[Gods Unchained] Another Trial of The Gods REVEAL! Death Champion and Cards

Hey guys! Yesterday we had a second champion reveal, Neferu, Champion of Death and couple of cards. If you are interested in watching the VOD of the official Gods Unchained stream I'll leave the link here.

This reveal was followed up with the 3rd Chapter of lore.

Today we gonna take a look at the new cards and see how they may affect the future of the meta, the cards aren't the final version and will possibly go through some tweaks/changes but we can still have some theorycrafting with the current version of the cards.

Neferu, Champion of Death

This is a really exciting one for sure. Since the damage from the effect deals damage to each other character that includes gods so the implication of this effect can be used for control and also for some aggressive style of play. The interesting part is that the effect activates when summoned as opposed to the Roar effect that only triggers when the creature is played from hand so this card can be brought back from the void with Raise Dead and still act as a board clear/burn. The afterlife also goes in favor of replaying this card as much as possible since after your god's health goes below half the card goes back to the hand and is also discounted.

Summoning this card from the void is done easier with god power Reanimate so this type of decks will also be including it. Canopic Hoarder and Sand Scorpion have multiple synergies with this card. Not only are they able to return this card from your void when you are below 15 but also they are 5-cost creatures so Reanimating them can bring her on the board in other situations. Being Anubian there are even more synergies like Sarcophagus. It is safe to say that this card will be viable and all over the Death deck archetypes and in some form or another a part of the meta.

Neferu's Khopesh

Next up we have a legendary relic card. This card definitely has the potential to give an insane amount of value but there also a lot of risk with it too. Being able to remove any creature each turn is an amazing ability for 6 mana but here's the problem. First, turn that it's played you just paid 6 mana for nothing really and if your opponent has relic hate cards and destroys it that will result in a huge tempo and value loss. On the other hand, if the relic wasn't answered and/or your opponent doesn't have anti-relic cards at their disposal they will quickly start falling behind. For this card to be worth it only thing you need to do is to play a single death card before using its effect so that you can activate it again.

The interesting part about this card is that it can target friendly creatures also to gain more durability which definitely gives it additional depth and usability if your opponent doesn't want to commit onto the board without getting rid of the relic. I don't think that will be the main focus when using this card though but it sure is a bonus to have.

That being said, it is a relic after all and if we see too much of it, decks will start to tech in more relic removal cards which will make this card worse. So I think that we won't see it being used too much but it will be coming in and out of the meta from time to time.

Neferu's Will

I just gonna say it outright, this card has the potential to single-handedly bring back the death zoo archetype or any kind of midrange playstyle for death. The reason I think that is because of its effect work as kind of a win condition, where you need to have a certain amount of board control and your opponent around 21 health or less. In the scenario where you have a full board with all 1 strength creatures and 7 mana, you can deal 5 damage with creatures and then use this on the remaining creature, buffing it for +15 and hit for another 16 damage which equals an amazing 21 damage! This example obviously isn't the strongest one but it isn't that hard to imagine to have a wide board with weak creatures in the zoo style of deck. We didn't even take into account that the target creature also gains Overkill which will give it some flexibility if the Frontline creature is in the way and if you only want to get rid of multiple opponent's creatures or even if you give this buff to a Twin Strike creature things can get messy really quickly.

Power just keeps stacking up with this card and we didn't even include Afterlife creatures that might die during this effect. There is so much in this card and I doubt we won't see it getting used if it stays any close to the current version it is now. This power in a single card definitely makes it a win condition card and the best thing is that you can have two of them in the deck, increasing the odds of drawing it so consistency is there which is something you would like to have when constructing a plan.

Nether's Advocate

I will keep it short with this one because during the reveal they told us that Experimental Outcome creatures will have random effects and we don't know what they are so there is not that much to talk about.

If these 3/2 were vanilla creatures without any effects this card would find its place in decks utilizing afterlife procing, no doubt but as I said there is not much to talk about before we know how these Experimental Outcomes will function.

Trial of the First Pillar

The last card in this reveal isn't a death card. It features one of the six pillars (one for each god) that will be introduced in this expansion and this one is for Light.

The card is amazing! Maybe a bit too good. Setting all creatures on the board to 1/1s is powerful as it is but as a bonus, you get a 1/7 Frontline creature that can't attack. Other than an obvious weakness for a spell, like creatures with Ward, this card doesn't have any downside no matter the opponent's board state. Versus Big boys, getting them to 1/1 is strong and versus wide boards with a lot of smaller creatures you also get that 1/7 Frontline that is enough to stop their entire board of 1/1s.

With this inclusion, Light will have a lot of variety of control tools so control archetypes will most likely rise up unless meta favors too many Ward creatures.

That's it for this batch of cards, hope we see more soon and finally get more information on how the Favor mechanic will work so that we can get a better feel of the whole Trial of The Gods set and understand better in which direction the meta will be going.

Next Teaser

We've been right with the last silhouette but this one isn't looking too obvious, maybe it's a Magic one? Because of the "Wand"? What do you guys thing?

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Thank you for reading!

,z3ll