a huge pain. Airborne and Blitz are common, but it being a 0-cost and having Righteous is crazy. I played a game where I attacked with this guy, was blocked by a Wild Roc, I played Gift of Furios, and all of a sudden I killed the Roc, gained 9 health, and STILL hadn't spent my gold. Very nice. Also, with so many fliers, this card will be very useful to block at the very least.

Silver Wing Paladin - 1 cost Good Champion

7/6 Blitz. Tribute - Draw a card. When this card blocks or becomes blocked - This card gets +7 power this turn.

Here is another card similar to War Lion of Valentia. It has 1 fewer defense, Blitz instead of Ambush, a guaranteed draw 1 instead of a Loyalty requirement, but has the exact same strength gain upon blocking or becoming blocked. I tend to lean more on Ambush abilities, but that guarantee card draw is really nice, especially in Limited. This card is also a human so benefits from certain cards more than the lion. These 2 cards are just so similar though. I think I'd rather only have 1 of them to make room for a different card. Same with Runek and Scarred Berserker.

Dark Eyes - 1 cost Sage Champion

8/7 Airborne. Blitz. When this card damages an opponent - Draw a card.

Yet another flier with a big statline. This card stands a better chance of drawing a card than the Scarred Berserker thanks to being Airborne. In Limited this will have to be dealt with, and games could quickly get out of hand if not, but this card is doesn't to gush about.

Halt! - 1 cost Sage Event

Expend target champion. Draw two cards. OR If it is your turn, expend each champion target player controls and draw two cards.

This card is fun, although I probably wouldn't build a deck around it. It is a great mind game card similar to Ceasefire. Do you hold back a big guy and attack with a little guy? Which champion do you attack with first? This card could foil those plans. It is a draw 2-and as a result so that is very nice. It can also be used on or off-turn. The on-turn ability is considerably better, as it will expend the entire opposing board, AND draw 2 cards, which could easily give you the swing you need for a win. It also has an exclamation point in the title, which I don't recall seeing before. I wonder why?

Shield of Tarken - 1 cost Sage Event

Draw two cards. Each of your champions gain untargetable this turn.

Let's end with a bang. I have already mentioned how important draw 2-and cards are in Epic, so this already comes with those same benefits, not to mention have the pack's namesake. Each of your champions gain untargetable this turn. That is a game-ending ability, especially in Limited formats. If you have some board presence already in the form of an army or even a hard-to-get-rid-of target such as Brak, Fist of Lashnok, playing this card can negate most removal in the game. Sure, wide sweepers may be able to get you, but in Limited it is less likely your opponent will have them. This is one of those surprise cards that will win games. Cards like Demonic Rising and Deadly Raid are both solid picks in a Dark Draft game, simply because they can be a surprise way to beat your opponent, and this card helps that as well. Not only that, but since it is a Sage card (an already sought after faction in Limited), it will help with Loyalty costs.
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I think the MVP of this pack is Shield of Tarken. I think it is a better game ending card than Halt! and I love the game ending cards and draw 2-and cards. What do you think? Do you agree with my assessments? Let me know, and happy gaming!

Epic: The Card Game - The Art of Splashing

The art of splashing in Epic: The Card Game. Getting the term from Magic: The Gathering, who in turn probably got it from somewhere else, can be described as the practice of adding a small amount of cards from another color into your deck in order to improve certain match-ups, counter certain cards, and fill gaps/weaknesses in one’s deck. In Magic, splashing comes at the cost of straining your mana base. In Epic, it comes as a cost of straining Loyalty triggers in an alignment (color in Magic), and making sure numbers add up when it comes to counting 0-cost cards.

This seemingly simple concept has huge ramifications in Epic Deckbuilding, and is something one must constantly be made aware of, when trying to make a competent deck. The amount of splashing can be varied, but the core concept of filling in a gap/weakness in your deck remains true. Each alignment in Epic has its strengths and weaknesses, and while it can be good to have your deck consist of primarily one alignment for loyalty and synergistic purposes, you can frequently run into trouble against more colorful and varied decks.

For example, the go-to deck for most new players is the “burn” deck. This deck acts similarly to an aggressive red deck in Magic, in that you are working towards killing your opponent quickly, using direct damage. A weakness the burn deck has is if your opponent has a large amount of healing, which in Epic generally is greater in number than most burn cards. Another weakness that a burn deck can have is lack of cards in hand, as playing quick events and champions can quickly diminish your hand, leaving you vulnerable to a more controlling deck, or one that works on forcing you to discard cards from your hand. A way that proponents of a burn deck can mitigate these issues is to splash certain cards from other alignments. In this example, perhaps adding in Ancient Chant, Lesson Learned, and Muse in order to help with card draw. Or maybe add a card like Kalani Woodreader (from the new Pantheon set), which can be aggressive, as well as prevent an opponent from healing. Splashing can turn a good deck into a great deck, with only a few modifications.

So, now that we have that down, how does one splash in Epic? According to the constructed deck building rules, you must have 60 cards, with 2 1-cost cards for every 0-cost card in an alignment. This means if you want that tasty Amnesia 0-cost card, you are going to have to have at least 2 Sage 1-cost cards along with it. When considering to splash in cards, you should also be thinking about Loyalty. Although Raging T-Rex can draw you cards and give you a huge champion on the board, splashing it in any deck is probably not smart, due to it requiring Loyalty 2. On the other side of splashing, you should consider how many cards your splashing will remove from your primary alignment. Sure, you may have a bunch of your favorite Sage cards in your deck, but is it causing you to not be able to hit your Loyalty triggers as a result? Or maybe it is making a card like Scarros not as good, simply because you are missing out on using it to its full potential? Things to keep in mind.

As I have said, there are multiple reasons why you may want to splash, and it depends on your deck. However, I have found that most splashing has to do with filling the following gaps:

Card draw

Direct Damage

Sweepers

Discard Pile Banish

Healing/Anti-Healing

Specific cards that give you special abilities your deck needs (ie Surprise Attack)

I will now give some examples of how one could splash, attempting to solve each of these issues:

 

Card Draw – This is the most important aspect of a deck, and luckily, most alignments have ways of drawing cards. However, sometimes you need some of the best card draw or ways to make sure you can draw cards at the right time. For this, I recommend Ancient Chant. There is no card that can net you more cards in the game, because if you combine this with Lesson Learned, you can draw 4 cards thanks to the unique way Epic resolves its triggers. The best card drawing 0-cost cards I can recommend to go with Ancient Chant is Muse, Frantic Digging, or Amnesia for some discard pile banish and Recycle and fill 2 gaps in your deck. It really comes down to your playstyle. If you have cards you can afford to discard and use from your discard pile (like Soul Hunter or Ancient Chant), or you need to make sure you are guaranteed to draw some cards, use Frantic Digging. If you want another body on the board that if not dealt with, can continue to give you cards, take Muse. There are many options, but all of them give you card draw. My go-to card draw splash packet is 3x Ancient Chant, 3x Lesson Learned, and 3x Frantic Digging. This combo allows me, for just 9 cards, to have a ton of card draw options, filtering with Frantic Digging, and the option to replay my favorite events (including Ancient Chant), with Lesson Learned. You will see this combination in many decks, as it has become a staple in Epic.

Direct Damage – This one is important for slower control decks, that sometimes need a way of finishing off an opponent directly and surprisingly. For me, I have a deck that runs a lot of little 0-cost Blitzers that can quickly run down an opponent’s health, but I found that some direct damage could really help finish an opponent off. The smallest splash packet I love is 2x Fires of Rebellion, and 1x Flash Fire/Fireball. FoR allows you to have direct damage, as well as removal in one nice card, and Flash Fire/Fireball allows you to deal with little annoying champions if need be, as well as that last, tiny amount of health. John Tatian, I believe, used the new Steed of Zaltessa for some direct damage/anti-healing for his Championship winning deck. Now the steed was in his primary alignment, but its role was definitely for finishing off opponents.

 Sweepers – Most decks like to have a way to clear the board, especially off-turn, in order to come back from a negative board state. My two favorite cards for this are Zombie Apocalypse and Wave of Transformation. In terms of splashing, it really depends on what other gap your deck has. I have paired Zombie Apocalypse with Guilt Demon in order to have a little direct discard pile banish as well as aggression. I have also paired Wave of Transformation with Amnesia for discard pile banish and a little card draw. These are very flexible, but frequently very important in a deck. For our new Epic team’s practice for World’s (The Dead Minotaurs Society), our representative, Josiah Fiscus, splashed in 3x Wave of Transformation, 1x Lesson Learned, and 2x Amnesias, in order to give him off-turn removal, event recursion, discard pile banish, as well as some card draw, all in a simple, 6-card splash. And since he went undefeated in the Constructed portion of the tournament, perhaps that was a good choice. J

 Discard Pile Banish – This splash usually has to do with adding in 0-cost discard pile banish events, since those are the most popular. Amnesia and Heinous Feast have long been the best examples of this. Usually, people will add other 1-cost cards that fill in another gap, in order to make room for the discard pile banishing 0-costers. The example of Josiah’s deck above is a good one. However, you could get really dedicated to discard pile banish and put in Grave Demon or Erratic Research to go along with Heinous Feast and Amnesia, respectively. If you know that people are playing a lot of cards from their discard pile such as Soul Hunter, Smash and Burn, Dirge of Scara, Plentiful Dead, etc, then perhaps you need a discard pile banish splash in your deck.


 

Healing/Anti Healing – The anti-healing portion of this is rather new, since it has mainly come into play with the release of Pantheon in response to the popular Kark deck that dominated the previous Constructed year. The new card Kalani Woodreader has given this as a potential splashing option, for example. Healing, on the other hand, has been around for a while. Probably the most popular healing card in the game is Drain Essence. This card has continued to be popular due to it not requiring Loyalty of any kind, so splashing it is easy, and on top of a very decent amount of health, you get to have some champion removal as well! Also, if you want to continue the health trend, Evil has a lot of 0-cost cards that really compliment Drain Essence like Heinous Feast for some health and discard pile banish, Consume for a smaller dose of health gain and removal, and of course the new all-star of the World Championship, Scara’s Gift, which gives you health and direct damage. As you can see, Epic can give you a ton of options for splashing, and it just depends on your playstyle and preference.

Specific cards to splash – This is reserved for very specific cards that provide a specific ability that your deck might want. A common example of this is Surprise Attack. This is a card that allows you to play any champion off-turn, which is an incredibly powerful ability. Using John Tatian’s World Championship-winning deck as another example: He splashed in 2x Surprise Attack, along with 1x Flash Fire. Surprise Attack gave him the ability to play a lot of his champions on his opponent’s turn, something that many of them could not do before, and it allowed him to defend and threaten his opponent more than he otherwise could have. Flash Fire provided a lot of utility, including a tiny board wipe, direct damage, and card draw if needed. It is a great example of splashing in a deck.

Josiah Fiscus splashed in 2x Final Task and 1x Wither into his deck at World’s in order to allow him to make a lot of his champions, and his opponent’s, into Blitzing monstrosities, that allowed him to stay on offense, or on defense in a pinch. Wither gave him a tiny board sweeper as well.

The Pluck You team in this years’ World Championship splashed in a couple of packets into their deck. They splashed Good with their packet of 3x Silver Wing Guardian, 3x Silver Wing Lancer, and 3x Brave Squire. They also splashed a Sage packet of 3x Mist Guide Herald, 3x Erase, and 3x Force Lance. Since they said they wanted their aggressive deck to have combat tricks in it, I would assume they started with wanting 3x Brave Squire, since it is one of the best, and the new Silver Wing Lancer is a great, aggressive punisher. The Guardian also provided them with an attacker that can be played on your opponent’s turn, and then attack on yours for damage to your opponent, as well as health gain! Meanwhile, I am sure they saw Force Lance and loved it for that Unbreakable and Recycle trigger, and so when finding room for that they went for Erase, which gave them card draw as well as pseudo-removal (especially against the mirror combat trick deck), and the MGH which gave them more bodies on the board, along with whatever champion they needed at the time. 

As you can see, splashing is a very important thing in Epic deckbuilding, and the skill with which to recognize your decks’ faults vs what could fix it, is a skill that separates the best from the rest of us. I hope you enjoyed this article, it was a long one. What are your favorite splashing packets? Any comments? Please let me know, and as always, happy gaming!