Mortal Judgement
PTR is live and boy was it a wild night. Stayed up streaming until 2AM!
What did I think about the new set's keywords?
Let's break it down.
- Tempt Fate
- Empower
- Echo
Tempt Fate
My first impressions of Tempt Fate are that it is broken beyond reason. Playing cards early game with Tempt Fate and high-rolling two buffs on them spells out GG for your opponent. It's not a good look and is effectively game shattering. Coin flips for all the marbles on turn 1 and 2 just shouldn't exist.
Can you nerf it? Not easily. In the PTR Tempt Fate is giving out Protected, but when it goes live it will instead give out +1 Health. This is obvious as Protected is so huge, but even +1 Health and Ward are still enough to make a creature on T1 absolutely out of reach.
Best/Broken Card:
I rate this mechanic a 0/5.
Empower
On the other side of the coin (pun intended), Empower is a great mechanic. The flexibility this mechanic provides is enormous.
Midrange decks suffer from "draw this card late game and you lose" and "draw this early game and you lose" syndrome, but Empower changes all that. Now if you draw your 1 Mana Empower 5 creature on T6 OR on T1, you didn't draw a dead card, you can choose to Empower it and utilize all your Mana efficiently.
Efficient Mana usage is one of the keys to winning games, and Empower is here for it.
Best/Broken Card:
I rate this keyword 4/5.
Echo
I didn't get to play very many Echo creatures (in fact I think I only played one at the end of a game I was losing the following turn anyway, and I played it for fun so I could say I played one.) That being said, this seems like a really fun and unique keyword.
Getting a 1 Mana 1/1 with the same card text and Soulless is a very interesting way to help gain card advantage and often times sacrifice tempo in exchange for bigger plays later when you drop your cheap 1 Mana Echo.
Another key to winning games is card advantage, and having cards replace themselves in your hand when you play them is awesome.
I also love the art/thematics of the keyword, it just works well all around.
Interesting Card:
Double Underbrush Boar!
I rate Echo a 4.5/5.
More PTR Testing Required
I'm looking forward to testing the PTR out more on Wednesday's stream, 6PM EST!
Hope to see you all then!
~Copper
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