Lyra's New Clothes

     There were two spoilers from Pax that I didn’t go over the other day and the two I’m going to talk about today were in Loki’s Boss deck. Let’s start of with the one that we have both the common and the rare for.

     The first card might well be part of a cycle of 1 cost gear, given that it costs 1 mana from hand and reserve just like Arcolano Milk does in Bravos. This winter clothing gives Lyra the ability to pretend not to be a cooky Lyra card at all. My view is that it’s not just a Winter Outfit, but a disguise as well.

     What do I mean by not being Lyra? One of the key things about Lyra characters is they generally have a zero stat, or as I like to think of it, a fatal flaw. They are very good when you have an expedition that suits their skewed stats, but when the stats aren’t ideal a 1/1/1 Ordis recruit can easily get a joint win on the expedition, meaning that the opponent could often get a cheap advance without doing much on the side against a character where you’ve spent 3 or more on it.

     The outfits therefore cover up this ability by allowing you as Lyra to have square stats on your characters in the expedition with the stats being the highest one that each character has. This stops cheap expedition wins by your opponents and makes all your characters stronger.

     Additionally, playing the Winter Outfits is a form of ‘After You’. It’s a cheap play that doesn’t affect the board that makes your opponent make the first move. This is something that Lyra doesn’t have a lot of, and I think this will be a useful addition to their arsenal. In faction, they currently have Martengale and A Capella Training for this, so I think Lyra will welcome another cheap card as well as another permanent that can potentially help trigger some Lyra Uniques.

     The rare is an upgrade to the common by having a little added reserve ability - R: I lose fleeting. This makes the card potentially useable for the rest of the game after you draw it. However, it does have a hidden cost to it. Continually cycling it from the reserve means that you are effectively giving up a rare slot every turn. This actually can be a very big cost and I’m not sure whether the rare will get as much play as some people think. Yes, it can be potentially very good, but if you are constantly discarding cards from your reserve to keep it around, then it will be forcing you into card disadvantage.

   The second Lyra card is ironically enough a spell that can also act as a pseudo ‘After You’ as well. The Sleight of Hand costs 1 mana from hand and reserve and allows you to exchange a card from your hand with a card in reserve. This is particularly good for Fen when you have discarded something that you really don’t want to push to reserve, though. I just saw a Nevenka deck get to the semi finals of the Exalts Celebration with a number of these effects, so its definitely not just Fen that wants it.

     The downside on the card is that it has cooldown in reserve. This means that you can reuse it straight away, but then you probably won’t need to use it twice and potentially there will be interactions with exhausted cards in reserve for Lyra. Also don't forget you can exchange the character you want to re-use with a spell with fleeting or a permanent landmark that you could only use once anyway.

     Again, this can be used as an ‘After You’ that can also rescue a character from reserve that you don’t want the opponent to sabotage or get to reuse a from hand ability. This card is costed to move, and I expect to see it in Lyra decks in the future.