I was planning to build another deck before today’s event, but I forgot my Axiom uniques at home, so I ended up bringing out Fen & Crowbar again.
This ended up working out, since the games I played over the weekend had me reconsidering my anti-Small Step, Giant Leap stance, and I was curious to test it out as a 1-of.
Previously, I had written off the card for being useless until the final turn of the game, like a burn spell in Magic: The Gathering. What I had missed is that Small Step ends the game before progression at dusk. I’d liken it more to a free spell where just having it in hand reduces the number of progressions you need to achieve by one. At its best, it invalidates your opponent’s plays on the final turn and substantially changes your win condition.
Of course, it’s still a dead card if it appears at any point before you’re within one region of victory. There’s the argument that you could instead include a strong rare character that might just as easily secure you your final progression while also helping you get to that point if you happen to draw it earlier.
The deck
The last time I played this deck.
I tested Small Step as a 1-of, keeping an eye out for whether it won or lost me any games that another card wouldn’t have. Alice (F) edged out a Paper Herald (F) for the cut.
Uniques
Amahle, Asgarthan Outcast: 6/7
The games
Round 1 (W): Teija & Nauraa Ganesha + Mechanical Training combo
My opponent was playing a fun deck that includes characters with anchor arrow abilities to take advantage of Ganesha (F) and Mechanical Training (F) to continually reanchor them. If you manage to get two Ganeshas on the board at the same time, you can have them reanchor each other with Parvati (R) and/or boost a Hydracaena 100 times with an infinite loop.
The deck is vulnerable to removal, even more so than the typical Muna deck, making this a very good matchup due to my suite of uniques. The game swung on my Cernunnos (U) discarding a reanchored Dracaena (R), then hitting another character the following turn.
Round 2 (W): Teija & Nauraa anchor and boost
After I got off to a slight lead in the early game, my opponent dropped a stellar Kodama (U) that anchors another character with hand cost 3 or less when your third or greater character enters. Possibly the best repeatable trigger in Muna, it only gets better on a character with an arrow ability to self-sleep.
I had my Cernunnos (U) in hand when it woke up, but I got very greedy: I wanted to save it for a turn when I could land a 2-0 blowout rather than being mana inefficient and just trading. My opponent played a Kodama (C) and third character which received the anchor from the Kodama (U). Hitting it with Cernunnos (U) after my opponent replayed it the following turn was still good, but my opponent had already gotten an anchor’s worth of value that I should have nipped in the bud.
Ahead, but very low on resources, on 8 mana I played a resupplied Amahle, Asgarthan Outcast (C) for no draw, then liberally used a Paint Prison to hit a previously anchored character. This went badly for me: my opponent blocked my Amahle with a boosted Hydracaena that I no longer had a way to deal with, as my Amahle (U) had been put into mana, and my 1-of Twinkle, Twinkle (C) was in my discard pile.
The next turn, I forfeited the Hydracaena expedition and fought hard for the other, which put me within one advancement of victory. My only outs were either a very well-statted top deck and resupply or the Small Step, Giant Leap (F).
Miraculously, Small Step was the top card of my deck, which I played to win the game. That’s one point in favor of Small Step.
Round 3 (L): Nevenka & Blotch good stuff/disruption recursion
I opted to keep a 1-drop and a 2-drop alongside Amahle (U), putting an Aloe Vera (F) into mana.
After trading early, my opponent started attacking my resources. They recurred an A Cappella Training (C) with a Kadigiran Mage-Dancer (U) that returns spells on each die roll and has an arrow ability to roll a die itself. They also played a Tanuki (U) that with a sabotage arrow ability and an ability that returned another character from reserve to hand. They recovered their Tanuki (C) for repeated sabotage.
I was pretty happy about the resource war at the time, as I was still able to make well-statted plays and come out ahead on expedition progress.
One advancement away, I got down large characters on both sides and threatened a double-advance by playing my Amahle (U) into a forest-mountain region purely for its stats. My opponent played characters that fell one point short of my multi-boosted Anansi (C) but then targeted a character for a die roll and hit the 2/3 chance for a boost to keep me within one advancement while advancing themselves.
My opponent had successfully run me out of cards, and after they slept my last big threat, my Martengale (C) and Cloth Cocoon (C) off the top couldn’t stop them from progressing on both sides for the victory.
I reflected on my opening hand and noticed that my expensive Amahle (U) sat in hand all game with no good window to use it. Keeping Aloe Vera (F) wouldn’t have been much slower than what I kept, if at all, and would have given me a lot more staying power.
Takeaways
Okay, I’ll admit that Small Step, Giant Leap is a good card. It won me R2, and I was in a position in R3 where having access to one would have closed out the game.
I need to think through the matchups where I’d prefer to keep a 3-drop versus those where I’d prefer to keep a 1-drop and a 2-drop. Are there matchups where I can’t afford to keep one of my uniques?
Overperformers
- Small Step, Giant Leap (F): The fact that this wins the game before dusk is critical. I like that the mere presence of this card in your hand/deck allows you to make aggressive pushes to open up outs that otherwise wouldn’t be available.
- Twinkle, Twinkle (C): As I discovered here, sleep effects get much better in combination with Small Step.
Underperformers
- Amahle, Asgarthan Outcast (C): When this wasn’t reserve fodder today, it was just a 5/5/5. Worse, it was a 5-mana card that tapped me out of being able to deal with a Hydracaena.
- Paint Prison (C): Waiting for a worthwhile target has made this very awkward to play. It never ended up being better than a vanilla 3/3/3.