Original article by Delula, translated to English by Erleyah
Greetings, daring travelers !
Bring out your winged steeds and your skyships!
In this expansion, we’re gearing up for a Skybound Odyssey, a most colorful and emotional journey
Spoiler season has begun and we are once again honored to introduce one of the set’s new cards : the Wyvern.
The Wyvern (or why Muna needs nature as an ally)
Reminisce for a while. A year ago. When a Muna Caregiver helped a Wyvern hatch and raise its egg from the very beginning. Is the dragon you will soon see from the same brood?
Muna loves nature! Cute shrooms! Playful animals! Sweet plants!
…and drakes, apparently. The Hydracaena has a new playfriend!
You may send to Reserve target Character with Hand Cost 1 or less.
The common version of this card is a 4-cost 3/3/4 Character with a cost reduced to 3 from reserve, which is for now a statline only seen in Aroro, and most importantly, Flamel (though reversed), both from the Yzmir faction. Much like Flamel and Aroro, the Wyvern has a from-hand ability
Whereas Flamel allows for value and recursion (and thus, card advantage), the Wyvern’s more aggressive nature translates directly to a bit of removal, something that tends to be Muna’s weakness.
It is however a very conditional removal as it only allows for 1-cost or less characters to be targeted. As of the third set (Whispers from the Maze) there are a total of 27 1-hand-cost characters. Even if sending a Machine in the Ice or Bladedancer to reserve looks to be a very pleasant play, the main thing about the Wyvern is its ability to remove any token character.
Booda, Brassbugs, Ordis Recruits, Maw… The Wyvern cares not, it eats all.
As a friendly reminder, in Altered, a token has a hand-cost of 0. Should a token leave the Expedition Zone (i.e if it sent to reserve), it is removed from the game
Do electric Wyverns dream of woolly sheep?
Altered just loves to tell stories.
Through lore articles, through drawings, through the community (with the tumults)
Most of all, through its cards, as is very explicitly shown with the ravenous Wyvern chasing after the terrified Woollybacks
With their fluffy texture and cotton-candy flavor, woollybacks are wyverns’ favorite prey.
Beyond telling an incredibly sad story about the woolly beasts’ demise,
the card itself tells a new (or veterans!) player how the wyvern can, or should be used.
One of Altered’s six new skybound heroes, Kauri & Puff, gives the opponent a token every other turn in exchange for card draw. The Wyvern grants you the ability to nullify the silly drawback
The Woollyback is a new Character token introduced in Skybound Odyssey, and while removing a 1/1/1 is decent, there is probably a much more interesting prey for the Wyvern : Halua
Halua is also a Character token that quickly gets out of hand with a boost or two, especially towards the end of the game when it gets Gigantic. Sol & Halua will often look to quickly end their turn to make the most out of their abilities, and as such it is not uncommon to be able to target Halua with the Wyvern, removing any boost with it.
Sheepsh Kebab.
While all of that is nice, it is time to talk about the rare version
The rare version of the wyvern (and its Yzmir counterpart!) gain the ability to target not one, but two silly sheeps! Or troopers! Or Maws! Or anything edible, provided it has a hand-cost of one, of course.
(Oh yeah and the art looks even angrier!)
The rare is a strict upgrade from the common, but will it be good enough to warrant a rare slot? While we do not have the answer, our guess is probably not, but don’t let that pull you down if you want to experiment.
In Altered, 4-cost and plus cards must have a significant impact on the game, be it with “Enter-the-board (ETB)” effects, raw statlines or game-breaking effects, and the rare Wyvern’s ability seems a little niche, while the common one does seem to have good stats and a nice effect.
Back to Flamel, mentioned previously. Both cards have approximately the same amount of stats and cost, and Flamel, one of the most powerful effects in the game as of now (recursion, bouncing a card back to your hand), is shunned because of its cost. The Wyvern does have another drawback : in Muna, cards that cost more than three cannot be anchored easily.
Though, that is our analysis considering the metagame at the end of set 3. We do not yet know what the Skybound Odyssey meta looks like, nor do we even have all the cards. In the right meta, this could be a strong tech card in the right deck.
Conclusion
We are thrilled to see more disruption in Muna, a faction that sorely lacks it. It is a nice, simple card that seems to flows very nicely with Kauri and looks to be a Limited (Sealed or Draft) powerhouse, and while it seems like including it in Constructed decks will be a bit harder, it is a decent card overall!.
One thing is for sure though.
It’s Woollyback season.
The work here (except Equinox content and pictures) is under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
Equinox, Altered, and their logos are trademarks of Equinox. © 2023-2024 Equinox. All Rights Reserved.
