Hello everyone and welcome to our third installment of Cloud of Witnesses Combo Musings! As before, I will be commenting on more combos with the new CoW cards. Well, CoW card. This article will be brief as it just focuses on 1 new CoW card.
We now have been given a Falling Away reprint. It’s an alternative Christian Martyr:
Just as Christian Martyr will almost always defeat a lone hero, Falling Away will too. The question is: why use the new Falling Away when the old one is arguably the most powerful evil card in the game? The old Falling Away basically “undoes” Son of God which is the most powerful good card in the game. And Guardian of Your Souls, which is the “hard counter” for Falling Away, is almost never used in T1 decks anymore because of the Dominant Cap.
The thing is, with new cards sometimes you just have to use them in decks to get a feel for the card. Sometimes you find delightful new tricks by adding the card to a deck that you would never have discovered if you just sat rereading the card’s ability over and over. So I decided to start testing decks that use the new Falling Away. I’ve actually been pleased with the results and it is my opinion that there are some decks where the new FA is more valuable than the old one. Here are some reasons to consider the new FA over the old one:
- Evil character abilities! Christian Martyr has always been able to “protect” an ability from being negated, or allow you to reuse an ability by saving an evil character from death by numbers. Maybe you block with an evil character with a powerful ability, but it’s negate-able and your opponent will have initiative. Or maybe you play an EE that you really really don’t want negated. Just play CM and you’ve “protected” that ability from potential negation. The new FA does the same. I really like it in a splash defense with Messenger of Satan and Emperor Vitellius. Being able to draw a lot of cards and protect your character before they get negated (or die by numbers) with either FA or CM is very powerful.
- Lampstand of the Sanctuary/Guardian of Your Souls. Neither is very popular in T1 right now. But if you plan to play Lampstand, the new FA becomes more attractive to you. Your opponent could get stuck with a worthless FA in hand while you can still use yours on a hero to win a battle.
- Combos! And by combos I mean using FA on an opponent’s male human hero before you attack, choose an evil brigade they don’t have, and then choose that character to block with Jael, Asahel, or Ehud. Not only does this give you a chance to play an enhancement that is basically CBN but you get to take out one of your opponent’s heroes in the process! As I’m writing this, I’ve done this twice since I realized the combo. I discarded Watchful Leaders and another evil character with Trumpet and Sword, and I discarded Moses with Samuel’s Edict. Both rescues were successful as well since I chose evil brigades for which my opponents did not have enhancements.
- Evil banding/Grapes of Wrath. If you convert a human hero to an evil character you could band to that character with Gomer/Messenger of Satan/etc. and then play Grapes on the converted hero. Or you could use Seven Wicked Spirits to exchange for the converted hero. I’m not sold on the efficiency of using 2 Dominants in tandem for one block but if you ever wanted to discard your opponent’s heroes with your own good Dominants….here you go.
If you’ve got a deck where you want to abuse evil character abilities, and you’ve got at least one of Jael, Asahel, or Ehud in your deck, I strongly suggest you use the new FA. At least test it out. If a deck is built right to take advantage of the new FA it’s basically a second CM that you can optionally use to win a rescue with instead. No other Dominant, except for maybe Grapes of Wrath, offers that flexibility. Cards with the flexibility to be used both defensively and offensively are rare and powerful.
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Justin Alstad
I think you left out one important aspect…creating an EC to block! Your opponent is making a pretty weak rescue and you have tons of EE that could do heavy damage, but the only problem is you have exactly zero ECs. Convert any of your Heroes to an EC and voila…you’ve got a blocker. Certainly riskier than just using FA on the Hero but if you’re way behind and need to swing the momentum, it might be worth the risk in order to play a card like Confusion or Great Image.
Justin Alstad
That being said, excellent article! I’m very tempted to see how much damage I could do with the CtB combo…
Josh
I like your “create an EC to block” idea. I would never have thought of it, for the reason you stated: FA usually stops a rescue on its own.
The CtB combo is now 3/4. The only failed CtB rescue was when my opponent had Lurking in hand 🙁
Justin A.
Lurking is such an underrated card…but I think people are going to start realizing its increased value in a Coliseum-meta.
Josh
I’m also coming around on the Lurking train. Not to mention it is CBN on Naaman, and my favorite defenses have him in them 🙂 Who knew that it has a Psalms reference? Not me, until someone played it CBN off of my Nergalsharezar last month!
Lurking should also gain popularity if this FA CtB combo starts to get used… The new FA is basically another CtB like King Amaziah/OoN/Provisions, except potentially better and definitely easier to use, in my opinion.
Justin Alstad
Yeah, unfortunately I got shot down when I tried to get it included in the list of cards that “involve music”… <..>
Jonathan Gomez
That’s why I almost always run lurking in my decks lol. Great article!
John David Cunningham
Great read! Definitely building appreciation for this card 🙂