Harry Potter Card of the Week
with Alex Rockwell

02.17.02  

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Card of the Week:
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Bravado
3C - Spell
For the rest of this turn, your Spell cards need 5 less Power to play. You still need at least 1 Power that matches.
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Well, I have gotten a bunch of card of the week requests, so its been kindof hard to choose. So if you wrote me and I don't do yours, sorry, but I have had over a dozen suggestions already.

For this week, I have chosen to go over Bravado, because I think it is a really interesting card with amazing potential. The ability to cast a spell 5 lessons more than you have is just too powerful to ignore. The
problem is how to get the deck to work.

First, there are several things we need to think about.
First, we need a powerful card which we can cast with Bravado which will absolutely destroy our opponent. Otherwise, the deck really isn't worth it.

Also, we need to not just lose completely if we don't draw Bravado.
This could happen if we have loads of high cost powercards, the Bravado's,
and not much else. If we don't draw them, or if one draw isn't enough, we
could just get killed because we cant play anything, and it takes too long
to get to the point where we can cast our big spells.

When we look at Bravado, we should notice right away that it is a charms
spell, meaning that if we play Flitwick, we can pull it out of our
graveyard. (Flitwick is just SO GOOD!) That way, even if we don't draw
it, we will be able to get it after taking a bit of damage.

We also need to look at what power cards to use. We must remember that it
must be a spell, not an item or creature. So we cant pull out fluffy
quick with a Bravado.

An obvious choice to consider is Potions Class Disaster. This card forces
your opponent to discard 5 cards, from either their hand or play or some
combination. The best thing about this card is that if they have no hand,
they just lose 5 cards in play. (Or if they have a small hand, they lose
it and some from play). Generally, if your opponent has a small hand, two
of these will leave them with no hand and nothing in play. At that point,
you should be able to win.
Another good choice is Potions Exam, which costs 10 instead of the 12 of
the Disaster, and makes them discard three cards from play, which is very
good. However, if they play potions, they can avoid this by only
discarding a single potions lesson, which isn't so strong.
Another good card is Obliviate, which costs 12 but makes them discard
their hand.
Also Out of Control forces a discard of 4, while doing damage,
Transfiguration Exam destroys all of their creatures for 10. Titillando
costs only 9 and does 3 to a creature and forces 3 discards from the hand.

So we could base our deck around casting a Bravado followed by a power
spell, and use cards which destroy our opponent's hand followed by a
potions class disaster to wipe the board. To do this however, we will
need many lessons. 7 + Bravado, or 12 without. It takes a bit of time to
get out this many lessons. By the time we do, many decks will have
already played out a few creatures, and if we do manage to cast Bravado
and a potions class disaster, they will be able to simply sacrifice some
creatures and start playing some more. Obviously, we'll need some defense
against creatures, such as Stream of Flames, Fumos, Transfiguration Test
or Exam, or others.

Since Bravado only works on spells, we cannot use a big creature such as
fluffy, or an item such a golden snitch as our kill card, since these are
not spells. This fact has forced me to rewrite this article and made it a
week late. (I was thinking I could use the Snich for an auto-kill (if
they don't have enough chance to deal damage. and try to get it out really
fast..but obviously, that doesn't work.

So lets try going with cards like Potions class disaster and obliviate,
and destroy our opponent's hand and board. If we can pull this off, the
game is ours.

We will need lots of powerful lesson producing items, to get out enough
lessons. We will also need creature defense.

Items are the most important. Since we cant use the big wands with
Flitwick without also putting extra charms lessons in our deck, lets
choose to not use flitwick, and instead try and build a deck with
McGonagall, who could help us to get the free transfiguration lesson, so
we only need to use potions and charms lessons, and also protect us from
harmful adventures.

1 Professor Minerva McGonagall

we will want some big wands and cauldrons. Do we want Dragon Heart wand
or Phoenix Feather? Well, Dragon heart takes us from 5 lessons to 8,
which is good. But if our spells are obliviate, potions class disaster,
potions exam, and transfiguration exam, we need 10-12 lessons without
bravado. We want bravado to help, but if we are dependant on it, that
will make us very vulnerable to not drawing it. So we'll go with Phoenix
feather. Also, we'll use Pewter Cauldron, since sacrificing more than one
lessons is too dangerous, and makes us extremely vulnerable to lost notes.

4 Phoenix Feather Wand
4 Pewter Cauldron

We'll also want a LOT of lessons.

14 Charms
12 Potions

That's 36 cards in our deck.
24 more.

4 Bravado
4 Transfiguration Exam
4 Potions Class Disaster
4 Potions Exam
4 Obliviate
3 Draught of Living Death.
3 Burning Bitteroot Balm

The draughts will be used for our kill, and the Balms to stay alive and
get back all our power cards to use again and again. Don't worry about
the lack of damage spells. The purpose of the deck is to gain complete
control by destroying everything our opponent has, their hand, their
lessons, and all, and then we can draw lots of cards, keep our opponent
from getting out anything important, and finish it off with our powerful
potions.


One other way to do this deck:

Use Hermione, and use Human Chess Game. This will prevent our opponent
from playing anything while we both draw loads of cards. Then you play
out a whole bunch of lessons, and then Bravado/Obliviate, and follow with
Potions Disasters and Exams.
However, this second method is very vulnerable to Charms Exam. After both
players have drawn loads of cards, your opponent discards a lot to remove
the chess game, then charms exam's you and you lose your hand. (I have
won this way against decks using Human Chess Games.

Well, that's my thoughts!

For all of you who aren't on apprentice, come join us, its really awesome.
You can play people from all over, and you don't even need to own any of
the cards in your decks!

Well, thanks for reading,

Till next week,
Alex


P.S.
If anyone would like to see a certain card featured on card of the week,
just send me an email and I'll think about it.  rockwell@u.washington.edu