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NAME: | Shard of Alacrity
| ELEMENT: | Air
| COST: | 2
| TYPE: | Spell
| TEXT: | Your cards cost 1 less quantum this turn. Gain  if your mark is .
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| NAME: | Shard of Alacrity
| ELEMENT: | Air
| COST: | 3
| TYPE: | Spell
| TEXT: | Your cards cost 2 less quanta this turn. Gain if your mark is .
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NOTES: | The card cost discount applies to all cards you play on that turn, and is calculated as a field/turn effect. This means that cards you generate or draw are still affected. Negative costs act in the same way as negative damage-- you gain 1  from playing a SoA and Photon. The effect stacks.
If you played three unupgraded SoA and 3 Photons in that order on a turn, it would go like this (assuming mark):
- 1 used (-2 from cost +1 regained from mark)
- Discount of 1  for this turn
- 0 used (-2 from cost + 1 cost reduction + 1 regained from mark)
- Discount of 2 for this turn
- 1 gained (-2 from cost +2 cost reduction +1 regained from mark)
- Discount of 3 for this turn
- 3 gained (+3 cost reduction)
- Photon is on field
- 3 gained (+3 cost reduction)
- Photon is on field
- 3 gained (+3 cost reduction)
- Photon is on field
In considering balance, Shard of Alacrity opens up a lot of avenues. As a cost reducing card, it acts a powerful speed amplifier in any rainbow that already uses cheap cards.
SoA also has the unique utility of enabling the use of off-element cards at zero or negative cost, which means it'll allow for many versatile splash duos or trios for any other element involving cheap cards like Lightning, Explosion, or SoW Reflect without involving their respective marks.
Given that you'll need to generate anyways, SoA pairs well with other low cost Air cards in splashes like Fog or Shockwave without having to waste too much card space on quanta production. In addition, SoA may enable the use of otherwise prohibitively expensive combos with cards like Miracle, Sky Blitz, or Fractal. As the amount of quanta you save depends directly on the number of cards you play, card generators and increased draw cards like Shard of Serendipity and Electrum Hourglass also have a good synergy.
However, all this versatility and power multiplication is offset by the fact that you'll need to take up some room with the SoA itself, as it provides 0 combat utility on its own. One important thing to note is that though quantum producers like towers are affected, delaying their play is not usually advantageous as you would have had them generate that same quanta in the turn that you didn't play them. The exception there would be bursting against a denial deck like Ghostmare or when you plan to sidestep a quanta drain like Sky Blitz.
In War and other competitive PvP, losing Shard of Freedom would be a significant blow to the current viability of Air as an element. SoFree is a very strong force multiplier, providing both damage multiplication and creature defense. Even when Air doesn't use SoFree, the threat of it makes other elements pause and consider it in their planning. The war results between when shards were banned and when they were first allowed in War #9 speak for themselves, with Air transitioning from near bottom of the pack to a streak of top two finishes, including their first War victory.
With the introduction of Shard of Alacrity, this loss would still be felt. Though still powerful in a mono and opening up many duo combos, SoA excels the most in a rainbow, and rainbows generally use up some of the most expensive cards restriction-wise. A large part of the Mono SoFree deck's strength comes from the lack of effectiveness single-target CC has against it, moreso than its pure rush potential. While SoA shares in the theme of speed, it provides versatility instead of defense.
I don't believe SoA provides any special value to other elements in a PvP meta. Rainbows are usually hamstrung by restrictions in deckbuilding, and shards are usually expensive(whether in points or upgrades) on top of that. While the duos and other combinations I mentioned above would still work, they can probably gain more value without dealing with the restrictions.
Thematically, I believe Alacrity is a better fit for Air than Freedom. It conveys that sense of celerity all born to the sky know as surely as they breathe, and the mechanic represents both that speed and also the wide expanse of possibilities that Air as an element enables in the idea of travel.
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Shard of Alacrity Showcase
Hover over cards for details, click for permalink
7ee 7ee 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mv 7mv 7n9 7nq 7nq 7nq 7nq 7nq 7nq 7oe 7oe 7oe 7oe 7oe 7oe 7oe 7oe 7oe 80i 80i 80i 80i 8puThis deck isn't the most optimal, but it shows off nicely all the different mechanics involved. The most obvious advantage is that you can speed up your combo and main damage by making the
Sky Dragons and
Fractal cost less. If you play a shard early, your
Damselflies act like towers, and your existing pends are supercharged. Incidentally, this is also why the mark is not
-- the card bonuses should outweigh the mark bonus.
You're able to include off-element utility cards like
Shard of Bravery without even generating any
. If you stack the
SoA, then you're able to play zero cost
Fractals and your dragon spam matches the likes of
SoR Mito or
Fractal Leaf-Jade Dragon! Of course, stacking relies on getting the right draws(or sneaking in some extra draw power, like
SoBr!), and force multipliers aren't useful if they don't have anything to multiply, so you'd better hope you built your deck right to cut down on the amount of time you spend without useful cards.
SoA Grabbow
Hover over cards for details, click for permalink
4sa 4sa 4sa 4sa 4vh 4vh 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 4vj 52q 562 590 590 590 590 590 590 5c2 5f6 5ib 5lf 5og 5pa 5pa 5pa 5pa 61q 8prYou've seen what an upped
SoA deck can look like. Unupped, there's still plenty of versatility unlocked. Most
Grabbow builds use 3
cost cards sparingly, since you'll generally be relying on 2
Novae and an additional source of quanta to meet the cost. We can now add more expensive options to our
Grabbow and still keep it running thanks to our cost reduction scheme. A 2
Novae start suddenly unlocks so much more-- we can activate as many
SoA as we draw, a
Graboid, and any other of our now 2-or-less cost cards that have the power of 3-cost cards.
Alternatively, even if we don't draw an ideal start,
SoA makes it much more likely that we'll have our rush revving up in the first three turns instead of waiting on quanta draws-- it's significantly harder to get quanta locked by a bad draw when you can spend 1
in the place of 2
. If we'd gone with more standard rainbow choices like
Forest Spirit,
Momentum, and
Mind Flayer, it would be virtually impossible.
SoA Dark Domin
Hover over cards for details, click for permalink
5oc 5oc 5oc 5oc 5of 5of 5of 5of 5og 5og 5pu 5pu 5pu 5pu 5up 5up 5v1 5v1 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7mt 7nq 7nq 7nq 7nq 7tb 7tb 8prHere's an example for the partially upped ruleset. This crafty duo deck appears to be a standard
war-build mono... until you play
Vampire Daggers and
Nightmares without any darkness generation! If your opponent looks away for a moment they'll be left scratching their heads at how you pulled it off. While this does make the deck less consistent than the regular dark domin, keeping your opponent guessing at what deck you actually have can throw them off their game.
