Analysing Uniques Part II

     In my first part of the article, I broke down some of the aspects that you need to look at when you are analysing a Unique, but there’s quite a bit more too it than that. An ability that is strong in one faction is weak in another. Why might that be? In this article I’m going to use some of my own Uniques to help explain things.

Breaking Down the Quest:

The quest actually breaks down into several components and this can be reasonably complex to analyse because of the nuances in the game. Sometimes things I say below might not apply as a general rule and I will try and break down those where I can.

1. The Timing

This is one of the crucial parts of analysing every ability. There are a number of potential timings that an ability can have, and some are stronger than others, though sometimes that can also depend. I’ll go through each one below.

-->

This is one of the strongest ones, meaning that it happens when played from anywhere. The strength in this is twofold. Firstly, you will normally get the effect twice (assuming that it is not ‘I have Fleeting’ or the opponent removes the character from the game. Secondly its effect will happen when played from somewhere other than the hand or reserve. So, Mind Apotheosis and Auraq’s abilities will still trigger this effect.

Leave        Effects that fire off when a card leaves the expedition are pretty strong, since they are immune to removal effects. Even bounce effects will trigger them, so once in play they are pretty certain to happen, but you just cannot time when that will be. Strong effects on these cards will tend to make for stronger Uniques as the effect will always happen.

Go to Res  A variant of the effect above is ‘When I go to the Reserve from the expedition’. This is similar to the above but only applies once and won’t occur if the character ever has fleeting (naturally from the reserve or because the opponent gives you character fleeting.

-                Static Abilities have nothing before them and are always active as long as the character is in play. This can often mean that the effect is either ongoing or repeatable. Both of these can potentially be very strong. Robin Hood’s static tax is a strong effect as it lasts the rest of the turn after he is played. Effects like ‘Whenever a character comes into play’ mean that it could trigger multiple times and be abusable. These static effects can have a variety of conditions, such as ‘When you roll a die’, ‘When a card leaves the reserve’, “When my Expedition fails to move forward during dusk’ or ‘When a character joins my expedition’.

H               Playing from the hand is the next strongest effect. The card will normally be in the hand first and so you will have to play it from there before you can play it from reserve. With factions / heroes that can easily get things in reserve (or indeed the gameplay is to do so) then this may not be as strong, but for all others it is pretty strong.

At Dusk:   Having to wait for your ability to kick off At Dusk means that your opponent can plan for it to happen and do something about it before it happens. So, even if it is a strong effect, you might not get it. For instance, if you have At Dusk: Sabotage, the opponent can empty their reserve first. At Dusk abilities happen before card values are compared and then the cards go to the reserve, so you can’t snipe cards from this round with it. This is weaker than a à or hand effect. On a weak character, it may not be worth an opponent removing the character, so it might seem stronger if it’s a medium strong ability.

R              Playing from the reserve means that you either need to somehow get the card into reserve (which Axiom can do fairly easily) or you need to play out of the hand first. That means that you have to wait for a turn to play from hand before you can get the ability and even then, you are risking it being sabotaged. Generally, this is a weaker ability unless it is in Axiom.

At Noon:    Possibly the weakest ability is the At Noon: ability. The character not only has to survive the full turn, but also must be either Asleep, Eternal or Anchored to get this ability to happen. The effect is stronger in factions that naturally get anchored or asleep (Muna and Ymzir) and weaker in all the others.

2. The Condition

The next thing to look at is what is the condition (for the quest) to actually fire off at the time that you will see normally after the timing symbol. There are a whole bunch of these for Unique cards in the first set and I’ll only go through some of the more common ones.

If You Control One or More Landmarks: 

This one is usually seen on non-Axiom or Ordis Unique cards. Because it is less common for Bravos, Muna, Ymzir or Lyra to play lots of Landmarks, this condition is harder to meet. You need to draw the Landmark, play it before this card is played and finally hope that the opponent doesn’t remove it. So, it may sound easy but its not as easy as all that. My view is that you need at least 5 landmarks in your deck to make these kinds of effects workable. On Axiom and Ordis unique cards you’ll often see a need for two or more landmarks.

If you Control Two or more boosted Characters:

[I do not own the above card] This one you will often see on Bravos characters. One or more is not too difficult to achieve, but when this is two or more boosted characters it is harder to achieve. I rate the unique cards with two or more boosted characters to be a hard condition unless the character has a built-in self-boost.

If you control three or more characters:

There are some variations on this one, principally three or more other characters, which is harder to achieve. You principally see this condition in Ordis or Muna, both of which can achieve the condition relatively easy, however in general this will be a mid to late game condition in most non Sigismar decks.

If I have 1 or more boosts:

This one isn’t too difficult to achieve, but you do need to have some other way of giving the card a boost. There are heroes in Bravos. Muna and Ymzir that should all be able to achieve this condition fairly easily, but you have to be able to trigger it still, so its not 100% guaranteed to fire off. There is a variant of this where you need two or more boosts that is harder to achieve.

You may put a card from you hand into reserve:

This is a fairly easy condition to achieve, but in most (non-Axiom) factions you are giving yourself a card disadvantage to make this happen. Now this can be good for you if you really need that effect to happen OR that your card you are discarding is better played from the reserve OR you have a way to later remove fleeting. The only difficulty to achieving this one is if you don’t have enough cards in hand, but that should be a fairly rare occurrence, you just need to be aware that you are giving yourself card disadvantage.

You may pay 1:

Another easy to achieve condition is paying mana. This is usually one but could be more mana to achieve the effect. You just need to add this onto the cost of the character to see if that extra cost is going to be worth it or make the overall package too expensive. Paying the extra one might also mean that you can’t cast that extra character that you want this turn, so you may be effectively Robin Hooding yourself. Paying 1 to draw a card though is probably worth it.

You may discard a card from your reserve:

Discarding a card from your reserve is another relatively easy condition to meet. You obviously need to have a card in your reserve but (barring an opponent’s sabotage) you should be able to meet it. Once again this is card disadvantage and is akin to giving any other card a support ability. If the ability is strong then it may be worth it, but in the example above I’m not sure that it is.

If you have three or more base statistics of 0 amongst characters you control:

This one is not easy to achieve in my view, even in an Auraq deck. Basically, on the card above you need two other zero stats on creatures you control. Chances are you’ll only have one other character most of the time and it is less likely that you’ll have more than one zero stat on it unless you pack your deck with lots of weird cards. Late on you may have two other cards out, but this card wants to ramp early if possible.

If you control two or more plants other than me:

This also can apply to robots and bureaucrats or perhaps later to any other character type. Two or more others means you have to play three characters or have the other characters in play from the last turn. Muna does this through Anchored and Ymzir does this through Asleep, so I don’t see this condition as too hard to meet, but it will require some setup from the turn before.

If you control a token:

[The above is not my card]. The need to control a token is pretty easy in Axiom and Ordis (though not guaranteed) but much harder in the other factions. As such these cards tend to be in Axiom or Ordis and its not a hard condition to meet. I rate this as around 80-100% chance of meeting depending on the hero.

No Condition:

Some cards have no condition to their effect. These will always happen and thus these can be some of the strongest cards if they have a good effect on them.

      3. Effects

The final part of each ability is the effect. The stronger the effect, potentially the stronger the Unique will be. Below I’ve listed some effects I think are very strong, strong, good, okay and weak.

1. Very Strong

• Robin Hood tax ability
• Discard Target Character or Permanent
• Draw 3 cards

2. Strong

• Draw 2 cards
• Target Character Gains 3 boosts
• Put two cards from the top of your deck into your mana orbs
• Characters you control gain 1 boost
• Two target characters gain 2 boosts
• Send target character to the reserve
• Discard target permanent

3. Good

• Roll a die. Target Character gains x boosts
• Put one card from the top of your deck into your mana orbs
• Target Character gains 2 boosts
• Roll a die. On a 4+ gain 3 boosts, on a 1-3 gain 1 boost
• Target Character gains Anchored
• Return target character costing 4 or less to their owner’s hand
• Draw a card
• Target Character gains Asleep
• Sabotage

4. Okay

• Target Character gains 1 boost
• Roll a die. On a 4+ gain 2 boosts, on a 1-3 gain 1 boost
• Resupply
• Each player discards their hand and draws 3 cards
• Anchor target character with cost 3 or less
• Each player draws a card
• Characters gain Tough 1
• The next card you play this afternoon costs 1 less
• The next permanent you play costs 2 less

5. Weak

• Target Character gains fleeting
• Target Character loses fleeting
• Target Character switches expeditions
• I gain Fleeting

Obviously rating these will depend on the mana cost involved, the biome stats on the card, the conditions to activate it and the faction that it is in. The list above is only a guideline, and you really need to look at the whole card to sum up all the effects.