Spreadsheet: Other
Category: Ambush Champions (B-Tier)
Internal Category Tier: C-Tier
Tier 8
A 14/14 ambush champion that turns into an 8/8 or an 8/8 that boosts a champion for one turn. The most straightforwardly-valuable thing about this card is that it can ambush in front of Kong/Sea Titan/Steel Golem (or almost any other champion) and break them in combat. Then, as an 8/8 it wins fights against a lot of other utility champions including all of the 6/8s (Medusa, Palace Guard, Ice Drake, etc.). Unfortunately, if your opponent’s gold is up and you play it this way, it’s vulnerable to fast targeted (non-damage) removal (Erase, Banishment, No Escape), however, that category is not currently valued highly.
On the other hand, using it on a champion you’ve already declared as a blocker is fairly safe and solid (assuming the attacking champion doesn’t have breakthrough). If your opponent has the targeted removal, you’ve already locked the block in, so you won’t take damage to your face, and, if they spend their gold just removing your blocking champion to save their attacking champion, you still have an 8/8 to block this turn then attack next turn. However, if you use this to effectively save one of your champions and break one of your opponent’s champions while their gold is up, you risk overextending right into a board clear. Further, this also relies on you having another champion in play that can block, but demon tokens become 10/10 and wolf/zombies become 8/8, so that isn’t actually too hard.
On the attack, this is probably most useful as the first of a double burn-out. For example, if you have this and Flame Strike in hand, your opponent is at 16 and you have a wolf in play, you attack with the wolf, if unblocked buff it to hopefully deal 8. If your opponent has 1-cost health gain, they can dodge the Flame Strike to the face on their turn, but you still at least developed an 8/8 to attack with next turn.
Spending all of this time thinking this card through while typing this up has convinced me to tentatively promote it to an internal C-Tier over D-Tier. That being said, I can’t imagine wanting it in constructed. Fighting for the board with non-evasive 8/8s in constructed has never been a thing (although it is a human for Faithful Pegasus), and a 6/6 buff by itself doesn’t seem anywhere near enough. (Briefly expanding on the 8/8s not being a thing in constructed, they are either overshadowed by big Wild champions, chump-blocked by tokens/0s, or flown over. Mid-sized, non-evasive bodies in competitive constructed Epic are essentially meaningless.)
Maybe it finds a home in a deck with Royal Escort if Kong/Sea Titan make a major resurgence in constructed, but including a 1-cost card that is only reliable when you have another 1-cost card in play against a tempo deck is doomed to fail. (On rereading, it is even more doomed to fail since you couldn’t target your Canopy Ranger with Canopy Ranger’s tribute while you have Royal Escort in play, whoops.) Competitive constructed games are way to fast right now to manifest such small targeted synergies. You need to be immediately moving towards a win as soon as you spend your first gold with Aggressive/Midrange Wild and Kark being the two most represented decks. If you can’t deal damage, you’ll get Karked out (unless all 3 copies of Kark are near the bottom of your opponent’s deck). If you get hit once by a single big Wild champion, you’re in range to be burned out. That being said, those aren’t the only two decks in the meta, and there might be exceptions.