Preview Day

Well, it's Friday again and that means more Dark Portal Previews. Today we get a couple of allies that may be indicative of a few more allies in the set. Here are the cards for anyone who hasn't seen them.

Bubula del Kissel

Cost: 2
ATK/Health: 2/2

Stealth

Activate->Target hero or ally has stealth this turn.

First up are his stats. He's a 2/2 for 2 which is about in line with the cost. There are more efficient allies out there, but Bubula's ability can become relevent in many games considering how controlling the environment has become. Magni's dork tokens keeping your Tewa at bay? Have no fear, Bubula is here. Plus, who doesn't like saying Bubula? Say it, Bubula. See, that was fun. Of course, now you're just going to be saying Bubula, Bubula, Bubula over and over for the next three hours, but I'll press on anyway.

Apparently, UDE doesn't think Stealth is as good as long-ranged, since they made this guy with stealth and stealth-enabling and still gave him reasonable stats. This guy may see play in some rush decks to make sure the big guys like Fury and Leeroy find their targets. Before anyone says you can't use this guy with Leeroy, you can chain Leeroy's ability and then give him stealth before it resolves. As we'll see with long-range, its power is apparently too much to not overcost and understat anyone who has it.

For our long-range allies we have our official preview Tanwa the Marksman

Cost: 6
ATK/Health: 4/3

Long-Range

Anything that costs 6 needs to have a bigger butt than this. Anything that's going to cost 6 and then only have 3 health better be really good or serve its purpose when it comes in (a la Zygore). Tanwa might be an adequate 6-drop in Dark Portal limited, we haven't seen enough cards yet to know, but in Constructed, I just can't see any time I'm going to want to play this guy. You would have to have a great wall of protection set up to let him survive even one turn. At 3/4 Tanwa at least gets into the discussion, but when you look at the slots it's looking to take, it's just not on the same level as Moko, Tewa, or Zygore. When you consider that the 2 of those already share a race with Tanwa and Moko shares race and class, there's just not much reason to think Tanwa will see much action in Constructed.

A lot of the cards to me seem like they wanted to make more powerful cards, but were afraid of them becoming degenerate so they added some resources to the cost to keep them in check. The other long-range ally that has been spoiled, Kallipsa, is a 2/2 for 4 that let's you draw a card when she damages an ally. This is another example of a card that doesn't really seem worthy of costing 4 and wouldn't have been significantly better than Parvink (if better at all) as a 3-drop. But instead we get her at 4 where she will probably get a lot of time in common boxes since no one will play her.

Good luck to anyone playing in Regionals this weekend. There are 7 tournaments in the U.S. and 10 in Europe. I will try my best to get the results in from European Regionals if I can. As always, any help from anyone who attends an event this weekend or just knows how one turned out is always greatly appreciated.