Merc Spotlight – Going Beast Mode

Gearing up for Chapter II has many interested in the various ways rangers can now be built. We can focus on Pets, Plants, or Marksmanship. There are even a few ways to focus on the wildest of troops, pets that are not easily tamed. Beasts!

We already have several beasts we have access to play, but no real champion to support fully building around them. Until now…. It is time to let our hair down and go Beast Mode!

Welcome to the Party, Sister of the Herd!

Sister of the Herd can summon Tama for 3 charges. The 2/3 beast for 3 is already pretty great as a permanent 3 cost charge power. However, not only is Tama great for 3, but if we already have a Tama in play, all our beasts in play get +2/+2 for the turn! Wow, now that is going to make for some crazy board states once we hit our 6th charge. Sister of the Herd’s deckbuilding restriction also allows us to freely ignore the shard grid and include 4 copies of any beast we want in our deck. Beasts don’t stand out as amazing by themselves, so let’s look a little deeper into Sister of the Herd and why we would want to build a deck this way.

The first thing we will want to do with Sister of the Herd to make our Beast Mode strategy pay off is upgrade her to get the Upgraded Text: Beast Mastery – “At the start of your turn, beasts you control get one of the following at random: +1/+1; Crush; Flight; Lethal; Lifedrain; Steadfast; or Swiftstrike.” This passive for beasts is huge! Alone, it will enable us to make great use of the 4 copies of beasts in our deck.

Another benefit to building with beasts is that Sister of the Herd has a zero cost Basic 1-Shot ability called “Seasoned Wayfarer” – “Gain target beast card in your hand’s thresholds.” This allows us to splash a few Beast troops that we are not even playing threshold for in our deck. We will definitely keep this in mind while brewing.

Perhaps the strongest passive we have seen so far on shared mercenaries is Sister of the Herd having “Opposing non-combat damage is reduced by 2”. This will make her a very effective mercenary to swap to against specific encounters that require you to survive against damage based sweepers and damage targeting your champion.

The Party Passive for our main-deck grants: “Before the start of the game, three random resources in your deck get ‘When you play this, gain 2 health.'” This can be great for decks centered around healing, especially when you play Immortal Tears or Shardcall with the Trinket equipment.

So now that we know what we’re working with, it’s time to build the beast.

The Building Process

Immediately sorting by beasts, the Skarn family sticks out at the top to fill a low curve. While we are not planning to play a ton of actions, we should be mindful of how beneficial a low curve will be as we will be utilizing “Beast Mastery” to grow our beast army every turn. After a close look at all beasts available to us, I narrow the list down to 3 cards we want to build with.

Wildwood Beastcaller is an expensive troop to play for the 2/2 body, but it has great equipment and great text to make it worth it. The Howling Headband head equipment allows us to battle with our beasts when we play them, turning any beast into much needed removal. The Beastcaller Vest chest equipment gives our Beastcaller a much needed +1/+1. Once we find a way to get our expensive 5 cost Beastcaller into play, it will generate free beasts for us at the start of each turn. Unfortunately, it is not a beast itself, so we can only play 2 copies.

Feralroot Jaguar is the next card we want max copies of. Before the start of the game it will buff two random troops in our deck with +1/+1. We will also run the Forest Stalkers feet equipment to give our Jaguar Crush. Similarly, we can run Skittering Skarn to grant two random troops in our deck with +1/+0 and Speed. These passive buffs will synergize nicely with “Beast Mastery.”

Kindling Skarn is the next beast to join the herd. We won’t use the Skarns for their awesome synergy with action heavy decks this time, nor will we use their great head equipment for free actions. Instead, we will use them as a cheap beast to play to start taking early advantage of “Beast Mastery.” We will also use their Kindling Gauntlets glove equipment to help us dig for cards when we top deck resources. We may also include Embertongue Skarn to have the entire family present. The one resource cost troop with a generic 3 defense is great, and it can further benefit from the deck buff cards we have. Our Embertongue could easily be a 2/4 with Speed when we play it on turn 1.

Riftwarp Badger is quickly becoming a new favorite of mine. This beast will not only synergize with the deck, but giving it the Major Wild Orb of Conjuration will ensure that each Badger grants extreme card advantage. Between the Orb and the Badger’s card text, each Badger is three troops in one.

Finally, we drop in Cerberus as a late game finisher. If one of these get hit with a Skittering Skarn or Jaguar buff, it will quickly close a game out. With the Cerberus Collar trinket equipment, we can easily turn our following turn into the last turn, getting a second combat phase.

We almost forgot to figure out a good way to abuse “Seasoned Wayfarer.” My first thought is to splash in 4 copies of Untamed Duskwing. Duskwing has built in evasion and would be a much needed 2 drop for our deck. We can use the Duskwing Taming Whip weapon equipment to give them Lifedrain as well. This troop could be crucial to our sustain earlier in an encounter. Another possible approach with Seasoned Wayfarer is to try Mystic Squirrel here with their weapon equipment. This would provide some bonus card value. We could then save our “Seasoned Wayfarer” One-Shot for normal troop threshold fixing.

Lastly, we close the deck up with a few actions – Crimson Clarity to push to 5 resources early, Combat Training to make our skarns happy, and Crushing Blow to put the finishing touch on our enemies.

Our ideal Turn by Turn play might look like this:

Turn 1: Ruby Shard + Kindling Skarn

Turn 2: Wild Shard + “Seasoned Wayfarer” onto Untamed Duskwing which we then play.

Turn 3: Ruby Shard + Crimson Clarity + Riftwarp Badger

Turn 4: Wild Shard + Crimson Clarity + Wildwood Beastcaller

Deck List / Shopping List

Mercenary Sister of the Herd

Troops

4x Embertongue Skarn

4x Kindling Skarn

4x Untamed Duskwing

4x Feralroot Jaguar

4x Skittering Skarn

4x Riftwarp Badger [Major Wild Orb of Conjuration]

2x Cerberus

2x Wildwood Beastcaller

Actions

3x Combat Training

3x Crushing Blow

3x Crimson Clarity

Resources

12x Ruby Shard

4x Shard of Savagery

7x Wild Shard

Equipment

Howling Headband (Wildwood Beastcaller)

Cerberus Collar (Cerberus)

Beastcaller Vest (Wildwood Beastcaller)

Kindling Gauntlets (Kindling Skarn)

Forest Stalkers (Feralroot Jaguar)

Duskwing Taming Whip (Untamed Duskwing)

Other ideas to explore with Sister of the Herd

Looking at beasts, we benefit most by playing Wild and ramping with troop draw and resource/charge acceleration. However, we could look into options to go further into Blood and making use of more exotic troops. Chickatwice and Blight Steed are Blood beasts that come to mind, though there are several others to choose from.

Another fun and unique option with wide open access is splashing in 4 copies of Menacing Gralk and utilizing “Seasoned Wayfarer” for all the necessary thresholds. We can also run the Thundering Bow weapon equipment to create some free value.

That is it for now! I hope everyone enjoyed this look at Sister of the Herd. I can’t wait until we are cracking our knuckles and getting ready to enter Chapter II of the campaign. See you there!

-Nico

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