Guest Cope: Variance is the Good Guy - The Sweeping Daggers Problem
By Keenan Meadows
Hi all, it’s Keenan Meadows – ex caster, ex world champion, ex retired player with a passion for coffee. And I’m here to talk to you about something, that I think gets to the real heart of why Sweeping Daggers is such a deck building problem. And the only reason more people aren’t talking about it is simple:
So few of you softies have the gumption to run a 2 or a 1 check.
In the past, your excuses for “safety threes” were vague and dumb: “What if I fail my first turn? Waah variance, stability blah blah blah”, and it was easy just to call you a bunch of wieners and move on with my day. But then, UVS Games handed you the excuse that you were looking for all along.
That Sweeping Daggers gets to steal your built-in risk, risk free.
It’s actively making me, a passionate lover of playable 1-checks, heartily re-consider my deck-building choices. For instance, take the card Zeru’s Flames. A card, that some could say, has the worst diff to check ratio in the game. But in Krista? That’s stun 4 on character before you even get to your foundation enhances. I’m out here thinking that’s a pretty fun, unexpected wall breaker.
Unfortunately, guess who uses my Zeru’s Flames better than I could ever dream? Any character on the air, death or void symbol.
I’m not saying there isn’t counterplay, but to slot Zeru’s into my deck requires me to play the game knowing at any point, my turn could end. To slot Sweeping Daggers into an opponent’s deck, they simply open the sleeve and slide the card in.
Why would anyone risk War Hammer Strike, when they get stun 3’d back as soon as they hit their worst check? How could you consider running Food Motivated – a high-risk card that can solve a draw-starved character’s resource problem, when it just gets slapped right back in your face?
BUT THIS IS A PROBLEM WE’VE SOLVED BEFORE.
See (and please don’t trip over the dinosaur bones) Phil Birch*.
This card has an errata to say add 1 attack with a printed control of 3.
Please UVS Games, open the floodgates and let the bad checks shine through. It’s an easy errata, with text you are all too familiar with, and it opens up deckbuilding for REAL PLAYERS who aren’t scared of the low numbers.
