Crucible Blacksmith

Crucible Blacksmith is the first “true”, unconditional Item Tutor in The Elder Scrolls Legends. The new blue 2-cost creature was recently revealed by Jele77 on her stream. Surprisingly, the Blacksmith is a Wood Elf and not a Redguard. The reason can be explained by Elder Scrolls Lore: During the time just before the Greymarch, the only blacksmith in the Shivering Isles that was able to craft Madness Ore is a Wood Elf named Cutter (thanks to mrswashbuckler for pointing this out).

And this is a good thing, because it gave the card artist the opportunity to make Crucible Blacksmith a real beauty. I guess, those Redguard aren’t that good-looking.

But, we are not only getting another card with awesome art: Crucible Blacksmith is also a true beauty at her trait. She fetches an item of your choice from your deck. No crazy conditions, like Forsworn Looter, where you need a 50-page handbook to consider what items he might fetch for you. No. Crucible is simple and very efficient. She gets the job done for only 2 magicka.

Crucible Blacksmith – Gifted in Versatility

Shield Breaker

Grappling Hook

Sentinel Battlemace

Stendar’s Hammer

Legends has many powerful items. Grappling Hook, Sentinel Battlemace, Stendarr’s Hammer, Ancestor’s Battleaxe and many more. As an aggro player, how often did you have a creature hiding in the Shadow Lane to deal those last 6 points of damage? Just a few points more to get your opponent to zero health. If only you could equip a powerful item to swing for these extra few points of damage. Crucible Blacksmith will do this trick for you, by allowing you to draw a Sentinel Battlemace exactly when you need it.

Cloak & Dagger

Your opponent has put down a Guard for protection? Fear not! How about fetching that single Shield Breaker from your deck? Crucible Blacksmith can provide you with a lot of versatility. Instead of running three copies of a single item, you can include three Blacksmith’ and a single copy of a few different items. This allows for much greater flexibility.

For example, a Shield Breaker to get past the Guards, Mace of Enumbrance to shackle a big creature or maybe a Grappling Hook to remove a threat across the lane? Maybe a Dragon Priest Mask to trigger another creature’s summon effect. There are so many of useful items. And with the new Dual Card Cloak & Dagger, Crucible Blacksmith can even fetch two items for you. One can be equipped to herself, while the other can help another creature survive. It’s options like this that will make Crucible Blacksmith a card that’s going so see a good amount of play.

Crucible Blacksmith & Dawnbreaker – Peace to the Undead

Dawnbreaker

Dawnbreaker is one of the best items in Legends. This is not only due to the +4/+4 buff but also to it’s ability to destroy an enemy Undead, i.e. a Vampire, a Spirit, or a Skeleton. This can make for such great tempo plays. Unfortunately (or luckily), the issue with Dawnbreaker always was it’s uniqueness. Thanks to Crucible Blacksmith this issue is now gone and both Mage and Tribunal Temple decks can now more reliably fetch Dawnbreaker from their deck.

With Gavel of the Ordinator and Umbra, Mage and Tribunal Temple also have some other interesting items at their item tutor’s disposal. Gavel Ordinator can provide a great upwards trade against a high-health creature. Umbra equipped to a creature with Regenerate or Breakthrough can equally be very efficient removal (unless your opponent runs a lot of Lethal. Probably it’s exactly these situational benefits that three copies of Crucible Blacksmith can help you with.

Crucible Blacksmith and Charge Creatures

Nord Firebrand

Steel Scimitar

Silvenar Tracker

Assassin’s Bow

The burst potential in a deck with Charge makes the tempo-loss of Crucible Blacksmith negligible. As a minimum, Crucible Blacksmith is like a Cliff Racer. All you need is a 1/1 Nord Firebrand in hand. Play the Blacksmith to fetch Assassin’s Bow from your deck and you are ready to hit for 4 damage with a Charge creature that even gains cover at the end of your turn. Yes, it dies to Firebolt, unfortunately.

Alternatively, in both Assassin and Dagoth you can also combo Crucible Blacksmith with Crazed Hunger, the Charge-Daedra from Isle of Madness. 5-magicka for 4 burst-damage. Want more resilience for your item? Play Mage Slayer on turn 3, followed on 4 by “Item Wood Elf” to add a Steel Sword for a swing of 6. This doesn’t even die to Lightning Bolt.

Want more damage than Cliff Racer on the same turn? Not a problem. Simply use Silvenar Tracker as the wielder of a Steel Scimitar and you get a 5-cost 5/3 Charge creature, if your opponent has a wounded creature in the lane. Five burst damage is done by what? 8-costs like Ancano or Swiftwing Dragon?! Reasonable value for your magicka here. Yeah, you will say Wood Orc Headhunter does the same and even has 4 health. But, do you really want to play Ugly Orcs when you can have Crucible Blacksmith?

Crucible Blacksmith – Lane Removal with a Lethal Staff of Sparks

Sanctuary Pet

Staff of Sparks

If your opponent is playing in the Shadow Lane you can drop a Santcuary Pet to slow them down and eradicate all enemy creatures (that are not immune to Lethal) on your next turn. All you need is Crucible Blacksmith and a Staff of Sparks in your deck as well as 8 magicka. A great lane removal option for Assassin and Dagoth decks.

Consistency for Mentor’s Ring OTK & Imaginery Might Decks

Mentor’s Ring

Ring of Imaginery Might

Several One-Turn-Kill decks rely on a combo of Mentor’s Ring being equipped onto a Charge creature. Usually, these decks are build around a single large creature such as Stealer of Secrets, Flesh Atronach or Pure-Blood Elder. Crucible Blacksmith will allow you to fetch Mentor’s Ring with 100% certainty. However, since most of the OTK-creatures cost 6 or more magicka, you will need to fetch the Ring on an earlier turn, unless you have some sort of magicka ramp (e.g. Tree Minder, Contracts, etc.) to get you to 13 magicka.

I will completely omit the fact, that Crucible Blacksmith is also an extremely interesting option for Tullius’ Conscription decks that can make it to 17 magicka (Telvanni). Just imagine what a Charge creature like Shadowmere or Crazed Hunger and Crucible Blacksmith could do…

Similarly, decks based on high-health creatures running the item Ring of Imaginery Might can get the item more consistently now. Usually, these decks were looking to get two Maple Shields and the Ring of Imaginery Might equipped on a Snowy Sabre Cat for a 15/15 creature that could swing twice. With Crucible Blacksmith it will be much easier now to find the combo pieces.

Aldora, the Daring and Crucible Blacksmith – Dream Team?

Aldora the Daring

Treasure Map

Corsair Ship

Battlemage has a new female power duo – Aldora, the Daring and Crucible Blacksmith. Aldora a 3/3 Nord for a cost of 3 is treasure hunting for an action, an item, a creature and a support card. If you find all 4, she gets an enormous buff of +6/+6. Aldora also summons a Skywag who gets a +1/+1 buff whenever a treasure hunter finds something.

It used to be pretty difficult to proc Aldora. But with Crucible Blacksmith you can fetch an item like Treasure Map. Equip this to Aldora to draw a support of your choice from your deck. This might actually get Aldora close to playable. With a Corsair Ship in deck, you have already six cards to provide you with an item and a support card pretty easily. With Isle of Madness, you can add in some additional Dual Cards to increase the chances of getting a creature and an action with a single draw. Might make a fun deck…

A Push for Treasure Hunt in General

Scroll Seeker

Ratway Prospector

Relic Hunter

Ruin Archaeologist

Crucible Blacksmith and her ability to draw Treasure Map might make an entire class of cards a bit more playable. Thus far, the Treasure Hunt mechanism has failed to deliver on value. This potentially changes with Crucible Blacksmith and Treasure Maps, as you can now fetch basically any card from your deck. Equip Treasure Map to Relic Hunter to fetch yet another item from your deck. Not only will this allow you to do more favorable trades, it will also thin your deck pretty nicely. Ever wanted to get two actions to hand? All it needs is Crucible Blacksmith and Scroll Seeker. Need a support for a combo deck? Ruin Archaeologist and Crucible Blacksmith will do the trick.

Not sure, if it is going to be enough to make Treasure Hunt decks viable, but you can certainly find some new trickery for some combo decks.

More Consistent Tribal Decks

Another option is to fetch the Ring of Lordship to reduce the cost of your tribal cards. Although the ring is not a unique item, you might still want to add-in a Crucible Blacksmith (or a Forsworn Looter) to fetch the Ring to hand. This ensures that you can play it once you have accumulated enough magicka to make a difference for your tribe. Note, that this is going to cost quite a bit of tempo, so you might want to be careful with this approach.

Summary

Lots and lots of space to experiment after Isle of Madness is released. As an item tutor, Crucible Blacksmith does a great job and facilities low-cost, but high-value plays, assuming that your deck is running a small but versatile set of items. The Blacksmith will also allow many combo decks to be more consistent and can also help some Treasure Hunt-cards to see more play.

There are plenty of cards allowing you to even get two items to hand from a single copy of Crucible Blacksmith. This is probably a very niche use, but all you need is to trigger the summon-ability twice. Cards like A Night to Remember, Winterhold’s Illusionist or Ulfric’s Uprising can help in this case. This is probably not something you want to build a deck around, but in case your deck is already running some items and cards with a lot of summon-effects, it might be interesting to experiment with Crucible Blacksmith.

As a “minimum”, you can use Crucible Blacksmith to buff a charge creature for some lovely extra-damage. Needless to say, that Crucible Blacksmith is also an excellent body to bear another item that was created “out-of-nowhere” by an item Pseudo-Tutor. All of a sudden she can even deal a bit of damage herself or do a trade.

If you liked this article, please leave a comment down below. Equally, if you would like to share some feedback, additional ideas or a deck that Crucible Blacksmith should be running in, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

Holoir

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