There is one card from Armies of Myth that popped out at me the moment I saw it: Golden Avenger. Now on the surface it's just a bulky mid-range flight troop, a hero of mysterious allegiance from another plane of existence. But when he dies this noble hero leaves behind his Mask, which can be used to transform another troop you control into the Golden Avenger.
Something about this card just seems right from a design standpoint. First off, he doesn't seem ridiculously broken. A 4/4 for 5 with solid stats isn't going to destroy the meta (at least I don't think so.... I haven't played PvP constructed much). There's also plenty of counterplay for the Mask since it's a basic action: you can use discard effects to get rid of it from your opponent's hand, kill the troop in response to the Mask being put on it, or just straight up counter it.
And yet, there is an alluring quality about this card, that if abused properly could devastate the Vampire Kings and Angels of Dawn that your opponent relies on to carry the game. It's clearly a limited powerhouse, and will definitely be fun in highlander/singleton/Elder-Zakiir-Highlander, or whatever version of the "fun" format Hex eventually gets. But it's also the sort of card I'd love to take into the Proving Grounds to troll around with (if you got gold for losses....). At the very least it's the sort of cards I'd like to play against my friends, so in the off-chance I snag four copies of it, I'd like to get a deck going.
Now since the first half of this card is pretty straightforward, the only thing there is to "abuse" is the Mask. To ensure your avenging days continue you need to have a troop on the field when the Avenger bites it. Normally if you're just looking for troops to get churned out you want something along the lines of Worker Bots or Battle Hoppers. Wretched Brood isn't bad for pumping out future Avengers, though Golden Avenger doesn't have Lifedrain, so you might risk killing yourself with Brood if you don't put in countermeasures to prevent that. Bertram in a Sapphire-Diamond Worker Bot deck doesn't sound like too bad of an idea either. Sapphire also has a good chunk of cagey utility troops like Phoenix Guard Messenger that don't penalize you if your opponent kills them before they can put on the mask. Humans also have lots of Rangers that generate troops when they enter play, giving you many options for transformation.
But the deck I want to run is a bit more thematic, and uses a new champion from Armies of Myth: Madame Anana. This Necrotic spiritualist requires Blood and Diamond threshold to work her dark magic, but for three charges she allows any troop under your control to leave behind a Phantom when it dies. Now as of writing this Anana isn't available in the client, so I can't test her, but I assume since both effects trigger off of the Avenger dying that they will both happen when he is killed, giving you both the Mask and a 1/1 Phantom to conveniently place it onto. You can also use Minion of Yazukan and Xentoth's Inquisitor, two difficult troops to fully eliminate from the board, and ones that can repeatedly die to Anana's ability once they are enchanted with her charge power. Here's a sample list I'd like to tool around with:
Anana's Avenging Phantoms
Champion: Madame Anana
4 Xentoth's Inquisitor (Brutality)
4 Repel
11 Blood Shard
For reserves options I'd probably run a sacrifice engine to get around cards like Inner Conflict or other cards that hobble, but don't outright kill opposing cards. Born to Die is thematic, but not particularly effective, though it could be a win condition if you get a rotation of Phantoms going strong with Minion deaths. Hopefully in the upcoming weeks we'll get some news about an Armies of Myth release date. In the mean time I'll be feverishly grinding Arena matches until I have one of every promo card (3 more to go).
Card images from HexTCG Database
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