Card Spotlight – Stay Crafty my Friends

What do you do when Hogarth and Lixil are having an epic battle that is assuredly going to change the world?

You put on your rocket pack, your favorite music, some protective goggles, and a gauntlet that shoots lasers out of your index finger. No big deal, at least not for the most interesting Dwarf on Entrath.

“I don’t always farm Runes. But when I do, I prefer them to be Mysterious Runes.” – Crafty Skycarver

Yea, go ahead and read it again. I know I had to. To fully grasp what’s going on here, we need to understand what exactly a Mysterious Rune is. It’s the same thing as any other Rune, in that it is a constant with “when a resource enters your hand, revert this and play it for free.” So basically, as long as you can find resources, you can play actions from your crypt over and over again!

Is there a way to abuse this? Hmmm, I’m not sure…

Well, that was easier than we thought. Play Crafty Skycarver on turn three, then on turn four you activate Blue Sparrow’s charge power to put the Psychic Ascension into your crypt. Turn it into a Mysterious Rune by connecting with Crafty Skycarver. Then, after all that, you’ll still have four resources that turn! Finding a way to then get a resource into your hand to trigger the Mysterious Rune and become the Paragon of Thought shouldn’t be too difficult in a Ruby/Sapphire deck. And, if you manage to transform, it’s going to be pretty hard to lose from that point.

When I first saw Runeseeker, I thought the card had potential to see play if there was a good Sapphire/Ruby action deck. It turned out that six resources was just a tad too much to be constructed viable. However, when you cut that cost in half, you can really go places! It doesn’t happen the turn it comes into play like Runeseeker would, but you can do it multiple times if you are able to connect with your opponent’s face.

Having the combo of Crafty Skycarver into Psychic Ascension is exciting and fun, but ultimately I think we will get the most use out of Crafty Skycarver if we just have a good deck with a couple of Psychic Ascensions for the, “oops, cheap Psychic Ascension” kill. The rest of the deck would be a solid Sapphire / Ruby deck. We have some good cards in these shards to make a decent Sapphire/Ruby deck, but if Dead of Winter gives us just a couple more things, this deck could really rock. Here are just a small number of cards the deck would have access to:

Typically, you shouldn’t play interrupts with Crafty Skycarver. Something like Weave into Nothing turned into a Mysterious Rune won’t do much of anything. However, a Mysterious Runed Stifling Sting will still deal three damage in Rune form and can still act as an interrupt when it’s in your hand. Fury Chant is another way to go (if you’re an immortal kind of guy). Now all your Runes deal damage and you can Runebind your own stuff to deal damage! Runefusion seems like a solid addition here as well. Of course, Crafty Skycarver will get you even more value now. Not only will it transform a random action in your crypt into a Mysterious Rune, but now that Rune will deal two damage to your opponent because all runes are constants. YAY!

*You now see Crafty Skycarver in a bar surrounded by Promiscuous Succubi. He turns and looks directly at you while a Mysterious Rune lies right in front of him*

He says, “Stay crafty my friends.”

I am the most mysterious dwarf in the world.

Ali Aintrazi

@Alieldrazi on Twitter

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