New cards for Hex TCG’s ninth set, Doombringer, are being spoiled at full force (our full Hex spoiler page) but if you’ve been following the game for some time there’s perhaps one legendary spoiler that lingers in the back of your mind, eagerly anticipating its reveal. We are talking about the mysterious cycle of Constructs known as the Eternals, these troops have been known to pack some of the most interesting and powerful abilities in the game and their shardless nature allows decks of all types to accommodate them should they be able to afford its high casting cost.

Before we share the Eternal for Doombringer, here are the past Eternal cards of previous sets (we actually got two Eternal cards in Frostheart with Eternal Relic).

“If there is some sort of cosmic design, perhaps through their eyes it can be found.”

Ok with that out of the way, we present the Eternal Curator:

The Eternal cards have historically not needed many lines of text to leave its admirers in awe, and Eternal Curator certainly follows that trend. In fact, it might have the most ridiculous ability of them all and that’s saying quite a bit. You might be wondering what exactly this card does so to clarify: Eternal Curator will scan a deck and leave every card it only sees once in there, but if there are cases of 2 or 3 or 4 copies of a card in your deck, then it will leave the first one there but void the remaining ones. Cool right? But you know what, when it says ‘card’ it really means any ‘card’, so this also includes resource cards! So if you or your opponent is playing a Mono colored deck with only 1 type of basic resource…the deck will only have 1 resource left after playing this.

If your opponent does not have a copy of a certain card in their hand, crypt or play – you will know after playing this that you will potentially face a certain threat only once. This can be good against opponents who rely on a few key cards, but can be bad against aggro let’s say where the cards are interchangeable to the overall strategy and you’re just aiding them drawing into gas. The uses of this card can be quite varied, so let’s try to analyze some of the more interesting ones.

Eternal Curator can both be a combo killer and also combo facilitator. Decks that rely on a few key cards like Escalation will love to have their deck thinned to only ‘the good stuff’ and you’ll be facing a top deck war stacked in your favor. In terms of being a combo killer, Scout the Archives is a good example, as its key ability disappears when it’s left by itself. Another example of a card that relies on duplicates is Archon of Nulzann which cycled itself to find its other copy that is buffed by Replicator’s Gambit. So the Curator can be a double edged sword, be careful which combo deck you put it in and which combo deck you reserve it in against.

Another interesting use case is dealing with multiple copies of Bane cards like Spiderlings, only Purify allowed us to void them in this fashion before. This also helps when your opponent is filling their deck up with more and more of a certain card like Pack Raptor or The Ancestors’ Chosen.

To go in a different direction, and the most interesting route in my opinion, is going for mill. Your average deck usually runs about 15-20 different cards, so the milling potential when this hits the board should be around 30 cards…more if you manage to sneak it into play somehow. The thought of reanimating this on Turn 3 or 4 or something with Mindcall and Mordrom’s Gift (also the -1 cost gem if you’re in Immortal) sounds like a ton of fun and could be the first times we have a viable resource deprivation strategy. So we get reanimation, milling, and resource deprivation all in one deck..who doesn’t want to try that? And let’s not forget the 7/7 Invincible body can get some work done as well, especially against those pesky Blood decks.

While perhaps lacking the evasion and immediate impact that cards such as Eternal Seeker bring to the table, Eternal Curator in exchange provides a permanent irreversible impact on future turns like we have never seen before. This card can really be a gamechanger in every sense of the word and it will be interesting to see what effect it will have on the meta.

We’ve only managed to curate a few of the exciting new strategies this card allows, so if you’re looking to break this card keep an eye out for new spoilers and keep on brewing.