Ancient Bonds Compendium
All cards spoiled so far!
Some minions have a new Keyword called Bond. It triggers an effect whenever the minion enters the battlefield (from the action bar or otherwise) while the player controls another minion from a certain Tribe.
Abyssian
Nightshroud is screaming out for a dedicated Arcanyst recursion deck to deal massive damage with its effect multiple times, and I don’t know if such an elaborate combo is likely to see serious play. It’s still a cool effect.
The Releaser is another card with a cool effect that is probably too convoluted to see real play. It requires some kind of token-based ramp deck that doesn’t currently exist afaik, but I hope it will because punishing the opponent for attacking you is something I’d like to see a bit of in action.
Nocturne is a card I appreciate because it tries to bring the highly divided (Wraithling or Creep) faction together a bit more, but I’m not sure if this is going to do the trick. The body is weak at a crucial mana slot and I don’t know if Abyssian players will be able to use this kind of a toolbox effect. Still, using the Abyssian Creep spells to also generate bodies has its appeal, so I suppose we’ll see how it turns out. It’s also an Arcanyst, so there’s some synergy with Nightshroud there.
Death Knell looks really cool and is another Arcanyst (CP seems to be pushing them for Abyssian, Songhai & Vanar) that seems tailored to work with Nightshroud for a third alternative Abyssian win condition. Using rebirth effects on Nightshroud can let you spawn a good number of them to let you get off a BIG Health swing alongside of reclaiming the board. Death Knell might be strong enough to finally see a real Dying Wish deck in Abyssian.
Lyonar
Life Coil seems like trash to me, I’m sad to say. Even as a combo piece for a Lyonar OTK deck it’s outclassed by just playing a second Divine Bond or the eminently more flexible Afterblaze. Maybe I’m missing something here but I don’t see this card getting play.
Gold Vitriol had people flipping their shit initially, but I think that initial impression is going to turn out to be way overblown. People probably missed that this card hits a random enemy, not a random enemy minion. This means the cards is very unreliable, which is a problem for an archetype that needs to be precise. To boot, this card has anti-synergy with Sunforge Lancer aka ‘the best Healyonar card’ because Zir’An typically wants to be up front rather than retreating and pinging away. Some kind of control deck might turn things around, but even then this card just seems too weak.
Sol Pontiff is a strong card by itself, but it needs good Golems to actually be good. If the new Golems (and Ghoulie) are good enough the Pontiff is likely to see play in a deck dedicated to them. Otherwise, probably not. Magmar and Vetruvian have been getting the strong Golems so I’m not very hopeful at this point.
Peacekeeper. Hey look, it’s the Excelsious problem again. It’s less bad because Peacekeeper is cheaper but we have another Lyonar ‘answer or die’ finisher. Oh well. At least Lyonar players can squint their eyes and pretend they’re playing this card when they run Meltdown or EMP.
Magmar
Cascading Rebirth is probably way too random to see any play, but it’s a fun meme card that will deliver some nice stream moments once in a while. If I’m generous we might see Warbeasts getting Rebirthed into Elders or Leviathans, or either of these into Juggernauts though. I’m not counting on it though.
Ragebinder is a really strong card that I expect to see in a lot of Magmar decks. The statline is really good, the effect is excellent and players seem to be aching for a bit of Rebirth action on ladder. The question is whether or not Magmar will have a second Golem they’d be okay with running (see below), but even as an occasional healer I can imagine this thing to be good enough as a 3/4 Rebirth minion.
Lavaslasher is likely to be that second Golem for a lot of Magmar decks. It’s such an amazing card, honestly. Magmar didn’t have a staple 5-drop but this is likely to be it. Outclassing Brightmoss Golem AND Dancing Blades, Lavaslasher looks like a Faction-defining card to me.
Juggernaut is the third Magmar Golem so far, and probably the one most likely to revitalize the Painmar archetype. Self-harming this thing with Kujatas and Flashes guarantees early eggs (and potentially a lot of them), avoiding the threat of singular removal somewhat. EMP is a hard counter and it’s more or less Khymera again so I don’t think Juggernaut will go much farther than Diamond for overly serious play. It’s another ‘answer or die’ card in a game filled with them so I’m not a huge fan, but it’s cool nonetheless.
Songhai
Joseki is just a silly card but in all the right ways. It’s made to have fun, awesome moments with friends and not much more because it’s too random to see real play. I appreciate CP printing meme cards like this alongside the very serious stuff.
Sparrowhawk is an amazing card by all accounts. The body is weak but still good enough to trade with 2-drops, but it’s the Ability that really opens up some potential. The obvious application is with Onyx Jaguar and Backstab decks, but it’s also an Arcanyst, allowing for some nice combos with that minty fresh Dragon Seal in hand.
Bangle of Blinding Strike is a really good Artifact that Kaleos players are going to love toying with. Obscuring Blow and Mask of Shadows might see actual play with this, as might Twilight Fox. The investment to make all this stuff work might still be too large though, I guess we’ll find out.
Kindling’s effect is persistent, and it applies to itself. Kindling is really good. Songhai’s always had the best Arcanysts and Kindling might just be enough to get a dedicated Arcanyst archetype going! Especially when we consider…
Calligrapher. Holy shit this card is good. Did you notice you can use Inner Focus on it? Yeah. People are going to be peeing their pants for this thing.
Vanar
Mana Deathgrip proves CPG wasn’t kidding when they made Crystal Wisp: they want to let Vanar ramp, and this card is a good one to do it with. A ping is very useful and the effect is just groovy. Vanar’s big problem is going to be maintaining adequate card advantage so we’ll see if they can manage that to afford playing this. I’m pretty sure they will though.
Circulus doesn’t say ‘draw a card’ but that’s kind of what it does anyway. There’s great synergy with Mana Deathgrip here and unlike with Sterope Circulus is a cheap early drop with very lax conditions on triggering its effect. As an engine for Arcanyst Illusions we could see a fun little token/spell deck come out of Vanar in the coming months. I like this one a lot.
Ghost Seraphim. And speaking of token/spell decks, holy crap! This is another great card that is going to have players experimenting with Winter’s Wake all over again. Here’s hoping Vanar get another big spell to combo with her! The statline is also excellent, so even if she gets dispelled she’s still likely to clean house.
Vetruvian
Blood of Air is the removal Vetruvian needed, and at 5 Mana it had better be! I dislike this kind of card because it’s unconditional but at this high of a cost I can’t get salty over it. Get a play set of these (Common!) things and enjoy your newfound range, Vet players.
Thunderclap looks like a real winner to me as well, it’s a bit expensive but copying an enemy minion is insanely valuable (especially for Sajj) and you can copy multiples using Blast or Frenzy for maximum cheese! A fun, fair and high-skill card for Vetruvian and I love to hate it already.
Sirocco doesn’t seem great to me at first glance. Maybe Vetruvian will see more Golems that make this card more enticing but unless you drop it really late-game (unlikely in Duelyst) you’re probably not getting more than two Skyrocks out of it for a total stat collection of 10/7, which is slightly better than Second Sun (after factoring the random drops vs Zeal) but requires more preparation. If you can hit the card later on I’m not sure the impact is big enough to really be worth it. It can put out a lot of stats for only 5 Mana, but I don’t know if that’s what Vetruvian needs. A difficult one for me to evaluate, so I’ll leave this one in the middle.
Neutral
Ghoulie is a good card! 3 Mana 3/4s have turned out to be pretty strong and its ability might see it splashed in a number of possible decks. In the end it’s still ‘just a body’ though so we’ll see if there’s room for it in a strong deck.
Blue Conjurer is an old-fashioned Neutral Arcanyst, but with a more interesting effect than Firestarter. If this is going to see play anywhere I expect it to be in a Vanar deck because Vanar doesn’t have a dedicated draw card, but it already has Circulus so I don’t know how useful this is going to be. It kind of has the Golden Mantella problem of being unreliable, but at the same time its Tribe status gives it built-in synergy with all kinds of new cards (and Owlbeast Sage).
Celebrant is a humble little game-changer. I expect this little thing to completely shake up the way we look at ramping and Mana progression, and might single-handedly push for bigger cards to see play. A 1/4 body is very competitive and the Golem tag makes it an attractive pick for a few Factions on that basis alone. Keep an eye out for this one, I have a feeling Duelyst is going to be forever changed because of it.
EMP is exactly the kind of card I didn’t want to see, but it’s here. I firmly believe it has been mislabeled because that is clearly a Mech, but regardless this card is liable to push a whole range of decks out of the meta by itself. It might turn out to be a dud, but this minion has some meta-warping implications if players can make a deck that fits it. I’m sure players will be trying this thing out in all kinds of new decks to see if they can break it and every >5-turn-game deck along with it.
Feralu looks like a dud to me. The effect doesn’t rock my world and its stat line is very poor for a 4-drop. Maybe the devs saw the potential for a game-breaking Dervish deck so they decided to play it safe and rein this card’s strength in a bit, probably too much.
