Assuming Emphatic Bond | Feral Bond is the winner...
Just as the element of Life revolves around numerous creatures and spawning multiples of them for damage, Empathic Bond is a specialized permanent that heals you for 1 HP for every creature on your side of the field. Empathic Bond is also one of the few healing permanents found in game.
Empathic Bond is a moderate-cost card for 6
quanta (5
upgraded, as Feral Bond) that can be used in a variety of decks. For every creature on your side of the playing field, you are given +1 point of healing. The card is a permanent, and it does not have a limited lifespan. Multiple Empathic Bonds work independently (the cards do not stack on top of one another like pillars, but the ability does), which means that you could have up to +6 healing per creature, per turn. As a full field allows up to a potential of 23 creatures, having 6 Empathic Bonds could heal well over your normal 100 HP pool (a maximum of 198 HP), and thus, can be incredibly irritating to a player if they are not removed quickly by permanent control.
Empathic Bond works great with creature spam decks, or decks that focus on generating and playing as many creatures as possible for damage. Firefly Queen and Pharaoh both have the capability of producing high quantities of Fireflies and Scarabs for example. Boneyard can produce several creatures if you have reliable forms of creature control (killing the opponent’s creatures), and can often slowly turn matches around once you have reliable crowd control to reduce the incoming damage (all the while increasing the amount healed by your Feral Bonds). Even the alchemy spell, Aflatoxin, can spawn multiple Malignant Cells on your field to reap the benefit from this permanent (after sacrificing one of your creatures from the poison). One great deck to use with this card is the Firefly Queen Deck and all of its variants. The Firefly Queen deck works well with this card because of the high volume of creatures involved, and because Air and Life are two very synergistic and compatible elements.
Rainbow Decks often use Bonds for their healing prowess, and are effective ways of earning an Elemental Mastery bonus against False Gods. Because several standard rainbow decks depend on a large amount of creatures, Empathic Bond makes a great addition when you have a reliable creature generator, such as Firefly Queen (which produces Fireflies for two
, making a decent Air and Life synergy). If your deck does not contain a large amount of creatures, however, you may resort to using another (but more rare) permanent, Shard of Gratitude, which heals a static 5 HP each turn.
A secret trick with Emphatic Bond is having a creature with the Vampire ability on the field. (From the Adrenaline article: Emphatic Bond treats an Adrenaline-affected vampire as more than one creature. For every attack you gain an extra healing, meaning Emphatic Bond is 3-4 times as effective. With six emphatic bonds on the field, a vampire that would normally bring 2 healing with each attack instead heals you for 8, meaning after four attacks, instead of healing for 8 HP, you heal for 32 HP.)
Regardless of how you use it, Emphatic Bond is often prone to both creature and permanent control. It can be easily destroyed or stolen by enemies to neutralize its benefit. While protecting your Bonds with Protect Artifact may be helpful for healing in the long-run of a match, if the opponent has numerous CC cards such as Rain of Fire, your creatures will be destroyed, thus negating the healing. Having other permanents (such as weapons, hourglasses, etc.) or replaceable creatures (Skeletons from Graveyard) will force most players (and some A.I.) to carefully plan how to negate your constant healing.
Quick Facts:
Heals +1 per creature, even if creatures are frozen, petrified, or blocked.
Empathic bond is not affected by Adrenaline.
This card is best used in decks focusing on creature spam.
Use This Card Together With:
Firefly Queen | Elite Queen
Boneyard | Graveyard
Pharaoh | Pharaoh
Decks Using This Card:
(Almost) NON-UPGRADED False God Rainbow (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,1615.0.html)
MrSexington's "Cremation Rainbow" (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,8421.msg104875#msg104875)
Pharaoh Sails to Orion (time/rainbow) (
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,4958.0.html)
...yeah, I hope that I can add a Pure Air/Life synergy with Firefly Queen and Emphatic Bonds. Anyone find me a link perhaps? ^^;
