UNTAMED Preview Discussion #3 - We got a new summoner!

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We've nearly at Untamed-mas! WOAH! Did you know? The kickstarter rewards have been sent out yesterday! Go claim your packs! But dont claim the potions yet, if you want to save them for the packs only. The change to disable them for reward cards isnt happening until the untamed release.

Today we got shown three new upcoming reward cards and three untamed ones.

As always were going in order of the offical post. :)

ITS NOT JUST A FISH OR AN ORCA. Its an Battle Orca. An Orca that does battle!
Okay, so this the newest card for the water splinter, meant as a cheap tank/frontliner. Its the best mana to HP ratio you can get in this splinter, so its a good option for back to basics, or against magic units, when you might not want to use the turtle. The Orca can also hit back! 4 dmg is really good for three mana. This card is good in all leagues, starting from silver you get 2 dmg 4 speed and 6 HP for just 3 mana. Thats really good!
I think its easy to think this card is bad, just becouse it has no ability, but this is a cheaper mountain giant that can attack!
Of course if you just want HP, mountain giant is still better.
Pretty happy to see that the good Pirate Archer got replaced by another amazing water card!

Turtle is still way better in non b2b rulesets, and against melee attackers. But the orca is better against magic.

So the peaceful giant has a much better HP to mana ratio, if youre just looking for HP.
You get 3.4 HP per mana spent at max lvl, but a max lvl giant would cost you around 117$+ and that is if you could get 505 copies for the current price of 0.23$.
Orca gives you 2.66 HP per mana on max lvl. While that is worse, let us compare that to a lower lvl giant.A level six giant (52BCX) is 13 HP, which makes it 2.6 HP per mana. So the orca is better for a HP to mana ratio, unless you can get a lvl 7 giant.
AND the Orca can attack aswell. Dont sleep on this fish!

Okay, heres the Boogeyman, Im gonna say, when I first saw this card and another one were looking at today, I though they would be just bad. But you know what, after sleeping over it, I changed my mind.
While this card is nieche and cannot be played in all games, with the new unlimited and higher mapacap games, this card will probably be seen a lot. You get a counter to armor, melee dmg and slow, which is always good. You also get seven HP for six mana, which isnt terrible. The dmg is a nice bonus.
Its also another magic attacker is the death splinter, they dont have many useful ones sadly.

Another six mana magic user in death is the Dark Enchantress, and you know what, she isnt used, like ever. While she has double the magic power, she has three less HP, which makes her die to reflect in two hits.

The other option of demoralize (besides the summoner) is the Fallen Specter, but it dies in one hit against magic reflect, so hes rarely used.

In lower mana games you would still want to use the amazing Undead Priest, hes amazing value for two mana.

Did I say I changed my mind about two cards? Make it three. My first impression of Hive account@thecryptodwarf's cousin wasnt that good. I compared him to magic users from the water splinter. But that wasnt fair, since water strenght is magic. But for all the other splinters, this is a really decent card! Especially if you play the Life or Death splinter, both of them dont offer that many good magic users. Here you get a decent attacker, that also comes with a self defense buff, a party buff, and an enemy debuff. Thats really good for six mana!
The lvl one version isnt that good, but starting on lvl two, I expect to see this miner speeding around a bit!

His stats are most compareable to the Magi Sphinx. I would say that if you can spare the one mana, and you are not in a back to basic ruleset, then you would always use the dwarf over thee sphinx.

Kobold Wrestler! Ain't he cute?! Look at his teeth :)
This is another good contenter for little league games, so far the fire splinter only really had Cerberus as a frontliner for little league / low mana games.

The stats itself are really close to the Battle Orca that we just saw for water, you get one less HP, but get a new ability called "knock out" instead.

So if you read my explanation about the orca, the same applies for the Kobold.

But lets talk about "knock out" for a second here.

The effect: the unit with knock out does double dmg to units that are stunned, by the stun ability

While this sounds really powerful, there are some problems here.

Team setup: you need to have a stun backliner in your team to make this ability work.
The stunner needs to attack before the kobold does.
The stun ability need to actually trigger and stun the target.
The kobold needs to attack the stunned target AND hit, before he dies.

I dont see this ability beeing super good, unless we get some really nice new stun units.
But thankfully the stats of the wrestler alone make him playable.

So, how many backline stunner are there in the fire splinter?

As of right now 0.

How many back line stunner are there in the neutral set so far?

Only one, the Dwarven Wizard, but he doesnt attacker the enemy frontline under normal circumstances.

Your only option from the old set to trigger the wrestlers knockunit would be:

Using the Pit ogre in melee mayham.

Using the dragon splinter and the lightning dragon.

Our next card is from the life splinter! This eagle is a really solid card! Im not sure how good it would be in lower leagues, since it might be better to use the Silvershield Warrior, which costs two less mana there.

But the stats and abilites of a max leveled eagle are super good! Its a fying unit, so it works amazing in earthquake, its a reach unit, so it can attack from the second position, and it gains knock out and shatter.
You can read by opinions about knock out in the previous card.
Shatter is another thing, in theory I think this is a really solid ability, but with all the rust units coming out, Im not so sure if shatter will be needed. Either way, the 4 dmg, 7 HP and 1 armor are still very solid stats for six mana.

I expect this card to be player over the warrior in all higher manacap games.

Okay thats our last card, and boi is it a big one! Its the first summoner (with stats) we're seeing from UNTAMED.

So our Wizard of Eastwood is the newest rare three mana summoner, for the earth splinter. He takes Lyanna Naturas spot.
How does it hold up? Hes the second card I mentioned earlier that I changed my mind on. At first I hated it, -2 armor on all enemies is really niche.
Heres the problem with debuffing summoners and cards: you dont know how many, if any, units get effected.

In theory having buffing units/summoners is always better, since you are the one who decides how many units get affected. That is also the reason why Zintar wasnt that good as a black summoner.

But heres where I changed by mind. Having a card like this, adds more strategy to the game. If you expect your enemy to use protect or many armor units, or play the life splinter, then this is an excellent choice.
While you could just use a monster with the rust ability instead, those will often set you back more than three mana, and their effect (presumably) ends when they die. This summoner debuff lasts for the whole game.

Now there is still some negatives about this card.

Newcomers only buying untamed cards will only have a niche earth summoner.
The price of the beta earth summoners would very likely increase (can be a pro or con)
If theres gonna be nieche / counter summoners now, that would increase the price of champion tier decks, since you need a "normal" summoner and a counter summoner for each splinter. Of course you could just go with one, but then your options are limited.

Just as a refreshers, here are the current earth summoners: