My local game store started selling their shipment of Altered today, so I splurged and picked up one more Kickstarter display while I was there. When I got to the second pack and flipped the cards around, I knew what was happening the moment I spotted the first unique.
Equinox really delivered on making opening a golden booster a special experience. As someone who loves trying to figure out each card’s potential, getting to do that ten times in a row for cards no one has ever seen before was an absolute thrill.
Here are my impressions of the uniques from the booster:
Update (2024-09-04): I’ve added my numeric ratings.
Kappa - 6/7
Repeatable turn-two ramp on a respectably-sized body seems game-winning. My only concern is that it’s a reasonably hefty requirement to have drawn and played a landmark along with this card early enough for the ramp to matter. Fortunately, Haven, Bravos Bastion is a powerhouse even without this as a payoff, so you’re not making any compromises to be running at least three landmarks.
Sun Wukong - 2/7
Notably, the reserve ability doesn’t exclude itself, so if this receives the Teija & Nauraa boost, all you need is one other boosted character to have stuck around from a previous turn to get a repeatable 5/5/3 for 3. In practice, I’m worried this requires too much effort to recur more than once or twice, which is the entire point of it losing fleeting.
Studious Disciple - 4/7
This is Meditation Training for Lyra with several upsides. You can play around removal since you choose which character to anchor at dusk. If you have extra mana, you can boost the character you intend to anchor. And it’s not much, but it does contribute a single point to your mountain region.
Kadigiran Mage-Dancer - 5/7
Strictly for an Afanas & Senka deck, but wow, does two boosts per spell sound good. Its biggest downside is that it prevents you from running one common/rare Kadigiran Mage-Dancer. It also costs one more from hand and from reserve, which makes it slightly harder to cast multiple spells. There are niche scenarios when you draw this late and the paid card draw is equivalent to or better than than rare’s passive card draw.
Achilles - 2/7
Well-statted - like a more expensive Bravos Tracer - but probably not well-statted enough to make up for only being able to play it once. It’s a shame the fleeting line counteracts what would otherwise be a nice support ability.
Tomoe Gozen - 3/7
This is reasonably well-statted as far as permanent removal goes. I think the mana orb restriction is lessened by the fact that you probably won’t need to answer a permanent on the first turn or two of the game, but I could also see it being problematic if your opponent plays an early permanent, and you’re unable to get this down before it accrues significant value. The fact that many removal spells can prevent the permanent discard ability before it occurs hurts this one.
Ordis Gatekeeper - 2/7
Each of this card’s abilities has so much potential. It’s a shame they’re completely at odds with each other, and they individually eat up so much of this unique’s base stat allotment. Ramp is most powerful early, but you just can’t afford to play a mere 2 stats on turn two. The joins trigger pays for itself once 2 other characters join, but by the time you can afford to play multiple characters alongside this, the ramp is unlikely to make a big difference.
Mighty Jinn - 1/7
Funnily enough, this suffers from the same problems as the Ordis Gatekeeper but to an even greater degree. This is worse than the common in every way if you intend to use it as ramp. Again, the double-boost on-join trigger has a lot of potential, but you can only trigger it so many times due to this costing 5 from hand.
Shenlong - 3/7
For this to be more appealing than the common Achilles, you need to be getting value out of the either the support ability or the permanent discard. It’s amazing if the at-dusk trigger hits something valuable. The trouble with trading a mana orb for a permanent is that if a permanent is worth discarding, it’s likely the game is going to last several more days, in which case missing out on one mana per turn is a real cost unless you’ve already ramped to excess.
Thoth - 3/7
I’d prefer the rare in Waru & Mack, which is the only hero that really wants the fails-to-move trigger and the bureaucrat cost-reduction. Still, it’s strictly better than the common and I’d happily play this just to free up a rare slot if I don’t end up with a stronger unique.