Harry Potter Card of the Week
with Alex Rockwell

04.05.02  Card of the Week: Spiral Dive

Well, the new set is out, so after looking at all of the cards in the set, I want to take a look at a few cards in particular. First, I should make a correction to the review of the whole set.

I read Tawny owl as being: return a non-healing card from your discard to your hand, not "return a non-healing ITEM card from your discard to your hand". As it is, its much weaker, and Hedwig is better.

Alright, Spiral Dive.

Name: Spiral Dive
Type: Spell
Cost: 5Q
Text: Discard any number of cards from your hand. Do that much damage to your opponent.

As many people know, and others are about to find out, this card allows an awesome combo which can be used to kill your opponent in one turn. However, the deck, in my opinion, can be beat, and is vulnerable to certain cards.

Here is the combo:

Step 1: Play Diagon Alley adventure
Step 2: Play Draco's Trick, solving the adventure, draw all but 1 card in your deck.
Step 3: Immediately play the Spiral Dive (that you just drew), to deal one damage for every card in your hand.

This will do enough to kill your opponent unless they have done more
damage to you during the game than the following: (number of damage you
have done to them + cards in hand before solving Draco's Trick + Number of
cards they have drawn - Number of cards you have drawn).

Usually, they need to have done about 5-6 more damage than you have.

SO you'll need a few good damage spells, like fouled! Some good creature
defense, like Stream of Flames (does damage too). And something to slow
them down, Lost Notes and Picking on Neville.

Also, Gringotts Vault key is very important, as it allows you to get
whichever of the two key cards you don't draw.

So here is the deck:

4 Diagon Alley
4 Draco's Trick
4 Gringott's Vault Key
2 Spiral Dive

4 Fouled!
4 Stream of Flames

4 Picking on Neville
4 Lost Notes

4 Borrowed Wand
13 Quiddich Lessons
13 Charms Lessons

Professor Minerva McGonagall starter




Now, this deck can kill as early as fourth or fifth turn, given a great
draw, and the Lost notes and picking on Neville can help you slow down
your opponent.

However, the deck has several problems.


First: If you don't get a decent draw, you lose. You must draw Diagon
alley and Draco's trick, with the help of Gringotts Vault keys. And you
must do it before they do lots of damage to you.

Second: If they play Minerva McGonagall, they destroy your first Diagon
Alley when you play it (unless they are stupid). This means you must draw
ANOTHER Diagon Alley, and spend another turn playing it.

Third: If your opponent plays Lost Notes and Picking on Neville on you,
it slows you down a lot and they have a bit of time to do damage to you.

Fourth: Trevor, or similar cards, can totally kill the deck, since you do
all your damage with one spell. SO you must Stream of Flames Trevor if
they play him. A Kelpie is basically death. Hedwig getting back Trevor,
or Halloween feast doing the same just kills you. If they can search
their deck for Trevor using Lapifors or Gringott's Vault key, they can
kill you. They should do this as soon as they see you drop Diagon Alley,
thus revealing your deck. (Also if they hurt you and see a Draco's Trick
or a Diagon Alley, they should know you are playing this deck and should
go search for a Trevor, or try for a bit more quick damage.)

Basically, once your opponent does about 10 more damage than you have, you
are dead. And there are plenty of ways to slow you down to do this.


So basically, the deck is really cool and impressive against decks that
don't have certain cards (McGonagall, Lost Notes/Picking on Neville, quick
damage, Trevor). But it dies to someone playing those cards who knows
what they are doing.

So the deck won't become the "Best deck", but it is something to watch out
for. And try it on your unsuspecting friends and kill them, it's a lot of
fun.

Try to work on the deck if you want and improve it, to make it more
resilient to these cards. Maybe more creature defense, more damage
spells. Its really hard though.I have tried and given up. I don't think
you can make it work against a good player with a deck using McGonagall.


Well, I hope you like this cool trick deck :-)

Many people have independently come up with the combo, myself included, so
don't anyone think that everybody else stole it from you. :-)


Soon I am going to write about the following cards (probably):

Hebridian Black Dragon
Wand Shop


Thanks for reading!

Alex