Liberating Eldon

As readers of this blog will know, I love me some transforming cards.  It's a simple mechanic, but a broad one that highlights the benefits of working in a digital design space.  Shards of Fate came packed with cards that transform, including two cycles of transforming cards that spanned across all five shards.  The first cycle, the Incantations, are easy enough to recognize since the name jumps out at you.  The other cycle requires a more discerning eye to catch.  It's comprised of five rares that "level up" twice, similar to how a Charmander would level up into a Charmeleon and eventually a Charizard. 

For each member of this cycle you start with a card that is slightly underwhelming for its cost, but that has the promise to become something amazing.  On one end of the spectrum you have cards that get gradually better over time, like Kindling Skarn or Hop'hiro Samurai.  On the other end you have cards which get a huge dip in power like Giant Caterpillar and Ascetic Aspirant, which require you to wait out the second stage before they reach their ultimate forms.  Then there's Eldon's Distress Signal, the intriguing oddball of the group.  While the others all start off as Troops, EDS starts off as a Constant in its first stage, requiring you to exhaust three troops to transform it to the second stage, which is a troop, but can't engage in combat (though he can cast some limited magic from his prison cell).  This execution makes the "transform" mechanic of EDS feel less like a Pokémon you have to level up and more like a Quest, assembling a team of to find the imprisoned mage and coordinate an attack to free him!  It's also a deceptively difficult quest to pull off in competitive play, since board wipes run rampant in Constructed and alpha strikes can be difficult to coordinate in limited.  The pay off for Liberating Eldon is worth it though, essentially giving all of your troops a Prime Sapphire of Mind.  In the months I have played Hex I've never been able to free the mage outside of random matches against the AI, until he found a spot in a deck I drafted not too long ago...

Liberating Eldon
Champion: Palamedes, The Righteous
Troops [16]
1x Malfunctioning War Bot
1x Phoenix Guard Scout
1x Effigy of Nulzann [Sky]
2x Buccaneer
1x Phoenix Guard Trainer
1x Quick Strider
1x Wind Whisperer
1x Devoted Emissary
1x Archmage Wrenlocke
1x Noble Citizenry
1x Ascetic Aspirant 
1x Stoneclaw Gargoyle
1x Mistborn Wendigo [Duty]
2x Phoenix Guard Aeronaut [Duty]
Other [7]
1x Peek
3x Repel
1x Eldon's Distress Signal
1x Oracle Song
1x Countermagic
Shards [17]
9x Sapphire Shard
8x Diamond Shard

I won't go too much into the actual draft, suffice to say it's always nice to crack an Archmage Wrenlocke in your first pack.  Most removal cards are actions, so prioritizing Repels allowed me to decide fairly early on Diamond-Sapphire, a powerful draft combo featuring the bulkiest flying troops.  Diamond turned out to be a good choice since the Aspriant was waiting for me in my second pack.  EDS came pick 4 or 5 of Pack 2, which is surprising to me since it can be game-breaking if left unchecked.  

Eldon plays a bit clunky and even though his abilities all fit thematically, they're a bit of a mechanical mish-mash when rolled into a card.  As such, he has a habit of being a misplay magnet, where there is some aspect of the card players will forget or overlook.  At one point my opponent had a Feral Ogre on the board to my Eldon the Imprisoned and Phoenix Guard Scout, and an exhausted Quick Strider.  I had no resources available for a trick, so with only a 1/3 there was little reason to hold the Ogre back from attacking, but seeing a 2/4 on my side, he kept his Ogre back, forgetting that Eldon is under Inner Conflict so long as he remains in jail.  There was also a moment in one of my matches where my opponent attacked with a 4/1 Thunderbird into my team of four troops + EDS.  I exhausted three to transform into Eldon the Imprisoned, then gave a Swiftstriking Wendigo Flight to shut down the Thunderbird.  (He later got revenge in another game by playing Crushing Blow on a Thunderbird in a similar exchange).  One of the reasons I think there are so many misplays surrounding Eldon is that he plays much different in all of his forms.  Where card like Kindling Skarn stays relatively consistent and just scales up in power, Eldon goes from being a completely useless Constant, to a Murder-able Flight Machine, to a card draw engine.

There were two moments during the draft where both of my Aspriant and EDS each reached their Ultimate state.  I liberated Eldon against Dwarves, coming through with a Devoted Emissary, Phoenix Guard Aeronaut, and one of the Coyotle.  Eldon's freedom didn't last long though, a Ruby Lance for 4 shot him out of the air the following turn.  It was a tragedy, but at least he died getting to taste one last moment of freedom.  The monk of the cloister got to achieve Transcended status in my first match.  While this alone is generally enough to lock a victory, my deck was made it somehow even more broken with Wrenlocke.  My opponent attacked with two troops to which I responded with Repel, searching up another Repel with Wrenlocke's draw, playing the second Repel, and then searching up the third with the draw from that.  I did not envy my opponent, but it was pretty cool to pull off a Legendary-Rare combo in draft.  He did manage to play Inner Conflict on The Transcended, but that didn't stop his effect of letting me tutor up whatever I needed to put away the game.  

I ended up winning the draft, 6-2 on games.  The overall deck was lacking a lot of the heft you might expect from a Sapphire-Diamond deck. Sky'le Griffin and Mystic of the Tranquil Dream were noticeably absent, as were Inner Conflict and Mesmerize.  The curve and Troop count was solid, and Noble Citizenry & Palamedes was able to push my 3 power Aeronauts to aerial domination strength.  

Evaluating Eldon

Eldon is a fairly strong card in limited for his ability to unclog a board.  Flying-on-Demand can be particularly helpful for getting bulkier troops with no evasion off the ground.  The fact this ability is on Eldon's Imprisoned stage is crucial, since it makes the card good enough to play without you having to worry about it reaching the final form.  For Constructed the ability to give something Flight for 2 is much weaker and does not justify including it in a deck, so you have to look at his final form and how to reach it.  This is what presents the greatest problem: for one of your turns you are essentially skipping your attack phase to get EDS to Eldon Imprisoned, and then the next turn (or one of the turns soon after) you need to deal damage with three troops.  Often times being able to coordinate a safe attack with three troops means you're already in control of the game, so the inclusion of Eldon seems like a way to win-more, a trap new players often fall into when building a deck.  On top of that, Eldon Liberated's card-draw ability only effects your troops that are dealing damage after you've already freed him, meaning the most powerful effect won't become active until you've gone through three entire turns with your army on the field.  The ability to dodge that much removal should itself win you that game, making Eldon an unnecessary addition to most Constructed decks.    

However, looking ahead to Set 2 and beyond, there might be some interesting uses for EDS.  While his effect doesn't fit decks that have average sized troops, it does seem to fit well with swarm decks that generate multiple smaller troops (typically 1/1).  A Shin'hare deck can easily generate enough Battle Hoppers to find Eldon, and later in the game an Evolve or Command Tower would let them actually deal damage.  Getting three of your Hopper militia through shouldn't be too difficult with the numbers they churn out.  Eldon also doesn't specify combat damage has to be dealt to trigger the transformation or card draw on his final form, so a card like Malfunctioning War Bot or a troop with Dwarven Ballistics Training could be a way to subvert the attack phase altogether and play in the reactionary style that Sapphire is so fluent.

Finally, Eldon might find a cozy home in PvE alongside the Mercenary Ashahsa.  The mercenary, which is currently available from the Wheels of Fate, lets you put a Windbourne Acolyte directly into play for three charges.  Her passive lets you draw a card when three or more troops you control with flying attack.  Since triggering this Passive coordinates nicely with liberating Eldon, and both would work well from a deck that ran small, efficient Sapphire Troops with Flight, EDS could find a nice home alongside Ashahsa in the second phase of the Arena, when  mercenaries will first become active.  While this still doesn't fix the weakness that these decks have to mass removal, cards like Countermagic and Fish Hands might be enough for a Sapphire based tempo deck to answer board wipes like Extinction and Heat Wave.  

The most vexing question of all surrounding Eldon might be what exactly his story is.  Was he a fellow scholar of Cerulea who was ambushed by the Underworld and locked away?  Was he an obsessed and manic mage who was banished from human lands to an isolated cell atop a frozen mountain?  Flavor text is noticeably absent from every form of Eldon, begging the questions surrounding the nature of his imprisonment and his plans following his liberation.