Analysing Haven, Bravos Bastion

      One of the cards that I’ve been waiting to be revealed more than any other is the namesake of this website – Haven, The Bravos Bastion. Why was I so keen on this? The Bastions have all so far been very much integrated to the gameplay of the faction in question, so it would have to be an important part of the faction’s decks.

    The first week of Bravos reveals fortunately revealed this glorious card to us. For the simple cost of 2 from either the hand or reserve we get one free boost for characters being played from the reserve.

     The obvious candidate to benefit from Haven is Basira and Kaizaimon. Getting that extra boost out of the reserve will mean that Basira can make use of the boost to gain an extra boost. Now a number of the Bravos cards can already make boosts from the reserve, and they should already be able to get that boost, but an extra boost for every character coming from the reserve is great. The rare Haven Bouncer for instance turns from a 2/2/2 which gains 2 boosts from the reserve and then will get an additional one from Basira and then a final one from Haven. That turns her from a 2/2/2 for 3 into a 6/6/6 for 3 which is very strong.

     Even better for Basira is the Three Little Pigs. When they were first revealed I wondered why you would play them ahead of the rare Haven Warrior. After all you’re getting the same 4/4/4 for 3 and the Three Little Pigs don’t always work. The reason it seems if that the ceiling is very good when you play them with Haven and Basira. With Haven and Basira, the trio of pigs become 5/5/5 from the hand and a 6/6/6 from the reserve for that same three mana. We are getting spoiled for choice now with 3 mana 6/6/6’s.

     I’ve always been a little bit suspect about Atlas because for 5 mana he just doesn’t do enough on his own without something like Physical Training. That at least makes him a 6/6/6 gigantic for 5 or 7/7/7 with Basira. In his rare form he’d get those stats back and you can play him out as a 7/7/7 with a boost from Haven and another boost from Haven, meaning you would have a 9/9/9 gigantic for 5 coming from the reserve.

      So, I think we can see why Haven is good for Basira, but what about Kojo and our buddy Booda? Kojo and Booda work on efficiency and thus want to try and get the most use out of the cards in their reserve. Bravos as a tendency to use more, lower cost cards to win things, so getting that second use out of the reserve makes them an even more vital use out of the reserve. Yes, they don’t get the Basira extra boost, but you can only get of these each turn anyway and we get the benefit of Booda every other turn. The concern for Kojo is more whether we can get away with playing the permanent in the first place and losing tempo.

     Atsardi is the opposite of this though. He wants us to play higher costing characters and he gets a draw if he does. That means that early on her wants to smaller creatures and to ramp things out, so that he can get to the larger creatures in the mid game. He then wants to cast them if possible multiple times to get the value from them. Bravos Bastion will help with these recasts, but its not the best in Atsadi build’s, I think. Indeed, I’d say The Spindle is much more needed for Atsadi than Haven.

     I think though we’ll see the Bravos Bastion will really sing as well with two of the Axiom heroes. Treyst actively wants to cast cards from the reserve to get his counters. Now the Bravos Bastion might not come out early enough for him, but with lots of ways of getting things into the reserve, its bound to be useful all game for him. The OOF version even puts a card in reserve to help him out as well. Similarly, Subhash throwing cards into the reserve to create his army of bugs and those cards in reserve will get a nice boost when coming out.

      All in all, I think Bravos Bastion is going to be a staple card and its going to see a lot of play. Plus at two mana, it’s priced to move!