Goddess of Skiing

     It’s the most exciting time of the year. It’s spoiler season and a new Bravos goodie has dropped from Equinox. This one is another deity and indeed to help out our expeditions in the Trial by Frost our new Bravos deity is the Goddess of Skiing.

     The Bravosi like their sports and the particular one is no exception. Once again first of all I have to give big props to the artist Edward Chee who did a bang-up job of emphasizing the exuberance of the Goddess mid jump coming down the hillside. I love pretty much all the artwork in Altered, but this one is a particularly good job.

     The common card is 2 mana from hand and 3 mana from reserve. So, what are we getting for our mana then? First thing to note is that we are getting 1 additional biome point above par here from hand. We’re getting 7 biome stats for the price of 6 and we are getting a character that costs two who doesn’t have the Lyra disease – that is, this doesn’t have a zero stat. This means that Skaldi is playable in any expedition, but ever so slightly better in mountains. Why is this good? Well, it means on turn 1 we can play her and still have 1 mana spare for tricks. To prevent us from moving the opponent will need to have at least 3 points in mountains. Then we can swipe in with a Ratatoskr or a Helping Hand to beat them. If they choose not to go in the other expedition, then we have got an advance for only a little.

     The back side (Reserve) cost is a little more than the hand cost, but we do get something a bit more for our trouble. We get to exhaust a card in reserve. Now this can be either in our reserve or the opponents. The straightforward play might be to freeze an opponent’s card in reserve. Ever need to stop Treyst from getting that final counter to come online? Well, here is your answer. It can block the opponent’s key play from reserve just at the right time, therefore.

     Now here’s another idea we could use it on our own cards. Why would we want to do that?

Well, the out of faction rare is in Axiom and they just gained access to the Ymzir icebound card that gains counters when you exhaust a card in reserve. And sometimes Treyst just has so many things in reserve he can’t use them all!

     The rare version of the card upgrades the reserve ability from exhausting to allowing you to choose whether you want to upgrade it to a sabotage effect if you’re in a mountain. In the art Skaldi has upgraded her skis for a snowboard and been joined by friends! I love the idea that the Bravosi are skiing / snowboarding down a mountain to stop the opponent getting to their stuff in reserve. Now I’m not the biggest fan of sabotaging from reserve but both Axiom and Bravos can make use of it from resupply effects, so I’ll take it. Plus, the opponent can only have so much sabotage, can’t they?

     Where do I think this belongs amongst the Bravos heroes. Well although I think she’s playable in all the Bravos heroes, I think she fits best with Kojo. It seems to scream being useful with Kojo Foundry as well since you can get that exhaust / sabotage effect from hand and reserve.

    If you are looking at sabotage using a rare though I think Ordis Spy might be a better way to go for most heroes, though there may be some exhausted synergies in the Trial by Frost set that I’m yet to see.