New Shadow Isles Card - Vaults of Helia

I'm going to guess this card is going to get a fair amount of play. The video showcased an extremely powerful Anivia -> The Rekindler synergery -- I know Anivia isn't in a great spot right now due to Hush and obliterate but if you can resummon enough maybe it gets to a point where it just doesn't matter. 

I'm curious how this will work when it kills a unit and you don't have another unit with 1 cost higher than that unit. Will it even kill the unit? Or will it just summon the next highest? The way it's worded makes me think it will just kill the unit entirely. Meaning that this card would counter its own gameplan by killing the highest cost unit every time and summon nothing after. The way it works makes me think it's probably best to put it in a Tryndamere deck or maybe a new upcoming Last Breath archetype from SI? Not really sure how it's gonna work out but it's a card I would love to tinker with.

Interesting mechanic and card. Not seeing ideas for using that one currently though.

Looking forward to seeing more landmarks.

They who endure support?

The biggest determining factor of whether this is good or not is how it handles cases in which you don't have a unit in your deck that costs 1 more. I think that there are three options for how it could work

1. It kills the unit and summons nothing: This would make the card fairly bad because it would be a significant drawback in the late game

2. It doesn't do anything: This would make it a fair card

3. It looks at your deck and kills the most expensive ally that has at least one unit in your deck that costs 1 more than it. This would be really powerful because it would keep "upgrading" your board even once you summon your most expensive unit, and it would almost always trigger no matter how you build your deck. You could even choose not to include units of a specific mana cost if you don't want to destroy them. 

can landmarks be killed / obliterated ?

For sure Falling Comet can kill a landmark, since it shows that happening in the video.

Quote From CrDave

They who endure support?

I'd say it can get a bit clunky and too slow. TWE has a pretty defined curve and typically tries to end the game by t7 or 8. This card doesn't help that progress that much, and it doesn't feed TWE fast enough.

Quote From thazud

Quote From CrDave

They who endure support?

I'd say it can get a bit clunky and too slow. TWE has a pretty defined curve and typically tries to end the game by t7 or 8. This card doesn't help that progress that much, and it doesn't feed TWE fast enough.

I was thinking to it as an alternative way to summon TWE from the deck if you don't draw it

Quote From FenrirWulf

I'm curious how this will work when it kills a unit and you don't have another unit with 1 cost higher than that unit. Will it even kill the unit? Or will it just summon the next highest? The way it's worded makes me think it will just kill the unit entirely. 

My interpretation is:

• If there is an N+1 cost unit in the deck (where N is most expensive ally on board), kill the ally and summon that unit
• Else: do nothing

I think the key word is "Kill your most expensive ally to summon an ally...". In other words, it's like a contract where killing is the price and summoning is the reward; you either get both or nothing. Plus from a game design POV it just feels really bad if you pay 5 mana for something that automatically kills of your best unit for sometimes no benefit and then you can't even block with it.

Quote From OldManSanns

Quote From FenrirWulf

I'm curious how this will work when it kills a unit and you don't have another unit with 1 cost higher than that unit. Will it even kill the unit? Or will it just summon the next highest? The way it's worded makes me think it will just kill the unit entirely. 

My interpretation is:

• If there is an N+1 cost unit in the deck (where N is most expensive ally on board), kill the ally and summon that unit
• Else: do nothing

I think the key word is "Kill your most expensive ally to summon an ally...". In other words, it's like a contract where killing is the price and summoning is the reward; you either get both or nothing. Plus from a game design POV it just feels really bad if you pay 5 mana for something that automatically kills of your best unit for sometimes no benefit and then you can't even block with it.

Yeah I trust that Riot knew what they were doing when they were making this card and I think that at the very least it wouldn't be the worst outcome that Vaults will just keep killing your biggest unit when you have nothing bigger than it in the deck.

Onthe other hand, I still think it could go both ways with it either doing nothing or killing the next unit it can hit. Though I think I'm more inclined to say that it's probably gonna do nothing because it'd be really confusing otherwise.