“You played it for Nevenka, now play it for me. Play it Crowbar.”  Fen.

     Everyone gets the quote from Casablanca wrong. Rick never actually says play it again Sam even though that line is in the conscious memory of people. Memory being the early name for the reserve is a great cue to this week’s spotlight card.

     So a new Lyra card was revealed last week (Ouroboros Inkcaster), and I think that it’s going to be a crackingly good card for the thespians of Asgarthia. The ability to return a card from the reserve to your hand is so flexible and whilst its not obviously powerful like cards like Robin Hood, it is more of a Swiss army knife power. Whatever powerful thing you have in the reserve, you’ll now get two more uses of it (rather than one). It also allows you to play something to the board and rescue a card from reserve before it gets sabotaged. Sometimes you don’t want to play out your powerful card from the reserve and instead want to save it for later in the day. However, doing that risks the opponent sabotaging. Now this will only work if you’re going first, but it will mean that you can use it to stop the opponent in those cases.

     In a similar manner you can rescue your own sabotage cards. Pretty much all the cards with sabotage only have the sabotage ability on them when played from the hand, so if you are going second, you can use the Ouroboros Inkcaster to return the sabotage card (probably Tanuki) to your hand and then use it straight away next turn.

     The common version is a bit more powerful in stats but costs more and is a touch behind on rate for biomes. The rare is a little less powerful, on rate for biome stats, costs one less and has an ability that can be used from the reserve. There is a definite power increase here all round for the rare but even the common is still useful if you are pushed for rare slots (which you always are in Altered!).

     I think the main beneficiary in terms of Lyra heroes will be Fen. She automatically dumps a random card into her reserve at noon (through resupply) as part of her ability and it might just be the card you need there has a hand ability that you want to play but can’t as Fen’s ability has thwarted you. The Inkcaster gives the Fen player a second chance at being able to use the card that was resupplied.  I think this gives Fen a lot more utility and control than she had. Not that she was bad before, but it gives that extra bit of control.

     Nevenka and Auraq’s abilities do not especially synergize with the Inkcaster, but they don’t compete against it. Being able to get an extra iteration of the powered-up version of Yong-Su in Auraq or an extra Robin Hood (3 uses instead of 2) could be pretty great but it won’t necessarily be a certain victory. The number one thing I see with the Inkcaster is returning a rare All-in. The Lyra rare All-in is perhaps one of the best Lyra cards. Without an Ouroborus it is a boost of between 3 and 8. The floor therefore is a slightly worse Physical Training (3 boosts), the average is a much better Physical Training (5.5 boosts) and the ceiling of 8 boosts is just fantastic. Since the Inkcaster is a creature to boot you can play a rare Inkcaster, retrieve your rare All-in and potentially get a 5/5/5 or even a 10/10/10 for your 5-mana investment. With this played they’ll both be in your reserve to repeat the trick next turn.

     Out of Faction we find Axiom again here. Treyst is the big winner here with the Inkcaster I think since he doesn’t care how cards come out of the reserve. Ouroboros Inkcaster’s bounce back to hand is as good as any other way. Then as a bonus she has another little reserve ability that she can sacrifice herself to lower the cost of the next card by one. It’s not just the cost of a character, it’s the cost of anything, so its infinitely flexible with the added bonus that the card will leave the reserve and give Treyst a counter.

      Subhash will likely e able to utilise the Inkcaster, but his synergy is not quite as good. His ability to pay 1, discard a card to reserve to create a 2/2/2 Brassbug is good but often you don’t really want to discard the cards in your hand as you want to use their hand ability. So, the Lyra Inkcaster can actually rescue these cards back and keep Subhash on plan.

      In summary, the Ouroboros Inkcaster is a subtly powerful card.  It doesn’t do anything crazy all by itself, but it allows you to reuse your power cards. Image that really cool Unique that you pulled with a powerful play from hand ability. Wouldn’t you just want to get two or three or more uses out of it?