ordis

At the end of my last outing with Gulrang & Tocsin, I speculated that some of the hero’s fundamental issues could be solved by thinking of them not as a defensive late-game hero, but as a tempo hero whose finishers come online at 8 mana. I took the end-result of that experiment to the Wednesday A.W.O.L. tournament on 2025-01-08, where the deck went 3-3 to finish 18th out of 36. Disclaimer: I’ve lost a ton on BGA - and I mean a ton - while playing this deck. I’m happier with it than the previous iteration, but I think Sigismar and Waru are both better able to make use of Ordis’s current toolset. ...

Now that Robin Hood, the main offender of Waru & Mack, is no longer the problem it was on release, I hoped I could bring out Waru without making enemies on the other side of the table. What surprised me was how interesting the hero was to play due to the number of choices he offers over the course of a game. I took this deck to two online tournaments this week. At the Monday A.W.O.L. tournament on 2024-12-02, the deck went 5-1 in swiss for 3rd place out of 59 on strength of schedule. At the ACE Tuesday championship on 2024-12-03, it went undefeated in single elimination for 1st place out of 44. ...

Changes The last time I played this deck An awkwardness I noticed with the previous iteration of the deck was that it was extremely 3-drop heavy, which made for some inefficient curves. This isn’t trivial to fix, since the deck’s premium common (Ordis Gatekeeper (C)), card draw (Baba Yaga (R)), and removal spells (Teamwork Training (R)/Sticky Note Seals (C)/Kelon Burst (F)) are all fighting for the same slot in the curve. What’s also deceptive is the fact that Ratatoskr (F) is a 3-drop from reserve. ...

Gulrang & Tocsin’s hero ability offers what I’d argue is the strongest upside among the core set heroes, but it comes with a major drawback. The puzzle they ask you to solve is how to navigate the first five turns when the best cards in your deck prevent you from getting any closer to winning the game. When I started playing the hero, I thought that my task for the early-game was to ignore my own expedition progress and block at all costs. I now believe this approach to be dead-wrong. ...