This Card review was written by Espithel. Promethean Arsenal is a confusing card at first glance, but it is a beautiful one. Before going into the details of why this card is so pretty, I'm first going to explain how it works. In short, Promethean Arsenal is a substitute for Flying Weapon in mono fire or water, air or earth decks that duo with fire. It's a deceptive card that looks far more powerful than it is, at least unupped, but still a card that gives you a good amount to think with.
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First of all, this card is designed in mind with a card called Material Pillar, which alternates between generating 1 or 2 of
,
,
, or
a turn. However, as I'm about to explain, that doesn't really matter for reasons I'm describing below. This is why the card may look strange to the uninitiated.
When you play Promethean Arsenal, it absorbs one fire, air, water, or earth quanta. Of the quanta it absorbs, it adds the corresponding weapon (Fahrenheit, Owl's Eye, Trident, or Pulverizer, respectively.) into your hand. If you can't drain any quanta, it'll generate a non-rare weapon, currently Dagger, Short Sword, Bow, and Hammer.
Promethean Arsenal then provides a status effect to your current weapon, if you have one, that allows it to be animated it would be replaced (Not destroyed, but replaced. That means steal it for massive damage!) when you play another weapon.
So, essentially, it's a better FW, right? ... No. First of all, its main drawback is the RNG built in to it. Let's say you have all four types of quanta when you play this card. That means you have a 25% chance of getting a Fahrenheit, a Trident, a Pulverizer, and an Owl's Eye. That alone is a huge drawback; you will not always get what you want.
Of those cards, Pulverizer, is completely useless. You pay 3
, drain 1
, then pay another 4
to get something that deals four damage! You pay seven
for Shard of Wisdom, without the main upside to SoW. Its ability is in gravity, making it the last thing you want.
Second of all, what if you get Trident? Well, first of all, that's 4
and 3
to play an inferior SoW. And, whilst you can use its ability in a quartet with Material Pillar, doing so runs the risk of getting a Pulverizer, making something you're likely to exclude in decks that run the Arsenal... You just made NTUG cry.
This leaves us with two desirable results: Owl's Eye, which can kill creatures and deals fair, if not inefficient damage, and Fahrenheit, the monster it is... If you weren't paying 3
all the time to play more Fahrenheits. However, this card can be used with Fahrenheit alone, mitigating the damage that the RNG absorption gives it.
And this is all assuming you want to animate either one of these four weapons, which most decks do not. The RNG factor makes the card severely take a hit; if it was "Drain your highest of
", It would be a much easier card to work with. If it gave an actual damage buff to your main weapon, or readied its skill, that would be very kind, too.
However, this is the unupped. Upgraded, this card becomes much more viable. Whilst it forces you to run at least fire and air, forcing a maximum of 50% chance to get what you want, it is a very resistant (but slow) way of generating extra damage from thin air, giving it a home in fire/air stalls. After all, you could destroy this... If you want to have no answer to that wings or Eagle's Eye already in place. In this sense, it should be treated more like a mutated, bizarre Forest Spectre. You pay 1
and however much your weapon costs to get that much attack out.
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This card could create new duos for fire with the three other elements, with no loss to your previous weapon, encouraging weapon spamming, especially with the upgraded Promethean Foundry's duplication. Whilst not being a go-to card for these duos, it can help all four of these elements stallbreak when upgraded, which is its main upside. Even though at least Fire and Water are already good at stallbreaking, the Foundry allows you to it in a more compact and unexpected way.
This card needs some changes to make work, and it should be noted, seeing we're going full blown Cygnia here, that this card can pull other elemental
,
,
and
weapons should they get added, which people will eventually make and will alter this card's properties. This card may even have to work alongside FW to see its full potential, which could cause many strange and interesting decks to appear; What would this, some Long Swords, Freedoms and Animates look like? Or
To conclude, whilst this isn't powerful, it looks like a very fun card to toy around with, much like cat decks. A lot of weak but interesting experiments are to be found with this card, and I merely scratched the surface. And, after all, isn't that what's most important?
(And yes. The card has a typo in its name.)
