Ashes Preview: Heart of the Jungle
Jungle Warrior, Explosive Growth and Mark of the Red Flower!
Welcome back, Ashes players! Here we are again with some more card previews for the Boy Among Wolves expansion deck. We have previously seen how Koji and the Indiglow Creeper conjuration family can utilize status tokens to cultivate a swarm of huge units. Today, we will be exploring some further applications of status tokens in Koji’s base deck.
Jungle Warrior
First up we have a new ally, the Jungle Warrior. This ally lives to serve with two abilities that trigger off of its destruction. Inheritance 1 has been seen previously on Gilder and the new Brilliant Thorns, helping you to sustain your field of Luminous Seedlings and keep the evolution chain cycling. Last Orders 1 is an affordable unexhaustion effect that can be used to give your Brilliant Thorns another chance to attack before they Fade away. The Jungle Warrior draws comparison to the Flute Mage with similar cost and utility, but this unit is much more aggressive. Whereas Flute Mage must exhaust itself to unexhaust another unit, Jungle Warrior can engage in deadly battle and still grant an unexhaustion effect, provided you have the magic to spare. Even Ice Trap isn’t a perfect counter to Jungle Warrior as you are still gaining two highly beneficial effects off of its destruction. All in all, Jungle Warrior provides some solid support for Koji’s conjurations and is easily included in any deck running Sympathy magic.
Explosive Growth
Next up is the alteration spell Explosive Growth! This spell serves as a way to instantaneously Blossom a Luminous Seedling into two Brilliant Thorns! Using Explosive Growth in this way can be expensive, but impactful, when in a pinch for offensive units. Alternatively, the attack boost provided by this spell is at least 2 on whatever you attach it to, with plenty of room to grow from other status token placements. Luminous Seedlings doubly benefit from this alteration since they inherently gain 1 life for each status token on them! Suddenly a 0/2 Luminous Seedling is a 2/4 threat with potential to activate Blossom whenever it is ready! Explosive Growth is an essential tool in the toolbox for accelerating your Luminous Seedlings’ needs!
Mark of the Red Flower
Lastly for today, we have yet another alteration spell in Mark of the Red Flower. This alteration gives you the option to continuously add status tokens with the Growing Flames ability, as it does not exhaust to activate! After charging up a unit with some extra status tokens, you can convert those into burst damage with Fire Mastery! Considering that this spell costs no magic to attach, turning 2 status tokens into dealing 3 damage to a unit can be incredibly impactful! Any deck with Gilder can now fully utilize their Inheritance ability to threaten surprise damage from a Mark of the Red Flower! And as always, this is another option to pump up your Luminous Seedlings.
Thanks for checking out todays article! Next week, we will wrap up the rest of Koji’s deck, but stay tuned for Thursday as we return to see why Astrea truly is the Goddess of Ishra…
Until next time!
Art by Fernanda Suarez
Posted by Nick Conley Nick Conley is the lead playtester for Ashes and a dedicated fan. |