Our Thoughts on the New Freljord Cards (Call of the Mountain)
Trundle, The Troll King, will finally be making his debut as a LoR card in the upcoming Call of the Mountain set.
Overall, his reveal package included:
- Trundle (Freljord champion)
- Ice Pillar (Freljord follower generated from Trundle)
- Revitalizing Roar (Freljord spell)
- Icequake (Freljord spell and Trundle’s champion spell)
- Broadbacked Protector (Targon follower)
- Resplendent Stellacorn (Targon follower)
- Augur of the Old Ones (Freljord follower)
These cards involve a new keyword, Behold, which we covered in a previous Freljord card reveal, so be sure to check that out if you missed it.
In this article, Precipic, one of our Glimpse Beyond experts, gives his first impressions for each of the cards.
Trundle
- Trundle (level 1)
- 5 mana 4|6
- Regeneration
- Text – When I’m summoned, create an Ice Pillar in hand.
- Level Up condition – I’ve seen you play Ice Pillar.
- Trundle (level 2)
- 5 mana 5|7
- Overwhelm, Regeneration
- Text – When I’m summoned, create an Ice Pillar in hand. Attack: Grant me +1|+0 for each 8+ card cost you Behold.
Precipic: This card is a great Behold enabler. The ability to put a random 8 mana card into your hand means that you don’t need to make your deck clunkier to enable your late game Behold cards like Augur of the Old Ones.
However, Trundle doesn’t work with any cheap Behold card, so I would avoid that synergy if you can. It also generates an Ice Pillar which is a decent amount of value.
Ice Pillar
- Ice Pillar
- 8 mana 0|8
- Vulnerable
- Text – Play: Refill 8 mana. Play and Round Start: Give the Strongest enemy Vulnerable this round.
Precipic: This card has a reasonable effect, the ability to refill your mana when you cast the Pillar makes it a pretty nice play on Turn 8 by giving you a very chunky blocker that can give you the ability to dictate a lot of combats through the Vulnerable keyword.
Revitalizing Roar
- Revitalizing Roar
- 7 mana spell, Slow speed
- Text – Pick a unit in your hand to reveal. Heal your Nexus by its Power. Enlightened: Reduce its cost by 0.
Precipic: This card is basically the perfect combo enabler card. In a deck with Ledros and Atrocity, this effect can enable you to play a 0 mana Ledros for your Atrocity combo turn which gives you the ability to cast more than just Ledros + Atrocity in your turn to kill your opponent.
Add on the fact that it heals you which buys you time to combo and I could see this being a pretty reasonable part of over the top combo decks.
The only difficulty is getting to Enlighten but if your games are able to consistently get to 10 mana, this could do some powerful things.
Trundle’s Icequake
- Icequake
- 8 mana spell, Slow speed
- Text – Give ALL units -3|-0 this round. Deal 3 to ALL units.
Precipic: I think that 8 mana is way too slow for this effect, especially at Slow speed. It is a Behold enabler and that’s the best thing I can say about it.
Broadbacked Protector
- Broadbacked Protector
- 4 mana 2|7
- Text – Round Start: Heal your Nexus 3. Deal damage to me equal to the amount healed.
Precipic: The power of this card is solely based off whether there is a healing archetype. If there is, then this card could be amazing because it fully enables a heal level up off something like Soraka (there’s been speculation that she’ll be a part of this set) almost by itself.
However, if the only this does is act as a vanilla 2/7 that slowly kills itself, it’s awful.
Resplendent Stellacorn
- Resplendent Stellacorn
- 5 mana 4|5
- Text – Play: Heal an ally and your Nexus 3.
Precipic: This card is also reliant on the healing archetype but as an enabler for a Soraka heal level up, it’s great serving as an effective heal for 6.
Augur of the Old Ones
- Augur of the Old Ones
- 6 mana 5|5
- Text – Play: If you Behold an 8+ cost card, grant an ally Overwhelm and Regeneration.
Precipic: This card is quite reasonable. If you have a Trundle in your deck and 4 copies of another 8 mana card in your deck, you have a 10-11% chance of drawing an Augur you can’t activate on Turn 6 which isn’t that bad of a fail state.
An important note is that any draw you include in your deck (like Avarosan Sentry) helps minimize this fail state further.
The question largely is how impactful Overwhelm + Regeneration is as a combined effect to give to a unit and whether the game is slow enough to allow for a concept where you want to make a really big Overwhelm + Regen unit.
Here’s some additional nerdy math stuff (a big thanks to ZINC and Ashockfan):
Assuming you include 3 copies of Trundle and 3 copies of an 8 cost card, and assuming you always mulligan away Trundle and other 8 cost cards, an average mulligan is equal to approximately 2 draws.
From there the math goes like this:
A. Trundle by Turn 5: 45%
B. 8 drop by Turn 6: 50%
C. Not drawing Augur by 6: 50%
From there you need to add A + B + C – AnB – AnC – BnC +AnBnC
So .45 + .5 + .5 – (.45*.5) – (.45 *.5) – (.5 * .5) + (.45*.5 * .5) =.8625 meaning that you only have a 14% chance of drawing an Augur you can’t activate on Turn 6.
If we add a 4th 8 drop, .45 + .61 + .5 – (.45*.5) – (.45 *.61) – (.61 * .5) + (.45*.61 *.5) = 89.275% gives you a 10-11% chance of drawing an Augur you can’t activate on Turn 6.
As such, I’d recommend running 4 8 cost cards and Trundle in your Augur deck. The amount of 8 costs you need goes down the more draw cards (like Babbling Bjerg or Avarosan Sentry) you run.
Thanks for reading! Keep an eye out for the rest of our analysis as more cards come out and be sure to revisit our previous impressions for the set.
