kpr_ep12_woesaurianplaybook

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Cold Open

All the generous Patreon supporters have me feeling so exalted. But there's no Praefectus Ludo, there's no Imperial Scutum, and I certainly don't have a Calligophian ideal. Unlike dinosaurs and lizards, let's get sweaty.

Introduction: The Saurian Playbook in Winds of Exchange

Today, you and I are opening up the playbook for House Saurian in Winds of Exchange. What do they do in this set? What's their mechanical identity? What do they do well and poorly? We're going through this so that you can pick dex and pods well, play with and against this house, and find success in all of your dinosaur related tasks.

Today we're going to focus on commons and uncommons, since that's what you're going to see most of the time in these dex and these pods, with a couple shout outs to some special rares that really do some interesting things that they do. I just want to talk about. My name is Zach Armstrong and we're going to walk [00:01:00] you through everything about our lovely lizards in Winds of Exchange and their playbook to try to forge three keys and get you to victory. The things we're going to talk about today is that exalting in Saurian is risky. It's a mechanic they introduced, and they're keeping it around in Winds of Exchange, but, uh, well, your opponent's probably going to get that amber at some point. So, is it worth it? Also, we're going to look at their amber and board control, which are a little bit low with some exceptions, and so that's something to keep in mind when picking with or playing against them. And then, the redeeming thing though, is that Saurian has a couple notable super powered combos, that common and uncommon, that are gonna show up in at least a couple of your decks, and I want you to be aware of exactly how they work, so that you can take advantage of them and play against them, if you've got somebody across the table.

Saurian's Board Control and Presence

Saurian's board control in Winds of Exchange is mostly just their big creatures. They've got a couple that are going to be very good at this, because their board wipes in this set are often targeting your own board in a way that's not going to reward you, right? Or a way that's difficult. You have Crushing Charge, [00:02:00] which gives you a chain and destroys all creatures of power 4 or lower. You have Pale Insignificance, no chains, but it destroys all creatures of the lowest power. And then Regrettable Meteor, which blows up all cards that are dinosaurs or are 6 power or more, which are going to be a lot of those on your side.

Now, a lot of these are very conditional, and they're not necessarily going to blow up everything you need on your, uh, Other on the other side of the board, you do get a number of big creatures. there is chaos, Don rampaging, brooded on, Imperator do Scylla who gains splash attack for when there's more enemy creatures than friendly creatures.

So you're going to be able to fight, but there's not as much reward for fighting as there is in Brabnar, keep an eye out as you're looking at these pods and as you play and practice them, what exactly are the board wipes trying to do in that deck?

Are they going to be kind of anti synergistic? are they really just going to be discards except in particular matchups against smaller creatures, So try to figure out what those are doing and how they're interacting with your, soaring cards and then your other houses, [00:03:00] um, as you go, right, as you go. A lot of these actions you're going to find yourself discarding, because Exalting is a bit of a tough call in this set.

Exalting in Winds of Exchange

In their first set, where they were introduced, in Worlds Collide, they had a number of different ways to deal with Exalted Amber that let you dump it into the common supply with Praefectus Ludo or Imperial Scutum, or with Calligophia and Ideal, There's not a lot of ways to protect the Exalted Amber. So every time you exalt, you've got to think, do I want my opponent to eventually have this amber in their pool? if you're exalting a creature and getting a reap out of it, that's a one for one. You get the amber now. They will probably get the amber later. tempo wise, is it appropriate to be exalting? lots of questions to ask. yourself. because there's really no way to, to adjust for it and, and dump that Amber elsewhere, you're going to want to be really aware of what you're doing with an Amber and when your opponent could take it in case that would be a really big advantage for them, So you might be discarding some things here and there if you don't want to be exalting or if you [00:04:00] don't want to be blowing up your own creatures. And so just keep an eye out for really how synergistic those pods are. There are times when all of these board wipes that I mentioned a few minutes ago are really good. And we'll get into that in a little bit.

Saurian's Power Combos

Now, what I do want to talk about, I don't want to be too depressed about the Saurians, because they have a couple of power combos that are common and uncommon. Okay, they have a couple combos that are just absolutely super powered, tough to answer, and really just send you into the stratosphere if you pull these off, and you probably will.

They're not terribly rare. You have Epic Poem, which is an action card which says, Exalt a friendly creature and gain one for every amber on that creature. If you're capturing a bunch onto a creature or exalting it, then you get that amber one for one, and it's so good, right? We're gonna talk about the math on that a little bit later, and there's ways, uh, there's situations in which that math becomes really advantageous for you and disadvantageous, of course, for your opponent. there's inspiring oration, doing something similar, exalt a friendly creature, create a token creature for [00:05:00] every Amber on that creature. So very good, especially if you have Legionary Trainer, an absolute all star from this set that makes a token creature on play, and all token creatures enter play ready.

Amazing with the Saurian token, pretty much no matter which one you get, And then one big way that Saurian can capture in house is Praetor Marius. It's a five power creature with after reap, capture one amber for every exhausted creature to Praetor Marius left. Which is fantastic after that reap and you can even ready and use it on the same turn with Symposium, getting an amber on there and then capturing for everything that's exhausted to its left, and then using your inspiring oration, using your epic poem, really powerful ways to burst for either token creatures or amber. So keep an eye out for these. These are very powerful in a lot of Saurian pods. And there's enough other good cards that you really could get a finely tuned Saurian pod that either has some of those board wipes we talked about earlier, but is actually friendly to those board wipes in the deck and they synergize or you're just [00:06:00] getting all the really kind of unconditionally good cards, right?

So keep an eye out for these power combos like with Epic Poem Inspired Narration. anything that you can use to capture a bunch at once or exalt a bunch at once, like Praetor Marius. That's kind of the standout one, but there's a lot of ways to exalt or capture in this house. as far as power combos go, we've just got to mention legionary trainer like we did a second ago. It's a two power creature that makes a token creature on play and all of your token creatures enter play ready with this little guy. It is so good to be having your creatures enter play ready, your token creatures, right?

Because you get to use them right off the bat. Special shout out to, uh, Uh, scholar, the after reap draw a card token in sorry and so good with this. And if you can, have it survive or get it played off turn somehow, then you're in a really good spot, even with a non sorry and token, right? So keep an eye out for legionary trainer, absolutely combo and rush powerhouse.

I love it. Great card, very powerful, maybe too powerful, but Hey, it's [00:07:00] printed it's here. So use it,

Senator Token Creature Overview

Alright, Sarian Token Creatures. What are they? Are they any good? Do you want them? So, right off the bat, you have Senator. A two power dinosaur creature. Politician. With action, your opponent's keys cost plus one during their next turn. Now, the most redeeming quality of this token is that it's two power.

Two power actually does a lot for a token creature, because you can, you know, especially if you're creating them en masse, right? It makes them just a little bit more survivable. So two power is good.

The action, you know, taxing your opponent for one if they're going to forge a key, or trying to chemith off that key, it's, it's fine. It's not crazy strong. There's only going to be a handful of turns in which it matters, and you can, you know, only use them if you're Ansari, and it's not Omni like Researcher over in Mars, of course.

Um, but they've got some staying power, uh, and they've got some taxing power. So, not terrible, pretty solid, and honestly, you're just happy to have a Sarian token if you've got legionary trainer and other, these other combos, [00:08:00] perhaps, like Inspiring Oration, bringing them all in ready. You just want a body that can reap and be a little bit more survivable than a one power token, right?

So, overall, Senator, just fine, two power is good, and sometimes you get to tax for a key. That's fine.

Trooper Token Creature Overview

You also have trooper, which is a five power token creature, which says after fight after reap exalt trooper. Oh, man. So it is it is a tough choice here because If your opponent is able to go faster than you and they get that Amber, that's going to take them closer to Key 3, than you are, right, if they're getting that Amber back from Trooper and maybe it was one for one and they are bursting ahead closer to the finish line, or you fought with it and exalted and now they're getting the Amber.

As well. So it's not great. There are a number of ways it can combo inside of Sarian, right? We've got that inspiring oration. We've got that epic poem. These can combo and there is the rare. One of the only ways you can use this amber to your, uh, and actually take the amber for yourself, right? Is Senator Brock is this four power dinosaur.

That's a rare that [00:09:00] says you may spend amber on friendly creatures as if it was in your pool. That being said, if it's not behind Taunt, you know, if this Amber is just out and there's a Board Wipe coming, not much you can do there. There is Pax Soriana, the Sorian action card, you ward all creatures, but, uh, it's a bit tough to pull off. so I think there are going to be some decks where you do really like your Trooper. Shout out to the fact That it is five power. So it sticks around and it doesn't get hit by crushing charge and usually won't be the target of a pale into insignificance.

So I'm pretty mid on this one. I don't think it's great. I do think there are enough synergies inside of the house where you're going to actually be okay. Some of the time and also if you're not making a ton of these troopers, if you have kind of a lower token count inside of your house, I think it's actually totally fine to have a few troopers that you can decide whether or not to use them and hopefully you've got some epic poems or other things benefiting you for the amber on that token already, right?

Scholar Token Creature Overview

We have the last of the regular Saurian token creatures, Scholar. [00:10:00] One power, no elusive, so easy to kill, but it's got after reap draw a card. Fantastic, you're getting an amber and a card. Amber, which is the ingredient for keys, which you need to win, and then cards can let you do all sorts of effects to get you towards that finish line, right?

Amazing Legionary Trainer so that you're reaping, drawing a card, drawing into more combos, perhaps. I love Scholar. It is gonna be weak on the board to stuff that wants to fight it off, or opponent's decks that give them benefits for blowing up your stuff. Uh, but I think the cost is worth it.

You know, that's a strong enough card to be worth, uh, some bad matchups. Everybody's gonna have bad matchups, but Scholar is pretty great. Scholar is pretty great.

Bellatoran Warrior Token Creature Overview

Lastly, now this is not a common or uncommon, but it's their special token that's attached to a rare, Training Costs. Uh, if the rare Training Costs is in your deck, that is going to lose you some Amber when you play it.

Um, unless you can discard it through a card effect, but it turns your token into Bellatoran Warrior. This thing is a 5 power 2 armor token. It is beefy, the only downside of [00:11:00] course is that training cost that you want to tokenize or get discarded from your hand in some way. And oh my gosh, this thing is beefy. It is so fun. This is amazing in Sealed, of course, if you've got a deck that fires well with it, the Bellatoran Warrior. Um, and it just, it has such staying power, it sticks to reap, it sticks to fight, it can fight a couple things off. It's fantastic. Um, of course, perhaps it doesn't have as much combo potential as something like Scholar Rite or Prospector from Equidon, but a 5 2 is just super solid.

And, uh, if you're making a lot of tokens, your opponent just simply might run out of creature control by the time you have marched all of your Bellatoran warriors over and just taken over the game. Right? So I love it. I think it's a lot of fun.

Wraping up the Saurian Playbook

So, in summary of the basic playbook for Sarian and Winds of Exchange here, you've got to watch your exalting, right?

Watch your exalting, do the math, see if it's worth it, and look out for your power combos, right? your epic poems, your inspiring orations with your Praetor Mariuses, and other stuff that [00:12:00] synergizes with it. All of those. Your board control might be kind of wacky, uh, it might not be super effective, you might be blowing up your own stuff, or you might just have a couple really strange lines of play to maximize those, or you just might need to be discarding or making sure you tokenize some of those if you can filter, right, if you can filter what becomes a token.

Saurian All-Star Cards

So, a couple of the sorry and all stars here, right, is, so epic poem. Now, I mentioned the math on epic poems. Basically, if you can copy, you know, the same pool of amber twice, you're getting double that amber, and your opponent just gets that, the value of that amber once, once they get it back. So, multiple epic poems on a pile of amber is really good.

For instance, I've got a deck with three epic poems, and say I've got one creature in play, there's no amber on it, I play the epic poem once. One amber is on the creature. I gain one. I have one total. I play epic palm twice. There's two amber on the creature I gained two amber. I now have three amber total.

I play a third epic palm. I exalt it There's now three amber on that [00:13:00] creature and I get three more amber now. I'm at six amber total I just gained six amber and once my opponent eventually perhaps blows up that creature. They're just getting three So multiple epic poems, you know, uh, banking, banking that extra amber from that pile of amber multiple times is really good.

So keep an eye out for that. Right, keep an eye out for that. Legionary Trainer, we went over that. Just how powerful this dang little card is. Look out for it with perhaps a Sandhopper and you're getting Equidon token creatures out ready. It's very powerful. It's going to create large, big boards real fast of token creatures coming in ready and doing their You know, doing their effect of doing their business right off the bat.

So keep an eye out for legionary trainer. Absolutely. So powerful might get stuck inside of a really otherwise chunky. And Decker, sorry. And pod, but keep an eye out. Cause it's very powerful, there are a couple of Saurian pawns that are going to be tuned around just hating on the small creatures.

They're going to have, uh, crushing charge. They're going to have big, Saurian [00:14:00] tokens, right? Um, at around five power, maybe with the trooper, uh, with trooper or a Bellatoran warrior. And so you're going to have some pods where you can actually be playing these board wipes. And a lot of your creatures are going to be bigger than that.

And so there are going to be some pods, some sorry, insights that are really tuned to blown up all those small creatures and shout out to pale into insignificance, which blows up all the lowest power creatures with no cost to you. It's pretty great, right? It's pretty great. There's also an uncommon, uh, artifact named cerrarium that says each creature with the lowest power cannot reap.

So there's going to be a couple of pods. You might have one in your collection. That's really finely tuned to be a great matchup against a deck with a whole lot of small creatures, like perhaps prospector. Cause if this prospectors can't reap, um, that's one of the major threats of a prospector totally gone.

So keep an eye out for that. two more cards to shout out here as all stars. One is, uh, Plato Pelta. It is a rare, it's these, it's these three philosopher five power dinos that all have these reap effects and they give themselves wind of wisdom counters in a particular order [00:15:00] and they upgrade their effects.

Now check out those effects. They're pretty cool. I'm not sure they're going to find it all that often, but Plato Pelta specifically lets you archive a card from your hand. Um, After you reap and the reason this is so important is that there's only one other card in the set that lets you unrestricted the archive whatever you want and that's Ganymede outpost from Star Alliance, which lets you archive two cards at the cost of putting a creature on the bottom of your deck.

So this is such a premium that literally just having Plato Pelta in your deck, if you can drop that turn one, reap and archive something for later, a combo piece or an answer to your opponent's deck. It's just so valuable. Keep an eye out for how special that is, because you do have that comes with that another one of those cards, another one of those cards that lets you play cards from your archives, which is pretty sweet.

It's pretty sweet. You could definitely make some combo stuff happen there, especially with the action card symposium, letting you ready and use creatures to turn their dropped pretty good, pretty good.

Saurian's MVP in Winds of Exchange

And lastly, [00:16:00] I do have an MVP for Saurian in Winds of Exchange, a most valuable player, right?

A most valuable player, and here's the thing. This player, this player has played before. This player made a deal with the devil. They showed up in Mass Mutation, and that is Faust. The four powered dino. Play, you may exalt a friendly creature. Your opponent's keys cost plus one amber for every... Uh, for every friendly creature with amber on it, this card is so good in winds of exchange because there's so many ways to exalt your creatures like we talked about earlier, right?

We can exalt this one, we can exalt that one, we can reap with troopers, all this sort of thing, and Faust lets you finely tune exactly how much you want your opponent's keys to cost. There's so many ways to just turn the dials of exactly how much an opponent's key is going to cost when Faust hits the board.

Playing Faust, exalting a creature, maybe reaping with a trooper over here, and you can, you can, uh, drain the amber from your opponent as they forge a key with exactly as much as you want to. So [00:17:00] Faust is absolutely fantastic. Look out for it in multiples. It's a very good creature that really just levels up your entire Saurian pod and also does great with inspiring oration, uh, or epic poem, right?

Because you're getting that extra exalt onto a creature if you want to stack it all onto one creature.

So Faust is the MVP. It was very good at mass mutation. I also just looked it up. It was also in Dark Tidings. Sorry Dark Tidings Faust, but this card is fantastic and it's even more amazing here in Winds of Exchange where you've got all sorts of ways to exactly fine tune that key cost and plenty of ways to take advantage of that Exalted Amber.

Outro

Well, that's it. That is the Saurian playbook for Winds of Exchange. I hope you have enjoyed taking this deep dive so that you can figure out how to play with and against the Saurian house in Winds of Exchange and pick your best Saurian deck or your best Saurian pod for whatever purposes you have, whether Archon or Alliance, Sealed or just straight up.

A lot of fun. I [00:18:00] do think they're a lot of fun. They've got some nombos this set, but even those nombos can weave their way into a pod that is really focused on a particular game plan. And I love that because that's going to be good if you make a smart metacall and you just want to blow up a bunch of tiny creatures, right?

Or keep them from reaping with Saurarium. So, if you want to join KeyForge Public Radio's Patreon, you'll get regular updates on the show, you get to vote on content like what order the house playbooks occur in. That's what our Patreons have voted on for this series. It's fantastic. I love being able to ask them, you know, what to do for this kind of thing.

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