Ada, Sleeping Botty and a Jelly

     So, with the release of Coppelia there are now three spoilers that I haven’t covered, so I’m going to cover them all today. It’s just as well that I waited on Ada Lovelace because Coppelia is her ideal partner. Now since I knew that the art on Ada / Coppelia was one long piece I had an inkling that they might have something to do with each other.

     Let’s look at Ada Lovelace first on her own without the support from Coppelia. A 1/3/1 for 2 is slightly under par for rate but only by a third of a mana. For that third of a mana we are getting a play from reserve ability to put a card in your hand into the reserve and if it’s a permanent to draw a card. Now since permanents don’t care about where they are cast from, its often to you advantage to put a permanent into the reserve and here you’d be getting double duty. Now Sierra likes a lot of permanents in her deck, so I’d say on its own she would do well in that deck. I’m not saying that Treyst or Subhash wouldn’t play her but she’s less useful to them. Treyst needs cards in reserve early, so he likes Ada early and needs it less so later in the game when his ability is already online. Subhash already has the ability and its then just a question if you want the extra card or a 2/2/2 brassbug token on that turn.

     Axiom has a number of cards that are more efficient when played from the reserve, so this is a way of turning on those cards faster.

     The rare version doesn’t care what card you put into reserve, so also allows you to move fleeting spells to your reserve as well as permanents for that draw bonus. It can also be used if you just have the wrong card in your hand at this point in the game to move it to reserve and draw something new. The rare then is a good card all round.

     The OOF rare in Ymzir makes a lot of sense because they have changed the word permanent to spell. Ymzir likes to play many spells and those spells with fleeting can quite happily get moved to the reserve and once again Ada can be used to dig for the answer that you need at that point in the game. Given that a card draw is worth roughly 2 mana (less the one mana disadvantage, you are having for putting a card into reserve) you’re getting more than par with the card even if you do not have a card one use card going to the reserve. Big spell builds such as Arfanas are the most likely to gain from Ada.

     So, Ada is pretty efficient for our Axiom friends and will fit nicely into many of the decks that Axiom wants. Same is true of many of the Axiom cards – right? Well, yes, but more so because of Coppelia. See if Ada discards Coppelia, you get to play your sleepy robot chum for free. In all TCGs I’ve played free is a magic word. Now it’s not all upside as you robot pal has asleep, but it means that the turn after she will come out fighting for you and she doesn’t take up a precious reserve slot. Even better, she has the creature type robot which gets a boost from the rare brassbug hive, which many Axiom builds are going to want to play.

     Subhash and Treyst both have abilities that can put a card from your hand to reserve, so it should be pretty easy to be able to play her for free (ish) with those heroes. Add Ada or Kelon Elemental to the mix and you should get a free sleepy robot pretty often.

     The rare Axiom Coppelia has slightly better stats that or on par if you were actually playing for the card with the ability thrown in for free ?. It will obviously make her a 4/4/1 with the robot boost from the hive, so she’ll be a force to be reckoned with … the turn afterwards.

     In its OOF form we find Coppelia in Muna. Now Muna is a faction that likes her characters to hang around for a long time, so a free character with sleep is actually a good thing. The rare Spindle will give her a boost at noon and Rin likes a character with a good forest stat to win those forest biomes. In Muna we also have the rare Kelon Elemental who can help get Coppelia into your reserve.

     Just when you thought that a pesky OOF Ordis Recruit or a Studious Disciple were your perfect sacrificial fodder for the Kraken, we have a new contender. The cute Moonlight Jellyfish is just begging to be sacrificed. She is obviously good with Lindiwe, but also combos very well with Gift of Self. Sacrifice the Jellyfish to draw two and you get the Jellyfish in your reserve to use again. With Lindiwe you also get two boosts on Maw. Now the rare is even better as it lets you draw another card when the Jellyfish is sacrificed.

     Which brings me back to Coppelia for the OOF rare of the Jellyfish which is in Axiom. So, if you can bring Coppelia in for free and already have a Jellyfish in play, then you can sacrifice the scardy-cat little Jellyish to put two more boosts onto Coppelia. Assuming you have the rare brassbug hive in play already, your free Coppelia is now a 6/6/3 for just the price of the 1 mana for the Jellyfish. Not a bad little combo!