Heroes Canvas Showcase

Hello guys and welcome to a something just a little bit different; Custom Heroes Palette reviews!

With the guys at Five Realms now rotating the theme every Achroma Thursday, I thought I'd start to dive into the secondary format in the game now that it has a more regular home; Heroes format. I previously wrote a brief introduction to the format here.

To begin with I'll highlight my chosen Hero for the palette and what their ability is, as this is will, obviously, very much impact why I chose certain cards; the overall strategy of the palette; etc.

So starting off with quite a simple concept, similar to one of my recent Canvas palettes I put up, is a Drake-based list with the Hero being Umbra Aqueous.

As it currently stands, for a palette focused on Drakes, Umbra Aqueous' ability is pretty much the strongest one for it, reducing the cost to deploy all of your Drakes without hurting their trade value incase that's needed. There is also the option of making a palette full of Dragons and using Tenebris as your Hero instead, as he makes all Dragons Drakes so they synergise with the two locations that benefit off of you having loads of drakes out as well as Haskus' draw ability, but that would most likely end up being a bit more of a chroma-focused list whereas I wanted to really go hard achrom with this one.

Unsurprisingly it is full of all the core Drakes from the current Draco sets and as many synergistic cards that go with them as possible. Game-plan is pretty obvious; put down all the Drakes to ramp up the pressure on your opponent’s shard bank and use your abilities to keep their board presence down. Keep in mind, as I go through the characters, every time I say it’s a Drake it’s automatically one shard cheaper to deploy thanks to my Hero. So let’s dig into the cards themselves.

Tenebris - A very strong character, even if he isn’t a Drake. Removes a character or location when deployed, steals 3 on resolve and trades for 6 when needed.

Fibron - 4 strength drake with a nice steal 2 resolve. Also turns my Freeze cards into flexible removal to boot.

Haskus - As above a nice steal 2 resolve and can give some great draw power. At worst, because of my Hero, its a 2 cost character that pays for itself that same turn and draws a card.

Umbra Aqueous - Gives you some gain ability through combat. Required to be in here to be the Hero but honestly it definitely deserves its place.

Umbra Igneous - 4 strength body Drake that also gives some location removal through combat.

Impius Drake - Generically powerful card for any Draco palette, especially early game.

Mortius Drake - 4 strength body that drains 2 and can be traded for 2 if necessary. Honestly I’ve toyed with running Jali over this however the synergies with everything else keeps leading me to play this card instead.

Thisp - Similar to Impius Drake; great card in general that has the power to remove any smaller pieces outright or it can weaken an opposing character enough for a weaker one to crash into it.

Danra Drake - As with Mortius Drake just with slightly weaker stats.

Gritfell Drake - Cheap drop that replaces itself when erased, sometimes making removing it a bad choice.

Achrom Breach - It’s an achrom palette…. Nothing more to say.

Mirror Sanctum - Allows me to effectively have more copies of some of my big resolve locations that are coming up for just one shard, as long as I’ve already deployed one of course.

Snowdrift Sanctuary/ The Valli Caves - Sources of gain resolve that also Freeze my opponent’s resolve and stop prevents. Also double as removal when Fibron comes out.

Achrom Haven/ Haskus’ Den - Exponentially increasing resolves based on how many Drakes I control. Main targets for being copied by Mirror Sanctum.

Draco Graveyard/Cintimani Stone - Both give me some Dig ability to fetch back high impact cards and incase the game gets grindy. Stone has the added benefit of boosting a character’s strength in combat as well as being decent trade fodder in a pinch.

Breath of Fire/ Claw Slash/ Breath of Ice - It’s not a Draco palette without some brilliant control cards in there; all interchangeable with others within the realm as you feel are necessary.

Some other cards you can consider as well incase you wanted to mix it up.

Vortigen - Might not be a Drake but, like Tenebris, can be a great control piece with a body since it wipes certain colours off the board.

Jali - Although it’s cost wouldn’t be reduced it’s still a steal 2 resolve that can get rid of the best card in your opponent’s hand which is a fantastic card for turn 1 to give you knowledge of whats coming up.

Achrom Balenium - If you want to focus more on keeping your characters around for longer this will help, especially as far as combat’s concerned. Also has a high cost incase you need it for a trade.

Scathers/ Achrom Claw/ Achrom Bow - Gives you an out to Protection without relying on Impius Drake coming down at the right time. I rely more on Freeze as then my Umbra Igneus can potentially still attack into their characters to erase locations.

Feeding Time - Action that allows you to draw cards based on the number of Drakes you control. Chose not to run this as, unlike Haskus, it’s possible it could be completely dead in your hand if you have none out and it’s not the greatest trade fodder either only being 2 shards.

Holder of Truth - Action card that allows you to force your opponent to put their best card from their palette straight in the dregs. Excellent pairing with Cintimani Stone as you could then turn it against them. Also, much like Jali, gives you knowledge of what your opponent’s plan is as well.

That's all from me for now guys!

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