Welcome back everyone! At the time I am writing this we are closing in on the end of the current reflections season. In a mere 9 days we will be leaving behind a season that introduced a huge swath of changes. Don’t worry though dear striker, there are more changes in store. In fact we are going to discuss one of those updates today!
No I’m not previewing balance changes. Those actually were presented by the team themselves over in the official discord. Shout out to the Runestrike team for the transparency, especially with modifications of this magnitude. You don’t get that level of communication with every game. Instead I’m going to take a little walk on the nostalgic side as we warm up for the big reveal. Now I’ve been around a while, I know virtually everyone is going to skip to the end but try to stave off the curiosity for a few moments and stay with me.
Back In My Day
I think at this stage I am old enough to use “Back in the Day” and it doesn’t seem weird. I certainly feel like I am and if you don’t like it then get off my lawn!
*ahem* (pretend it’s guttural throat clearing noises)
As a kid I loved animals. I still do of course, but like many kids I thought I was going to be a veterinarian. Didn’t quite work out as planned but what can you do? For me the coolest animals were of course reptiles of all varieties. Didn’t matter what kind of lizard, or snake, or turtle it was, I wanted to know everything about it. My memory is fuzzy enough that I don’t quite recall whether I started with dinosaurs and their modern day cousins or if it was general animals and then mixed in my infatuation with fantasy stories, but either way it ultimately yielded a fondness for the winged scaly beasts known as dragons.
Over the years I’ve definitely made efforts to try and play dragon builds where possible, or at the very least include dragons as the finishers. Recently I even had success on the Runestrike ladder with a dragon focused list that you can see over on the Random(‘s) Thoughts YouTube channel.
Everything Is Dragons are Awesome!
Look, dragons are cool. That much is axiomatic. Most people who have played card games have probably tried to make a dedicated dragon deck work.
It’s OK. You can admit it.
Dragons have generally had a tough time of it in the card game realm though. In more casual settings they will certainly saturate a game table. Conversely, in past competitive environments, they were often absent save for the occasional honorable mention. That isn’t quite the case in Runestrike. In fact there’s a veritable armada of firebreathing lizards dominating the skies in this card game.
The dragons of Runestrike on the whole epitomize what you want out of the tribe. In nearly every iteration they are big, they do something spectacular or gamechanging, and they absolutely will make your opponent sit up an take notice. It doesn’t matter what realm you choose, there can be a scaly battle companion for you.
Arguably the most difficult part is managing to fit in any non-dragon cards!
That’s old news though. We’re talking about a new season and what it brings. So what did the dragon drag in? What new treasure lies in its hoard? Or more appropriately, who is the new Guardian of the hoard?
Darkness Pervades
That’s not a grim-dark or edgy title, it’s our upcoming season! Several other content creators as well as the Runestrike team themselves will be creating previews so make sure you check out the official discord for all the hot reveals. I also want to give a big THANK YOU to the Runestrike team for including me in this round of previews and giving me this opportunity.
I’m really excited about Guardian of the Brood:
I’ll give you a moment to bask in the glory.
OK moment over.
Let’s just bring in the other cards referenced by the Guardian here as we discuss the possibilities.
Now that we have a better frame of reference to evaluate the new addition to the dragon family let’s take stock:
- We have another chaos dragon. Chaos is far and away has the largest big lizard infestation.
- At 6 cost it comes online decently early
- A 7/7 statline allows it to dodge a good portion of damage based removal as well as eat up a lot of opposing forces. Including recently buffed minions such as Kraken that are at the same mana point
- This dragon doesn’t take trash from anyone. Look at it! Seriously the artwork is superb.
This new minion checks a bunch of the boxes you want in a general control finisher. He is certainly sturdy. While minions are obviously vulnerable in Runestrike, this one requires specific answers to address him or an enormous amount of effort. Secondly due to the aforementioned reasonable cost to play it, you can either play it on curve or windmill slam it onto the board late while also playing something else to shore up your boardstate. Third it represents a huge potential due to generating free cards.
Sure, you may not be excited to play Hatchlings when you could be advancing much more impressive dragons but here’s the thing: now blocking isn’t so bad! It’s arguably the worst kept secret in Runestrike that blocking is a big problem. if you are blocking you are probably losing. That or you are doing a “well I still had all these” from a monstrously large bully position. Guardian of the Brood allows you to create and maintain the latter. If your opponent doesn’t deal with it, you can simply stymie offensive efforts and clog up the board either to win the race by preserving your life total or in a less savory fashion generate a dragon cannibalism cycle that will allow for the bigger consume monsters to dominate the board with powerful effects.
*shudder*
This is all before you consider that Big Mama is going to show up when her guards go down. At worst you are forcing your opponent to invest in addressing the Guardian and then you get to just set yourself up with the mother of dragons. Seems like a pretty good deal.
If you’re the dragon player of course.
A Storm of Teeth, Claws, and Fire
I can’t wait to get my hands on this new rune. Even outside of a dedicated dragon deck it an represent a nesting doll of free cards which many late game builds will be salivating over. As mentioned before make sure that you check out the official Runestrike channels in addition to the other content creators for more Darkness Pervades previews.
As always everyone, thanks for coming by and Black Lives Matter.
Random('s) Thoughts 