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July 14, 2022

Rampant Speculation: Winds of Exchange Spoilers, Part One

Rampant Speculation: Winds of Exchange Spoilers, Part One

Praise be to Ghost Galaxy! Long live Christian T. Petersen! We have gone from a despondent silence dominated by board gaming’s cruelest French vampires to verdant fields of hope alongside our Danish-American savior. And we have spoilers from KeyForge’s sixth set, Winds of Exchange! But that name is too long, so everyone’s calling it WindEx, which is great, because the window to the future is clearer and cleaner than ever before.

To celebrate, let’s indulge in some rampant speculation and unhinged analysis of cards for which we have a minimum of context! In Part One, we’ll focus on non-token creatures. Keep an eye out soon for a Rampant Speculation post on Blorb and Blorb Hive (how good will they actually be?).

Brobnar:
Broken Axe Outpost

Artifact. Uncommon. Aember pip. Trait: Location. 

Action: Put a friendly creature on the bottom of its owner's deck. 
If you do, deal 6 damage to an enemy creature.

I hope the design of Broken Axe Outpost is the new Brobnar standard power level. For an interesting cost that doesn’t seem very high, we get a whopping 6 damage – which is enough to take out most creatures.

Since this is an Action: artifact, the ability will be slow. If you’re calling Brobnar n times in a game, the maximum uses are n-1 if you play it the first time you call Brobnar in a game. Standard artifact stuff. It’s balanced out just a little bit by the aember pip, which we’re always happy to see.

The cost – putting a friendly creature on the bottom of its owner’s deck – seems to have very interesting potential interactions. In a vacuum, you’ll be crafting your end-of-deck draws with what you select. Losing a creature from the board can hurt, but if you don’t plan on calling that house soon – or if it’s an expendable token creature, whose card you want to see later – it’s a good move. If WindEx sees more effects like Dark Discovery or Ol’ Paddy – Evil Twin, then you really need to think twice before sending a creature to this place!

 

Ekwidon:
The Old Tinker

Creature. Common. Three power, no armor. Traits: Getrookya, Artisan 

Elusive.
Reap: Discard a card from your hand. Draw a card.

The Old Tinker is the standard “efficiency on a stick” creature we’ve seen since Mass Mutation. But with Logos on the way out, one huge question for Winds of Exchange is “What will efficiency look like?”

I don’t mind how simple The Old Tinker is, wielding a modified version of the Techno-creature Reap: ability along with three power and Elusive. Most sets need a baseline of straightforward workhorse cards; and besides, the effect is just slightly different than previous similar abilities. Both effects after Reap: are mandatory, and they aren’t connected by an “if you do…”. Not a significant change, but one to note once you’re tinkering around with Ekwidon.

Mars

Borka Rikk
Creature. Rare. Traits: Martian, Rebel. Four power, zero armor.

Each time a Mars card is discarded from your hand, make a token creature.
Mk.2 Generator
Artifact. Common. Trait: Item.

Action: Make a token creature.
Space Invaders
Action. Uncommon.

Play: Reveal any number of creatures from your hand. 
Put each creature revealed this way into play facedown as a token creature.

The return of house Mars – a favorite of mine, inside of the game of KeyForge – is a great time to reflect on that fact that fascism anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere. Each of these previewed cards interact with tokens, and here are the rules we have so far (pulled from this keyforging.com blog post):

Every deck from that set will include one token creature reference card. When a card effect instructs a player to make a token creature, the player puts the top card of their deck facedown in their battle line to represent that token creature.

Each deck’s token creature is selected during the deck-generation process like this: First, the deck’s three houses are randomly chosen, then one token creature is randomly chosen from among all the available token creatures within the deck’s three houses.

There are a large number of factors going into the question “is making a token creature a good move, given my deck’s goals and the current board state?”, as you can see from the above mechanics. We’ll need more spoilers before we can plumb the depths of token strategy.

Borka Rikk continues the mighty tradition of Rock-Hurling Giant and Auto-Encoder: cards with a passive ability that triggers off of discards. When it is advantageous for you to make token creatures this way – e.g., “are my token creatures worth more than each of these Mars cards” – Borka Rikk will shine, especially with discarding effects during non-Mars turns. Remember, the tokens will be in one of your deck’s three houses, which will factor in to this decision tree.

Mk.2 Generator is the common-slot workhorse for the new mechanic. I suspect Mk.2 Generator might not see much use in WindEx decks that don’t like to turn their cards into tokens. Whether or not Mk.2 Generator is limited to one-per-deck is a big question; if you get three or more of these, a mid- and late-game token creature army can be a consistent presence in your matches.

Space Invaders will be a high-tier card. You get to cycle your hand AND create creatures, so the efficiency value of the card is high, alongside the fact that all those new token creatures will share the same house. A powerful way to affect your delta!

 

Star Alliance:
Echo Reflector

Upgrade. Common. Aember pip.  

This creature gains, "Your opponent's keys cost +3 aember." 

If I haven’t overused the descriptor “workhorse” by now, I’ll certainly try to. Key cost increases showed up in force in Worlds Collide as a major tactical consideration for aember control. Echo Reflector continues that workhorse tradition in the common slot and with an aember pip, so any creature-and-upgrade bouncing that Star Alliance gets to do this set is guaranteed to have at least one helpful common.

Oh, and if Martian Generosity gets a reprint (literally or spiritually – like Library Access to Library Card), you might just want to stick this on your opponent’s creature to see if you can get way up past six aember.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for Part Two, where we engage in some Rampant Speculation about Blorb and Blorb Hive!