Things have been bare around here lately while I take a breather/find some full-time work/play too many games (it's been the dreaded Magic Online has has sucked away some of my time these past few days!). Of course, Cryptozoic has been good about providing some daily content thanks to the Icecrown previews. One of those cards, Gale Winds, was something I took a liking to the moment I heard about it from the Ggslive livestream during Gen-Con.
Those of you who played against me or in my region during 2006 probably know one important fact about my preference of decks: I couldn't not play a Druid.
This wasn't always a good thing, of course. When you're playing Moonshadow in your first WoW TCG regional qualifier, you're probably doing something wrong.
Then Moonfire came along, and I smiled.
I played the Boomkin deck from August of 2006 all the way through the World Championship for that year. I have no complaints about my deck-choice from that big tournament either. It locked me into day 2 early in the day, where I finally dropped off at 6-3, and I think with a little more fortune in my last two rounds I could have secured a 7-2 or 8-1. The Moonkin Form deck had a lot of powerful synergies and interactions. Stormrage Cover could help you find your deck's key players, but was an exciting piece of armor in terms of damage prevention. However, when matched with Moonkin Form (another card that doesn't do anything on its own), it became a huge road-block for aggressive decks. Combine those two cards with Moonfire, and you'll putting your opponent on a clock while having easy access to damage-prevention with your headpiece!
The Balance Druid has been all about interactions and synergies with its own cards. Specifically, the deck plays a lot of ongoing abilities. Moonfire, Moonkin Form, and now tools like Barkskin, Dreamstate, and Insect Form often play off of each other to become a powerful interaction that can take down most opponents. Moonkin decks ran strong for about a year, before finally falling out of the top-tier decks as Drums of War was released.
Naturally, Gale Winds has me wanting to re-sleeve those old Moonfires.
Why would I get so excited about this deck type again though? Well, despite my unnatural obsession for becoming a fat chicken and spamming magical lasers from space down on unsuspecting opponents with a hand gesture that strongly resembles Ryu throwing a Hadoken from Street Fighter 2, Gale Winds offers some great deck-building options. One of those is the fact that you can quickly ramp into a Master Hero, as what gunslingers at Gen-Con were doing. That's close to one of the most powerful things you can do in this format. The next big effect would be putting King Varian Wrynn into play, which many players can attest to as being absolutely back-breaking in a variety of match-ups. Generally, I could see a Boomkin player throwing him down and often giving the opposing field -5/-5 (ally, hero, quest, location, ability). That pretty much obliterates anything you'd commonly expect to see being played against you!
Another thing that Gale Winds does, which was emphasized by preview writer Dan Clark in his article, is something that could be deemed broken. Big resource jumps rarely take place in this game, and the effects that can do this are often heavily restricted, or are limited to fringe heroes (like Ripped Through The Portal). Gale Winds can let you ready into an unbeatable board-state with little effort, as the number of resources you can suddenly have access to will most likely go from 5 to 10 between turns. This makes effects like Moonfire exceptionally lethal. Even if you can't kill your opponent in one turn after Gale Winds resolves, there's probably a good chance that you can make it inevitable. Moonfire is a pretty natural combo with Eye of the Storm, meaning that having an active Gale Winds with Moonfire and Eye of the Storm will often mean that any deck relying on attacking you cannot win. This especially applies to Solo decks, which rely on hitting through the opponent with their hero.
Gale Winds also plays exceptionally well with Insect Swarm, which is what I feel to be one of the most underrated and undervalued talent cards currently in the game. Simply nugging your opponent for 2 damage on turn one doesn't sound very exciting, but what if that suddenly turned off your opponent's next two Broderick Langforths? Suddenly, Insect Swarm on turn one goes from 'mediocre' to 'absurd' in an instant. Many Horde decks have begun to rely on effects like Broderick to add up damage with their hero over the course of a game, and an early Insect Swarm stops any of this from really happening to you!
This one's a little out of left field, but it's worth bringing up as it may apply in different ways to Gale Winds in the future. Quagmirran's Eye, Vengeance of the Illidari, Gromble the Apt, and Moonfire with Gale Winds in play is infinite Moonfire activations. Sure, this is a five-card combo, but some of these pieces are actually playable on their own, and there is also the possibility that cards which can replace the less exciting pieces of the combo will be released in the future. I'm certainly someone who loves comboing out on opponents, so you can bet that I will be keeping watch on Gale Winds when new cards come out.
Icecrown is shaping up to be an excellent set, and cards which do potentially busted things like Gale Winds have done a good job of getting me really excited to start throwing together some brews once the set's contents are confirmed. I'll be sure to chime in with my thoughts on the set with a little two-week breakdown of each class, faction, equipment, and face-up resources once Icecrown hits shelves on September 14th.
Until then, what are your thoughts on the set's previews so far? Share your opinions!
No comments:
Post a Comment