Thou Shalt not Pass!

     It’s Ordis week and its time for Waru and Mack to get a new toy to play with – The Monolith Legate. The card is very much more focused to Waru as its type is a Bureaucrat which means that Waru will get his free soldier boy or girl and get to bore the Legate to sleep if needed.

     First of all, we need to understand how this one plays with the rules. I had to look this up as I understood the Night phase, but I didn’t yet comprehend that the Night Phase has two sub phases around it. The first sub phase of the Night Phase is called Rest. Here are the characters in the expedition without an anchored, sleep or fleeting token goes to the reserve. The fleeting characters go to the discard and the anchored and sleeping characters lose their tokens. Next we have the Cleanup sub phase, which means that the player has to ensure that their reserve and landmark zone don’t have too many cards in them and if they do the excess goes to the discard pile.

     The Monolith Legate’s ability happens between these two phases (after Rest) and (before Cleanup). So, assuming the Legate’s ability triggers (and we’ll come to that in a minute) you get to sabotage any card that is in the reserve before it is cut back to the reserve limit. You could either call this last strike sabotage or first strike sabotage for the next turn. It is useful to prevent a card with a good reserve ability from coming back. Both Athena and Sun Wukong are annoying cards in this regard as they can keep coming back from reserve and this stops those shenanigans even if your opponent is going first next turn.

    Coming back to my earlier train of thought, the Legate’s ability is not guaranteed to trigger. Some have assumed that you have to lose the expedition for this to trigger but that is not actually what the wording says. It triggers if you don’t move, so if you draw the side then the Legate’s ability will still trigger. Given that the Legate is not that powerful its not difficult to lose a side, but you have to concentrate on winning the other side if that is the case and you really want to be ahead when you’re doing this. The fact that the Legate only costs 2 mana helps with trying to stack the other expedition for you, but it does rely on you being ahead. A free sabotage at the end of the turn is good, but I’d much rather have Waru sleep a Robin Hood to cause your opponent more problems. I’d say though that the Legate is currently the second-best Bureaucrat for Waru.

     The next question to ask is whether Sigismar or Gulrang will want the Legate. I’m really not convinced that Sigismar wants the Bureaucrat as he has much better cards available to his strategy. Plus, if he really wants a sabotage, then Ordis Spy is a certainty and a better card for him. The rare Legate can create a free soldier from the reserve, so it isn’t useless, but I’m pretty sure that Sigismar wants to put its rare points elsewhere.

     Gulrang is another story. I really don’t know exactly what she does want. If she uses her boosted tokens early to ‘not move’ then the Legate’s ability will kick in and give her an advantage whilst denying your opponent a move also. So, I think that the card has some utility with Gulrang and also helps the rare Archivist from having defender as Gulrang has another Bureaucrat to help out. I think I’d need to see more cards to know whether it is good in Gulrang’s build, but she’s the one hero who I still really haven’t worked out yet.

     Out of faction Ymzir has the Legate in its Ordis common form. I think it’s a super niche card for Ymzir who already has sabotage, and it doesn’t have synergies with the bureaucrat character type. I mean it’s fine, but probably not worth a rare slot. It can pre get rid of an annoying character in reserve if you’re going second, but that’s a niche use really.

     My conclusion is that this card’s main use will be with Waru, but there may be some applications with builds for Gulrang.