Talk:Blockbuster/@comment-30204686-20181225094021

Card Review #1: Blockbuster

A 4-sun 3/3 with Bullseye that destroys all Gravestones when Evolved, fitting into the Guardian theme of destroying gravestones as well being mediocrely statted but having a strong Evolution ability.

First, why it can be good. It’s 3/3 and has Bullseye, which can be used to pressure your opponent. Also destroying three Gravestones is really good, while scenarios where this actually happens will be rare, it’s just massive. It will devastate a zombie setup while giving you card advantage (knocking out up to three Gravestone zombies while putting down a 3/3), not to mention hard countering Mixed-Up Gravedigger. Even hitting just one gravestone would be value; a Grave Buster is 2 sun and this costs 4 but comes with the 3/3 body, so it’s more cost-effective than the sum of its parts. Obviously it will come at a cost given it’s an Evolution, but if you deckbuild around it putting down a weak plant to sacrifice might not be hard and worth the sacrifice.

But… would you want to? Writing this months after set 4 (Triassic Triumphs) and a bunch of balance patches, this card (or Evolution-themed decks) doesn’t see much play. And the Evolution ability is situational – you could have the evolution nicely lined up but it would be meaningless without Gravestones to destroy. In short, you COULD deckbuild around this but it probably won’t be worth it, there are better cards you could use. A 4-cost 3/3 is quite inexcusable and due to the situationality of its evolution effect this card overall won’t cut it competitively. It’s definitely not something you can drop on the curve, that’s for one, which already puts it out of the picture for many proactive decks.

You’d either have to drop this as a 4 cost 3/3 (bad) or wait till the Zombie Hero plays gravestones, during which it sits dead in your hand AND you’d have to prep a plant to act as the ‘sacrifice’ (even worse). This card doesn’t even hit most zombie decks very hard because most of them maybe play a Gravestone every other turn at most (in the most zombie-heavy non-swarm decks) or none at all. (By the way, there are no Gravestone Zombies that cost less than 2, so Gravestone swarms strategies are usually quite impractical.)

So given its drawbacks, it doesn’t see mainstream play and it’s clear why. But, I dabble in theorycrafting and love to experiment with off-meta decks, so I posed this question to myself: If I HAD to put this in a deck, what would that deck and its matchups look like? I think broadly I have a three-pronged answer to my own question.

a) This could go in some tempo-oriented Grass Kunckles or Spudow deck. Both heroes have lots of aggressive options and ways to plonk down huge plants that pose big threats if left unanswered. However, they must fall back on their Guardian class to handle gravestones, which block all damage and can delay even the strongest of assaults. While they actually could just run the more flexible and more practical Grave Buster, they could consider mixing in this card to destroy multiple gravestones while adding anothing body to their attack (they’ll need to mix in some token generation to more consistently activate this card though). This card has Bullseye and more importantly acts as another buff target, which helps further the attack.

b) This might go in some Citron deck, being mashed into any midrange/tempo/board-oriented deck together with Spyris. This synergy between these two is very strong, such that I think you could use this anti-Gravestone package to develop your own board without being menaced by Gravestones (hence you could play more riskily, since you can worry less about cards like Pogo Bouncer, Smelly Zombie, Zombot Battlecruiser etc.). Not many people expect a Blockbuster (since it’s so off-meta) and even fewer generally try to play around it so you can surprise them with it or heavily punish them if they commit to Gravestones.

c) But, let’s have a look at the meta too. The thing is that both the above-raised deck concepts work under the overarching idea of this card fundamentally being a tech card. This card exists as a counter to Gravestones should they ever get too strong. Hence your usage of this card will basically just be a meta call. You could slam it into any deck should Gravestones be strong in the meta. If Gravestones are played in passing or there’s no specific Gravestone card that needs this as a hard counter, you can probably afford to can this card altogether. Card Rating: 4/10