Welcome to this focus on one of the 18 heroes from Altered’s core set (Beyond the Gates). We will review the hero power of this Lyra Exalt. I will then present the different types of deck we can build around it.
If you haven’t read it yet, you might be interested to know more about the Lyra Faction and their overall mechanic with the Leaping into Lyra article. Auraq is a hero even more random than Nevenka and on top of that, there are currently (in the first set) no tools to control it.
Hero Power
Auraq’s hero power is :
When you play a Character with a base statistic of 0 — I gain a Performance counter.
At Noon — You may spend five of my Performance counters to reveal the top card of your deck. You may play it for free or put it into your hand. (Don’t activate anyabilities.)“
Auraq’s hero power is really hard to evaluate as you don’t know how much or when you’ll trigger it, and you can’t predict the card you’ll get with her power. The goal is therefore to activate it as much as possible and hope for a good card to topdeck. However, this power also gives a clear deck building direction : you want 0-statted cards and high-cost cards.
Cards that fit well with this playstyle
Cards with 0 stats are obvious choices with Auraq to help trigger her power. Martengale and Ouroboros Trickster are good choices as they are cheap and thus can easily increase Auraq’s counter. Moreover, the Trickster is also useful for her 3 0-stats as they enable the trigger of other cards. Hydracaena for her part is also a truly interesting card as she has 0s and costs a lot so it’s one of the cards you’re really happy to get for free.
After filling cards to enable Auraq’s power, you will need others to take advantage of the free card and the 0 stats. Therefore you’ll play cards like Lyra Thespian that gain boost if you have 3 or more statistics of 0 among your characters. Some other cool cards are Mind Apotheosis and Kaibara as they cost tons of mana : you’re really happy to play them for free !
Archetypes around Auraq
I put Cloth Cocoon in every deck as the card is somewhat mandatory in Lyra to have some control over the board.
Note : Auraq is currently, in my opinion, quite hard to play competitively… therefore those decklists are more “fun concepts” than actual game-breaker ideas.
Auraq Casino
This deck is already a somewhat classical deck with Aura. You put tons of big creatures and Mind Apotheosis and pray to top deck the perfect card. The dangerous part is the fact that you may end up with only big characters in your hand and thus with nothing to play. You can adjust this by removing higher cost cards and putting low cost one with 0s instead.
This is probably the most random deck in the whole game as the card you get freely at the top of your deck could define the whole game.
Hero
Character
Spell
Playing with 0s
A very different decklist with almost no big characters but some synergize with 0 stated characters instead. The goal here is to easily have 3 0s among your stats on board to benefit from Thespian and Yung Su effects. As characters with 0 are most of the time overstated, it shouldn’t be hard to win in one or even both expeditions. The main issue will be to prevent your opponent from advancing as they’ll be able to play where you have no stats (your 0s).
Hero
Character
Spell
Magician’s Show
For this last deck, I wanted to try another concept with more spells. The idea here is to play them freely with Auraq and therefore not loose tempo on your turn with this first action. The main issue is to top deck a Cloth Cocoon or a Paint Prison and have no valid target for your spell. Moreover, the spell don’t give any counter as they have no stats, therefore you might not trigger Auraq as much as the previous deck. Other cards are here to control your opponent : you might disrupt enough of their plays to win with your characters and your free cards.
Hero
Character
Spell
Permanent
Thank you for reading this focus on this Exalt. We hope you read some stuff that might interest you and you’ve found some lists that enhance your will to play this awesome game.
We remind you that these lists are just hands on and are not optimized, we really encourage you to try things on your own with what you have and want to play. That way you’ll find some interesting stuff that suits you great!
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