Outsiders pre-release
Outsiders pre-release

Outsiders pre-release

Hey folks,

Late post from Outsiders' pre-release weekend. A recap of the spice over the weekend, some notes on how I feel about the set after having a chance to try it out, and of course how I played!

Spice of the weekend

I attended my LGS' pre-release at Troll Trader Bromley. Due to train strikes, which have become the norm in London for the time being, there were only 7 of us at the event, which is still a very decent number so quite happy with that.

I opened my six packs, no spice except Infiltrate. In fact, no spice were pulled at TT, which is a shame as other store's pre-release were absolutely on fire! The GOAT Shahmir pulled the Fable, Plague Hive, and Vambrace of Determination at R0, then pulling Vambrace again at DS the next day. He can't keep getting away with this.

At the BMC pre-release on Monday, the lovely David Madgin pulled the Fable, with David Dyson pulled Flick Knives and amazing Jaco Sepe pulled Trench of Sunken Treasure. Absolutely nutty!

Thoughts on the set

As for the cards themselves, are they any good? Yes, yes they are. Outsider seems to have done what players wanted it to do.

It has given the newest class, Assassin, a footing in the meta. The class feels unique to me and has options for different playstyles. I can go for a more on-hit effect with the Spike-with cards. I can use Uzuri's ability to cheat a strong 2-cost attack like CnC. But, my favourite playstyle comes from Flick Knives. I look forward to launching my cards across the table and recovering them with Concealed Blade. Probably not, cards cost money too.

Flick Knives

Outsiders also gave Rangers the much needed bump to make them more competitive. A lot of new cards are giving Rangers nasty on-hit effects, such as Barbed Undertow and all the ones giving opponent Inertia, Frailty and Bloodrot.

When building Lexi now, it feels like I have an abundant of arrows and builds to choose from. Whereas before it was more like one of two ways. Azalea definitely has some new toys as well and I expect we will see the Azalea cult come out with some spicy builds before long.

I think the most exciting thing about the set, and last weekend, is the banger limited experience brought to us by Outsiders. If you are a fan of limited, this is the set.

In previous sets, playing sealed has been a bit lackluster due to a very hard segregation between different heroes. In Uprising for example, it is not uncommon to end up with a barely fun deck that doesn't really live up the hero's playstyle, i.e. you can open 6 packs and get majority Iyslander cards, but might not get enough Blues and the deck feels strange to play. Earlier sets like Rathe are even harder to play sealed as the distribution of classes between packs might be too even and you can't build any hero meaningfully, most would be generic cards plus a few class cards. Earlier sets were definitely more geared towards Draft.

In Outsiders, however, sealed felt great! All the events in London were sealed. Due to the fact that there are now dual-class cards, the pool of cards felt very flexible to build any of the 3 classes. Additionally, there's more hero in the limited format than before, which allowed for different pitch values of  the same card to still be useful, i.e. Benji can use more Blue Ninja cards whilst Katsu can use red/yellow. Quite a few London players echo the voice that this set is indeed a home-run for limited, and we can't wait to draft!

Some of my favourite card for limited has got to be Hurl and Short and Sharp.

Hurl
Short and Sharp

Hurl is such a cool card for Assassin to get their dagger on-hit effect. Short and Sharp is also super flexible for all the Ninja and Assassin heroes and really good in limited.

The event recap

As for the pre-release event itself I did pretty well!

My 6 packs gave me a workable Assassin deck. I didn't have quite enough cards to make an effective Ninja deck, and I felt my Ranger pool was a bit lackluster in arrows. I could have gone either way with Arakni or Uzuri, but opted for Arakni because I thought it was simpler to build around him. About 11/31 of my cards had stealth for go-again. Some of the cards themselves had go-again without stealth, such Hurl and Bleed Out. And finally, some bigger hitters like Wreak Havoc and Cut Down to Size to finish off the chain. The good ol' reliables like Ravenous Rabble and Come to Fight are also present in the deck. Come to Fight is pretty good in my opinion. It blocks 3, which not a lot of cards does in this set. It also gives Arakni's first stealth attacks a big power pump, which could threaten the on-hit. Equipment-wise, Toxic Tips was a fairly key equipment in the deck, apparently. It was a farily red-line deck, with only 5 or so Blues and a handful of yellows.

I probably could have still played Uzuri with that build. But, there wasn't enough time for me to re-think the deck between rounds.

My normal turn would usually look like this:

  1. A dagger in first.
  2. A go-again attack without stealth, if available. Hurl or Bleed Out
  3. The stealth attack with go-again, Infect, Sedate with reactions if needed
  4. Then some big attack at the end like Cut Down to Size or Destructive Deliberation

I don't think it is the most aggresive deck, but those on-hit effects turned out to have mattered in the end.

My first match was against Ethan Rambarran, who was on Riptide. This was an insanely fun and close match. It was strangely a fatigue game, but it seems to be a common experience for other players I've spoked to. Ethan was able to dish out a much bigger early game with multiple arrows averaging damage of around 8 to 12, which kept me on the backfoot, blocking out the damage and coming in for 1 attack per turn. At mid-game, I did let a turn through that dealt me a decent amount of damage and gave me Bloodrot. I responded with Toxic Tip's effect on Ravenous Rabble to give Inertia, followed by Back Stab with go-again, then ending it with Infectious Host to return Bloodrot to Ethan. My turn gave Ethan just about as much trouble as his did to me and a great example of why the limited experience was so much fun given how interactive it was. We continued to wither each other down until we were both on our last hand. I was on 1 health whilst Ethan was on 2 health. I managed to take this match by coming in with Spider's Bite, which Ethan responded with a blue Brush Off.

Brush Off, be mindful of when it prevents damage

I then reacted with Short and Sharp, which essentially nullified Brush Off as it only prevents exactly 1 damage. With no further reactions, I took the match with only 2 cards left in the decks and hand. A great game!

My next match was against Jason Hamer on Uzuri. This matchup was more aggressive, we were just swinging at each other most of the time. I feel like in a race, Arakni fairs a bit better. With my usual turn on a go-again attack, followed by stealth go-again, then another attack, my damage output was consistently higher. Once again, using Toxic Tips on the right turn to gain that on-hit effect was really good, as I managed to give Jason both a Frailty and Bloodrot in the same turn. It meant that it wasn't worth Jason swinging back the turn after, as Uzuri would deal less damage and still lose health. That turn really helped me gain momentum to close out the game.

My final game was against David Copson, who was also on Arakni. David's build was different to mine and more aggressive I'd say, whereas mine gave more on-hit effects.

In the early game, I was quite lucky that my Wreck Havoc actually triggered, as David arsenaled a Defence React which would have been bad for my later turns.

David opted to just put out as much damage as possible, and did so successfully as his Arakni had way more attack reactions than mine. I did sweat on his big damage turns. But equally, he was not blocking as much so I did manage to bring his health down to a range I can handle.

David's final turn was on 8 health and gave me a Frailty token whilst I was one 4 health. On my final turn, I had a yellow Short and Sharp in Arsenal and a pretty decent hand. But, Frailty made it difficult to output the damage I needed. I had to do the maths to figure out how to put out the most damage and close the game.

I played a red Bleed Out for 4 damage, paying the cost as my daggers are doing no damage at the moment due to Frailty. Followed by blue Prowl for 1 damage with go-again, buffing my next stealth attack. No blocks so far and 3 health to go. My final attack was a yellow Back Stab, for 3 damage due to Prowl. This did make David think a bit because if he overblocked, he wouldn't have much of a turn and I was still on 4 health, plus I would just save the react. He decided call my bluff, blocked with only 1 card in hand for 2. I sprung my react from the arsenal to come in for lethal. It was a really good game, we both had to do quite a bit of thinking near the end there.

I'm quite happy to have won the local pre-release and took home the Cold Foil Uzuri and playmat.

Cold Foil Uzuri and tokens

It was a successful event for the store as well. I am really hoping to get TT more spotlight so we can get certified for those bigger events like Skirmish and PQ!