And there comes and goes another Skirmish season. With the focus quickly shifting towards the Road to Nationals events, this weeks Cards of the Week centers around the heroes who have risen and fallen during the last five weeks. Without further ado, let’s get right into it!
Both in Blitz and Classic Constructed, Chane is a force to reckon with. The amazing card advantage he provides (although at the cost of your life and deck size) is simply too much to handle for many heroes, and strong Chane turns match up with some of the highest damage outputs available in the game. For those unequipped to deal with him defensively, many heroes will fall under as Chane pummels them down once he has a few Soul Shackles up and running.
Carrion Husk
The emergence of Carrion Husk as quite possibly the best equipment in the game has changed the way Shadow can play. Whenever they feel (if they remain over 13 life), Carrion Husk and Grasp of the Arknight can block for eight without even spilling a card from hand. This means the generally slow starting Chane can set up his Shackles and also sculpt his hand until he’s ready to block with his Husk and then swing back for massive amounts. This will become an even bigger force in Classic Constructed as endgame blocks with Carrion Husk will allow Chane to get that extra bit of push to finally tip his opponents over and out.
How to Handle Him
For those classes who can’t block well, you have to capitalize on his slow starts and punish the Chane player’s life total. Chances are, if you can get Carrion Husk in banished, alongside doing a decent chunk of damage, that you’ll force the Chane player to make suboptimal aggressive plays, in an effort to win before blood debt becomes a problem.
If you’ve got the equipment/reactions for it, you should be able to block these out and stay the course of your game plan to secure the game. This is even more emphasized in Classic Constructed, where small pings of blood debt will not be as devastating to the Chane player. You must punish their life total early, as blocking with Husk early will not be an optimal option for them and they won’t be able to swing tempo back easily with their cards that block for so little
Now before I get into it, I want to underline Ira absolutely remains a top tier hero in Blitz. However, the amount of Ira’s having success has dropped after the induction of Chane and Prism into the meta. Although Ira will still do well, the pre-Monarch meta saw a period where her dominance was almost absolute alongside Dorinthea. However, hyper aggressive Chane decks, along with strong control opponents in Prism, means that Ira no longer has a way to consistently win out every matchup.
Chane’s hyper aggressiveness is many times too much for Ira’s players, especially without the aid of timely Flic Flaks, alongside this is Lumaniris Prism, who presents simply too much damage for a hero with so few ways to pop her Phantasm attacks. Although she’ll always be a queen in Blitz, look out for Ira to fade back slightly from her prime days in Crucible, especially during hyper aggressive metas like right now.
If you haven’t been destroyed against Boltyn yet, you’re one some of the lucky few. Boltyn’s big turns can be bigger than almost anything we’ve seen in the game, matching up with the most hardcore Brute turns out there. V of the Vanguard is a devastating card in terms of it’s offensive potential and sets up massive blowout turns with Raydn, Duskbane and Bolting Blade.
The issue for Boltyn however will be getting around poor matchups such as Dorinthea and Ninja, which haven’t seemed to budge from the CC meta since Welcome to Rathe. However, if you happen to be a poor matchup against Boltyn, or try to race him to the bottom, then be prepared to be blown out of the water with massive turns taking away your whole hand and then some.
How to Counter
For those classes who have poor matchups against Boltyn (Brute, Shadow Brute, Guardian), you must try and race him if you can. He takes a good while to set up and you won’t be able to stop the setup once he has it all prepped. Race him if possible, and if not then put the pressure on him to block as much as you can.
Boltyn hates blocking from hand and losing even one card is devastating to his turns. In the same way, be very careful with how you block, whether you’re blocking with attack actions or non-attack actions. Good Boltyn players care almost solely about their tempo, and once they see you block with two or three cards, they know they have sealed it for the next three to five turns at least.
