Epic: The Card Game Pantheon Maligus vs Furios Pack Analysis

So we finally have the full spoiler list for the new Epic: The Card Game Pantheon Expansion! I am very excited to pore over the new stuff. Just like last time we shall have to wait for the art to come in, but in the meantime we can speculate and analyze the new cards. I will have an article for each of the new packs. The fourth, and final pack of the released cards so far is the Maligos vs Furios Pack. This is one of the packs that should be available around December. Here we go:

Maligus vs Furios pack

Fiery Demise 
Wild Event
Deal 3 damage to a target.
Draw two cards.

Hey, another draw-2-and card! These are always great. I think I like Wild’s other one Smash and Burn better, but this definitely plays into the burn deck archetype more. It’s a solid card that can either give you removal and cards, or straight damage and cards. Unlike Smash and Burn, you don’t need more Wild cards to fully benefit with this, so it can be included in any deck and be a decent choice. Obviously, this is a great card to have in Limited. This is like the perfect anti-Thought Plucker card, if only it was free, lol. 

Greater Lightning Wurm 
Wild Wurm Champion
12/10
Breakthrough
Loyalty 2 → Deal 6 damage to a target.

Yay more Wurms! I always love the visuals and theme of these guys, so I can’t wait to see the art. This is on the lower end of the stat spectrum for Wurms, which is pretty crazy to think about, but it’s still pretty devastating. Like its Burrowing cousin, it provides a huge, if not slow, Breakthrough Champion, and if you can hit the loyalty, THIS one at least can deal some damage. Using Final Task with this will be quite lovely. That is 6 damage to a target, not just a champion, so defending decks beware. If you can hit the loyalty, this is a decent draft in Limited, but like Burrowing Wurm, I would not go crazy trying to get it. I would rank it higher than the Burrowing, but probably lower than the Rampaging.

Kalani, Woodreader 
Wild Elf Champion
5/5
Blitz
Opponents cannot gain health.

Now that is a much better Elf name than Burger, Or Bagel, or whatever that other guy’s name is. This was also spoiled a while ago, although at the time it was just called Elf Shaman. I like this one better, although the visual in my head of an elf trying to read a piece of bark is not very flattering, but I’m sure the art is amazing. This is a very simple, but awesome, card. 5/5 0-cost Blitzer is going to be tough to deal with without spending gold, and then while it is around your opponent, and your opponent only, cannot gain health. This card sounds like it was made in the days of Kark’s reign, but it will hold its own in the current meta. I think there is a viable strategy in just playing this guy and never attacking with it, forcing your opponent to take him out, or risk never healing. I shall enjoy putting this into my aggressive Wild decks and watch my opponents squirm as they force themselves to Drain Essence the elf, all the while letting some other giant Wild Champion in for the kill. Since this card requires no loyalty, this is a solid Limited draft choice as well.

Herald of Angeline 
Good Angel Champion
7/5
Airborne – Righteous
Tribute → Reveal the top three cards of your deck. You may choose a good card among them and put it into your hand. Banish the rest.

Ok how many angels is this? This is another Scrying-like Champion, this time for Good, I do not like that 5 defense, and although it has Airborne and Righteous, I feel as though it will do nothing other than help you draw a card you need. That is very important for sure, but I think Good has so many other great 1-cost cards, that I doubt I personally could make room for this in my decks. Maybe if it had Ambush or Blitz, now THAT would be Epic. It is a fairly weak Limited choice except for the Airborne, which automatically makes it not-so-bad. 

Angeline’s Will 
Good Event
Gain 10 health
—OR—
If it’s your turn, banish target expended champion. If this is the first  card you’ve played this turn, gain  that may only be used to pay for good costs.

This is the last “Will” card, and the card I got to spoil for this set, a few hours before the entire set was spoiled anyway, lol. Anyway, you can check out my review of it, but in short I love the card. Yes, it doesn’t have a draw 2 option, but it just does so much else. Removal while allowing you to play another Good card, or +10 health? That is quite the swing any way you put it. I don’t usually try to build Good decks, but this card makes me want to try. Could Kark have a revival with this card? This is also a solid choice for Limited, maybe even more so, than some of the other “Wills”. My favorite is Gareth in theory, but we’ll see if that changes in practice.

Knight of the Dawn 
Good Human Knight Champion
6/3
Blitz
Tribute → You may banish target evil token champion.

Another Kickstarter brought to life! This guy hits hard and removes tokens that are not really being used for now. It should be noted that it gets buffed by the countless Good human buffers in the game. I love that Good is getting some offensive power in this set, and I look forward to seeing what people can do with it. This is a solid choice in Limited as well. It requires no loyalty, could possibly take out an opponent, and hits like a truck. In fact, I think it hits harder than any other Blitzing 0-cost Champion. It’s a great way to start off a turn. Your opponent can only take so much damage from 0-costs before they spend their gold first.

Scara’s Gift 
Evil Event
Deal 2 damage to target player.
Gain 2 health.
 → You may banish two other cards in your discard pile. If you do, Recall.

I love this card. This may have been the first card that had my mind racing for combos and breakages. This is just a huge health swing for a 0-cost card. Yes, it does not remove anything from the board, but a 4 point health swing for free is a big deal. Plus, you can get it back for a Recycle-like ally trigger. This and the Steed of Zaltessa make me think they want Evil to start doing more direct damage decks. I’m inclined to give them a try. I think this is a fine choice in a Draft. Without Evil it is greatly diminished, but if you have a lot of Evil, this will cause a lot of havoc. 

Krieg, Dark One’s Chosen 
Evil Human Mage Champion
8/8
Tribute → Put two zombie tokens into play.
 → Put a zombie token into play. Your zombie tokens gain blitz, +1  and +1  this turn.

I hope this art portrays Krieg from Borderlands 2, but I doubt it. Fan art maybe? This is another token generator. I like zombie tribal decks, and I missed out on doing a Halloween themed deck, so maybe this guy can join in for next year. I feel like using this card along with Scara’s Will shall be fun. That’s a lot of zombies and breaking. I’m unsure if this card would make it into a competitive deck, but I still really like the card. I think it’s a nice card for Limited as well. I love the guys that put in tokens, as it is very difficult to get rid of all of them, and you usually can start giving your opponent a death by a thousand paper cuts. Plus, this guy can keep churning out new zombies, while making the existing ones much harder to kill. A 3/3 is so much better than a 2/2. 

Dark One’s Fury 
Evil Event
Draw two cards.
—OR—
If it is your turn, break all non-evil champions.

This feels similar to Raxxa’s Displeasure, except this gets all non-Evil stuff, rather than just all non-Demon stuff. Slightly different ability, although if you are facing a non-evil deck, and that’s what you are playing (like a zombie deck), this card could be amazing. In Limited, unless you specifically have Evil on board, and your opponent doesn’t, this card is a draw 2.  

Erwin, Architect of War 
Sage Human Champion
1/5
Tribute → Recycle
This card has all alignments, even while it is in your hand, deck, or discard pile. (During deck construction, it is only sage.)

I love the adaptability of this card, and it was an ability I have been talking about having in Epic for a while. I am glad it made it. This is the only card in this set that has this, but I look forward to more. This is a weenie blocker of a card, but it Recycles, and it allows you to use it for any Loyalty for any alignment. That will be quite useful. It’s cards like these that will allow deckbuilders the ability to have 4 colors in their decks, and still use Loyalty triggers. I don’t think this card is broken or anything, but it is a welcome addition. This is a great card in Limited as well. In a mode where Loyalty triggers are so hard to come by, this card could be a life saver. 

Ethereal Dragon 
Sage Dragon Spirit Champion
6/8
Airborne – Ambush – Untargetable

I am very happy about another Dragon. In terms of visuals, they are my favorite tribal in Epic I think, and I can’t wait to see what this one looks like. The Dragon Soul from Gems of War anyone? Anyway, this thing is a beast. Such a simple card, but this is a huge pain for your opponent. 8 defense is tough to crack, Airborne along with it and there are very few that can beat it in a fight, and no targeted removal for you. I could easily see this being put in “Reel Steel” decks (Happy, Dixon?). It doesn’t hit as hard, but add in some Winds of Change and you could have a monster. This is also a very solid pick in Limited. Sure, it doesn’t have card draw, so you have to be wary of that, but this card could crush your opponent if they don’t have sweepers or combat tricks or very large fliers. This will be a popular pick in Limited. 

Scrap Golem 
Sage Construct Champion
6/6
Loyalty 2 → Blitz
 : Banish a card from your discard pile: Put a scrap token into play.

 : Recall

Scrap Golem Token 
Sage Construct Token Champion
6/6
 : Banish a card from your discard pile: Put a scrap token into play.

And lastly, another Kickstarter card brought to life. I love the idea of this card. I hope someone can build an awesome deck with this card. I also hope we get enough tokens for such a deck as proxies suck. This gets my vote for the next alternative art card, so we can all build up our stock. It’s also a decent card. It comes in and you can most likely get another scrap golem. If both of them survive to your turn, that’s two more. It could get ridiculous. 5/5 stats are pretty brutal, and it’s the best token we have so far in that regard. I’m also very glad they created a separate token for it, because now all of the alignments have tokens! The deck will probably fail in practice, but I’m looking forward to giving it a try. It’s a decent card in Limited simply because if left unchecked, you will have an army of minions at your disposal. You will be really hurt by discard pile banishing effects, but those are less likely (although there are more and more every release). Recall abilities are always welcome in Limited in case you don’t have gold to spend for some reason.

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Well, that is all the packs of cards that have been released so far. My MVP for this pack is Kalani Woodreader. I plan on trying this elf in a number of decks. However, Angeline's Will is the card I am most excited to see how it can be abused. I think this is a very solid set, and a welcome addition to Epic. I can't wait to get my hands on it, and am very sad it won't be until well into next year. Some year maybe I will qualify and get to worlds.

Just FYI, the reason I said "cards released so far", is because in May/June of 2018, we should get the rest of the packs, which include the god/demigod cards from the kickstarter. I'm guessing there are some other cards as well, and these cards as a whole should give players the opportunity to play Epic in a different way. I am looking forward to what we shall get in those, and you can bet I will write an article or two discussing them. Just so you know they are called:

• Pantheon: Shadya vs Valentia
• Pantheon: Riksis vs Tarken

So thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed these articles and I hope it gets you thinking and excited about the new set. What cards are your sleeper choice? What cards are your MVP? What combos or decks are you most excited about trying out? Anyways, I need to rest my hands. Thanks again for reading, and happy gaming!

Epic Card Game Worlds 2016 - Afterthoughts From a Spectator

Well it certainly was an exciting Worlds. Lots to talk about.

I wrote an article about my predictions here: http://amazingspidertank.blogspot.com/2016/11/epic-worlds-predictions.html

For those of you that don't know, this was the format for the weekend:

The World Championship will consist of 7 rounds of Swiss on Sunday, followed by a cut to the top 8 on Monday. Each round is 60 minutes and it is a best of 3 rounds.

The Tournament begins with an Epic Cube Draft with 8 player pods.

Rounds 1 and 2 will be played using decks created in the Cube Draft
Rounds 3 and 4 will be played using the Dark Draft Format
Rounds 5 through 7 will be played using full Construction rules.

The Top 8 will be single elimination, and it will be the best 3 out of 5 games each round.

Games 1 and 2 will be Dark Draft
Games 3 through 5 will be Constructed

Everyone loves giant checks!

There were 12 Last Chance Qualifiers which contributed to the 64 total players in the World Champion Event! 64 players battled it out and the top 8 advanced on to Monday. Several games were streamed and they were a blast to watch. The Dark Draft rounds especially were exciting. So many great plays and epic turn-arounds and come-from-behinds. I was one of like 5 people chatting on the Twitch Channel. At any given time though there were 90 spectators, which seems pretty decent for the first run. If anybody wants to watch or rewatch all the videos are here: https://www.twitch.tv/whitewizardgames/videos/all

While the streams were going on, we chatted about strategy, the future of the game, funny stuff involving the poor Minotaurs, and how WE would have won if we had just qualified, lol. It was lighthearted and good-natured, and was a true testament to the great community that Epic is getting. The play by play analysis was great and enjoyable. They offered some genius insight into the game, spoiled some new information, and even interacted with us lowly spectators!

I am so envious of that swag bag. Every qualifier got this stuff!

My feel good moment of the stream was when I correctly guessed every single one of John Tatian's (the eventual winner of the entire tournament) picks during his Dark Draft in the semi finals. I felt so vindicated. I guess some of my Dark Draft Decision articles are paying off. Now I'll just have to find a way to apply that to the real world, lol.

There were a few snafus when it came to the videos and audio but they were few and far between. It seemed like the majority of the streaming went smoothly.

We got to hear the announcement that an Epic App will be coming soon! This means that we can play our favorite game digitally. WW mentioned online play, some kind of campaign mode, real time and slower tournament play, and that the kickstarter would be coming around January I believe. This is quite exciting. This may even be enough to push me over the edge and get a smart phone. For those of you that don't know, I've been proudly sporting a flip phone all these years, much to the chagrin of my friends and family. I shall go kicking and screaming into the smart phone age, but this app may be enough to do me in.

I got to cheer on my good friend, Josiah Fiscus. He won my local qualifier and represented us here in Pittsburgh very well. I believe he finished 39th. He was sad to start out 3-0 and then drop so many after that, but placing in the 2nd reward bracket is quite the accomplishment so congrats! I also had to cheer on Gabriel Costa-Giomi. I played him at Origins where he beat me soundly. Then he came to my other local qualifier and we played against each other in the final Dark Draft game where he beat me again. Since he finished in the top 8 I feel proud to have contributed in some small way to his greatness lol. Also, that means that Pittsburgh qualifiers put out some serious competition. Both our finalists performed very well, and one made it to the top 8, that is pretty sweet!

Epic App!

When they moved onto the Constructed portion of the tournament, that is where we would see if my predictions would come true or not. Now I don't have the statistics of all the decks that were being played, but we do know of the top 8 decks at least here: http://decks.epiccardgame.com/decklists/tournament

I feel pretty good at my predictions for the tournament. We did indeed see a smattering of Wild/Sage, Evil, and Kark decks. I did not see a Drinker of Blood deck do too well, or at least it didn't make it to the top 8, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given my luck with them at tournaments. The most talked about and controversial decks were of course Kark decks, and that's what I'd like to spend some time on.

When Kark was spoiled tons of people cried out "OP!", and soon after tales of playtesting of the unbeatable Kark deck was making the rounds. I definitely was worried about Kark, but I was hoping it wouldn't ruin the game and would just become another archetype. I think we are still not sure, even though the eventual winner used a Kark deck. One thing, and something White Wizards is quick to point out, is that Constructed is only 1 format that was used to get to the top 8. In order to qualify, you needed to perform well in a variety of situations and a Kark deck would only take you so far. And while that is true, playing a deck that gives you a huge advantage definitely helps. We had 3 Kark decks make it to the top 8. I read somewhere that someone said there was another Kark user in the top 16. Kark was the most used deck in the top 8, and Kark won the championship. You can guarantee that we'll be seeing a lot more Kark in the future. Now is that a good thing?

White Wizards has said they wanted to create Kark in order to give a win condition to control decks. In the past if you wanted to play a slow or controlley deck, the games would last forever and usually go to time. If there was a mirror match, it wasn't fun at all, as both players basically did nothing all game. So Kark was put in to give an alternate win condition that would allow the Control matchup a way to win.

I got to watch several Kark matches as they were streamed. Although Kark wasn't as dominant as some people feared, it still won most of its matches. I don't know if WW planned this, but a lot of the Kark games were mirror matches, which made it a lot worse. We didn't get to see Kark try to beat other types of decks as much, but we did see games of "who draws Kark first?". Those matches weren't very good and it sucks to lose because one player happened to draw a card first. Sure they were exciting as for some reason every Kark vs Kark matchup had all Karks at the bottom half of the decks, so it was quite the race, but it didn't make for very good gameplay. It was very non-interactive. The Kark players would wipe the board or play stuff that gained health, and as long as they kept doing that and managed to draw enough cards it was a race to grab Kark.

In the top 8 we did get to see Kark decks play some other decks, and they finished on top. Kark did not go undefeated, and that must be said. The decks that beat Kark were extremely aggressive and had to continue to wear Kark down. They usually had to attack both the life total as well as the hand of the opponent, to keep them from winning. Since there were 2 rounds of Dark Draft to start out it does throw off some of the statistics, but Kark mainly won.

The original Hateful Eight

In the semi finals there were 2 Kark decks and 2 identical Evil decks. If they had split up and Kark had gone to both matchups, then we could have easily had a Kark vs Kark final, which would have been awful. As it turned out, the Karks played each other and we had an exciting Final game. John Tatian (deck - http://decks.epiccardgame.com/decklist/view/115/kark-john-tatian-1-seed-1.0) and Will Morgan (deck - http://decks.epiccardgame.com/decklist/view/116/evil-thoughts-jonathan-lewis-2-seed-will-morgan-6-seed-1.0) played some of the best Epic I've ever seen. They went 1-1 in Dark Draft, and then went all the way to game 5 where John Tatian finally beat Will down for the win with his Kark deck. Will showed that Kark can be beat, however it was just not enough.

So here are my thoughts about a Kark deck right now:

Kark is undoubtedly very powerful right now. He can win very easily, or at the very least, not lose. Kark won most of his matches in worlds top 8. I would love to see the statistics of Kark decks at Worlds in general, as I would wager they did quite well. We did see Kark lose, but it was always to a very aggressive deck. Does that mean that only aggressive decks and Kark decks can be played? That's a shame. Derek Arnold's 4 color deck that qualified him for Worlds had everyone excited because it was a different type of deck, now that deck is completely nonviable. It is way too slow to beat Kark. I would love to see how long those Kark matches were too. I know that they weren't timed in the top 8, and so players purposelessly played slower to make sure they played correctly, but man did Kark games take a long time. The decks that beat Kark went well over an hour. I fear that anyone playing against a Kark at a timed setting at a tournament, is doomed to either lose, or run out of time and draw. Kark has just way too many ways to gain tons of health. That will make for some pretty annoying games. Now the games that Kark lost were testaments to great play. They were slow, but looking at the strategy as a whole they were very exciting. Great plays and rushes to try and keep that life total and hand size down, and slowly whittling Kark down where they could finish him off. I just don't think most decks can do that in 50 minutes, and if you playing for fun, be ready to play just 2 games in an entire night, lol.

John Tatian, our winner, with the bigwig himself

If Kark wins, he crushes. Even though most people would say that the final games were exciting, but how exciting is it really when you step back and think about it that Will Morgan was nowhere close to winning when John played Kark for the win? In so many other Epic games, it comes down to the wire, where the person with initiative pulls out the win and would have lose had they passed to their opponent? Those are real nailbiter games and are very exciting. We got to see that during the Dark Draft formats. However, with Kark, the only exciting plays a lot of the time were the unique ways Will managed to NOT lose by lowering John's health a bit. When the game ends with the winner at 60+ life, you don't get the feeling that the opponent was close to winning, and I think that really hurts Epic. And when Kark loses, it will most likely take forever. As I said I hope those games can make it in time, but I highly doubt a deck is going to beat Kark 2x in the span of 50 minutes. Unless the Kark player makes some serious mistakes or has some really bad luck, I just don't see it.

Look how epic that is? Also, cool playmat

So what does that mean? We are going to see a lot of Kark decks in the meta in the meantime. I hope we can find some stuff that can really crush Kark so to discourage a ton of people from playing him. I don't mind him being in the meta, as I like variety, but a tournament full of Karks sounds dumb. It's similar to a token swarm deck. A Human token deck can win a game on even the first round if they go second. However, Epic has a lot of counters to that deck (perhaps too many), and so we don't see a ton of them, but I am still excited when I see one attempted. I hope we can get the same thing with Kark. I'm not sure what the fix is. I think some kind of champion that while in play, prevents health gain, might be a decent answer, but I don't know for sure.

However, don't let that get you down. I really enjoyed myself even though I didn't get to participate. It was a lot of fun to watch the streams and continually hit refresh on Facebook to check for updates. I loved going through the posted decklists and trying to figure out what a player's next move was on Twitch. You better believe I will be trying my best to qualify next year.

A side note: I want to commentate on a match next year. Somehow make it happen WW gurus.

But anyway thanks White Wizards for such an awesome Worlds event. I had a ton of fun and I can't wait to see what you have in store for us next year! Thank you for reading and happy gaming!