Beyond the Bandlewood LoR Spoilers Day 2
It’s Day 2 of the Bandle City spoiler season and the forecast is calling for puffcaps.
I’m your weatherman for today Jordan “WhatAmI” Abronson and I’ll be bringing you the lowdown on all these down low trapping Yordles.
To follow along with past and future Bandlewood card reveals, just click here.
Let’s jump right on in.
Here are the cards from today’s reveal package:
- Aloof Travelers (Bandlewood + Piltover/Zaun follower)
- Ava Achiever (Bandlewood follower)
- Lecturing Yordle (Bandlewood follower)
- Poison Dart (Bandlewood spell)
- Puffcap Pup (Bandlewood follower)
- Swole Scout (Bandlewood follower)
- Yordle Newbie (Bandlewood follower)
- Entrapment (Bandlewood follower)
- Sump Fumes (Piltover/Zaun spell)
- Stinky Whump (Piltover/Zaun follower)
Aloof Travelers
- Aloof Travelers
- 4 mana 3|4
- Text – When I’m summoned, both players draw 1, then your opponent discards their highest cost card.
This card does a couple of things really, really well, and while I may eventually be let down by the actuality, the potential here is amazing.
First of all, the stat line and effect look a lot like one of my all-time favorite cards, The Traveler.
3/4 for 4 mana that is effectively plus one card is nothing to sneeze at. This also puts in some serious combo disruption tools.
Any combo that relies on high-end cards, which is most of them, is going to be under some serious pressure.
Discard Lee Sin? Discard Trundle’s pillar? Discard Leviathan, or Harrowing, or Give it All?
I’m going to be starting most of my P&Z or Bandle City decks with three of this little guy for quite a while.
Ava Achiever
- Ava Achiever
- 4 mana 4|4
- Text – When I”m summoned and Round End: Plant 3 Poison Puffcaps on random cards in the enemy deck. Traps on enemy cards are doubled when activated.
So Ava here is clearly meant to be the bomb style finisher for a Trap deck.
Whether that will be predominately puffcaps or we’ll see other Trap cards we don’t know yet, but doubling effects are traditionally very strong, ask Cithria, Matron of Clouds, or Dreadway.
Four health is a pretty tough stat line to answer, and if your deck has been planting traps then Ava will create a potentially lethal situation very quickly.
Still, she doesn’t affect the board much on entry and does cost six mana.
I’ll call myself cautiously optimistic on this one’s viability.
Lecturing Yordle + Poison Dart
- Lecturing Yordle
- 4 mana 3|5
- Text – When I’m summoned or Attack: Create a Fleeting Poison Dart in hand.
- Poison Dart
- 1 mana Slow spell
- Text – Deal 1 to anything and plant 3 Poison Puffcaps on random cards in the enemy deck.
Another card advantage generating beefy bodied four drop? Alright we’re swiftly moving from anticipation into fear.
I think the saving grace here is that these are fleeting so you don’t just get a four-mana Draven but there are some pretty sick potential synergies here nonetheless.
And don’t forget you can also just play the Poison Dart. I think Ezreal might have just found a new best buddy to go conquer the world with.
Leveled Ezreal is a powerhouse when he comes down late in the game, if we are looking at decks that can consistently level him in the midgame then he will break formats.
It’s also important to note that Poison Dart is playable on its own.
It’s definitely a tad weak, but depending on the format having some early removal that also assists in a Trap based win condition late could be just what some decks are looking for to push them into viability.
Puffcap Pup
- Puffcap Pup
- 2 mana 2|2
- Quick Attack
- Text – Strike: Plant 3 Poison Puffcaps on random cards in the enemy deck.
So, I want to be clear the this evaluation is contingent on their being a powerful deck that cares about Puffcaps, but that said, this looks an awful lot like Akshan-light as a follower.
Now before you call me crazy look at the comparison.
It’s hard to block down on curve, will often get in chip damage, and unless Mystic Shot interferes will happily advance the win condition of whatever deck it ends up in.
This unassuming role playing pup is just the kind of card that makes high tier decks a possibility within their archetypes.
Swole Scout
- Swole Scout
- 4 mana 3|2
- Text – When I’m summoned, if you’ve added 2+ cards to your hand this round, grant me +1||0 and Elusive.
Let’s assume momentarily that this card will always be a four mana 4/2 elusive. That’s a pretty terrifying stat line. It’s not the hardest to answer, but it demands one almost immediately or it will begin decimating a nexus.
Swole Scout triggering off of added rather than drawn means that things like Ballistic Bot, Boom Baboon and Lecturing Yordle will trigger this clause.
Given that, I think we actually can build a deck to get this card and others like it online relatively consistently.
Even in that world though Scout friend’s viability will be heavily format dependent.
If the removal is staying home then he can come out to play, but if he is trading down in to Mystic Shot or worse getting Avalanched, it’s probably time to bench him.
Yordle Newbie
- Yordle Newbie
- 3 mana 3|3
- Text – When I’m summoned, if you’ve added 2+ cards to your hand this round, grant me +1|+2.
I immediately get bad Kahiri flashbacks here of a conditional three mana 4/4 just not being the badger bear it really wanted to be.
The question here really is how hard the condition is to meet.
If the deck we are building is consistently triggering the 2+ added cards rule anyway then there are plenty of formats when a three mana 4/4 is just the thing.
It’s a solid blocker and applies good early pressure as long as we don’t have to go through too many hoops to get it online.
Entrapment
- Entrapment
- 2 mana Burst spell
- Text – Pick 1 of 3 units or spells from the enemy deck and plant 3 Poison Puffcaps on all copies of it.
First, let’s define how this card works. Step one, cast Entrapment. Step two, pick unit or spell.
Step three, look at thee of the chosen card type from your opponent’s deck. Step four, choose one and put three puffcaps on every copy of that card your opponent has in their deck.
This has the smell of another anti-combo card, which I rather love. If there is a key unit or spell your opponent needs to win the game then puffcap it up and they’ll take three (or six with Ava) damage when they draw it.
Also, this card has huge informational gathering ability in open decklist formats.
Take note of the number of puffcaps in your opponent’s deck before and after casting and you’ll know whether they have the chosen card in their hand or not.
All that said though this is still a two mana do nothing without a draw attached.
It’s possible that the puffcap deck will want these extra triggers sufficiently for it to be worthwhile, but unless Go Hard gets popular again I’m not really holding my breath for Entrapment to see widespread play.
Sump Fumes
- Sump Fumes
- 3 mana Fast spell
- Text – Deal 2 to a unit. If you’ve added 2+ cards to your hand this round, deal 3 to it instead.
Contrary to the rest of the cards we’ve seen today with the 2+ added trigger this one actually seems a bit underwhelming.
While it’s kind of a side-graded Gotcha I think that the original will often be the preferred choice for that kind of slot.
More than that the inability to go face means this is basically a control-only card. Worse, most P&Z control decks want to eventually finish the game with burn.
Mystic Shot or Get Excited this is not. Maybe I am missing something and this is a premium removal spell but I’m just not seeing it.
Stinky Whump
- Stinky Whump
- 1 mana 2|1
- Last Breath
- Text – Last Breath: Create a copy in the enemy deck with 2 Poison Puffcaps attached.
Hey, Pesky Specter, are you listening? This is how you do this kind of effect. One mana 2/1’s with small added bonuses are and have always been my jam.
The push a little damage, often trade up, stymie aggro decks, and generally make everything fit together more smoothly.
This little guy is no exception. I suspect this is an automatic three of in any puffcap based deck, and potentially even in decks that will have puffcaps in them as a side synergy.
Even better you can make an educated guess when your opponent has drawn this card based on puffcap triggers and update your hand reads accordingly.
This one gets the WhatAmI stamp of approval from the get go.
We’re revealing the new Beyond the Bandlewood cards every day at our spoiler page. To build decks with the new cards, head to our Deck Builder.
