Hello again my fellow humanoids! Every couple of months, MetaZoo releases a mini-set of cards that do not appear in any of the main sets. These mini-sets are always themed in one way or another (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, fan art set, etc) and it’s become quite clear that they all contain very playable and hard-to-find MetaZoo cards, all of which are tournament legal. Today, I’m going to break down my top three cards from the latest mini-set, MetaZoo’s Fan Art Blister set that arrived at the beginning of the month.
Before I get into that, I want to take a minute and explain what the Fan Art Blister set is. Last year, spring time, MetaZoo introduced their first official Art Contest. Fans of the game were given a list of unprinted cards and were asked to produce their original design for the card image. All designs had to be physical art submissions and winners were selected for each prompt, then later those winners got to see their art officially printed on a MetaZoo card. All of these cards were tournament legal and some of them are truly powerful chase cards now that they’re released. I tell you this because MetaZoo is currently running their second official art contest with the intention to do the same thing again: accept submissions from fan artists, choose winners and then release them later as their own mini-set.
Okay, now that I’ve explained the contest, let’s look at my favorite cards from this year’s Fan Art Blister Set.
“Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary…”
I’m sure most of us played this game as children, frightening ourselves in the mirror and running out of the bathroom… but I never expected we’d get to build a deck based around this crazy witch. And let me just say, she totally lives up to the hype.
Bloody Mary gives Walking Sam a run for his money for the best Spirit beastie in the game. This is due to her combination of effects; the Spirit trait prevents her from being the target of attacks; the Fear trait will allow you to flip a coin after you contract her and if you flip a heads, you’re allowed to bounce an opposing beastie back to its owner’s chapter; and finally, her Power which allows her to be returned to your chapter (meaning you get to contract her again and trigger that fear trait all over again).
All of those effects work incredibly well in combination but there’s a kicker with Bloody Mary that we haven’t seen on any beastie before in the game of MetaZoo… she can be contracted at any time. That’s right folks, our first anytime beastie. That means you can contract her on the opponent’s turn after they’ve spent their aura on a beastie, you’ll have a 50 percent chance of bouncing that beastie right back to their hand and then when they pass turn, you awaken her and can decide whether you’d like to attack or use her power to return her back to your chapter, starting the engine from the top.
On top of all of this, you’re allowed to have two Bloody Marys per spellbook, meaning once you hit your resource drops, you’ll be able to cycle two Marys over and over again, bouncing beasties every time you flip a heads. It gets silly and provides a level of control over your opponent’s arena presence, giving your Spirit deck the chance to establish itself and take the game. The first time I played against Bloody Mary, I had to reread the card a few times before it sunk in. Just remember, contracting and entering the arena are two different things and you won’t be able to target a beastie with her Fear trait until you allow the beastie to enter the Arena. A small step, but hugely important in your overall strategy.
The first card ever designed by Isaac Sky, now one of MetaZoo’s most prominent artists and one of the best Water beasties in the game. Not that Water needed anymore help, but hey, I’ll take it!
Altamaha-ha play’s a lot like it’s dinosaur cousin, Chessie. It’s a four-drop with a nice, high LP (90 LP) and it can swing big. It doesn’t gain +10 damage for every other Water page in the Arena like Chessie does, but it makes up for that with some unique Terra bonuses.
First off, it gets +50 damage from the River terra, which takes its total damage (including fourth wall effects) up to 90. Nice. Second, when that River Terra is active, Alta gains the Invisibility trait, making him unblockable and unable to be targeted with attacks and when he’s destroyed, rather than just going to Limbo like most beasties, Alta will go to the bottom of your spellbook. If you’ve played Water extensively, you’ll know that it’s not uncommon for a Water Spellbook to deck itself out, running out of cards to draw, so having a beastie who will repeatedly return to the bottom of your spellbook and allow you to draw them and contract them again and again is incredibly valuable. This works especially well in Torrential River spellbooks that intentionally and quickly fly through their decks in order to activate a rapid-fire effect very similar to storm decks in MTG. As long as River is in the Arena, Altamaha-ha will continue to return to the bottom of your spellbook and that means you’ll almost always have a big, bad, invisible beastie in the Arena.
Bonus points: Alta works incredible well in Water mirror matches due to the Invisible effect. He can’t be targeted or blocked by Crabs or Chessie and if the River Terra is active, Alta will kill either one of those threats in one hit, dealing 110 damage to water pages. Incredible.
Last but not least, let’s talk about Little Green Men. This is one of the non-holo cards contained within the Fan Art Blister set and I’m telling you guys, everyone is over looking these little critters.
Little Green Men are one-drop Cosmic Alien beasties who I daresay are the most tech Alien in the game, and considering Lizard People just dropped in Wilderness, that’s saying a lot. Why are they so good? Well, they are Terra engines, meaning you can fatigue a LGM to search your spellbook for any Terra page and place it on top, then when you contract your next LGM, you reveal the top page and if it’s a Terra page, you can contract it for free. This works to thin the deck and also guarantee your Terra drops.
The LGM’s have two Terra which they benefit from, Stars and Meteor Shower, both of which are incredibly common Terra for boosting Alien beasties, and if you get both of them in the Arena the LGMs swing for 30… okay, that’s not super exciting, I admit. However, if you get a third Terra of any kind in the Arena, all your LGM’s will gain an additional 30 damage on their attacks, meaning they each swing for 60.
Now, all in all, a one-drop beastie with 30 LP, 10 per spellbook, an ability to tutor out Terra pages and a 60 damage attack is undeniably playable. This is exactly what Alien decks need in my opinion, so good luck to all of you cosmic players who are scouring the internet for these hard-to-spot little techies.
That concludes this look into the most powerful cards in the Fan Art Blister set. It’s not an easy set to get a hold of, so I wish all of you luck in your pursuits and trades. MetaZoo is a game that thrives on rarity and exclusivity, and personally, I love that some of these easy-to-overlook mini-sets are full of powerful cards that many don’t even realize are out there! There’s not a lot of card games out there that purposely make tournament-legal mini-sets and I can’t wait to see what’s coming after UFO! Stay tuned!
