Welcome to my first card of the week segment on this blog. Well, I should say card of the work week since these will be done Monday through Friday. On last Saturday I entered in the first official Shadow Era tournament and managed to qualify for the top 8, which means I’ll be heading back next week to see if I can hack it to become United States Champion and play in the World Championship. It’s because of this I decided I this is the week to start on this game.
I based the order of review off of the least amount of copies of a particular hero to the most copies (some had only one so I picked based on what struck me as oddest). So enough with the senseless chatter and onto business.
For our first review we got Eladwen Frostmire, Kathalar’s weapon of choice (congrats man/woman for making top 10 with her). She’s got a heart of ice and turns it into a weapon to make the Shadow aligned people into nice yummytastic frost pops. Interestingly enough it’s said in the single player campaign that she knows their weakness. Though she wields ice and could possibly bring them to an end is she REALLY a badass or a faux? Let’s break her down.
As you see she’s got 26 Life which happens to be the current average for anything that uses magic. It could stand to maybe be 2 more considering her ability of dealing 4 damage with an Ice shard at the cost of 4 Shadow Energy. At this point in the game’s development the fact that it is Ice damage is meaningless (outside of story flavor) until we acquire cards where it matters that the damage is a certain kind.
Her ability takes at least 4 turns to get off at which you can select a single target and deal 4 damage to it. For me, waiting 4 turns to deal 4 damage to ONE enemy is a long time to wait so I can’t just spam this ability if I hope to get any use out of it. Unlike Nishaven who has to wait a turn longer but can nail all allies (even your own) in one go can play board control Eladwen is a surgical tool. With that in mind it’s not fair to compare the two. One’s a bomb and the other a bullet, think rocket launcher vs. sniper rifle.
Elad (I’m referring to Eldawen as this for the remainder of the review) can compensate for this since as a member of the Mage family she has access to cards like Research to help draw into something more. Say your opponent has a Plasma Behemoth he’s about ready to go crazy on Elad with on the next turn and you got the required amount of Shadow energy to use Elda’s ability to deal four to him and follow up with Lightning Strike so you can place the final nail in its coffin and still smack the opponent for a little damage and if not, you’ll just bring him down to 1 life and then eat 7 damage.
YES, the fact that she can’t kill the likes of Behemoth or Aeon Stormcaller in one hit is problematic but remember…she’s a human, and has access to Retreat to help pick up the slack. The ability is also helpful in cases like Elda vs. Majiya in who could deal with a beefy ally better. Majiya would on average need to use two cards to take care of the issue while Elad only needs one and her effect saving those other cards to jack up your opponents. Sadly, the like of Gravebone simply laughs this off cause he can just get the ally back at a later time.
To help Elda along I would strongly recommend Snow Sapphire to buy her some time against ally heavy foes. Keeps them affixed in a block of ice so it takes some pressure off a little while and conduct some Research to fix the problem.
Overall I would say she’s not useless, but she does require some help to stay in the game and maxing out her ability. Depending on her ability is a death sentence. Like I said earlier, it takes too long to get off and only hits a single unit. Being a Mage helps her case but even then…well, only time will tell if Kathalar will force feed the detractors some humble pie.
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