Now that the demo decks have been revealed, pretty much all the set is out there on the main site with just a few stragglers still to be shown. There are far too many for me to go over in one post, so instead I thought I’d pick three from each faction that look particularly spicy. We all know that The Hunger likes good eating – right?

Axiom

Lab Tech Unit

The Lab Tech Unit is a new permanent for the Axiom and Lyra factions. The common costs three mana to play which is ideal for Sierra to get her free Brassbug. It also gets a free resupply when it comes into play. It allows your reserve to be increased by one. Now Sierra can use that, but its not her number on game plan, so potentially the Landmark could easily be sacrificed by say The Grems for fun and Brassbug style profit. The rare seems better useable by Treyst and Subhash as for a start it only costs two mana, still gives the resupply and still increases the reserve limit. Both Treyst and Subhash can really use this and can run far more out of reserve, triggering extra resupplies using mechanical training. The OOF in Lyra is the same as the rare Axiom version and gives a lot of love for Fen which often floods her reserve.

Sap Extractor

The Sap Extractor is an Axiom Landmark Construction for one mana at common. It allows you to augment a card at noon. Fortunately it can’t target Heroes or else Treyst would be busted, but there are plenty of uses for it amongst the rest of the set. I think this will be a quietly good card in reserve passive support ability Axiom decks. The rare is three mana and is made for Sierra I feel. The rare lets you augment any number of cards in play or reserve at noon. This might not be as many as you hope, but it does cut down the amount of time that cards in reserve with passive support abilities need to fully mature. The OOF for this is in Yzmir, but I’m not yet sure how useful it will be for that faction.

Enhanced Prototype

The Enhanced Prototype is a robot that costs five from hand and six from reserve for a 5/5/5. It has a passive support ability to gain up to three boosts and from reserve allows you to spend one of those boosts to untap two mana. This makes it effectively a 5/5/5 for four mana. I’m now waiting for something that can enhance a mana orb to make it tap for two mana … maybe in a future set. The rare allows you to spend a counter from anywhere for that mana orb readying ability. The OOF in Bravos is perhaps the most interesting one as this ability allows you to remove a Hero counter from Atsadi, meaning you can potentially draw more cards with him.

Bravos

Lernaen Hydra

What more could Atsadi want but a stupidly large card for not too much mana. Well this cute Hydra might be the answer. For six mana you get a 0/0/0 with a boost for each mana orb you control. So mid game you may have ten or twelve mana and get a really big card for your mana. Alas Floral Tent won’t protect this character, but not all removal will be able to target a a six mana character. The rare is the same for five mana, which makes it even more of a bargain. Now I’m imaging my little Hydra sucking on an Eat Me Energy Bar. The OOF rare is in Lyra. Auraq kind of loves this, since he gives three zero stats all in one go for all the Uniques that need three zero stats on characters.

Duel of Grit

Duel of Grit is one of the things Bravos has been crying out for – a reliable two cost removal spell. Cheap removal is a premium thing and a two cost is the best. Mana Eruption is good but it has two downsides. Firstly it makes you sacrifice a Mana Orb and forces you to play ramp. Secondly it makes you play it at rare if you want the two mana cost. Here Duel of Grit gives us that two mana removal, but you can only target something that has a hand cost less than or equal to a character you control. Given Bravos has more larger creatures this shouldn’t be an issue and tokens has zero cost, so those Dragon Spirits should be no problem for us now. The spell does have fleeting, but then most removal does. The rare, which still costs two mana, discards the character to the discard pile. I’m not sure whether the rare upgrade will be played a lot, since good valuable commons are worth their weight in gold. Lyra gets the OOF here, but they already have a lot of good in faction options for removal.

Cuppa Sap

Physical Training costs two mana for three boosts and then three mana for another three boosts. That’s five mana for six boosts spread over two characters. How about a total of three mana for two lots of two boosts? Does that sound better. Now admittedly those characters need to be in reserve to start with, but you can play out boosts onto them for a low price without committing to the board early. With the other passive reserve abilities, you can build your own large characters in reserve for very little, but at a risk of being targeted by sabotage or exhaustion. The rare does the same, but instead of two lots of two, gives you two lots of three boosts. Three mana for six boosts is very good and note it also triggers Basira’s ability too. Axiom gets the OOF which is the same as the Bravos common.

Lyra

BLISS Keytarist

The BLISS Keytarist I think is going to be played in both its common and rare forms. The common one if it’s boosted lets you reveal and look at your top card of your deck at Dusk. If it’s a character with a stat of zero on it you get to draw it. Having a potential double draw in Auraq will really help the deck out and will mean that you can burn through the cards in your deck pretty quickly, especially if you can anchor it or make it lose fleeting. The rare does a similar thing for an artist or a song card. I feel that there’s going to be a deck built around artists and songs, but I’m not yet sure what hero will use this. The OOF rare is in Axiom and instead works for Robots or Permanents. I think at the moment the volume of suitable cards to go in the Axiom decks is still too low for this to shine, but this might be a grower in future sets.

BLISS Drummer

For four mana from hand and five from reserve the BLISS Drummer gives you get a 4/4/0 and a discount of one (to a minimum of one) on your other cards played from reserve if he’s boosted. The challenge may be to get a boost on him from hand, though from reserve he can build up a couple of boosts by playing characters with a zero statistic. This could allow Fen to play a lot of cards out of her reserve for a very cheap cost. Nevenka can more easily get the boost on the drummer from hand (just don’t roll a one!). Auraq should have lots of characters with a zero stat to gain the boosts quickly so this could be played by all the heroes. The rare only boosts artists, but only costs four mana from reserve. The OOF rare is in Axiom and is identical to the Lyra rare except the type to discount is robots, which I feel is a little less numerous than artists. It also has the Axiom mechanic for building up boosts on the support ability.

The Wayfarer

The common Wayfarer seems to be made for Nevenka. Its a three cost Landmark Permanent Construction that lets you roll a die and check your top card of the deck. If its hand cost is equal to the die roll, then you can draw it. Now it seems to me that it doesn’t say what you do with the card if is not equal – I assume you put it back on the top of the deck, but you know what one of the cards of your draw will be. The rare is similar but allows you to exhaust the permanent to play the card for free, which is my kind of cost. Now all we need to see is a little more Lyra dice manipulation and we could be in business for free card plays for our graffiti artist. The OOF card is in Ordis, but as Ordis has no die manipulation it’s a one in six chance of drawing the card, which I suspect is not worth the buy-in price.

Muna

Arawn

Arawn with his team of corgi hounds costs five mana from hand for the common and also from reserve. The rare version reduces that to four mana. For that you get a 4/4/6 or a 4/4/5 with a scout 2 ability that will trigger a charge effect for all your animals. Those corgis are all going to get a lot bigger quickly, though alas there’s only one other Corgi at the moment in the set. The OOF rare in Lyra is only a 4/4/0 for the same four mana and gives all artists a boost. This will activate most of your BLISS band it seems.

Burrowing Noosh

The little fox plant is yet another cute little low cost critter in Muna. Importantly it is both an animal and a plant, so it gains bonuses from both things that boost plants as well as animals (See Arawn above). Since it only costs 1 mana and has stats of 2/0/0, it can easily win you a tied expedition in turn one for a very little cost. Also it has synergies with the Trial by Frost cards that only count forest as the winning biome. The rare version only has 1 point of stats in forest but gains an ability to gain a boost if an opponent draws or resupplies. This can gain a number of cheap counters from Yzmir decks as well as Fen and Tryest decks. The OOF is in Bravos and strangely it has the forest stat at 2 again but otherwise the same as the Muna rare. I’m guessing the boost in stat is due to the lack of type synergies.

The Minotaur

The Minotaur is a six cost 5/5/5 druid animal. It therefore has animal synergies with Arawn, but that’s not the draw here. A six cost character has to do something very special to be used, so what does it do? Well the common has a scout 3 ability on it that anchors a character with hand cost three or less. That is fine, but nothing special for your six cost. The rare however changes that ability to anchoring any charcater. Here the Minotaur can now anchor himself. What’s more, he has a passive support ability in reserve to gain boosts. When played back out of reserve therefore he can sun himself in a Floral Tent and survive any dastardly removal. The OOF is in Lyra and is identical to the Muna rare except that it gains its boosts from characters with a zero stat being played.

Ordis

Leo Relic Expert

This Ordis character is another bureaucrat who costs three mana to bring into play. At night as he goes to reserve you can spend a counter from your reserve or landmark zone to sabotage after rest. This card compares to the Monlith Legate who can do it for one mana less, but only if her expedition fails to move forward. The requirement for a counter to be discarded is removed on the rare but he also gets two more points of mountain stats and a cost increase to four. Sabotage after rest is perhaps one of the best times to sabotage so this card is good, but four mana might prove to be too high. The OOF in Muna is the same as the common. Since sabotage is rare in Muna, this is a good option for a Muna deck that wants that ability.

Conscription

This two cost spell with fleeting creates X 1/1/1 recruits where the value of X is the number of cards in target players reserve. There are two ways to play this. Firstly you can stock up your own reserve before playing this. This is not easy for an Ordis deck however, so its probably better playing it on an opponent’s reserve. Fen, Treyst and many Yzmir decks often have full reserves and you can probably get three or four recruits from your two mana there. The rare is the same but has cooldown instead of fleeting, meaning you can get lots of recruit buddies over a couple of turns. The OOF in Yzmir is the same as the Ordis rare and will provide lots of nice sacrifice fodder for Lindiwe decks.

Ordis Dispatcher

The common Ordis Dispatcher costs three from hand and four from reserve for a 3/3/3. Sounds a little under par? Well she has a reserve support ability to gain up to two boosts when you play another character, and when played from reserve you can use one of those boosts to create a recruit in your other expedition. So, you are getting a 4/4/4 and a 1/1/1 from reserve, which is decent for a common. The rare is even better as you can sacrifice one of your boosts for two 1/1/1 recruits. That’s a 4/4/4 and two 1/1/1’s in the other expedition. But it gets even better if you are playing Gulrang as she turns those two little soldiers into 2/2/2’s and they don’t give defender to the Dispatcher’s side. The OOF in Yzmir is the same as the rare, which provides those two soldiers especially for Lindiwe to sacrifice to Maw. Of course being Yzmir she gains the passive support boosts by playing spells instead of characters.

Yzmir

Scholar’s Vault

The Scholar’s Vault is a two casting cost Landmark in Yzmir that gives you a resupply when it comes into play and allows you an extra reserve slot if you have a spell in reserve. For an Afanas deck, not having to ditch a needed spell at night from the reserve is a big boon. The rare completely changes the ability, making 7 or more cost spells cost 1 less instead of the resupply on entry. This one is more for a big spells deck which I assume is more of a Akesha thing. The OOF rare is in Bravos and instead of giving a spell discount, it gives a character discount that has hand cost 7 or more. This one seems to be targeted at Atsadi, however I’m not sure that there’s enough characters that he plays at that cost in his deck that it will benefit enough from this.

Pasiphae

Paiphae is a two cost character that is a 0/0/0 and fleeting. I suspect that Auraq would love this card but alas even the OOF is not in Lyra. She gains a boost for every character that an opponent controls. Against Ordis she could end up pretty big for two mana. The rare is not fleeting so can be used twice. The OOF card is in Muna. Since it costs two mana, it can easily be anchored by the standard Muna abilities.

Feast of Thoughts

Yzmir get a bunch of spells in this expansion as usual. This one is a touch expensive at 3 mana from hand and 6 mana from reserve, but it does have a good menu of delights to select from. Here on the common you have four tasty choices that you can chose one from for your 3 mana. Each are a little overcosted, but the variety means that the spell is never useless in hand. You can draw a card, create a 2/2/2 moth in any expedition, remove 3 counters from a card, or sabotage. All well and good, but from reserve (assuming you’ve accumulated four counters by playing spells) you get to pick all four of those things to do for your six mana, which is a bargain. The rare lets you build the counters up to six and you can choose to do the spell seven times! Fancy drawing seven cards? Getting seven 2/2/2 moths anywhere? Removing all your opponent’s boosts or any combination including a sabotage or two. This is a potent spell then may well see play in heavy spell decks.