Let us look at the first three cards that are revealed in the new Winter Wanderlands set. See if we think they are any good, or what type of deck they can fit in.
Winter Wanderlands set
The cards were announced earlier today on twitter by Play It Forward DAO in a partnership between them and Gods Unchained. What exactly the partnership is or entails I guess we will have to wait and see. But let us look at the cards.
I have done my very best mature effort in cleaning up the cards, but this is as good as it gets, so sorry.
First of all, it is three cards from three different gods. From left to right, Magic, Deception, and Nature. Let us look at the first card, the Avalance Watcher. This is a 0 mana 0/1, in info itself not very impressive at all. It does have backline. But what is interesting is that the card has a varied mana cost. Meaning it will use up all your mana. And for every mana expended, the Avalance Watcher gets +1/+1.
This means the card has very nice potential. It can be played on any turn. Meaning it will be a good early game. But also it will be an ok late-game card. This is a great flexibility to have in a card. Allowing it to fill several use cases in a deck. The only drawback to the card, as I see it. Is a fact that you can not play any card after you played this. Unless you saved your pip. This means you can not play this card and then play a buff. You have to play the buff first and then play the slightly smaller Avalance Watcher. Omitting it from getting a buff. I do think this card will make its way into many magic decks simply because of its flexibility.
Curious Wandercat, the second card. This is also a creature. A 3 mana 4/3. Simply based on that stat alone I would see it is decent to a good card. But it has relic removal on top. Meaning that it most likely will be a very good utility card. It looks to be a more powerful version of the two 1 mana cards that remove 1 durability at the end of your turn. This now removes 3 durabilities at the end of your turn. Which is huge. This can potentially help vs the relics that keep adding charges to them, like Lysanders Spear.
The drawback is that it will kill your own relic at the same time. But Deception, as far as I know, is not a god that has a lot of decks built around their relics. But this might hint that maybe Deception will get a new relic in this set as well. I think this will be a good card. It is only a bit strange as deception already had the only way to deal with sticky relics, that being the card Counterfit. I would personally like to have seen this card be for another god.
The third, and last card Fir Tree´s Fury, to be revealed is a spell for nature. This is a spell that has some flexibility to it. But it has some downsides to it as well. Let us look at what the card does. 5 mana spell, first that is a pretty expensive card. The effect of the spell is it does 1 damage to the weakest enemy creature. And it will repeat this 4 more times, for a total of 5 damage. But it has the upside that it will hit the next enemy if it kills the first one it targets. If there are no more enemies or none to begin with. Then instead of doing damage the spell will summon one 1/1 Frosty Fruit for every damage not done.
This means the card has some flexibility, it will allow you to both kill off some weaker enemies and possibly still summon a 1/1 creature or two for you as well. I will assume the Frosty Fruit will have some Afterlife to it as well. The other 1/1 like the Vibrant Fruit, or the Walking plant has both an Afterlife effect. One buffs your creature, and the other heals your god. A guess would be an afterlife that does damage to the enemy God or their creature.
Based on the card alone, I don't think it is that good of a card. But there are some unknowns. Like will the Frosty Fruits do something, will they be Wild or just neutral? These are two possibilities that very much can affect and increase the utility of the card. As it is now, based on the card alone. I would say that maybe it will see play in some Nature Controle decks.
What are your thoughts on these cards, do you agree with my assessment or do you think I have over or undersold them by missing some potential or flaw? Please share your opinion in the comment section down below. If you would like to support me and the content I make, please consider following me, reading my other posts, or why not do both instead.
See you on the interwebs!
Picture provided by:
https://twitter.com/PIF_DAO/status/1599673295431168001
- PIF_DAO