Toxic Terrors
The new Toxic Terrors Rivals deck included in the Wyrdhollow core set! As always, thanks to GW for providing a copy for review purposes.
Seismic Shock Universal Rivals Deck
First Impressions
[D]AVY & [P]HIL
Again with no plot cards! The universal pool grows! Going hard into the theme of poisons with 7 objectives referencing poison, 6 gambit poisons (and a seventh gambit that interacts with them) and 9 poison upgrades. Let’s take a look:
P: The conditions for this are pretty simple, you just need to have enough poison upgrades really. Based on what I'm seeing the poison upgrades are decent and I think you could afford to take at least four to help trigger this.
D: Making just a single successful attack is setting the bar nice and low. The real question will be how many poison upgrades you feel comfortable including in your deck if you’re working in a constructed format.
P: I like the flexibility here. Make two attacks could be the easy seed glory you need. Make two with one successful in enemy territory gives you that extra difficulty with a reward to match. I like this design a lot and hope we can see it more.
D: Ranged leaders and scything leaders can trigger this one pretty easy. Heck, Hexbane with his pocket pistol could score this without ever activating. Your tolerance for objectives that brick on the death of your leader will determine inclusion on this one.
P: If you are doing the poison thing this should be simple. The second clause seems tougher but there are a number of persisting gambits these days that could trigger it so I bet you can find some play for that condition too.
D: Worth noting that these don’t have to be friendly persisting gambits. In our games this did lead to some suboptimal/hurried poisons.
This card got dark.
P: Again, if you are doing the poison thing this should just happen which is exactly what you want in a single glory end phase.
D: Super easy if you’re playing this as a rivals deck. Passive enough to be considered if you’re constructing.
P: This is interesting. The first clause should be trivial. The second though may not realistically come up until at least round two. Not sure how I feel about a surge that can brick my opening hand...
D: Since you’re not playing around with third end phase objectives in this deck, it does give you a safer mulligan if you draw this early. There’s also some anti-synergy with the upgrade that recycles your poisons.
P: I was all on board until it was no objectives held by opponents. For a single glory this is too unreliable.
D: Yuckers. Too many matchups where it’ll be a ton of work.
P: So you can push a fighter to make this happen but more often than not I think you can't score this until round two or later... The one caveat would be for warbands that can summon fighters in enemy territory. It's a small list but they can make this card happen without trying. Looking at you fish face!
D: Stalagsquig was genetically engineered for this card. But the fish does it even better.
P: Two successful attacks with a single fighter is not impossible but it will require a good amount of work. I think if you feel confident in your accuracy or have a scything fighter this probably gets better but on the whole this might be a bit too much work.
D: Wow, 2 glory surge, though. If you feel okay with the poison upgrades, this is plenty tasty to me.
P: Seems decent. Kill as little as one fighter and get your leader in enemy territory. I'll take that for two glory if I have a tough leader.
D: Mollog just gonna scoop this lil guy up right here.
P: This is pretty aggressive and in certain matchups will be completely impossible. I think if you have a large and fast warband you can probably use this but you need to really have a plan for it. The fact it is equal or more goes a long way to making this happen. I don't think you get this in round one much but in the games you do this likely supercharges the rest of your game.
D: Grymwatch do feel like the warband that would be happy to try to score this. Exiled Dead too!
P: Decent kill surge. The fact you can ping to score this makes it better. Even better if you can ping with a persisting poison!
D: In Rivals this works just fine. A kill surge that triggers off of any kind of kill (lethal, attack action, gambit) has enough flexibility that the poison caveat feels ok. It does look like the deck only includes 4 poison gambits that persist on enemy fighters, but that should be enough. Wouldn’t want to go much lower than that in constructed formats though.
P: Just one fighter holding in enemy territory makes this feel worth it. Your opponent will likely have to worry about this one since a fighter lurking in their territory could mean two glory.
D: Especially nice for playing this deck in Rivals format- since 9 of your upgrades fit the bill. Two glory is definitely worth fighting over a feature for.
P: I'm not sure how bleeding out is a poison but okay... As to how good this card is, it's not bad for sure but I think needing to target a wounded fighter makes this much less powerful.
D: Yeah, at first I was excited to be able to debuff defense, but having to get some damage through first is a little bit of a bummer.
P: Eh, if this didn't have the poison keyword I wouldn't be very interested. A conditional grievous that can be used up by a successful non-grievous attack seems meh. When you hit the crit this will probably feel good though.
D: Kinda weird that you poison your own fighter. This actually hurts the utility of something like Toxic Demise. Unless you want to stretch the argument for what it means to be “affected… by a persisting gambit”.
P: I see this as likely a two mode card. You want to stop a fighter from charging or you want to get ensnare on a fighter that has already activated. Both modes seem situationally strong but I doubt you will often get both benefits. If you do, then it's just a cherry on top!
D: I can think of some warbands that would be happy to turn off Keira’s scything attack too. Real nifty control option. Real gnarly art.
P: Wow. Not a poison but a brutal effect against hold bands. The fact this can be cleared with a flip doesn't feel like it helps much though since you will have a hard time flipping back in the same round.
D: Right. Delve once, get staggered, burn an action to go on guard, so you can delve again? Little tough to do, and really unlikely if this gets played late in the round… as it should. A real brutal hit for hold warbands, but are they around enough to take this?
P: How impactful this is will depend on the warband being targeted, but at worst this is a conditional way to stop charges which can swing a game in a big way.
D: Situationally incredible. And in the other situations dead in hand. Had this dropped on my leader after enemy took first act and that hurt.
P: This feels like a pretty reliable ping towards the end of the game but will be risky early. I think that is probably a good thing though? When ping is too reliable it becomes oppressive so this seems to thread the needle so to speak.
D: I don’t think you’re gonna expect the two damage out of this, or at least, you shouldn’t. The chance of dealing at least one damage starts at a 1/3 chance of going off. One gambit in the pile gets you to about 55%, and a second to about 70%. Those odds make me feel like you only run this in a real heavy poison build.
P: Double push is always good, even if it is directionally limited. Nothing really not to like here.
D: Yeah, love it for aggro warbands. It’ll be a rare scenario where there aren’t any enemy fighters in enemy territory and early on, this is very flexible.
P: The times this staggers and pushes into a lethal will be great. A little sad this can't disrupt hold but hold probably needs the help right now. Despite that, don't underestimate an enemy push at the right moment.
D: Yeah, big fan!
P: Being range limited keeps this in check, but it probably needed it because forcing an opponent to 1 dodge is a pretty big deal.
D: I like having this around as a tool for the metas where defense stacking really gets going. That’s been put a little more in check, but we could see it return. That said, I think the way modifiers work, this can’t totally shut down defense upgrades.
P: Not sure I like this. Reactions after taking damage always feel like they don't quite play as good as you'd hope and with this requiring a specific upgrade to trigger it makes me want to look for more reliable options.
D: If you build this with deck with big fighters, you can really punish someone coming in.
P: Even with a high density of poison gambits I feel like your opponent can just work around this. It almost seems like it should have given a minor benefit always and a better one if being attacked by a fighter that is poisoned.
D: That would be a cool option. Damage reduction is always powerful, so I’m glad they kept conservative on this.
P: Same thing as blighted aura.
D: Getting immune to cleave and ensnare is huge for fighters like Glisette. I suppose these two upgrades give more functionality to poisons that might not really apply that well to a particular situation (like Spit Venom into a glass cannon warband like Reavers)
P: Hmmm. We have seen weapon master do work and this is kinda similar with a secondary trigger. That should make this at least a little better when building poison.
D: This only needs one more poison upgrade other than itself. In Nemesis in particular, damage upgrades can be hard to come by, so this is worth noticing.
P: These upgrades and ploys that give out other upgrades never seem like a good use of a power card slot to me. Since this one can only give out poison upgrades it feels even less useful.
D: Given that’s pretty much every upgrade in your deck is a poison upgrade, that’s not too crippling in rivals play. But there’s so much that needs to line up for this (kill, poison gambit, upgrade in hand, relevant recipient is positioned close enough). And for it to actually make money for you, you need to trigger it twice, since the first one could have been bought with the glory you used on this one.
P: A whole lot of words to say this fighter can draw two after killing a poisoned fighter. This might be useful if you can fuel more poisons with these draws, but overall I would guess you don't get a lot of uses of this.
D: I wonder why this one can’t go on a large fighter? Maybe too much potential to get huge card draw out of Mollog if you can recycle or get gambits up and out.
P: A multi-push can be nice, but often taking an action to push is not efficient enough. Because there is no range restriction on this it may still be good enough. This one will definitely need some testing to see how it plays.
D: Not quite enough persisting poisons to make it worth the upgrade and action, I think.
P: This should be solid. Getting an extra push after any activation can be very strong, even if the direction is limited. Note that while limited you still get to choose the fighter if there are multiple wounded fighters so you can set up your pushes.
D: I think this is potentially real strong. I’m a little surprised that this one wasn’t limited to non-large fighters.
P: Wow this is accurate. The 1 damage is rough but if you just need to land a hit this should be able to do it. Also, it can be modified so a great strength type buff suddenly makes this a very potent attack.
D: Is this amount of incredible accuracy overkill when paired with such low damage?
P: Oh this is fun. Being able to recycle poison gambits should go a long way to turning on the poison synergy in this deck. Just need to find an accurate fighter to give this too and go nuts.
D: I’m a sucker for what they’re doing with this kind of card. Playing with recycling mechanisms like the Arenai did has a lot of potential. Get this on a ranged fighter with accuracy to trigger multiple times and you can take multiple cracks at something like Insect Swarm.
Well that’s… unsettling.
P: Hm. Turn all your poisons into sidesteps. Seems like a very potent effect. The stagger seems like a nice but unnecessary bonus.
D: Yowza, I love this. Every poison play gives a push? Yes please. Really makes each poison pretty tasty.
Summary
D: We tried this out with Kainan’s and it did just fine. A big leader was able to leverage some of the objectives pretty well. Some of the pieces fit together to some relatively powerful combinations. But combo play has historically been pretty hit or miss, so we’re looking forward to seeing this in the field.