Harry Potter Card of the Week
with Alex Rockwell

First of all, thanks to everyone for reading my post!

Card(s) of the Week, from the new expansion:

Well, for my first ‘card of the week’, I wanted to get two out of the way, because I felt there were several cards in the new set which just needed to be talked about.

First of all, there is the card that I am sure we all did not believe the first time we saw it.

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Fluffy

10CoMC (discard 2 CoMC) - Creature

Health = 21 Damage each turn = 12

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Well, I was pretty skeptical when this card was first posted, but then I realized that while it is good, it is not ‘broken’. (You just have to be able to kill it or put it back in their hand!!!)

I posted an article recently stating my opinion of all the cards in the basic set, and sadly, I made at least one mistake in my reading of the cards.  (Hopefully only that one!)  Specifically, I thought that transmogrify put the creature you got out of your deck INTO PLAY.  Not into your hand.

Obviously there is a huge difference.  As it is, the card is not so good.  If you got to put it into play, it’s a whole different story.  Before, all you could transmogrify for was a unicorn or mountain troll or something like that, so it wasn’t a big deal, but being able to sacrifice a creature to search your deck for a 12/21 and put him into play!  That would be too much.  Thankfully, it doesn’t put the creature into play, only into your hand, so we don’t have to worry about the following turn 4 kill: (which would have worked the way I was thinking)

Character:  Anyone who gives a lesson Turn 1: Lesson, Raven (or other little creature) Turn 2: Lesson, Transmogrify (for fluffy)

Turn 3: Fluffy hits for 12, play lesson, play Steel Claw (for 12)

Turn 4: Fluffy hits for 12, play steel claw for 12, and its over.

Well, luckily, fluffy wont come into play when you transmogrify, so we only have to worry about him coming out after a few more turn have gone by and your opponent has 10 lessons in play!

So there is my correction to my previous article. (And a pretty big one :) Transmogrify does NOT let you put any creature into play!  Sorry about that...

Anyway, I think that fluffy is a wonderful card, and gives a lot more power to creature decks.  I see it changing the game in the following ways:

First, any control-type deck will be forced to use cards which kill creatures automatically, not using damage (since you cant kill fluffy with damage).  This means that my earlier suggestion (from my article), of only using creature kill cards which could also be used to hit your opponent, if they don’t have creatures, gets thrown out the window.  Now you need to worry about fluffy, so you have to throw some stuff in there that will just kill a creature, of your choice, or nullify a creature, such as Winged Keys.

I think Raven to Writing Desk (Cost: 1 T If your opponent has 2 or more Creatures in play, choose 1 of them and discard it.)  Becomes a much better card, because anyone who plays fluffy will probably play other creatures too, and you can play this for cheap to kill creatues early, or later to kill fluffy.

I also think that Cage is even better now, because it can put fluffy back in your opponent’s hand.  And then he or she will have to use two more lessons to play it again!  And they have to get two more lessons out first....since they probably played it as soon as they could get to 10, and didnt have any more.

I think that fluffy makes Hermione a better character too, because a deck with him(fluffy) will want to get 10 lessons out as fast as possible, and will have many lessons in it, so Hermione’s ability will be very good.  In this deck, I would use her as my starting character, as you will be able to use her ability 4 times effectively, thus saving you 4 actions!

Before the quiddich expansion, it seems to me that the two ways to build a deck were to try and get out lots of big creatures and kill with them, or to get out lots of potions lessons and use big potions for the kill.  (You could also try to win slowly, with a lot of healing spells, but I don’t know if it would work as well)  Anyway, both methods had their problems.  The creature method had to deal with your opponent playing unusual pets, and you would have to choose to either take 4 damage a turn and race them, or to sacrifice your creature to get rid of it, thus weakening your attack and letting them play ANOTHER unusual pets.  As to the potions method, it had the problem that if your opponent played a 4 Privet Drive, you HAD to kill it, since you couldn’t cast spells, which was your kill method, and therefore you lost 6 cards to get rid of it.  And then they could just play another...

Now, with the new expansion, we have:

Gaze into the Mirror

Adventure

Effect:  During your opponent’s turns, prevent all Spells damage done to you by Spell cards. To Solve:  Opponent chooses 5 Spell cards in hand and discards them. Reward:  Opponent gets 1 more Action

Guess what this does?  It gives us yet another adventure to destroy potions decks.  I don’t think a potions deck will be able to survive against anyone with both 4 Privet Drives and Gaze into the Mirrors in their decks.  They have to choose 5 of their kill cards and get rid of them, or else they cant do anything to you with spells!  This card DESTROYS potions decks.

So much that I dont know if I would play one anymore...

That leaves us with either creatures for our kill, or the new quiddich cards.

Of course, you could always go for a more versatile approach, with 2 or more different sources of damage, both creatures and spells, or so on.  That’s what I am thinking about right now That way no matter what your opponent does, you wont be helpless. 

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Another card I wanted to mention was

Prof. Minerva McGonagall

Witch  Unique - Gryffindor

Provides a Transfiguration lesson

Once per game, you may discard the Adventure your opponent has played. (You don’t get the reward.)

All I can say is, I was waiting for this card.  After seeing Snape and Flitwick, I was expecting another character to provide a transfiguration lesson, but none did.

I knew it would come soon, and when it did, it would be GOOD.  This lets you start out with a free lesson in play, speeding you up a lot, and helping you by enabling you to play any transfiguration spell without ever playing a transfiguration lesson.  Then you can play 3 types of lessons but only have two kinds in your deck, so you will be able to draw them both consistently, or to play two types of spells with only one kind of lesson, and always be able to play both kinds of spells.

In addition, her second ability, being able to destroy an adventure, is just AMAZING!!!! I have mentioned several of the amazing adventures already 4 Privet Drive, Unusual Pets, and Gaze into the Mirror specifically.  (Depending on what type of deck you are playing).  Any potions deck that wants to survive should use McGonagall, I think, because she can save you from having to discard a lot of cards in order to play your spells.  It will force your opponent to draw and play one more adventure to stop you.

Also, if we think about it in terms of actions advantage, McGonagall gives you an additional 4 actions!  2 from providing the transfiguration lesson, (One to draw it, one to play it).  And 2 from destroying an adventure (since your opponent spent 2 actions on it).  And if they never play one because of her, then you have avoided a horrible 4 Privet drive or Unusual Pets or whatever else which would have crippled you!  So I think that McGonagall is the best character, replacing Flitwick in my mind, and that Hermione is made better by the existence of Fluffy, since now there is a really big spell which you really want to play fast!!!

Those are my cards of the week.  I’ll plan to go over a new card next week, stay tuned... 

Thanks for reading everyone!

·        Alex