Mana Erruption

     The one thing that the various Bravos decks have really been missing is a decent way to interact with the opponent’s plans. An Ordis player popping out an early Rare Carrier or Monolith, an Axiom player playing out a rare Brassbug hive and a Muna player playing Hydracaena that becomes all unstoppable. Bravos of course likes to win early, but what if it can’t? What does it do then?

     The answer is Mana Eruption. Before we discuss what the card actually does, lets discuss the fantastic artwork. Clearly someone is casting a spell to get rid of some kind of monster with tentacles from the tumult, but we can’t quite see his face as he’s turned to run away from the creature and casting as he turns. Monster, tentacles – might that be the Kraken? One thing we can see is his blue braided hair. Doesn’t that jacket look familiar too and those boots. If you spoil yourself further by looking at the rare, you also get to see a certain fiery cat in the picture. Yes, that’s Kojo and everyone’s favourite fire cat Booda on the spell.  

     For the bargain cost of 3 mana, you can get rid of a copy of that pesky permanent OR character forever. Okay you need to trade one of your mana orbs for the privilege, but we’re Bravos, right? We have Jinns, both mighty and tiny and we can channel out mana to make more mana orbs. So, is it really a bad trade? Since this is the common we also don’t have to give up our rare slot to get hold of the effect. The spell unfortunately is fleeting, so we only get one stab at this per card, but it’s a silver bullet for any problem we may have. What could be better than this?

      Well, the rare version certainly is better for one. Does it do any more things? Nope. Can you play it more often? Nope. But it is that crucial 1 mana cheaper. Often you might have a couple of mana spare in your turn, but three mana is starting to be a more significant investment in your turn. This is the same price now as Intimidation and I know which one of the two spells I’d rather have in my hand. You can give up a rare slot to allow you to have more flexibility in when you can play it, which (especially if they have a pesky early rare Brassbug Hub is well worth being able to get rid of straight away.

     So, which lucky faction got the fruits of the Bravos labours this time? Well, it’s our friendly Muna Druids. Like Bravos, they have been relatively poor for choices for removal, with Beauty Sleep perhaps being the best because it is so cheap. Well, Muna gets the Bravos rare version at OOF, so that is almost as cheap and whatever pest they need to deal with is permanently deal with, not just left to deal with the next day.

     Mana Eruption is the kind of card that I would be writing down for nearly every Bravos deck, it is just that strong and that needed by Bravos to deal with really decent permanents and creatures from the other factions. I’m sure that Muna will be looking seriously at it as well. 

     Thank you to the Equinox team, Loki especially for providing me with this spoiler. I hope you all enjoy it!