Magic: The Gathering is one of the most popular trading card game around the globe. While I’m not a hardcore fan like many of you are, I’m still really excited to see the collab coming through. So let’s jump right in on the review!

6★

Vraska

[4605]

Vraska Devil / Balanced Active Skill : For 3 turns, 2x RCV; Unlock all orbs and change all orbs to Wood, Dark and Heal orbs. (11 max CD) Leader Skill : 2x HP and 4x ATK for Wood Att.; Increase orb movement time by 2 seconds; 3x ATK when attacking with Wood and Dark

As a leader

Vraska has one big weakness in the leader skill and that is the lack of RCV. For dungeons that aren’t hard hitting and don’t have many it is perfectly fine as it is, but once you start taking her into harder dungeons you will start finding it difficult to sustain. While it is possible to supplement RCV by using her active skill it’s still better to save your board active to when you need it and not just spam it whenever you need to heal up. To solve the problem you will probably want to find RCV supply off of your subs. Luckily we have just received Eir who is a huge RCV stick of her own and provides decent awakenings that can synergize with high HP leaders. Overall she’s a decent leader but if you want to take her on to more difficult dungeons you definitely should tackle her RCV problem by not relying on your active skills and getting a few Eir on your team is one of the best solution to her weakness.

As a sub

Decent stats all around, double combo enhance with FUA and balanced typing will allow her to sit on almost all the green teams. Not to mention she also has an excellent active skill. She is definitely one of the best green subs to have around, the only weakness being the lack of TE which can definitely be made up by planning ahead your board solves.

Vraska Assist form

[4633]

Vraska Devil Active Skill : For 3 turns, 2x RCV; Unlock all orbs and change all orbs to Wood, Dark and Heal orbs. (11 max CD) Leader Skill : None

Equips with skill boosts are very useful for those that like making farm builds or really chasing for crowns. One of the higher consistency team in Courage cup also required a skill boost equip to be on Ilmina , but since it is on a leader you can always find a whale friend to do it for you. Overall skill boosts equip is a very luxury thing that most people will not have any use of. Besides, there is always a farmable skill boosts equip if you ever need one, so just keep her in the other form, she’s much more useful there.

Jhoira

[4603]

Jhoira Balanced Active Skill : Recover 50% of total HP and remove bind state & Awoken Skill Bind; Other allies’ skills charge by 1 turn (9 max CD) Leader Skill : [7×6 board] 3x ATK when attacking with Water and Fire; 3x ATK and reduce damage taken when 8 or more combo.

As a leader

There are not any leaders that Jhoira can pair with that solely utilize the Blue/Red bicolor activation, it’s unfortunate but all we have is Hermes , Sun Quan and Ranma(s) which all have lackluster multipliers. The closest leader that can utilize the B/R matching while providing good multiplier is probably Yuki and even then you’ll be looking to run more colors on the team to fully utilize the pairing.

While looking at a 7×6 leader I’m sure many would automatically compare to Diablos but here are a few strength and weaknesses that we have to compare:

Limitation Need B/R on board, so it limits the board/orb changer active that you can use. Just combo, no limitation. Scaling Multiplier broke down to two parts, 3x from 8c and 3x from B/R. All multiplier is concentrated in reaching 8c. Active A direct copy from Odindra, not very useful when there isn’t awakening binds around but can be inherited over since its cooldown is short Long cooldown that can provide damage, very difficult to recharge back. Awakening skill Have no problem providing damage to all spawns and 10 combos High attack with one combo enhance guard break

So in the end I’m not going to tell you which is better since they are good in their own right, but I’ll mention a few things that you should consider.



Do you have absorb shield null active? If you do then you can ignore the scaling part, Diablos suck at damage controlling but you can bypass that with absorb shield null actives. Can you build a team that doesn’t kill activation on Jhoira? Often times it’s irrelevant but having a few Urd , Mori or Weld really synergize with Jhoira. If not you will have to resort to other actives that are distributed to more colors, which can greatly reduce your damage output. Are you dealing with a lot of awakening skill binds? Namely in A4 and AA there are a lot of awakening skill binds, that’s where Jhoira’s active will really shine.



Jhoira is definitely one of the best 7×6 leader to date, she works greatly as a swap base in Alt. Arena since after you swap her with another leader you will be looking to use her base active a lot.

As a sub

Limitation Requires 7×6 for to consistently activate 10 combo Requires only 7 combo which is a lot more consistent but much lower output Latent Optimization High flexibility, can be specialized against any typing Can only specialize against Physical typing Stat difference Low stat overall Much higher HP and RCV

Without mentioning the typing difference and how they wouldn’t fit on certain teams due to that, I will run down the general difference and how they make a difference. In order for Jhoira to be a consistent damage dealer you will be required to have 7×6 board, and that is really the only prequestie for her to be a better sub on your team than Odindra. If setup is going to be on 6×5 then I’d still suggest using Odindra since the damage output will be at least consistent. The stat difference is minor but there’re probably rare cases where Odindra will allow you to tank a big preempt.

The most common case for Jhoira to become a sub is by using leader swap, aside from that I really can’t imagine having her as a sub normally. It is like saying there are a better 7×6 leader out there better than Jhoira where it is really fine to just lead with Jhoira.

Balanced typing gives her a lot of flexibility on team building, she can definitely be used to supplement damage on certain typing that your team composition is weak against. Also if your team requires her active to be up for most awakening bind spawn in Alt. Arena then you will definitely want to put a few SDR on her.

Should I trade for her?

So many will ask should I trade for Jhoira? Since that is the only full awakening skill unbind NA is getting now. My answer is really no, the usage of awakening skill unbind is very limited, only in A4 and AA. First off if you don’t do these dungeons, or plan on doing these dungeons you definitely should not trade for her. Secondly, what is your team and how are you going to use her? Are you going to put her on your team? Are you going to lead with her? Or are you going to inherit her over. For the first case is she actually going to do what Odindra can’t? She is indeed a powerhouse if you can reach 10 combo , but if you’re not using it on a 7×6 board it is very inconsistent and at that point you should just run Odindra instead, who also has a ~300 weighted stat difference versus Jhoira. For the second case if you can make sure your pairing is valid and your team functions well then go ahead, she will be great in that case. For the third case a vanilla awakening skill unbind will only prevent awakening skill binds into leader binds on Hera Sowilo in Alt. Arena. The chance of this is roughly 10% and if Hera Sowilo doesn’t spawn then your inherit skill will have no value in later floors. A vanilla awakening skill unbind is very different from what Joker or Sakura can do. Both Joker and Sakura will be able to buy you an extra turn on floor 19 and 20 in Alt. Arena, and that’s what makes them so great.

Jhoira Assist form

[4632]

Jhoira Balanced Active Skill : Recover 50% of total HP and remove bind state & Awoken Skill Bind; Other allies’ skills charge by 1 turn (9 max CD) Leader Skill : None

This is the first cloud resist equip in the game. Truth be told I never had problem with cloud mechanics but if I ever end up having dupe Jhoira I’ll definitely make one in assist form since there isn’t much value to having 2 Jhoira.

Nicol Bolas

[4601]

Nicol Bolas Dragon / Devil Active Skill : For 1 turn, void all damage taken; Haste team by 2 turns (18 max CD) Leader Skill : [No Skyfall] 2.5x ATK and reduce damage taken when 5 or more combos; Increase ATK based on the amount of orbs leftover, up to max 12x (Starting from 8 orbs)

As a leader

There are a lot to talk about for Nicol Bolas as a leader but first off here’s the table of its scaling:

# of orbs left 9+ 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Multiplier 1x 4x 5x 6x 7x 8x 9x 10x 11x 12x With 5c+ 2.5x 10x 12.5x 15x 17.5x 20x 22.5x 25x 27.5x 30x Double lead 6.25x 100x 156.25x 225x 306.25x 400x 506.25x 625x 756.25x 900x

Many people have looked at Nicol and said he’s the next Anubis , Kaede or even Amen . There’s no arguing that there are a lot of similarity with them but ultimately the teams will play out differently and certainly achieve different things.

In farming setups you can easily swipe a mono color board and get 144x multiplier. By using mono color board with other actives such as double row makers you will be able to achieve 900x easily and you can also achieve 756.25x using single row maker and making this board. While he does offer a lot of flexibility it’s hard to really envision something that only he can do and the others cannot. Especially since Amen provides a much higher multiplier there’re more flexibility in leader pairing that Nicol will not be able to. For example here’s a build for evo stone dungeon:

Inherit A Team A Inherit B Team B

The only reason this build was able to work is because Amen has a tremendous amount of firepower. Nicol on the other hand will not be able to do the same, but he’s usable for almost all the farming content.

For practical content tackling many would like to compare him with Anubis but I believe that it is absolutely wrong and they are nowhere alike aside from the maximum multiplier. Nicol operate off of clearing the board, in a sense I have to make high combo but in truth it is not really the case. On a board with 5 orbs in each color(RBGLDH) I will still be able to activate Nicol’s leader skill whereas I will not be able to do anything with Anubis or in fact many other leaders. What Nicol Bolas offers is a tremendous flexibility in orb management, he is similar to Amen in that aspect but with much more flexibility but of course with the trade off being that his multiplier is much lower.

His team building for content tackling can definitely be strengthend by combo enhance but it is not limited to that and you can definitely utilize L-attack and TPA while being creative with your board solving.

Regardless of how you would like to use him as a leader there is always one big weakness with him, that is the lack of unbindability . Obviously this really isn’t an issue if the dungeon you are doing doesn’t have binds but often times there are and it is important to get an active unbind or inheriting an equip with bind resists . Now you may wonder why can’t I utilize bind recovery awakening ? The answer is that you will still be receiving skyfall if you utilize bind recovery awakening and you will be forced to sit on that floor again, which isn’t always desireable.

As a sub

He is definitely a strong dark TPA sub to have, given that you are running a dark TPA team. His active is very strong on any team so he is definitely worth it to just put it on your dark team even if just for the active. His killer options are very poor and that’s where he really become less competitive to other dark TPA cards, but again do people play TPA teams?

A little on the active skill

Damage nullify shield is always strong, it will allow you to tank many things that you aren’t meant to tank. His active will buy you a turn and let you charge 3 turns into the rest of your team which can be handy in situations such as facing off strong spawns where your board got trolled. It is also true that damage nullify shields aren’t that hard to obrain, we’ve had Lin Yao and Takuma which are both 5★ and are much easier to obtain than Nicol. So if you were looking to trade for Nicol just for the active you should definitely hold off since there are other accessible ways to similar actives that are arguably stronger.

Nicol Bolas Assist form

[4631]

Nicol Bolas Dragon Active Skill : For 1 turn, void all damage taken; Haste team by 2 turns (18 max CD) Leader Skill : None

A bind resist with strong active is definitely sought after, the question is do I really need it? The most general application is probably slap it onto your Mitsune Hunter but Nicol can definitely be used for other strong leaders such as himself . Regardless I will most likely only make this with dupes because while the active is very strong I don’t need to make it into assist form to use it and there is almost no situation where I’ll need the bind resist .

Karn

[4599]

Karn Machine / Physical Active Skill : Recover all HP; change orbs to Light, Heal and Jammer orbs (11 max CD) Leader Skill : 3x ATK and reduce damage taken when matching 4 or more connected Jammer orbs; 4x ATK and reduce damage taken when matching 2 or more Jammer combos

As a leader

Just don’t. His leader skill is so orb hungry and asking for consistent feed of Jammer orbs is just asking to use up all your active skills. He’s essentially a 1/1/1 leader just because of how active reliant it is.

As a sub

The triple combo enhance makes him competitive amongst the light cards. His latent killer selection isn’t half bad either. God killer latents are always utilized in Alt. Arena to kill Metatrons and Kalis . Balance killer latent are often utilized to deal with Hashihime in Alt. Arena, she proves to be difficult especially for light teams. Healer killer are usually utilized against LMeta and Lkali especially on light teams since the counterpart to those spawns are Dark att. So just by looking at his typing and awakening he’s pretty decent, but his active skill really throws me off.

There are some leaders that can utilize Karn decently, namely Edward and Miru . His position on Miru team is very solid but on Edward not so much. Edward benefits greatly from Karn’s heal but by doing so you limit your team building to lights only which kills off the strongest point of Edward, the flexibility. Another place to use him is on a combo team that does not have any color requirement, so perhaps a light focused Mitsune hunter team. It really sucks that his active is relatively long or else I’d be more open to running him on teams that don’t work with his active.

Karn Assist form

[4630]

Karn Machine Active Skill : Recover all HP; change orbs to Light, Heal and Jammer orbs (11 max CD) Leader Skill : None

The awakening set should already remind you something similar, Kralice Rapier . To be quite honest I don’t rate Karn’s assist form highly just because I’ll never end up needing the row enhancements . Overall the 2 turn delay is just more useful compared to an active that kills activation for 90% of the team. It’s sad to say this but Karn’s assist form should only be considered when you can utilize his active, such as maybe on an Edward team, Yog team or a Miru team.

5★

Nissa Revane

[4612]

Nissa Revane Healer Active Skill : For 1 turn, 4x ATK for Wood Att. (10 max CD) Leader Skill : 5x ATK when attacking with 2 or more Heal combos; halves damage received when matching 5 Heal orbs in a cross formation

3x is a good meme but when am I ever gonna need to unbind myself 9 turns? Anyways the only thing usable about Nissa is the active, while it is not stellar it is at least usable. If you don’t have Bacches , relevent gemstone princesses , their VDay variations , or farmable alternatives , you can use Nissa. Obviously this active only last one turn and is weaker than a lot of the gemstones but this active will still allow you to overcome a lot of tanky spawns.

Chandra Nalaar

[4611]

Chandra Nalaar Attacker Active Skill : Deals damage equal to 10% of enemies’ max HP; Change far left and far right column to Fire orbs (15 max CD) Leader Skill : 4x ATK when attacking with 2 or more Fire combos; 2x ATK when matching 5 or more connected Fire orbs.

The selling point of this card is the active, and specifically the double column generator. It will certainly be usable by leaders such as Shishio or Madu . They can generate a large amount of damage using just 5 red orbs alongside L-attack stacking or killer stacking. The application on this active is usually on dungeons that are long but with spawn that aren’t so tanky. Using Chandra’s active will allow you to use one column for one floor and save the other column for the next floor, simlarly to how Sado is applied on many red row farming teams. If speed farming is not your interest then she is probably not something you will look forward to having.

Liliana Vess

[4610]

Liliana Vess Devil Active Skill : Deal Dark damage equal to 50x of team’s Dark Attack value to all enemies; Change top row to Dark orbs; Lock Dark orbs. (12 max CD) Leader Skill : 2x ATK and RCV for Dark Att.; 3x ATK when matching 6 or more connected Dark orbs.

The best part about this card is the active. An active that nukes while generating a locked row will always be looked at for farm builds and often times in ranking dungeon. So a possible application of this active can be on Shishio farming team, buttoning one floor and using the orb generated to clear the next. Easily 2 floors in one active, given the active does enough damage. Since the damage is in question, let’s quickly look at some calculations:



Base Contribution +225950 each +301330 each +200550 each

: I did not factor in the inherit bonus stat because she can be inherited anywhere on the team.

These are some of the cards that I think are most likely to be used alongside Liliana, Dark Ideal has the highest attack in Dark cards on solo mode, Vajrabhairava has the higest attack on coop mode and Shishio is where I believe it would be used the most if on any team. Looking at the numbers, they aren’t exactly amazing but she does have the potential to output more than what Nergi hunter can.

Jace Beleren

[4609]

Jace Beleren Balanced Active Skill : Delay enemies by one turn; Lethally poison all enemies. (12 max CD) Leader Skill : 1.5x HP and 4x ATK for Water Att.; Increase orb movement time by 2 seconds; 2x RCV when matching 4 Heal orbs.

So a little insider info, his active poison is 70x of the attack value. This active is very similar to Rathian in a sense that they both delay and do damage. One thing Jace’s active can do better than Rathian is that you will be able to kill Gaia with a base that has attack value higher than 2857 whereas Rathian requires 3200 attack. The difference is probably very irrelevant for Alt. Arena since Rathian assist offers a lot more goodies but for the time Gaia appears in monthly or other challenges you will be able to deal with her quite easily.

Note: Jace active does slightly more than 200k damage with 2857 base attack, meaning you can’t use it against Sopdet.

Gideon Jura

[4608]

Gideon Jura Physical Active Skill : For 3 turns, reduce damage taken(35%); For 3 turns, increase combo count by 1 (13 max CD) Leader Skill : 5x ATK when HP is above 50%; 8x ATK when HP is below 20%; May survive a single hit that would normally kill you with 1 HP.

The first thing I thought after seeing this card is that “Cool, I’ll be able to use it in Eir dungeon so people stop failing to make 8 combos.” Then I realized I probably need +2 combos or even +3 combos to make it relevant. Jokes aside we do have a very similar active skill to this and that is Enoch . They are similar because they provide the same shield and the second half the skill both provide combo one way or another. By providing at least 2.5 second to my orb movement time it is very easy for me to full combo the board. The cutoff where it matters for these two is that if I can already full combo the board or if the board is bad, Gideon will still provide me another combo whereas Enoch doesn’t really do anything. Another case is if I have a leader that locks my orb movement time at 4 seconds, the second part of the skill will not have any effect. If he was released at the time before Diablos was in PAD then I’d definitely say this is one of the most broken assist for Anubis since it allows tanking DQH in A3 so easily and +1 combo will bring so much consistency to activation.

35% shield for 3 turns in its own is not so valuable nowadays due to the fact that most teams have some sort of defensive mechanic and 35% shield doesn’t push them over enough to tank the larger hits. Overall you’ll probably not find too much use of this card.

Serra Angel

[4607]

Serra Angel God Active Skill : Unlock all orbs; change Wood, Jammer and Poison orbs to Light orbs (7 max CD) Leader Skill : 2x HP and RCV for Light Att.; 3x ATK when 5 or more combos.

Really just a short unlock active, nothing else to it. Literally the worst card to roll in this collab.

Shivan Dragon

[4606]

Shivan Dragon Dragon Active Skill : For 1 turn, reduce enemies’ defense to 0; For 1 turn, 3x ATK for Dragon type (13 max CD) Leader Skill : 2x HP and ATK for Dragon type; 2.5x ATK when matching 5 or more connected Fire orbs.

There’re a few spawns that fits in its killer category, namely Hadar , Folklore , Hysferzen , Kakkab , Kamui , Another Geist and Diena . None of these are difficult spawns so initially looking at Shivan I don’t have much expectation, but since it is only a 5★ I will still like to get one just in case something new comes out that fit into this set of killers.

Farmables

Demonlord Belzenlok

[4614]

Demonlord Belzenlok Devil Active Skill : For 1 turn, increase the drop rate of Poison orbs; randomly spawn 3 Dark and Poison orbs (3 max CD) Leader Skill : 2.5x ATK for Devil type; 4x ATK when 6 combo or more; Halves ATK & damage received when matching Poison or Mortal Poison orbs

Belzenlok has decent awakenings for a farmable, though his stats leave much to be desired. He has a suprisingly decent combo based leader skill with 64x multiplier in the base form , which can be better than many 5* REM rolls before their final evolutions. He’s got a evolution material killer and a machine killer, but the former can be obtained via farmable equips and he’s unable to stack latents of the latter.

His active can remove 99 turn jammer/poison skyfalls, but he requires 25 skill ups and cannot be inherited so you might as well just use DFenrir ‘s skill up. At max skill it can be cycled but honestly, do you really want permanent poison skyfall?

Weatherlight



Weatherlight [4618] Machine Active Skill : Haste team by 1~3 turn (15 max CD) Leader Skill : Cannot be used on a team; Cannot have latent awakenings

Off color OE equips like the heart breakers are useful for ensuring enough enhanced orbs are present when using a full board swipe like Dios or MGoe in order to deal enough damage. Having 2 Weatherlights assisted is equivalent to having one of each heart breaker assisted, pratically guarenteeing at least one enhanced orb on the board. A long base CD of 20 makes it a good SDR inherit for the aformentioned full board subs.

The skill itself is useless though, as it’s a 15 CD haste with no secondary effects.

The Navigator’s Compass is the only thing needed from the collab to make Weatherlight. Since it is tradable, consider keeping a few extras.

Conclusion

Nicol Bolas and Vraska are my favorite from this collab, they both have interesting play style and maybe I’ll find an excuse to make myself farm an Eir . Jhoira and Karn are like luxury cards that aren’t even fun so that’s why I don’t like them, there is no cases where I absolutely need them. From the 5★ I want a Chandra, Liliana and perhaps Shivan Dragon, they have niche usage and that’s really all you should be looking for in 5★s. The rest of the 5★ aren’t so stellar but their active are still pretty decent for newer players.

Overall don’t bother with this collab too much, take a few roll and leave it. Don’t chase anything.

[show_avatar avatar_size=60 id=9 user_link=authorpage align=left display=show_nickname] Vraska’s active is only one of 2 unlock + full board that makes hearts, the other being Pixel Cecil. This is useful versus 9Garuda in particular. The rcv boost aspect of it is largely outclassed by Halloween Verdandi, but still worth it if you do not have her and run high HP/low RCV dark and wood teams that might not be able to heal up to full from a tricolor board with heals.

Liliana’s lock can create a box for VDPing troublesome enemies while serving as a partial defense against spinners.



[show_avatar avatar_size=60 id=6 user_link=authorpage align=left display=show_nickname] Jhoira provides awoken bind clear, 7×6(in base form) and cloud resist(in equip form), but I can just borrow her(both the base or the cloud resist equip) from a friend if I really needed all those things at once. Odindra is generally a better sub (and cuter too). Vraska is a good leader, but her playstyle isn’t anything new and Eir won’t be on NA for another few months. I will be skipping this collab outside of farming 5 Weatherlights.

