Icebound in Trial by Frost

     This is the first time there’s been a very strongly signalled cycle of cards in Altered and this weekend all the cards in the cycle (as well as the token they make) were revealed. They are all Landmark Permanent – Sites (this is the new format for Permanent Landmark it seems) and mostly cost 3 mana from hand and reserve.

     They, also all need to gather three trial counters before the permanent gets sacrificed and creates a 5/5/5 Dragon Shade Illusion token in a target expedition. This is one notable exception to these generic statements of course and we’ll get to that at the end of the article. In addition, all the cards have a different trigger to get the token and a different clause after the token comes into play.

     Generally, we are playing 3 mana for a permanent that may give us a 5/5/5 creature with a bonus in the future. We have having to make a mana down payment for something stronger in the future. A bit like a 5/5/5 asleep character, but instead it will take one of your precious landmark slots up. The second question that we need to ask ourselves therefore is whether we can afford to use up those slots for this permanent. Treyst desperately needs those slots for Haven, so will playing an Icebound permanent be worthwhile.

1. Icebound Hollow

     Our first Icebound landmark belongs to Axiom. To get your Axiom trial counter you have to do a thing that Axiom likes doing. That is putting a card from your hand or your deck into reserve. Now you’d think that this is a natural fit for Treyst and also for Subhash, whose abilities both can fill up the reserve with cards from hand. However, this card also has something that Axiom’s other hero really wants. Sierra wants to be playing permanents with a cost of 3 or more. She can play this card out and claim a 2/2/2 Brassbug for the privilege of doing so. Thus, unlike other heroes, Sierra won’t get that much disadvantage from playing this. Now you may have to skew your Sierra build a bit to get more resupply or Kelon Elementals in it, but its certainly doable and the sacrificing of the permanent will free up a landmark space for another permanent.

     What is our bonus then on top of getting the 5/5/5 Dragon Shade Illusion then? We get to ready all our cards in reserve. What I hear you say? We know that there will be a mechanic that focuses on tapping cards down in reserve to do something which that means that you can’t play them until they ready again. Well, this allows you to ready them all again in pretty quick fashion. The strength of this one will depend on how good the other cards in the set are deal with exhausted cards in reserve for Axiom.

      I don’t think that Treyst will want this card, but I can see it being played in Sierra or Subhash. Obviously, time will tell as will seeing the rest of the set.

b)  Icebound Peak

     The Bravos Icebound Peak gains its counters whenever a character gains fleeting. This could be when they are played out of reserve, if they have fleeting innately (Bravos Tracer) or if an opponent gives your character fleeting through an ability. It is therefore possible with this one to activate the Dragon Shade on your opponent’s turn. This should be relatively easy to trigger, however the bonus part suggests that you might want to trigger the Dragon on the following turn to get the most out of it.

      The value in this permanent may be in the timing in which you can trigger it. This is because the bonus clause is a charge (1 boost for every character). You therefore want to have the most characters out possible when this gets triggered to get the biggest bonus. A Kojo turn with Booda in play will get that extra character to gain the boost, so I think this card a fairly good fit for hm. Basira likes boosts, so the charge effect will be good for her. However, she also wants Haven in play, so this might only be a one of card in the deck to stop overflowing the Landmark Zone.

     I cannot see Atsadi really wanting this card. Atsadi rarely has lots of characters out at a time and neither the permanent nor the token it makes will trigger Atsadi’s ability. So, its just not a good fit for him.

c) Icebound Tundra

     The Icebound Tundra is perhaps the hardest to trigger the counters, since you need to play your characters with the zero stat one of the biomes that is on the region. This means that unless you have some other way of boosting up that base zero stat, that you will likely not be winning in that biome. Now there is another spoiler from Trial by Frost that will perhaps let us get around this little issue, but it is more challenging than some of the other triggers.

     The bonus that we get after our trial is completed is to return a card from the reserve to the hand, which is a very Lyra thing to do. It’s good, but its not as good as the Bravos one. I’m not 100% sure on this card. It doesn’t play into Nevenka’s theme, and it doesn’t play that well into Fen’s game plan, though it doesn’t play against the plans of either hero. I think it’s best chance at play is with Auraq, since Auraq wants to be playing as many of those zero stated creatures as possible. I’m not sure how strong this is, but I think it will be playable at least with Auraq.

d) Icebound Taiga

     Muna’s Icebound Taiga accumulates trial counters when a character is played to a forest biome. It doesn’t need to have a positive stat in that biome but will mean that it will only apply in 5 out of the 8 biomes. Thankfully unless you are unlucky, you should be able to play your characters to one of the expedition sides, though this may mean you cannot easily get all three counters in one turn.

     The reward for achieving the trial is to get a 5/5/5 Dragon Shade token and to anchor it. Now in Muna having anchored creatures is very good and a 5/5/5 anchored is very good. As such I think that this is very good in all Muna Heroes. The forest biome requirement may seem like it is pointing this one as looking to Rin, but I feel that you’ll need to play in the expedition whatever hero you have. Therefore, it is not important which hero you are playing. The question then becomes, which Muna heroes have the space to make room for additional permanents in them, especially 3 cost permanents. I’m not sure yet, but I firmly believe that any of the current heroes could.

e) Icebound Lake

     The Ordis Icebound looks for non-token characters joining the expedition, but they only count for a trial counter if you are behind on that expedition. This is therefore not the easiest to trigger, but ironically this might actually make it good in some circumstances. You see this is a removal spell with added legs attached, but that removal spell can be delayed until you need it.

     So, you can play actual non-token characters to the side you are winning on or the other side to prepare for when you need to trigger this. Then when you trigger it, you will get a 5/5/5 Dragon Shade and make a character asleep. This can either be a self-benefit for Waru’s sleepy bureaucrats OR can take out a big character on the opponent’s side for a turn. Having this available with two counters on is therefore a threat that says – play a big character and it will go to sleep, which can help you win both sides (sleeping one side and a 5/5/5 on the other).

    Now this has enough restrictions though that it might not always lead to perfect gameplay and paying 3 mana up front for this might be tricky in an Ordis deck that may baulk at playing too many permanents. This is one that probably will need quite a of testing.

f) Icebound Pass

     Now I’ve seen a number of comments saying that Icebound Pass is trash from Yzmir players and given that it costs one more I can see why they have a beef with it. Justin from Equinox though has said that its good, so I think I’m going to go with what Justin says, given he knows the whole set and the random Yzmir players don’t.

     One of the reasons they were having a pop at the card (other than the mana cost) was the method it gets trial counters. Why should we don’t what we don’t normally do? The answer is I suspect that exhausting a card in reserve is something that Yzmir will be doing a lot this expansion. We’ve already seen the Moth Larva that benefits from it, so with enough payoffs in the set you can get the benefit for the Moth Larva for exhausting the card another related benefit from another card and then gain a counter for your 5/5/5. I suspect that this one will be the easiest to trigger as well. Play a cheap spell that goes to reserve with a exhaust ability and exhaust another reserve card. Rinse and repeat.

     Why does in need that extra mana? Well on top of your 5/5/5 Dragon Shade you are getting to draw an extra card, and what Yzmir mage doesn’t like drawing cards?

Final Thoughts

     Now we have only seen the common versions of all these permanents. We have yet to see what wonders the rare upgrades will bring, but I suspect that these will be even stronger versions of the above and they may well make the upgrade serious contenders for deck inclusion. As they are, the Icebound permanents are trading mana now for future power. That future power is moderate here, but how much extra power would tempt you to play these and take part of a turn off?