Tom Sorenson

Endbringer Ritualist (Epic Duels Rating)

Images used with permission from White Wizard Games. These are not the final card files and are subject to change.

Spreadsheet: Slow Champions
Category: Tech
Internal Category Tier: B to S Depending

Spreadsheet: Slow Champions
Category: On-Turn Gold-Punisher (C-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: E-Tier

Tier 4

This card has a lot of solid potential for abuse. At minimum it is an on-turn board clear earning it a stable B-tier status minimum. In can also function as a hard-hitting non-evasive on-turn gold-punisher, great with Lash/Rage.

Where the card shines though is with cards like Final Task, Invoke Pact, Surprise Attacks, and yes, even potentially Resurrection. An off-turn full board clear that leaves nothing for your opponent is excellent. Mist Guide Herald can even dig you closer to it.

(As of now, there is no way to make this unbreakable before it breaks to its own Tribute effect. There would either need to be a static effect or an ally effect that grants unbreakable to make that a possibility. For example, Evil Ally-> Target champion gains unbreakable is in play. Play Endbringer Ritualist, choose to resolve Ally effect first targeting Endbringer, then resolve Endbringer’s break all effect.)

Dragonling (Epic Duels Rating)

Draft

Spreadsheet: 0-Cost Cards
Category: Other (A-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: B-Tier

Constructed

Tier 5

6/7 airborne stats are strong. Wins against Strafing Dragon and Angel of Light and blocks the common 6/8s without breaking (Ice Drake, Gold Dragon, etc.).

However, while getting that strong airborne body for 0 is powerful, having no immediate effect leaves it devastatingly susceptible to Raxxa’s Curse/Siren’s Song punishes. Its stats also won’t save it from Ensnaring Rune/War Machine. All of those are powerful and highly desirable cards in limited, so if your opponent has a chance to draft them, they probably will (unless they got even better choices). That being said, with an ever expanding card pool, your opponent might not get offered them, let alone draw them in game. Of those, Raxxa’s Curse sees a ton of constructed play, Ensnaring Rune sees some (me), and Siren’s Song/War Machine sees very minimal fringe play.

If your opponent doesn’t have an effective/efficient answer to this (and it does survive all 6 or less damage removal [Smash and Burn]), this is a serious threat. It can’t be effectively chump blocked, it kills in 5 attacks by itself, and it is challenging to remove in combat. I will generally pick cards with greater immediate effects and/or card draw over this, but if I’m ahead of the curve on card draw and have a few solid reestablishing cards, this is a high priority pick I’d be thrilled to get.

In constructed I am incredibly reluctant to bring 0-cost champions without blitz that have no immediate effect because of the popularity of both Raxxa’s Curse and control. Playing against control, especially Kark, a 6/7 airborne champion isn’t enough threat/damage on its own, and combining it with other champions makes you more susceptible to board clears. Slow champions without blitz, even 0-cost evasive ones, usually just don’t cut it.

Eager Necromancer (Epic Duels Rating)

Draft

Spreadsheet: 0-Cost Cards
Category: Other (A-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: S-Tier

Constructed

Tier 2

This is one of my favorite Epic cards. It’s powerful, it’s flexible, and it has an excellently devious smile I can relate to.

It is a 0-cost 1/1 body that your opponent is punished for bouncing because you can either targetedly banish 3 cards from your opponents discard pile, get a total of 9/9 in stats over 4 bodies, or a mix of both. My preferred use for it is in combination with Demonic Rising/The Risen/(eventually Krieg Ally ability) for a major blitzing assault. However, I love having the ability to choose to break up that combo to banish key discard threats, turn off an opponent’s recycling at critical junctures, and/or just establish threat for 0. All four of these are powerful effects, and it feels excellent being able to choose how best to utilize the card in each individual matchup/game.

(I really want to play this with Krieg now, I hadn’t actively considered this specific possibility before.)

[I had some time to write up a few more of these as well for the regular schedule.]

Blog Pause, Buying Home

So, I am in the process of buying my first home (ideally a Condo in Minnesota). It has been monopolizing a lot of my energy recently, and I haven’t been able to keep up with my regular Duels ratings. I am officially putting them on hold, as well as my weekly streams on Twitch until I have purchased a place. However, I will continue to stream the monthly tournaments on the last Saturday of every month at 10am CST. (I might have that time wrong.) If there are other tournaments on the app, I’ll probably also stream those.

In the meantime, I’m still open to challenges on the app, any format: TomEpicGamin

Drifting Terror (Epic Duels Rating)

Draft

Spreadsheet: Slow Champions
Category: Establishing, Other (C-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: D-Tier

Constructed

Tier 8

A slow champion that puts a single token into play and has 9 or less health, why would I want this? I don’t.

That being said, 8/9 in the air is enormous stats when this sticks. It is hard to effectively block this and even harder to break it in combat, if it sticks. Drifting Terror and its token are also both Evil demons which opens up Raxxa’s Displeasure and Dark One’s Fury possibilities as well. Further, if you do use single target removal on the Terror (Drain Essence, etc.), the demon token is a considerable bonus left over too.

Overall, in Dark Draft, I don’t want to commit a precious slow champion slot for this because there are so many better/more impactful possibilities. If I’m late in the draft and low on slow champions or if I get passed four slow champions, there are still worse options than this. In constructed, same thing but even more so. It has been reasonable the few times my opponents have played it against me though.

Hunting Wyvern (Epic Duels Rating)

Draft

Spreadsheet: Slow Champions
Category: Re-establishing Single-Target Big (S-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: A-Tier

Constructed

Tier 2

Big airborne reestablishing champion. 8 damage is enough to break a lot of important champions and most airborne champions.

8/8 is also excellent stats in the air, since it wins in combat against all of the 6/8s on down. Only outright loses to two playable airborne champions: Draka and Sky Serpent. At 8 health it survives Whirlwind which is potentially a big deal for airborne champion fights. Finally, the airborne 8 offense threatens to kill your opponent very quickly while dodging more chump blocking.

This card was incredibly powerful in the no-core monthly tournament. At some point, I might make the argument that Hunting Wyvern is on the same level or better than Kong/Sea Titan in draft, but today is not that day. There are potential constructed metas where I would definitely make that argument.

Howl (Epic Duels Rating)

Draft

Spreadsheet: 0-Cost Cards
Category: Ambush Champion (A-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: C-Tier

Spreadsheet: 0-Cost Cards
Category: Other (A-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: C-Tier

Constructed

Tier 7

Wolf Support! … … wait … sadness

This card is incredibly underwhelming. It does two average things averagely. Two ambush 2/2s is worse than a lot of similar effects, but two off-turn bodies for 0 is still okay. +5/+5 is reasonable damage + protection on an unblocked attacker or a solid combat trick, but there are a bunch of better ones. The best combination with this card is Hunting Pack to enable a 10 damage removal effect and gain 5 wolves, which is better value than a lot of two card combos, but that speaks much more to the value of Hunting Pack.

That being said, in constructed, you can combo this with Wolf’s Call, and by that I of course mean using the +5/+5 on one of your Wolf’s Call tokens since that is more damage than making the two wolves first and giving them blitz. Comboed with Keira, the two wolf tokens are slightly better and can be be played after Keira‘s two tokens attack as scouts, but *shrug*. In other words, this does not make wolf tokens constructed viable (and neither does Forest Dweller mainly because these wolf tokens don’t have blitz). [A potential way to push wolf decks hard could be a 0-cost event that puts a wolf token into play and gives all wolves (tokens) blitz this turn. Still almost certainly worse than Evil token combo decks though.]

So, I already went over this in my Forest Dweller rating, but after writing this review I immediately went and made a new wolf deck. The deck feels pretty reasonable so far, but I haven’t drawn/played Howl much yet. Tentatively boosting constructed tier from 7 to 6.

Garbage Golem (Epic Duels Rating)

Draft

Spreadsheet: 0-Cost Cards
Category: Establishing Draw &&& (A-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: D-Tier

Spreadsheet: 0-Cost Cards
Category: Establishing Draw (A-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: D-Tier

Constructed

Tier 3

Sage’s Raging T-Rex? No.

I do not like this card in limited for the same reason I don’t particularly like the non-Velden Loyalty-X’s in limited, except to a greater extreme. In order for this card to be actively strong as opposed to below average, it needs to draw 2. The only ways to guarantee that is for your deck to currently be 100% Sage or play this in deck 2 (when you know your next draw will be a recycled Sage card). Neither of those are practical restraints for inclusion. (If you draw both this and a Sage card in your opening hand, you could mulligan them in order to set yourself up, but that relies on you drawing Garbage Golem at the start of your turn and wanting to spend your gold on it, that turn.) Further, as an establishing card, it wants to be played as early as possible in a game. So the question becomes, at what Sage threshold are you willing to take the risk of it only drawing one card? 85% Sage – 51/60 or 26/30?

For constructed, even if you do get your deck to a Sage threshold you are comfortable with, 9/9 just isn’t big enough especially in Wild’s meta. Inherently losing in combat to Raging T-Rex, Scarros, Kong, and tieing Brachiosaurus just isn’t strong enough. It also gets removed by 9 damage effects Drain Essence/Hurricane. All of that being said, it is a potential “draw 2 and” champion you can get off of Mist Guide Herald, and that sentence alone is enough for it to be seriously worth considering.

From Beyond (Epic Duels Rating)

Draft

Spreadsheet: 0-Cost Cards
Category: Blitz Champion (A-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: D-Tier

Spreadsheet: 0-Cost Cards
Category: Ambush Champion (B-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: C-Tier

Constructed

Tier 5

0-cost Blitzing 5/5, not bad. 0-cost ambush 5/5, a bit better (Demon token cannibalization). Reverting to a 4/4 at end of turn is not ideal because it trades with other demon tokens and gets cleared by Pyrosaur/Ascendant Pyromancer though.

This card gets significantly better when combined with other Evil champions, especially 0-cost Evil champions like Zombie tokens. For one thing, it breaks the symmetry of token trades. If you both have zombie tokens, for instance after a Zombie Apoc, Wake the Dead, etc., yours survive in what would otherwise be a 1-for-1 trade. Further, since this effect isn’t tied to a champion like Champion of the Wicked, your opponent can’t remove the +1/+1 buff this turn; however, it can’t carry over into future turns.

In constructed, this is potentially a solid card with token creators (Eager Necromancer) and/or 1-cost token blitz enablers (The Risen/Demonic Rising). Even just this + Infest is 15/15 worth of blitz which makes this a more flexible punisher than Champion of the Wicked. Whether or not this will earn/keep a spot in midrange-combo Evil is yet to be determined.