by Red Riot Games CA

By EthnicSmokea

 

In part 1 we discussed Channel the Bleak Expanse, a card that can be quite devastating against many of the current aggro decks when played at instant speed on their turn. In part 2, we will discuss the disruption we want to do on our turn.

Command and Conquer / Erase Face

 

                        

 

What am I, an ape? Physical attacks? In MY wizard deck?

 

Yes (except the ape part). Let’s go over the reasons why these cards shine in this wizard deck in particular. 

 

1: Your opponent’s armor

 

Back when Kano was the only wizard in town, aggro decks could afford to ‘disrespect’ Kano and not bring any Arcane Barrier equipment, with the idea being that if they do run into the 1 Kano in the room (you know who you are) they can just try to race them. For example, if I were to bring Briar to a tournament, pre-UPR, I would have been reasonably happy to only have Shock Charmers as my protection for Kano’s Aether Wildfire turn, and stick to my gameplan of going face the rest of the game. Of course, this does not always get you there, but it gets you there enough times to not need to dedicate more sideboard slots for a deck you are already quite unlikely to face. 

 

However, this gameplan does not work against Iyslander - she will slow you down and chip away at you while doing so, and so the aggro decks now have to bring AB. To give a specific example: you don’t want to have your turn abruptly ended by a Hypothermia or Channel Lake Frigid but also be unable to pitch your remaining cards to block the follow up 3 damage from Waning Moon. 

 

So, with the aggro decks now packing AB, we can punish the consequences: their equipment with block values on them are now collecting dust in their sideboard. And that means that while the aggro decks with fridges (looking at you, Runeblades) are usually somewhat resilient to cards like CnC and Erase Face, they no longer have this resiliency when against Iyslander. Couple this with the fact that a lot of the cards in these aggro decks block for 2 (looking at you, Fai), CnC and Erase Face become even more difficult to deal with.

 

2: Iyslander’s playstyle thrives on 2-3 card hands

 

The combination of Iyslander’s hero ability and weapon, Waning Moon, means that we are very incentivized to use at least 2 cards on our opponent’s turn - 1 card to play from arsenal, and 1 card to pay for it and waning moon. This leaves us with at most 3 cards on our turn, and to keep this cycle going, ideally we use 2 of them and arsenal the third. 

 

This means that we are looking for the most disruptive thing we can do with only 2 cards, which is where Command and Conquer and Erase Face fit in perfectly. Not only are they on-rate for damage (note that they do the same damage as a red Aether Hail + Waning Moon on your turn), they have potentially devastating on-hits on an already armorless opponent. So, either your opponent is forced to block with cards from their hand (thus reducing the damage they get to deal you next turn), or they take the on-hit effect (thus also reducing the damage they get to deal you next turn). This means that you can afford to block less on their turn, and so allows you to keep up the tempo.

 

3: It gives you the edge in the mirror

 

Um, what? Iyslander doesn’t care about either of these on-hits. 

 

Yes, that’s true. A CnC against Iyslander just prompts them to respond with that card in arsenal, and Erase Face’s on-hit only matters on rare occasions. To understand why these cards are still good in the mirror though, let’s take a look at the chest piece both players will bring: Alluvion Constellas. 

 

 

Since 1 charge on this is half an activation of Waning Moon, we can equate 1 charge on this being equal to 1 resource. That means that this chest piece basically says “the first point of arcane damage you block each turn is free”.

 

This generates a lot of value in the wizard mirror where both opponents are firing arcane damage at each other on both turns, but what if you were the wizard that was firing physical damage on your turn instead of arcane? You force your opponent to use 2 cards to block 6 physical damage instead of giving them the option of using 2 cards to block 6 arcane damage (say, if your alternative was an Aether Hail + Waning Moon), which, with this chest piece, effectively denies them 1 resource that turn cycle. Might not seem like much, but in a long game (and the Iyslander mirrors do go long), it adds up.

 

Conclusion

And that concludes this 2-part series on the cards which I feel are being overlooked in Iyslander. As with most card choices in Flesh and Blood, these are not always going to be auto-includes, particularly since the nature of the hero is such that it needs to adapt to what it is trying to shut down. However, with the current trajectory of the meta, Channel the Bleak Expanse, Command and Conquer and Erase Face are all cards I will look to consider for any Iyslander list.