Card Spotlight – On Crusade

Hello everyone! Chris VanMeter here with an exclusive Herofall spoiler!

Well, more like spoilers! These two bad boys (or girls) are really going to show off just how dedicated both the Ardent and Underworld factions are in the tumultuous world of Herofall.

Alright, this is something new. Using Jank Bot as an example for deck construction requirements in HEX, in order to play either of these you need to have 10 differently named Underworld or Ardent troops in your deck. Now, that may seem like a lot, but the good news is that it is considered inclusive, so that would be 9 others along with said Ardent or Underworld Crusader.

Now, this is a lot to ask since playing with ten different troops doesn’t really leave a lot of room for other cards if we want to have multiple copies of these different troops. This is especially true since these Crusaders seem to be pretty aggressively aligned and will want to be in a consistent and well-curved deck.

Let’s break them down a little bit, starting with Ardent Crusader.

As a 3 cost 4/4 with a minor gem and only a single Diamond threshold, Ardent Crusader really wants to be attacking. It’s generally going to be bigger than most other cards at that resource cost, and with the extra ability of creating two Phantoms when it dies, we aren’t really all that upset if it trades. Even without the gem socket, Ardent Crusader is already on the edge of being playable, even with the deckbuilding requirement. This means that the new cast of gems is really going to play a huge role in determining if it’s going to be worth it to work so hard to get this in your deck.

I think that we are likely doing to be Mono-Diamond to hit these requirements, so let’s check out the gems we have available. The two minor diamonds are:

Minor Diamond of Protection

Minor Diamond of Wind

Protection might be worth it as having a 4/6 body for only three is a pretty good rate, but I don’t know if that’s going to make me really want to put ten different named troops into my deck. If we expand our look to the other gems, then we actually have a couple that seem like they can potentially make our Crusader into quite the monster.

Minor Blood Orb of Frenzy

Minor Wild Orb of Brawn

Both of these gems push the power level even higher for the Crusader, giving it Speed or turning it into a 5/4 with Crush is exactly what we want. Unfortunately, Blood is heavily littered with Underworld Troops, so that seems like it would be difficult to pull off. But, we could very easily fit Ardent Crusader into a Diamond/Wild deck with Howling Brave. A 5/4 Crush troop on turn two is likely to end the game fairly quickly.

Let’s see if we can find a troop base for a Diamond/Wild deck, or just brainstorm any number of awesome Ardent troops that we could play with the Crusader: