Ashes Preview: The Grinning Giant
Rin Northfell, Phoenixborn of Frostdale
“Dont worry buddy, I got your back.”- Rin Northfell
Click here to pre-order Brennen and Rin, and other new Ashes products!
Don't let Rins jovial demeanor fool you. This giant is far from gentle. The Frostdale Giants deck, featuring Rin Northfell, is sure to bring the pain. From frosty conjurations to Freezing Blasts of magic, Rin manipulates Natural magic like no one else. Just look at him.
The Stats
Life Value 17: Life Value 17 is close to average. You can still guard for important units, but you'll need to safe guard you life total a little more closely than the average Phoenixborn.
Battlefield Value 6: Having up to 6 units will often allow you to leverage a superior position on the battlefield to attack more freely than most opponents while keeping your guard up.
Spellboard Value 4: A Spellboard Value of 4 allows Rin to set up a robust strategy for himself and build in answers to many opposing strategies.
Ability: Ice Buff
As you can see, Ice Buff's effect is pretty simple, +1 Life Value to whatever unit you attach it to. However, there are a quite a few interesting things about Ice Buff. First off, Ice Buff is a conjured alteration spell. What does that mean? A conjured alteration works just like any other alteration, except it doesn't go into your deck, and when it leaves play, it goes back to your conjuration pile. Anything that affects an alteration can affect a conjured alteration and anything that triggers from an alteration being attached or played is also triggered from a conjured alteration.
Ice Buff may look simple, but the impact on any game played with Rin where units are a main part of his strategy is huge. Some units are a little fragile to make up for a dominating pressence on the battlefield, and +1 Life Value can often be the difference between balanced and overpowered. Sometimes a unit can be tough to deal with, and a life value boost could make it near-impossible! Other alterations can do this too, but they cost magic to play and take up a card slot in your deck. Ice Buff costs no magic to play, and comes free with Rin.
Basically what I'm saying is that Ice Buff lets you circumvent the hours and hours of playtesting that went into balancing units, and as you'll see, that's pretty standard for Rin!
The Strategy of The Frostdale Giant
Do you like the look of fear as your opponent stares down a horde of unkillable beasts? Do you enjoy building the biggest badest army ever assembled, and then buffing them up to proportions your opponent has no hope of dealing with? Then The Frostdale Giants may be the deck designed just for you! Turn your pet Bear into a ravenous killing machine, make the fearless Frostfang a perfect guardian, and morph your Ice Golems into titanic tanks of destruction. Of course The Frostdale Giants packs plenty of ways to deal with the opponents' units, and a touch of inevitability should your opponent just try to outlast you.
That's all for this week. I hope you're as excited for these new decks as I am! I just can't wait for the new cards to be released! Next week we'll peek at Rin and Brennen's Phoenixborn specific cards, so make sure you come back to see what these new Phoenixborn bring to the table.
As always, thanks for reading!
Bob
Click here to pre-order The Children of Blackcloud, The Frostdale Giants, and even extra dice! Get Lulu Firststone or Dimona Odinstar FREE with each Ashes deck purchase, or buy them separately!
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Written by Bob Klotz |
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