Rimmen Siege Weapons is a new legendary support card in The Elder Scrolls Legends Moons of Elsweyr.

A Look at Elder Scrolls Lore

Rimmen, also known as Rim’kha in the Khajiit language, is the capital of the region Anequina, which is the major location in Elder Scrolls Online – Elsweyr. Leading up to the Elsweyr storyline, Euraxia Tharn conquered the city with the rest of Northern Elsweyr. She murdered the royal family and passed several acts to oppress the citizens, including a fur tax for Khajiit traders, because of their hairs spoiling their wares. She also ordered the construction of Siege Weapons to destroy Rimmen should the people start a rebellion. Euraxia also collaborated with a Necromancer cult led by Zumong Phoom. To learn more about Rimmen and the events in ESO Elsweyr, check out the UESP website.

Rimmen Siege Weapons in The Elder Scrolls Legends

Rimmen Siege Weapons is a red 3-cost legendary support with the following ongoing effect: at the start of your turn, each friendly creature deals 1 damage to your opponent. The support card is an exciting new addition to aggressive beatdown token decks. At the same time it also synergizes well with existing mechanics like Pilfer and Empower. On the other hand, support removal is very prominent in the meta, so there is a large risk of playing this support only for it to be removed by your opponent immediately. Therefore, before we look at synergies in more detail, let’s look at the card’s utility using Quadrant Theory.

Rimmen Siege Weapons during Opening

Fifth Legion Trainer

Scouting Patrol

Relentless Raider

During opening, Rimmen Siege Weapons can already start pushing for additional damage. Let’s do a best case scenario, assuming you have the Ring of Magicka. You play Fifth Legion Trainer on turn 1. Follow this up with two Scouting Patrols and a Relentless Raider next turn. This leaves you with 11 damage across 6 creatures on board. On turn three, you play the Siege Weapons and swing face for 11 plus 2 additional points of damage from the Raider. Your opponent will be sitting at 16 points of health by then. At the beginning of turn 4, your opponent will take another 6 points of damage from the Siege Weapons.

Your creatures will do the rest, when you swing for an additional 10. Of course, this scenario assumes the best possible draw for you and the worst possible draw for your opponent, but it shows how dangerous Rimmen Siege Weapons can be.

If you see them played, do everything you can to remove them quickly. At a minimum, remove as many of your opponent’s creatures as possible. With no creatures on board, your opponent’s Siege Weapons will not have any effect.

Rimmen Siege Weapons at Parity

Rimmen Siege Weapons at parity is simply bad. You play a support with no immediate impact, while your opponent uses his creatures to gain control over field lane. Leaving their creatures unopposed and playing to shadow lane might gain you additional damage. However, you should be careful to not lose the race. In addition, your opponent can at any point in time oppose you in shadow and dictate trades, while continuing to dictate trades in field as well, leaving them with a strategic advantage.

Rimmen Siege Weapons when Winning

When you are winning and have a board presence, the Siege Weapons support your assault. If you are able to play 4 creatures to shadow lane, and your opponent does not have mass-removal or support removal at their disposal, you can get a decent amount of additional damage in, even if your opponent puts down a number of guards. The Siege Weapons can provide a good amount of reach if your deck is able to build a wide board quickly.

Rimmen Siege Weapons as a Turnaround

As a turnaround card, Rimmen Siege Weapon is mostly useless. If your opponent is at very low health, you might be able to force them to trade into your creatures, instead of going face. Unfortunately, they will be able to dictate trades which will at most buy you an additional turn, but not improve your own board state by much, nor heal for a lot.

Card Evaluation – Summary

To put some numbers behind this – here is our card evaluation by quadrant squeezed into a 5-point scale.

Quadrant Opening Parity Winning Losing Rating 4 1 3 1

Rating Scale: 1 – Very Weak. 2- Weak. 3- OK. 4- Strong. 5- Very Strong.

Synergies for Rimmen Siege Weapons

Leveraging Wide Token Decks

Marked Man

Steam Constructor

Strategic Deployment

Imperial Reinforcements

Token decks that go wide during the early game will allow you to deal the most damage. Cards like Markath Bannerman, Raiding Party, Scouting Patrol, Marked Man, Imperial Reinforcements, Strategic Deployment or Steam Constructor are just a few examples of cards that summon multiple creatures at once. For Siege Weapons to work effectively, your deck needs to be able to build a wide board with as many different creatures as possible. Otherwise, Reverberating Strike can immediately destroy the four recruits or imperial grunts that you have just summoned. In terms of damage potential, Siege Weapons are comparable to a cheaper Divine Fervor. However, they do not provide the additional resilience to your creatures’ health.

Getting More Value out of Pilfer

Palace Prowler

Descendant of Akatosh

Blood Pact Messenger

Daring Cutpurse

Cyriel

Ashlander Punisher

Master of Thieves

Thieves’ Den

In Hlaalu, Crusader or Archer, Rimmen Siege Weapons gets you a bigger benefit from your pilfer creatures. While pilfer effects have always been relatively low tempo, Rimmen Siege Weapons allows you to double their effectiveness. Since there are a huge number of creatures with pilfer, we cannot possibly go through all of them in detail. However, we can outline some of the variety of effects that these cards may provide:

Buff up your creature (Descendant of Akatosh, Daring Cutpurse, Elsweyr Lookout, Baandari Bruiser, Tenmar Swiftclaw, Quin’rawl Burglar, etc.),

Draw additional cards (Baandari Opportunist, Blood Pact Messenger, Rajhini Highwayman, Bandit Ringleader),

Gain additional magicka this turn (Palace Prowler, Torval Crook, Brynjolf, Blackwood Distiller) or reduce the cost of the top card of your deck (Cyriel),

Equip a steel dagger to another creature (Prowl Smuggler),

Summon tokens (Pack Leader),

Tutor a specific card from your deck (Dagi-raht Mystic tutors supports, Forsworn Looter tutors items, Sails-through-Storms summons the top creature of your deck, snowballing on the Siege Weapon, Goblin Skulk allows you to draw a random 0-cost card from your deck),

Transform creatures being summoned during the same turn into random Daedra (Heretic Conjurer),

Summon a random Willpower creature that costs 3 or less (Brellach Commander) or summon a 3/3 Cathay-Raht (Monastic Champion)

and much more…

Needless to say that cards like Thieves’ Den and Master of Thieves can help to snowball pilfer effects out of control…

Triggering Empower more Consistently

Alchemy

Wish

Soul Shred

Some cards with the empower mechanic are already seeing play (e.g. Spoils of War, Debilitate, Channeled Storm). Rimmen Siege Weapons triggering a wide board of creatures will definitely work nicely with Spoils of War. A more consistent trigger could also be provided to Soul Shred or Wish.

Assume you have four creatures hidden in shadow lane (e.g. Imperial Reinforcements). With four Rimmen Siege Weapon triggers and 4 swings to face, Wish can summon a 10-cost creature on turn 4 or 5 for you.

Maybe Rimmen Siege Weapons will also help in building a consistent mill deck! With a maximum of 16 empower triggers from 8 creatures (not counting any additional Nord Firebrands from hand), Soul Shred could theoretically banish the top 36 cards of a dual color, or the top 54 cards of a tri-color deck!

Drain Creatures

Golden Initiate

Moonlight Werebat

Conjurer’s Spirit

Rimmen Siege Weapons combined with drain creatures allows you to heal a little bit for each drain creature getting triggered at the start of your turn. This can be useful when you are racing against another aggro deck. In particular, creatures with prophecy and drain (like Golden Initiate and Moonlight Werebat) can benefit from Siege Weapons being already in play.

Summary

Rimmen Siege Weapons is an interesting new card with strengths during opening and when you are winning, but clear weaknesses at parity or when you need a turnaround. The support can see play in proactive aggressive decks that are tailored for their synergy to the Siege Weapons and run a larger amount of small creatures. Control decks should avoid the card and mid-range decks will have to weigh its cost and low tempo during an earlier phase of the game against the benefits it can offer a few turns later down the road. The card has some combo potential and might be a key ingredient in a deck aimed at milling your opponent. It can definitely be used as OTK material in some memes with Elsweyr Lookout.

Rimmen Siege Weapons provides a decent push to creatures with the pilfer mechanic and can potentially bring some of the lower-cost pilfer creatures back to the meta. Whether this is enough to push a dedicated Hlaalu Pilfer deck into viability will remain to be seen. It is at least conceivable that Red Aggro Crusader or Yellow Token Crusader might run it and add in some specific pilfer creatures to tutor items or to refill their hands and perhaps even to regain a bit of life. If more strong pilfer creatures get released with Moons of Elsweyr, the evaluation of this card might shift a little bit upwards even. It’s definitely an interesting one to try in a few aggro decks once the set is released.

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