kpr_ep9_ekwidonhouseoverview

[00:00:00] My name is Zach, and I've been blowing at my own creatures for years. Now I could stop if I wanted to. Let's get sweaty.

Introduction to Ekwidon's House Playbook

Today we are studying house economics playbook in winds of exchange their debut set. We're going to look at what they're good at, what they're not good at and how they play so that you can make informed decisions when you're picking decks to play with pods for Alliance. Play your best when you're piloting them and know what to expect when facing them.

Ekwidon is new and brings a whole combination of mechanics to their house in KeyForge in a way we haven't quite seen before. What defines them? What are their weaknesses? What are their strengths? Make sure you're subscribed to KeyForge Public Radio to hear about the other six Winds of Exchange house playbooks in upcoming episodes, one [00:01:00] for each house

over the next few months, the order being voted on, of course, by our amazing Patreon subscribers. Thanks again.

Today, we'll be focusing mostly on what the commons and uncommons bring to house Ekwidon, along with their tokens, since that's most of what you're going to be seeing, we have a few special mentions for rares that we'll talk about later, but commons and uncommons are going to be most of the focus because that really is what makes up the feel of the house overall.

Summary of Ekwidon's Main Points

Some of the main points about house Ekwidon are that they do have top tier aember tempo at the cost of setup. I do mean aember control here as well as other ways to gain it. That just costs some setup. And usually that's not too hard to manipulate. So they have some top tier aember tempo is what I'm calling it to take all of that into consideration all at once.

They have very few must answer creatures, but plenty of good artifacts. Now, some of their token creatures en masse or a great threat. But as far as their normal creatures that are just on the board, very few of them are, must answer, [00:02:00] but lots of good artifacts. And then all of the token creatures kind of, like I mentioned, a lot of them are, must answer on mass in some way. And all of the mechanics of each token creature really reinforced the house's mechanics. If you get an Ekwidon token creature. It's tough to go wrong. Strange shell, their special token creature brought in by Molluscaller, the special rare is a bit of a different story, but we'll talk about that later.

Ekwidon's Aember Control

So the requirements on house Ekwidon's aember control can be manipulated in your favor pretty easily. They have things like a Generous Offer, which destroys a friendly creature to steal two, stealing two is pretty big and that the cost of destroying a creature, something you have total control over. That's pretty good. You can reap with the creature to get its value from that before you destroy it, maybe you're triggering a destroyed effect or blowing up a creature that you stole from your opponent. They have a lot of different capture that you can pick on what creatures to put that on. And then several ways to swap control of creatures, sending that aember over to your [00:03:00] opponent's battle line so that you get it if, and when that creature blows up. So their aember control can be manipulated in your favor pretty easily. So as you look at your house Ekwidon pods, I'm really hoping you get some aember control cause it's, it's very good when it does show up. And there are ways that you can play into that amber control's strengths by sequencing around the costs, handcrafting around the costs and maximizing its potential

for you. If you're seeing Ekwidon on the other side of the table and you're calculating their aember control to make a favorable end game state so that they have as little as possible to do, to actually take aember from you. Well, unfortunately, a lot of it really is under their control. Right?

Blowing up their own creature as long as they can make a token creature or play a creature that can blow up that, blow up that for Generous Offer, Trade Secrets, discards Ekwidon card from hand. So that's really tough to play around. Not a whole lot you can do there unless you're discarding [00:04:00] cards

from their hand . So they're very good at aember control when those tools show up. And related to that, there's a pretty good number of two card combos involving capture and then creature controls swapping across commons and uncommons. There are things like Exchange Program where you pick two flank creatures and swap control of them. Now, if you have just played, a Shrewd Investor who gives their opponent one, if you want to capture four you've now gotten that four aember, you can just send over to the other side.

Ekwidon's Two-Card Aember Control Combos

This combos, of course, with anything else that swaps control of creatures or captures aember. You have, for instance, Trading Frenzy where a friendly and an enemy creature, each capture three, easy to manipulate on your side of the board. And you have, for instance, Shĭzyokŭ Swopper, which can fight and then trade control with the enemy creature it fights. So if you've put aember on to Swopper, you can send it right on over, and maybe in a weakened state for you to then follow up, take it out on the same turn.

Ekwidon [00:05:00] has a number of these tools and things that even make it better. For instance, a Puzzling Trinket, which allows you to take an Amber pip that you're playing on a card and use it as really any other bonus pip that you want to. That is very good. You could do some additional capturing with that card.

The strongest part of these two card combos is that they're across a number of commons and uncommons. And so a lot of Ekwidon pods that you see are going to have these plays. So figure out which ones your deck has, how to set up for those, doing them all in one turn and then execute. It's really great. And watch out for what it takes to pull these off. If you're across the table from Ekwidon, so that if needed, you can try to dodge that mass capture and control swapping combo.

Ekwidon's Board Control

That being said, Ekwidon doesn't really have a strong board presence. They have three good, though conditional, board control cards at common and uncommon. That's Pull Up Stakes, which shuffles two friendly creatures into your deck, which is great for tokens that you need to reclaim,

and then returns four enemy creatures to hand, [00:06:00] which is pretty good. They also have Market Crash, which destroys all non token creatures. Very, very good in the right deck. That gives you two chains, very simple board wipe for two chains, amazing cross-set, of course, with other decks, not having token creatures outside of Winds of Exchange.

And then of course, Mass Buyout, no chains. Destroys everything on the board, but gives everybody basically, half an aember rounding up for every creature destroyed this way. An amazing board wipe that really only costs some aember tempo and if you're able to blow up their other side, say with Market Crash first, and then follow it up with a Mass Buyout, just blowing up your own stuff after it's reaped. That's a really very good. Now they're all just a little bit conditional,

and you might not even get them since there's only three, but these are very good. Make sure you know, what Pull Up Stakes does so that you can keep that in mind if it's across the table, right. Just know that you might be having four creatures bounced back to your hand. And a quick combo note here [00:07:00] with Pull Up Stakes:

sending enemy creatures back to the owner's hands. If you swap control of one of your creatures, putting it over on the opponent side of the board, that creature gets to go back to your hand. Not super common, but certainly something you can pull off with, Pull Up Stakes and some control swapping that you can get some really fun little combos with.

So keep an eye out for these board wipes just know that Mass Buyout, of course, if you're in the end game and your opponent has a lot of creatures, you're going to be giving them a lot of cash. A lot of cold, hard, aember. If they have a lot of creatures and you want to play Mass Buyout. So that is where the cost of Mass Buyout starts to become a little too expensive, right? If you're going to give to your opponent the game, but in many situations, Mass Buyout is something you can tune, to the best possible version of the board state for yourself. Maybe fight off a couple of creatures, then blow everything up. Get the Amber, play out a few more creatures. You've got no chains slowing you down.

Ekwidon's Creature Quality

Now that being said there are some good creatures. I don't, I wouldn't say they're subpar, but they're nothing to write home about. One notable one is belligerent guard, [00:08:00] which has the play effect "Your opponent draws a card" and it enters play ready and as an eight power Giant, very useful if you just need to take something out on the other side of the board real quick. So I do like that, but as far as must answer creatures where you play this creature and your opponent has to answer it, or you're going to trigger a combo or some other highly advantageous game state. There's not really a lot. They do good work, but there's not really a lot of "must answer" creatures at all.

Although there is a one specifically that in many decks is going to be really high power. And that is Esquire. This is a two power Ecuador creature that says every friendly non token creature gains destroyed to make a token creature. You can do some really busted stuff with this. It's very good. And so keep an eye out for it across the board. And trying to think what else is on their list that they could really combo with Esquire with that Destroyed: make a token creature ability on all friendly non token creatures, right? Maybe they're going to be board wiping with Mass Buyout and then reboarding instantly with those [00:09:00] tokens, especially look out for decks with two of these, because it means you have to create at least three tokens blowing these things up, if you're destroying them, instead of shuffling them away. Because you have the two destroyed effects on the first, the one on the second, once you've blown up that one, that's three tokens

for the cost of blowing up those two. So really fun setups with Esquire. Keep a big eye out for that. There's a lot of things in a set that combos with.

Especially the rare over in Mars, Martian Revolution, which is a action, which destroys all of your creatures in play and for each creature destroyed this way, you make a token creature. So that's good, you're doubling up on those tokens with Esquire. If token flood is going to be advantageous to your game plan, right?

And then of course, the famous Ekwidon token Prospector. One power token creature that has Destroyed: Draw a card. An amazing card, right, and very good with Esquire as you can blow stuff up, get a bunch of Prospectors. And, and do whatever you want to with the Prospectors.

Token Creature Overview: Prospector

So this is going to start [00:10:00] our token creature rundown.

For house Ekwidon, we're going to start with Prospectors because Prospectors is very good, and here's a number of core reasons why prospector is really one of the best token creatures you can get.

When a Prospector is out on the board. And if you have a bunch of them, you can reap out. Of course, right? Maybe if you have a bunch of them, you're hitting the rule of six. I can reap out get a bunch of aember. But how does your opponent combat that? Okay, well, they're going to go ahead and blow that Prospector up. However, you get to draw a card if they blow it up and if they're blowing it up on the opponent's turn.

And you know, across from you, you're drawing those cars before you choose your next house. And so you get to have all this information and all these cards in hand to choose what your next house is. So this is very good.

How To Tech Against Prospector

There's a number of ways to counter this.

There is, a uncommon card from Dark Tidings. It's a Sanctum card, so I don't know how many decks this is going to end up in as far as really competitive ones. But there is a card First or Last, which lets you purge all creatures of the highest power or all creatures of the [00:11:00] lowest power.

If you have a deck with one or especially two First or Last, and it's a Dark Tidings deck. That, has some respectable moves outside of the double First or Last, give it some practice. If you think you're going up against a bunch of WOE, because purging a creature does not trigger the destroyed effect. It's purged not destroyed. And so you can get rid of all of those Prospectors at once while skipping your opponent drawing a card and getting them all purged.

That said, I generally am fighting down Prospectors whenever it's convenient and not totally wasting my time. On the other side of the board, if I'm against a Prospector heavy deck, it's just the price you have to pay. There's really no way around how good Prospector is. Now, that being said, depending on the kinds of return to hand shenanigans you have the kind of board clears you have

or, the aember control your opponent has, maybe you can let them burst real high and then have your response. What is your deck equipped to deal with? Either way against a good Prospector deck, uh, it might be tough. It [00:12:00] might be tough cause it's very good.

Now these others, aren't going to be quite as popular, quite as hot, right. Uh, but they're still very good.

Token Creature Overview: Diplomat

We have Diplomat, which is elusive, very important. One power. It says After Reap:

each player gains one. Diplomat will play into a lot of strategies that you're going to see in Ekwidon. You want to give your opponent aember, so you can take it . If you give are giving your opponent one aember for your one aember, and in this case, really, you're getting two. They're getting one. All other things being completely equal. You're just going to win before them because you're getting two aember, they're getting one, aember. Boom. When you get to 18, they're going to be at nine. So of course KeyForge is much more complicated than that, but, and it's not optional, unfortunately, whether or not you give each player one aember, but, in general, this is a pretty good ability. Now, of course it will also depend on how many Diplomats your deck

wants to make, how often you want to make them, how often your deck can make them and how your game plan fits into giving your opponent aember and just moving as fast as possible towards that finish [00:13:00] line and giving your opponents some aember, as part of that cost. I will note that especially in set that elusive on that one power is quite good for using up fights of enemy creatures. If they need to fight your Diplomat off the board, if they get benefits from blowing it up, the elusive can often be quite helpful there.

There's some ups and downs, because then you get free fight effects, triggers off of it. But really you're just going to have to see what is your opponent doing with a fight, and do I want to make a bunch of elusive creatures for them to fight into.

Token Creature Overview: Trader

Then we have Trader the last of the standard tokens, one power, not elusive. It has Action: Steal one, destroy Trader. So stealing on a token, that's pretty good. I've had some turns where I've been able to make quite a few Traders and then. Just pop them right down the line and steal kind of a whole bunch of aember all at once. So if you get these out, if they survive, they are quite good. So pair with a surviving, Legionary Trainer that survived a turn from playing it earlier for a great effect, creatures entering play, ready, [00:14:00] and then pop pop pop pop pop, stealing right off the bat.

So this one is good. Again, a one power token without elusive is going to get far off the board easily, but it does present a really good threat because steal is so powerful. It's a two aember swing where you're taking from that opponent, starting to remove their ability to take them down from, from check, getting them away from that

aember that they're using to forge keys and bringing it to yourself, and then you blow up the token creature. Totally a fair cost. So this one quite good, quite good as well, and turns all your token creatures into aember control if they survive or can enter, play ready.

Token Creature Overview: Strange Shell

And of course we have Ekwidon's special token Strange Shell, which comes with Molluscaller. That is the rare that if it's in your deck, it takes over the token and makes it Strange Shell. That's one power four armor. It cannot fight or reap. It has Action: put Strange Shell into your hand. So this can be good. The one power four armor is a lot of staying power. It's a bit tougher to fight that off the board. What Strange Shell functionally [00:15:00] becomes in many decks is either one, a token that has a lot of staying power and is difficult to fight off the board.

So you can reward yourself for that, with things like Membership Drive or Harmonic Ritual. The other thing it does is it acts as kind of a slow archives. Now Winds of Exchange, there are only two cards that let you archive without restriction. Right? And so strange shell being on the board and you being able to action, just pick that up can be very good, but it's a very slow archive because they enter play exhausted. They have to ready and then you have to call Ekwidon again to pick it up. If it's not an Ekwidon card, then you've got to call the next house

and so that's really a three turn archives right to play it. However, if it's the right card at the right time, say you have two Befuddles right. And if you play two Befuddles at once and pick the houses smartly, your opponent can't play any cards and perhaps you can get your strange shells out and then, pop pop. Just make sure you've got your Befuddles for the end game.

Molluscaller after it reaps, has the Strange Shell lose all abilities. And so they [00:16:00] can go ahead and reap out if that Molluscaller is out. So Strange Shell is a strange one. It is a token that takes over the deck might not really jive with what the deck wants to do.

Uh, but give them a chance to see if they're good, because they are certainly, there are certainly unique and remember many decks in KeyForge some are bad, some are great. And some feel a little bit bad at first, but maybe it's not an issue with the deck. You just have to learn that deck really well in order to reap the reward of it, performing as high as it can.

I think a couple of strains shell ducks are going to be that way. I think plenty of strange shell decks are just going to be kind of jenky difficult to pilot, but Hey. That's still a fun KeyForge deck. And if you can take down a local night with it, more power to you.

Ekwidon's All-Star Cards

So we're going to wrap up by going over the Ekwidon All Stars. These are cards that if you have a couple of these in your deck, especially multiples of a few of these in your Ekwidon pod, you are probably good to go. You're going to have a lot of fun stuff to do. It is going to be, there's going to be some power [00:17:00] present in that deck for you to play with.

I mentioned earlier, their artifact game is very strong and would take a while to go through each and every one of them. But I'm going to call out here, Sandhopper. This is an Ekwidon artifact that says Action: Return a friendly creature to its owner's hand. If you do, you may play a non-Ekwidon creature from your hand. This is so much a value in one artifact activation. It's bonkers. One of the biggest, competitive hurdles with Winds of Exchange

is the fact that you're turning things into tokens in many decks. And so if you do, you might turn a key card into a token. So you've got to decide when not to make a token when to make a token, but if you're doing that in Ekwidon, with Sandhopper out, you can just boop return a friendly creature to its owner's hand.

That token is something you want. That token creature is something you need in your hand for later or for now,

go ahead and bounce it with Sandhopper. And guess what, if that wasn't good enough, which it's basically just a Transporter Platform, right, but without the upgrades,

now you get to house cheat. You can play a non-Ekwidon creature [00:18:00] from your hand onto the board. That is really good, especially in a set with enhancements where you're maybe going to get a little bit of a bonus for the play on top of the play effect or just the creature's presence on the board.

So Sandhopper is an MVP. If you've got multiples or if you've got one that you can get out on a regular basis on a deck, that is awesome. That is going to do you really well in an Ekwidon pod.

As mentioned before Exchange Program swaps control of two flank creatures that you pick. Very good for capturing tossing stuff over or taking a critical creature from your opponent over to your side. Very good for that as well. It's a very simple card, but I do need to shout out Auction Off. It is a action card of for Ekwidon in this set gives you an aember pip and it says: purge an artifact, its controller gains one. So they're getting paid for the purging of that artifact, right? And it is one of the only ways to blow up an artifact in this set.

And it's extra good that it removes it permanently. So keep an eye out for this. If you have a artifact -dependent deck and you're up against Ekwidon you're going [00:19:00] to have to make some choices there. Mostly I'm not picking a deck with Ekwidon in it, or an Ekwidon pod only if it has Auction Off but that's a really good bonus that if two different decks or two different pods are relatively similar except for one has Auction Off and one doesn't. I might lean towards the Auction Off just to have that option around. Generous Offer of course, as we mentioned earlier, huge, huge card. Blow up a creature. You steal two. Stealing two is big, you might be drawing off of Prospector or making two token creatures off of Kamalani, which has "Destroyed: make two token creatures." There's all sorts of good stuff you could be doing here with Generous Offer.

Right? Pull Up Stakes is fantastic. One of the reasons Pull Up Stakes is so good is because any removal that gets a creature off the board, even if it's just going to hand, without destroying it can get around destroyed effects and it can get upgrades attached to that creature over into the discard pile.

Bouncing for enemy creatures to their owner's hands is quite good. I like it a lot. I think it's [00:20:00] very, very valuable. Lastly, shout out to Ikwiji Outpost, every house has an outpost in Winds of Exchange, which is a uncommon artifact that has Action: put a friendly creature on the bottom of his owner's deck and then gives you some thematic, effect for putting that creature on the bottom of its owners deck.

Ikwiji Outpost in Ekwidon is one of the best you get to draw three cards of the cost of putting a creature on the bottom of your deck for later. The amount of choices that's giving you that you can use to build up the end of your deck, you know, as in, you're going to be drawing that creature later and getting to play it again and you know exactly when that's happening. Well, almost exactly when that's happening. Right.

You know, it's going to be. A little bit later. It's very good because drawing three is awesome and there's not a whole lot of draw in this set outside of a prospector and then Ikwiji Outpost. There is in a number of places, but not a ton of archiving or draw. And so Ikwiji Outpost drawing you three is very, very good, especially if you're able to use Ekwidon as your main house and call it a few times in a row. And maybe you're just drawing [00:21:00] more and more cards of your other two houses into your hand to have really big turns, a few

turns later. So very good. I love it. But now the MVP, the MVP across commons and uncommons, of course there are some standout rares. Absolutely. But the MVP across common and uncommon is Puzzling Trinket, an uncommon artifact. It gives two aember bonus pips as enhancements, anywhere else in the deck. And it says: when you resolve an aember bonus icon, you may choose to resolve it as a capture icon, damage icon, or draw icon instead. Anything that gives you choice is generally going to be very good.

And so you can play a card with an aember pip and say, Hmm, do I want the aember. Or do I want to draw or do I want to use it as aember control or do I want to use it as creature control? All very good options that are at your disposal when you have Puzzling Trinket in a deck. A fantastic card, very, very strong going to be an amazing tool. If you've got a new deck, especially if you have other aember enhancements, [00:22:00] just all over the deck, like with Cursed Relic, the rare that gives six, but it can't be discarded from your hand except their card effects or played. Or things like Steward Suzanne, the common enhancement creature in Ekwidon that gives a couple aember bonus pips and a draw.

Summary of the Ekwidon Playbook in Winds of Exchange

So that's it. That's the basics of house Ekwidon that is going through their general playbook. What are they doing when they're showing up to a match? They're going to steal. There's going to be a lot of choices in sequencing for you as the pilot to make, but you can maximize that without too much work across all of their commons and uncommons that want to capture and swap control.

Not going to have a very strong board presence in-house sometimes unless you get a whole lot of Belligerent Guard. So if you need to fight for the board, you're going to want to have them there with a Brobnar a Sanctum or a game plan that doesn't really involve putting a lot of creatures on the board. And keep an eye out for some big combo plays, especially Trade Secrets, discarding Ekwidon cards from your hand. So steal one for each card, discarded that way.

Prospectors are huge, of course. And then Esquire giving all those non token creatures [00:23:00] destroyed: make a token creature. Lots of cool stuff here in house Ekwidon. So check out your Ekwidon decks practice with them. And learn how to play against them, what the kind of rhythms are so that you can be even more informed when you're playing against Ekwidon.

Outro

So that's the show. Again, I am Zach and KeyForge Public Radio is supported in a major way by our Patreon subscribers. If you join it, you get regular updates on the show, you get to vote on content. Like what order will the house playbooks be done in? So I would love it if you join, if you could, we'd see you in the Discord and on Patreon, where I post those updates and we chat on a regular basis about upcoming content and brainstorming what KPR can put out next.

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