Thursday, March 30, 2017

Epic Strategy #5: The Ugly





Epic Strategy #5:  The Ugly


Evil Bob 1 gold
Loyalty 2
1/1
Deal 30 damage to yourself then deal 30 damage to your opponent

             Hello and welcome to Epic Strategy #5!  We are in full swing for alpha and I am loving every second of it.  You see back in the glory days, I had exactly one Epic opponent which was my good friend Daniel(Wasabi online).  Epic is an incredible game, but playing the same guy 2,000 times can get rather dull.  We both did not live anywhere near the qualifiers so we were sad to not be able to try and qualify.  We were drafting 4 times a week and devouring the game, but the lack of different and new opponents left us unsatisfied.  Now with the Epic digital, Wasabi and I have been loving the chance to play all of the new players.  In coming across plenty of players, I have seen some cards get used a lot more than they should.  As great as the design of Epic is(trying to make every card amazing), there are still a few cards that fall short in the core set of glory.  Today we will go over these cards and I will explain why I feel they are weak sauce.  Keep in mind, most of these cards do have a perfect scenario where they are as good as any card, but the problem is....

How often will that perfect scenario happen?

Ugly #1
                    

          Sorry to rain on your parade, but having an 18/18 has to have major drawbacks.  As amazing as this card looks stat wise and with a breakthrough, it still falls short of matching the speed of the game.  Removal is everywhere in Epic, so naturally any card that does not pay for itself with card draw or some extra value is just dead in the water.  If you open with this card, then your opponent will have 3 different opportunities to deal with this card(End of turn/His Turn/Your turn when you swing in)  In a game full of removal, the early bird gets the wurm.  The one use of our beloved big guy is with Final Task.  If this guy gets stocked in a graveyard, then it can be a deadly play giving this guy blitz with his built in breakthrough/high damage.  Unfortunately, he almost always gets bounced or banished or hated out of the graveyard.


Ugly #2 Vampire Lord

        
Just imagine the sound effect of that grave opening.... EEEEEEEEEEE.  


            You will quickly notice that they almost ran out of room for text on this card.  That is usually a good sign for a card.  However, the vampire lord falls short of glory in that he has lots of good traits, but no specialty.  Removal is a big problem for any of the "Watch me Grow!" cards.  Bounce and banish hard counter this card into the grave.  Since he starts at such a low damage point, it is hard for him to ambush in and block something to then live the next turn.  Best case scenario, you ambush this guy in then break the whole board on your turn and then swing in with him.  Even then, one erase and your opponent takes zero damage and the board is clear again.

Ugly #3  Chomp


           I have played about 50 dark drafts now on the digital platform.  I still have yet to pick Chomp even once.  There is not even close to enough dinosaur champions in the core set for this to be even remotely close to viable.  When I get removal I want a bonus effect as well.  Cards like Inner Demon advance my board and remove any champion in the game on my turn.  On top of that, those cards offer me the chance to draw 2!  This card lacks value and any synergy.

Ugly #4  Dark Leader


       This card is just a no.  Dark leader suffers the same fate as the vampire lord.  He has so many keywords and options, but in the end he does not have any super good qualities.  Buffing other human champions +1 is meh, and his 4/4 stat line is very meager.  He also spawns humans way too slow to really get a benefit out of that ability.  I have used him very rarely in the expansion packs when I have been able to draft a heavy human token deck.  Otherwise, this guy is trash.


Ugly #5  


A vital card in building a bad deck.

         Vital mission wants to be so good, but at the same time it has too many negative effects to outweigh the good.  Gaining life is great, but giving up the board is bad.  To get the max benefit you need to sacrifice one of your big guys to get all of the life.  The only time this card can shine is when you have the Peoples Champion in your deck.  That is a great combo as you get 8 life/two human tokens/two cards.  However, you not only have to have the Peoples Champion out, you also have to have this card ready to go as well.  It is a bit too far fetched of a combo to get out.  Many times you will hate having this card in your hand.




Conclusion

I figured you had not seen enough of evil Bob yet, so I put him up one last time.  Be careful in the draft out there folks.  Many cards will tempt you with the illusion of being good.  "I'm 18/18!"  they scream!  Walk past these guys, as you will soon find that even a tiny little 2/3 gargoyle is immensely more useful than a wurm who is going to enjoy the warmth of the bottom of your deck for far too long.

P.S

My stream is live!  I stream different hours each day based on my work schedule.  I am archiving all of my clips though.  I am trying to talk as much as possible about every choice I make on my stream so that you can learn how to draft a solid deck.  Here is the link.




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