3am Eternal Dragon

     This wasn’t the article that I was going to write, but the more I think about it, the more I think that Hyradcaena is going to be a key player in the Altered metagame. Lets have a look at the rare shall we?

     Our spoiler has a rather unique (no, not that kind of unique) ability in Eternal. This means unless it is removed, the card will just keep remaining in the expedition and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. This means although the first play is likely to be poor, every other turn afterwards will make you a massive advantage and you'll just keep winning that side of the expedition. It makes Hydracaena have a big target on his heads.

     Unlike the common and the Rare Lyra versions, the rare Muna version has a nice little extra ability. Tough X, where X is the number of plants you control. So, it helps to have a few anchored Shrooms, Spindle Harvesters or Daughters of Yggdrasil around first. Of course, on his only Hydracaena will have Tough 1, which makes all your opponent’s removal cost 1 extra mana, but it really is going to be a pain to remove, and Bravos can only remove it by playing the rare Dorothy and then having to pay the Tough penalty on top.

     There is currently one good answer to Hydracaena. Anubis requires each player to sacrifice a character. Since you are having to do the sacrifice, the ability doesn’t target and if the Dragon is your only creature, you’ll need to sacrifice him. So if you're playing Hydracaena try and make sure that you have something you can sacrifice to the annoying Egyptian God.

     Other than that, you are reduced to using standard removal and paying the tax on it. On average that will be tough 2 and so playing a Banishing Gate will cost you 6 mana. Given that the Dragon Plant is costing the Muna player 7 mana we are actually still coming out on top. And  a Sticky Note Seal will cost 5 and you are now still 2 mana ahead on the deal.

     Incidentally, The Council is a Bureaucrat that hasn’t been formally spoiled yet but in the launch event for the Kickstarter we did see a copy. It had a cost of 4 for both hand and reserve plays and was a 4/4/4. The ability is the thing that is interesting though. The ->, hand and reserve abilities of characters facing me don’t activate. So, our dragon will come in without its 4 boosts on the first turn, making is a 7 cost 0/0/0. Pretty funny. Of course you could just play it in the other expedition, but it is amusing.