Day 5 of Guardians of the Ancient Reveals
We made it to Friday y’all. Nothing but smooth sailing, hype spoilers, and seasonals ahead.
The new Guardians of the Ancients cards will be revealed every morning at Mobalytics so be sure to keep up with the latest cards!
You can theorycraft new decks with these cards right now by heading to the Deck Builder.
Lastly, to keep up with our previous expert impressions, click here
I’m Jordan “WhatAmI” Abronson and today we’re dropping it like a ton of boulders. Let’s check it out.
Here are the new Targon cards from the Guardians of the Ancient expansion:
- Spiral Stairs/Seed of Strength (landmark/spell)
- Rockfall Path (landmark)
- Earth Elemental (follower)
- Blue Sentinel/Crest of Insight (follower/landmark)
For more expert impressions, be sure to also check out Swim’s video!
Spiral Stairs/Seed of Strength
- Spiral Stairs
- 3 mana Landmark
- Text: Countdown 3: Create a Seed of Strength in Hand
Seed of Strength
- 0 mana Slow Fleeting Spell
- Text: Grant an ally +2|+2 and Overwhelm
Ok, Riot, level with me here.
Is there someone who loves Lee combo that is blackmailing you?
Are you being held hostage?
Blink twice if this card was made under duress and we will send someone to come help.
All joking aside though this is a really cool set-up spell for any deck that wants to make one big game-winner and then protect it.
We’ll have to figure out if the extra time you have to wait to get this running is worth being able to effectively buff your unit the turn you plan to play it without using your protection mana.
This will also help trigger landmark synergy effects for the Malphite gang. And speaking of landmark synergy the timing lines up just right for Taliyah to double this right before it goes off.
7|9 Overwhelm Leveled Taliyah anyone?
Rockfall Path
- Rockfall Path
- 2 mana Landmark
- Text: Countdown 2: Obliterate the weakest enemy
Ok, so the first comparison that jumps into my head for this card is Blighted Ravine.
And then the unfortunate follow-up thought is that Countdown two is a LOT more than one.
The reason Blighted Ravine works so well is that you are effectively saying, “This turn is your last action before this goes off, good luck.
Giving your enemy an extra turn to prepare for rocks falling and everyone dying is problematic, to say the least.
That said, we have ways to accelerate our landmarks this expansion.
It’s possible that this will be a very powerful answer to single-unit boards alongside the Advance mechanic.
I’m a little lukewarm on this one, but I’d say it’s potentially a powerful enough control tool to deserve some testing.
Earth Elemental
- Earth Elemental
- 4 mana 3|5 Overwhelm
- Text: Once you’ve summoned 4+ landmarks this game grant me +3|+0
Chip’s big brother is here and ready to rumble.
Most notably a four-mana 3|5 Overwhelm really does not suck.
You can even quite reasonably have this guy “leveled up,” as early as turn five or six, and four mana for a six power beater is frankly terrifying.
If there is an aggressive midrange landmark deck to be had then Earth Elemental will assuredly be one of its centerpieces.
Blue Sentinel/Crest of Insight
- Blue Sentinel
- 2 mana 2|3
- Text: Last Breath-Summon a Crest of Insight
- Crest of Insight
- 2 mana Landmark
- Text: Countdown 1-Get an extra mana gem this round
So before we lose our collective minds over one extra mana let’s try to look at this little friend objectively.
First, you don’t get the mana the turn it dies, so you’re going to have to be willing to do some setup.
Second, you’re not always going to be able to control when this dies. Anyone who has dealt with Avarosan Sentry stubbornly refusing to get blocked has felt this pain.
Third, the later in the game this goes off the worse the effect is.
If you draw this on turn eight it’s basically a blank two mana 2|3.
So take this with a grain of salt when I say that this card is dangerous.
All two drops lose value, or at least almost all, and if we’re ok with that then this is a pretty impressive wall in the early game.
Aggressive strategies will have to attack through it, giving you the tempo boost you need to turn the corner.
More controlling decks may just end up taking four to six damage for fear of blocking and falling further behind.
Add that to the fact that the death helps the landmark synergy triggers and I would be surprised if there wasn’t some home for our friendly neighborhood blue buff.
Bonus Deck Idea!
Last but not least, we’ve got a new list based on today’s card reveals.
Zil Taliyah is an aggressively slanted midrange deck with some interesting combo potential featuring some of the new cards and everyone’s favorite Best-Boi
Taliyah hasn’t had the greatest debut with Empires of the Ascended but her stock should rise a bit as new landmarks are added to the game.
Deck Code: CEBQIBAJAMCAKCIFAQDQ2JRHFFEQCAYJCMBAIBAHDQWTOXIBAMESGAA
[See Zil Taliyah deck details]
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to ask WhatAmI during his streams (around 10AM PST basically every day).
WhatAmI streams at twitch.tv/xxwhatamixx around 10AM PST every day
