A Hero Analysis

I have made the expected ability of a hero on average to be 1 mana over eight turns, giving the total average benefit of an Exalt being 8 mana. If you get more out of that hero, then you are ahead of the curve and doing well for hero ability.

 

Axiom

All the Axiom heroes play very differently mainly because the are split between ones which interact well with the reserve and those that need permanents. You can do a mis of the two strategies though with all the heroes, but everything they do is permanent and reserve based.

 

Sierra and Oddball

Estimated no. of procs: 4

Ability Mana Benefit: 2 mana

Rating Now: B-

Future Potential Rating: C

     Sierra and Oddball are about on a par for the ability assuming you can make four procs of her ability to produce a 2/2/2 brassbug. With the rare hive out, those bugs become 3/3/3’s and the hive itself pays for itself (since you will end up with two 3/3/3’s with Sierra’s ability. Her ability to get more out of her ability will really depend on how many 3+ costed permanents you can cast as well as whether you can find your rare brassbug hives. Since you can’t cast those rare hives until turn 3 at the earliest, you then need your bassbug hubs to generate more early bugs. More than any other Axiom Exalts, Sierra is very dependent on a permanent heavy build. Sierra though is quite slow to setup and can lose to early fast decks like Kojo.

     Currently there are not lots of good ways of removing those permanents. If the remainder of the set has more common permanent removal across the factions, Sierra’s rating may go down.

 

Treyst and Rossum

Estimated no. of procs: 5

Ability Mana Benefit: 1.25 mana

Rating Now: B+

Future Potential Rating: A-

     Tresyt relies on getting cards into your reserve quickly and then playing the out of the reserve as soon as you can. This means that you need to have lots of ways to get cards into your reserve in your deck to play them out quickly. Also, cards that play more cheaply from the reserve are really good in this deck. With a good draw you can get the ability going by turn 4 or possibly by even turn 3. Getting to play a card from reserve each turn for free is worth around 1 mana, but since you get to choose which card you get to take from your hand and put into reserve, I rate that slightly higher in turns of mana benefit than a straight dumping of a card into reserve. Permanents in the reserve don’t matter as they are all costed the same and you can only play them once. With some better ways of seeding the reserve early I can see Treyst going up in rating.

 

Subhash and Marmo

Estimated no. of procs: 8

Ability Mana Benefit: 1 mana

Rating Now: A

Future Potential Rating: A

     This is one of the heroes to beat. Subhash has a straightforward ability that doesn’t require any setup and he can be procced every turn by simply just paying one mana for a 2/2/2 bug. I have seen permanent heavy and permanent light Subhash builds and both seem solid. Putting a card in reserve just gives you the opportunity to play out a cheaper version of an Axiom card (such as Amelia Earhart) so isn’t really that big a downside. Being able to selectively put things into reserve is in fact an advantage (as it is in Treyst) and I see this as being one of the heroes to beat at the moment.

 

Bravos

I think Bravos is one of the factions where the heroes play out the most differently. Kojo is a rush deck, Basira almost more of a Muna deck getting boosts to stick longer and Atsardi is a big-mana deck. I think it almost has the biggest difference in the three heroes.

 

Kojo and Booda

Estimated no. of procs: 4

Ability Mana Benefit: 3 mana

Rating Now: B

Future Potential Rating: B

     Kojo and Booda are a solid pairing. They are the aggro deck of Altered and Bravos. Getting a free 2/2/2 Booda on turn 1 means you stand a good chance of getting a double advance on the first turn. Then you just need to ride that lead until you win with good solid well stated cards. Now there are plenty of ways that Kojo can lose, and they really need a little card advantage, so they don’t run out of steam late on (if Ymzir manages to drag you back), but Kojo is a solid strategy that doesn’t need much else.

 

Basira and Kaizaimon

Estimated no. of procs: 6

Ability Mana Benefit: 1 mana

Rating Now: C+

Future Potential Rating: B+

     Currently I can’t get a proc every turn with Basira and I think you need that to make her work. Most of the Bravos boosts on characters are ones that come out of the reserve, and you need lots of characters with Seasoned to make the best use of your boosts. Alas all the characters with Seasoned are rare and then you need other rares to make her work. So, at present she really needs other cards to make her work well, but I can see her getting the few bits that she needs to make a good deck. Definitely she is currently not as strong as Kojo but has the potential to be better. I also this that with the right tools that Basira can be better than Kojo with the full printed card list.

 

Atsardi and Surge

Estimated no. of procs: 3

Ability Mana Benefit: 2 mana

Rating Now: D

Future Potential Rating: B-

      Atsardi is the hero that is associated with playing big creatures. Over the turns you need to put a 5, 6 and 7 mana creatures into play to get your free card draw. Currently we don’t have anything bigger to get more procs in the card list, so Atsardi will be currently underperforming. Also, Atsardi really needs mana ramp. We currently only have the Mighty Jinn for that purpose, so we really need a bit more from the remaining card lists to make this hero fire on all cylinders. Also due to the risk of putting out so many big creatures.

 

Lyra

All Lyra’s decks play with random chance, but they do so in interesting ways. Nevenka is a straight up dice rolling ‘lucky’ deck whereas Fen is more luck in terms of draws in terms of what gets randomly mana orbed and what goes in your reserve. Auraq’s randomness comes in what free card you get from the top of the deck. If only there was a way to see what you had coming!

 

Nevenka and Blotch

Estimated no. of procs: 7

Ability Mana Benefit: 1 mana

Rating Now: C+

Future Potential Rating: B-

     Nevenka is subject to RNG, but she can severely mitigate that randomness by putting out the Ouroboros. Indeed, she is the only Lyra hero who needs the Lyra Bastion in her deck. Without the bastion the chance of your characters suffering the indignity of going to the reserve is very real. You need to time your procs for Nevenka well to make the most of her as well as using the rare All-in to your advantage since the scales should be tipped in your favour. With a few more cards I think Nevenka could be a solid choice, but I fear we have already seen the best for her.

 

Fen and Crowbar

Estimated no. of procs: 7

Ability Mana Benefit: 1 mana

Rating Now: B+

Future Potential Rating: A-

     Fen’s ability is solid and will always proc except for the very first turn. Being able to put a free card into the reserve every turn is a solid ability, though you need to remember not to have too many only ‘play from hand’ effects in your deck as her ability could seriously nerf them. It is essentially akin to having nearly 2 card draws a turn with the downside that things will get randomly put in your mana orbs. I think Fen is a very solid hero, with the one footnote that lyra odd stat characters are sometimes hard to sequence with the right biomes and you can get sneaky 1/1/1’s beating you.

 

Auraq and Kibble

Estimated no. of procs: 3

Ability Mana Benefit: ?? mana

Rating Now: D

Future Potential Rating: B-

     More than anything Auraq is subject to randomness than even Nevenka as your free card can be any mana cost. You do however have to play lots of odd-stated characters and only get 1 counter no matter how many zeros you have. You have the challenge then of Auraq is to have pay off cards for your odd-stated cards. Currently there is only one of them and that doesn’t have odd stats. So, it really needs to see more from the other cards before it can reach a very respectable performance (joke intended).

 

Muna

I think Muna is the faction with the closest gameplay between all three heroes. They all want to anchor their characters down and boost them, though the bonuses of their heroes are different. One being a boost, another being a free anchor for the price of a discard from reserve and the final one a draw and a discard. The basic strategy of each hero though doesn’t change that much and I kind of feel that all these heroes are in a similar place.

 

Teiga and Nauraa

Estimated no. of procs: 8

Ability Mana Benefit: 1 mana

Rating Now: B+

Future Potential Rating: B+

      Teiga will proc every turn and provide the first character that you play with a boost. This makes your decision what to play first an interesting connundrum as often the thing that you want to boost may not be the first character that you want to play. Teiga is starightforward and works well all the Muna cards. As such she's a fairly strong hero and plays pretty well with the overall anchoring strategy. I don't see her getting significantly better, but she's already pretty good as it is.

 

Arjun and Spike

Estimated no. of procs: 7

Ability Mana Benefit: Net 1 mana (-1 to discard from reserve to gain 2 for medium anchored)

Rating Now: C

Future Potential Rating: B-

     Arjun is doing what the Muna deck wants to do in terms of anchoring your small to medium characters so that they can grow. You are however losing quite a lot of resources to do that anchoring and the Teiga deck already has lots of ways of anchoring creatures or has that anchoring inbuilt within it. Arjun lacks the boost that goes with the anchoring, and I think it plays similarly but worse than Teiga. I don’t see what Arjun can gain to make him a better choice than Teiga so at the moment I’m not big on Arjun, though others seem to think he’s solid. I haven’t played him or against him yet, so I feel I need more experience and I may reassess him.

 

 

Rin and Orchid

Estimated no. of procs: 5

Ability Mana Benefit: 1 mana

Rating Now: C

Future Potential Rating: B-

     Rin has a potential to draw and discard up to 5 cards as a ceiling on the ability. That assumes that you win on forest to advance in the regions that you advance. It’s possible that you advance but only win on the other biomes, so you need to ensure that you have lots of good characters in your deck with forests. Whilst there are some, I’m just not seeing that you are getting enough value from Rin. I think there could be things in the other cards which help her, but as yet I have no idea what they could be.

 

Ordis

Whilst all the Ordis decks use tokens and go wide, they play very differently and have very different power levels. The straightforward go wide and boost little tokens works well in Sigismir, not so well in Gulrang and then I’m not sure in Waru as there’s not enough cards to make his controlling token strategy work yet, but I do think with the right cards he has the potential to be a very strong hero.

 

Sigismar and Wingspan

Estimated no. of procs: 8

Ability Mana Benefit: 1 mana

Rating Now: A

Future Potential Rating: B+

     Interestingly enough whilst I currently rate this as one of the top decks around I feel that this could actually go down once the whole set is revealed. I think that most of the tools for the deck have already been revealed and that the other decks will all start to catch up with Sigismar. There are very few ways to get rid of the permanents that this deck relies on and I think that it is likely that once other decks get those tools that this deck will lose something. The strategy is simple. Play lots of characters and boost them. The only thing that really seems effective sometimes against it is Kraken’s Wrath, but I believe we’ll see more tools against it. The bonus soldier each round though synergises so well with how this deck plays.

 

Gulrang and Tocsin

Estimated no. of procs: 3

Ability Mana Benefit: 3 mana (approx.)

Rating Now: D

Future Potential Rating: C+

     My currently worst rated hero, mainly because I don’t really understand how she wins. Her ability to give a boost to a token character when it comes into play is great, except for the first 5 turns any token that you have means they also have defender, and you can’t win that expedition. This means for 5 out of 8 turns she’s a sponge that you just have to hop you can nullify your opponent’s attempts to move forward and then hopefully start to claw that back and win with your powerful ability. The problem is that the disadvantage nullifies all the power of Ordis early on and your opponent will likely just beat you first. It needs more cards to be revealed, but I really have no idea what they could be.

 

Waru and Mack

Estimated no. of procs: 7

Ability Mana Benefit: 1 mana (plus some intangible benefits)

Rating Now: D+

Future Potential Rating: B

     There just aren’t enough good bureaucrats around at present to make Waru’s deck really come to life but unlike Gulrang I see where this deck is going. Currently we have three bureaucrats in Ordis, and I like two of them. To be fair to the Monolith Archivist though the rare version will get better once we have more bureaucrats to play with and I can see where the deck is going. Robin Hood is great to keep around turn after turn and once or two more annoying interfering bureaucrats could see the deck being quite good. This is my tip to be the most improved hero once we see the rest of the set.

 

Ymzir

Like Bravos, the Ymzir strategies I think will be quite varied, although they all centre around casting spells. The most basic of these is Akesha who’s ‘after you’ ability is powerful, but you can essentially build the deck any way you want with the cards you have available. Arfanas is a more of a tempo spell playing with characters. It’s much more glass cannon than Akesha and I think he suffers a bit from that. Lindiwe doesn’t really have enough support yet for her sacrifice strategy, but I think it potentially could be good once some more cards are revealed for her.

 

Akesha and Taru

Estimated no. of procs: 4

Ability Mana Benefit: 2 mana

Rating Now: B+

Future Potential Rating: A-

     I think Akesha is currently the strongest of the Ymzir heroes currently. She is very flexible in how you can build her, and her ability is as annoying as heck. She used to be much better when you could pay 2 mana for her ability when your opponent went first. She is also (in my view) one of the most skill testing heroes as players often forget or don’t time correctly when to use her ability. I see her getting a little better as new Ymzir spells get revealed but her ceiling is not that much higher.

 

Arfanas and Senka

Estimated no. of procs: 10 (ish)

Ability Mana Benefit: 1 mana

Rating Now: C+

Future Potential Rating: B-

     I think that Arfanas is a much more brittle hero than Akesha and I’m not sure that the build is quite correct yet. The current build seems to rely on the mage dancer and anchoring her down for several turns to win on that side, however that makes him a bit of a glass cannon that can fall apart quite quickly.

 

Lindiwe and Maw

Estimated no. of procs: 5 (ish)

Ability Mana Benefit: 2 mana

Rating Now: D+

Future Potential Rating: B

     Possibly the second most likely hero t0 move up the ratings with the reveal of the full set. Her ability to put out a 0/0/0 Maw token doesn’t do much (except gain from a boost from elsewhere). However, we know of a few cards now that do work with sacrifices (Gift of Self. Ymzir Stargazer and Kraken) and its likely that there will be more. I see there being a whole architype around her and sacrificing the poor Ordis tokens that the Ordis Carrier or the Brassbug Hive can provide her. So she’s currently not great, but I see good things in Lindiwe and Maw’s future.