Welcome back to Welcome to Sky! Today is our lucky post #13, and we’re taking a look at our new fifth Prism, Intellect! We’re going to illustrate some of the central concepts of Intellect, its playstyle, and some standout cards you can make use of, and what to watch out for in the coming weeks!

It’s Big Brain Time

As a Prism, Intellect aims to fulfill a new role not offered by any existing Prism. Here’s a quick review our other Prisms, their specialties and roles (for more details read our Prisms post):

Strength specializes in raw power, boasting durable Units that can overpower the opposition, and Spells that specialize in buffing Units or dealing damage to clear away foes.

Agility specializes in speed and aggression, pressuring opponents with Units, Spells that remove enemy Units, and cards that reward this low-to-the-ground, speed based playstyle.

Heart specializes in Units with death effects, as well as in recycling dead cards, making it an excellent supporting Prism to others that have key Units they want to reuse.

Wisdom specializes in defensive, long-term strategy, and excels at healing, stalling, and drawing cards, letting it keep its options open as it develops a long-term gameplan.

Intellect specializes in developing and employing combos of Spells and Units that can suddenly and rapidly take the lead and seize victory out of nowhere.

Intellect’s ability to facilitate combos ties into a few of its unique qualities. The first of which is a very powerful part of Skyweaver that's only been seen in limited quantities up until now, but which Intellect has in spades: copying effects.

As elaborated on in our posts on deckbuilding, you can only have one copy of any card in your deck. As a result, some cards and effects are quite powerful, as you will only get to play it once. Copy effects let you shatter that notion and deploy multiple copies of your best Unit to annihilate your foes. Soul Forge and Dual Boot also let you create a copy of a Unit without needing to even play it first, letting you copy a Unit worth 7-10 mana for just 5, albeit with weaker stats, which is why Intellect tends to focus on combos based on Spells and Unit’s effects, rather than combat.

To go along with its copy effects, Intellect has some amazing Units within its own Prism to make duplicates of.

Magnanimous’ body and Spell are unremarkable, but the fact that it discounts all Spells in your deck by 1 mana can save you a massive amount of mana, and summoning them early with something like Dual Boot or Soul Forge can vastly accelerate your game plan.

Zam is a key card in many combo decks. Dealing 2 damage for every Spell you play may not seem like much, but make a few copies of him, and your opponent is only a few Spells away from an early grave. Many Intellect cards like Supercharge and Manage Memory can also help you generate a lot of cheap or free Spells.

Finally, Dragomantium plays a far more defensive role. The value of giving your Hero Armor cannot be understated, and getting him to die early via Dual Boot or a Heart card like Wartlock can be a massive boon, and buy a huge amount of time for you to set up your combo.  

Intellect also boasts a number of effects which can search out specific Spells or Units, helping you smooth out your game plan and find what you need when you need it. Chrome Cast can help find certain Units, while cards like Kook Book and Seek can aid in finding small and largeSpells.

Finally, Intellect boasts formidable removal Spells including old classics like Frigid Blizzard and It’s a Trap!, as well as new ones like Volcanic Blast and Spike Slam, to help buy it even more time to set up its combos.

Beyond Combos

The fact that Intellect has a particular affinity for combos shouldn’t give you the impression that it is a one trick pony. It has a suite of amazing cards to help support and empower Aggressive, Midrange, and Control strategies to great effect.

Aggressive Cards

Don’t be fooled by Intellect’s sophisticated title. It's perfectly capable of brawling, and even keeping pace with the likes of Strength.

Starting us off, Coal Dozer is an unassuming 1/3 creature, but rapidly grows with each 1c card you play. If you get out Coal Dozer on the first turn, and follow up with 2-3 1c cards next turn, it’ll grow to a 3/5 - 4/6 on turn 2, and just keep going from there!

Cobalt is another Unit that seems meek at first, but its strength lies in its synergy with the metal Spell Lead Goblet, which gives all your Units +1/+1 and Lead, making Cobalt akin to a 3c 2/2 that buffs all your other Units when played, a terrifyingly powerful option.

Finally, Orion is a bit of a slower threat, but if played with a board of small token Units - Elderwoods, Zomboids, etc, can result in massive swings that can finish off weakened opponents in an instant.  

Midrange Cards

Focusing on a mix of offense and defense, midrange cards can be tricky to definitely identify, but Intellect has a fair number of standouts.

Vial Vendor is particularly amazing in decks that center on Units, as it can draw numerous 1c Spells for both players, but since you get to use them first, you can usually not only remove any Units/Spells your opponent gained in the exchange, but even deal damage to their Hero, if they draw their Spells from beyond deck.

Supermind has a weak statline, but by playing its teleport and then removing the Dazed on the Unit it summons, Supermind's Inspire - Mind effect will lock down two enemy units for a turn, buying you a lot of tempo, and with follow up Mind cards, its possible to stall for several turns with Supermind alone.

Hive is a long-term favorite that’s found a home in Intellect, offering a frustratingly durable armor body that pops out a new B Unit each turn, forcing your opponent to constantly try to squash the pests, or fall to a barrage of painful stings.

Control Cards

In addition to the aforementioned suite of removal, Intellect has some truly standout defensive cards.

Archivist is a huge healing option for a Spell-heavy deck focused on mulliganing its hand, and can give immediate benefits via its Spell as well. If copied via an effect, the healing it offers can become even crazier.

Gear Grind is an excellent removal tool for decks planning on having large hands, and will usually kill most early-midgame Units provided you’ve kept a decent hand size, while also letting a control deck refresh its hand to look for more answers to aggressive Units.

Blaze is a fantastically versatile Unit, playing like Allbane in the early-midgame by killing Units with its mass Flames effect and lategame, when their deck is already empty, a control deck will usually be happy to use Blaze’s attached Burn Out to dig deeper.

With that, we’ve reached the end of another post, so go forth and conquer with Intellect! There have been a number of balance changes to it this past week reining in some egregiously powerful options, but it's still very potent and provides countless amazing cards and options that no other Prism can replicate! Until next time, we’ll see you all in Sky!

Lethal Puzzle

See if you can figure out how to defeat your opponent using the game state presented below, in just one turn! Solution will be in the next post!

The solution to last post's lethal puzzle is also right below! Congratulations to everyone who solved it!

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