Today I got to crack my first ever Altered booster display! This was an order from a retailer; I’m still waiting for my Kickstarter order, Gamegenic accessories and all.
Some thoughts after opening the box:
- I found opening a unique to be the most fun booster pack experience I’ve had across any card game I’ve played. On the other hand, unique-less packs are less exciting than the average pack from another TCG. I’m okay with this tradeoff.
- Scanning cards using the app was very fast. I appreciate that it displays the total number of cards scanned so you can verify that you haven’t missed any.
- Foils look excellent. The foil and non-foil features are customized for each card, and I didn’t notice any curling whatsoever.
- I’ve heard that boxes tend to have a high concentration of uniques from one particular faction due to pack collation. My experience supports this.
- Moreso than in other card games, opening uniques made me want to build decks where they will shine. It’s less like opening a chase rare and more like opening a bomb in a limited environment. How can you leverage an advantage only you have?
Uniques
Without further ado, here are the uniques I opened and my initial impressions of them:
Update (2024-09-04): I’ve added my numeric ratings.
The foil alt-art Anubis is gorgeous.
- Hua Mulan - 3/7: Both sides offer a good rate. I can imagine playing it for the high boost count alongside the rare Kadigiran Mage-Dancer or with the Bravos out-of-faction rares that have seasoned. I think the imbalanced stat distribution is an improvement over the rare when looped from reserve.
- Moonlight Jellyfish - 1/7: No stronger than a common when played from hand, and you won’t want to sacrifice it. Its reserve ability doesn’t synergize with its sacrifice ability. Even if you’re looking for a cheap self-sacrifice, it only triggers from reserve.
- Ordis Attorney - 2/7: The fails-to-move ability is already worse in a faction without access to Waru & Mack, but it gets worse still on a more expensive card that wants to be boosted. I’d only consider this if you can occasionally draw off of it with Afanas & Senka.
- Issitoq - 2/7: While the increased card draw is nice on a character that slows down the game, it’s rough that it’s contingent on an 8-mana character surviving until dusk.
- Jeanne d’Arc - 2/7: Despite being quite efficient from reserve, the condition on the ability can make it awkward even in a deck full of landmarks. The rare is more reliable.
- Quetzalcóatl - 5/7: Great stats from hand, and excellent stats if you meet its reserve condition, which shouldn’t be too hard with Teija & Nauraa. 3 boosts is huge on an anchored character.
- Anubis - 5/7: About as good as card draw gets for Lindiwe & Maw. This wants to come down on your 7-mana turn alongside Maw and/or a 1-drop, when you can force your opponent to sacrifice the first character they play and have this survive to put you ahead 5 in the mountain biome. The draw ability happens even if Anubis is removed, so you’re guaranteed to go up 2.5 cards at some point. The only caveat is that you need to make the sacrifice painful for your opponent; you lose too much tempo if your opponent leads with a 1-drop or if they’re playing a token-generating hero.
- Edit (2024-12-03): 4/7: In practice, it’s not often that the sacrifice will hit a meaningful character in the late-game. Since Lindiwe is already spoiled with card draw options, drawing three isn’t quite as good as it sounds.
Sealed
I also practiced building sealed decks from the first and second sets of seven packs I opened.
The first deck I built was an aggressive Bravos-Muna-Yzmir deck that hopes to line up its plethora of boosting cards onto one of a few cards that can anchor, such as Muna Caregiver, Meditation Training, or Sneezer Shroom.
I locked into Bravos because of Kojo & Booda’s generically strong hero ability, then noticed that it paired well with Muna, one of the stronger factions in my pool. The big pulls into Yzmir as a tertiary color were the out-of-faction Red - another excellent boost target - and the unique Hua Mulan, which gives 3 boosts at once and whose reserve ability helps prevent me from running out of steam later in the game. I imagine Bravos and Muna will be frequently paired together in Altered limited.
I much preferred my second pool, from which I built a Fen & Crowbar deck in Axiom-Bravos-Lyra. I’d be shocked if Fen & Crowbar weren’t among the strongest heroes in limited due to their passive card advantage.
This deck focuses on cards that are stronger when played from reserve and doubles down on Fen’s hero ability with the two rare landmarks: Axiom Reprocessor and Haven, Bravos Bastion.
The three Tinker Bells can immediately sabotage if they get resupplied, and the two Anansis will reliably be well above rate due to the extra card per turn in reserve. The common and rare Dr. Frankensteins are each more efficient when played from reserve, and can potentially trigger the resupply ability on either of the deck’s permanents.
I also like that there’s a healthy amount of removal spells. It’s a nice bonus that Fen & Crowbar negate the fleeting downside on most of them, and that Fen’s reserve flow means Paint Prison can reliably cost 3.