Back from Vegas

Well, I'm back from Vegas and now a married man. While you may say congratulations, etc., I know you really come here to read about Warcraft, so I'll spare you all the details and just get back to business.

There were only 2 Regionals this weekend, and I've got results from neither. I did manage to pick up some slightly older results, but not enough to warrant a full metagame breakdown for the week. I guess organizers didn't want to compete against Magic Regionals this weekend. We'll be back on track with the weekend coming up though. We've got Darkmoon Faire-Chicago and a full plate of Regionals once more. So with that out of the way, I won't be doing Metagame Madness this week. Instead, I want to talk about the two Fires of Outland cards that will be prizes at U.S. Nationals.

I'm sure you've seen both of the cards. I'm going to talk about the Alliance one first, because it's the one that seems to be getting all the attention. A lot of people are making a big fuss about this card, and I'm just not sure why. Let's just look at the facts.

Her 4/5 body for 6 is small compared to other Alliance 6-drop. Anika Berlyn, Braxiss the Sleeper, Raul "Fingers" Mauldren, and Bretander of the Claw go 5/6. 6/4, 6/4. and 5/5 respectively, so you're not getting very much use out of her in the combat sense.

But it's her power that everyone is in love with, but how good is it? Well, she is a six drop that can't have an immediate effect on the board on turn 6. Since she doesn't have protector, ferocity, or any usable power, on turn 6 she's just an under-statted body. If you wait until turn 8 or 9, you would probably have been better served by Magni.

The bigger problem with her power is that with just the cards that are available now, there's not that much out there that I REALLY want to use the turn it comes into play. Sure, getting to use Medoc or Seraph right away is nice, but I wouldn't be able to use them until turn 7 if I played Breanna. And that's assuming she survived turn 6. I would rather run some protectors out early and then just drop Medoc on 5 and start using him on 6.

Breanna does one thing that has always been looked for in great cards. She breaks one of the fundamental rules of the game. It explicitly says in the rulebook, allies can't use powers that require an exhaust effect the turn they come into play. But one of the other things that is generally required on great cards is a low cost in addition to breaking one of the fundamental rules of the game.

For an exammple, let's look at Time Walk from Magic. At 1U it allowed you to take an extra turn. The card is incredibly powerful and ended up banned in every format but Classic (which I still call Type 1). Several years later, they printed a card with the exact same effect but made the cost 3UU instead of 1U. To most, this change seems relatively minor, but in CCG's cost is everything. Time Walk is still one of the most powerful spells in the game. Time Warp is basically trash.

But the final overarcing reason why Breanna just isn't that good is tempo. World of Warcraft is all about tempo. Aggro decks look to push the tempo while control decks look for ways to slow it down. In this world of tempo, there is little worse than spending all your resources on turn 6 and have to wait a turn for that investment to pay off.

What's worse is that because of the way the game is designed, when you play an ally like Breanna you are essentially relinquishing control to your opponent. Let me explain that. When you play Breanna, since she doesn't have protector or ferocity or any other relevent ability at the time you play her, you've essentially allowed your opponent to control her fate.

If Breanna is enough of a threat, she will be removed. Your best case scenario is that your opponent is forced to trade 2 cards for her and you at least come out one card ahead. But you could have just played a card like Chain Lightning and chosen for yourself which allies to remove. If your opponent decides that Breanna doesn't pose enough of a threat to warrant actively removing her, you're stuck with an overcosted ally. You can still probably kill 2 allies with her, but you will lose a lot of tempo because they will get extra attacks in before she gets to attack.

The few times that Breanna does pose a significant threat but can't be removed by your opponent, the fact that you had Breanna is of little consequence. Most times she just as easily could have been Bretander of the Claw and had the same impact.

This could all become moot if there is an incredibly powerful alliance exhaust power in FoO, but right now, there are no powers that are so good that they have to be used right away. And most of the ones that you might want to use right away, you would still have online before Breanna comes into play.

As for Tempest, after all I said about how important it is to have an immediate effect on the game, you might think I really like this card. While I don't necessarily love it, I'm probably in the small minority of players who thinks it's the better of the two. It would obviously go into a mid-late game Horde deck and you could use it to attack with a Tewa or Moko twice or to ready a protector before combat, although most players may see the trap when you leave seven resources open and still have cards to play. He also has pseudo-ferocity since he can be played at the end of your opponent's turn and then be able to attack on yours without being vulnerable to opposing attacks. I'm still not sure that I want to play him at a cost of 7 though. I think if I wanted a Horde 7-drop I would just play Zy'lah and her plus Tempest seems like too many high drops for one deck. I could be wrong though.