Critical Role: Heroes of Exandria Card Combos!

Hey there, UniVersus fans!

Critical Role: Heroes of Exandria releases today, and as always we are here to bring you a glimpse into some of the fun we’ve had with the set while working on it. Today, we’re going to display some of the card combos both inside and outside of the set–available now at your local games store!

Let’s hear from Will Howard on some decks he’s been brewing up:

One of my favorite new combos we are gaining with Critical Role Heroes of Exandria is Spellstorm with our existing Tekken character, Devil Jin. Spellstorm obviously wants to have a ton of attacks in our card pool to flip for its keyword abilities. We can look to the past cards like Duplicitous Attack to give our Spellstorm Echo. This will let us add in an Attack with Devil Jin for damage, to then use it to Echo our Spellstorm. Spirit Unicorns and Channeling Spell Seal are also great additions to the spell theme. Unicorns let us start our turn and remove it from progressive for our future spells, and can even provide some damage when we ready our Foundations like Capture the Target. Channeling Spell Seal is just a super solid move we can give stats, and if it connects it draws us a card, which is an issue we love solving as a 5-hander. On top of all of this, because of our character's response, it means that if we do check one of our Spellstorms during a turn, we can use our Response to increase the check. This almost makes it like we aren’t even playing bad checks in our deck

There is another very fun combination of cards we get to use, and it’s being piloted by beloved Hooligan, Mollymauk Tealeaf. This character looks to Girl Power for some inspiration, and that attack is named Mesa Mallet. Our character’s Response means that this 5-difficulty attack will generate us a Momentum just for playing the move. We can turn that around immediately for +2 speed, but also it forces our rival to commit a Foundation from its own Response. Between this, our character providing Stun-1, and Star Trek: Lower Decks Foundation Don’t Do This, we get to Stun-3 our rival on our first move while sending a 6 high 8. Molly having the Death symbol means that our discard outlet in Don’t Do This can pitch things like Loss of Consciousness or Eren’s Trial for bonuses. Then, if we are worried about our rival having hand knowledge, we have cards like Botan’s Coaching to pitch those away for brand new cards, keeping our hand a mystery to our rival. I think Molly under the Order symbol is going to be a great contender, with such a strong ability to potentially shut off 2 rival Foundations for an entire turn unless they want to sacrifice one of their own.

Next, Jeremy Ray offers a fun buildaround for the rambunctious new gnome musician:

I had a lot of fun making decks for a number of characters, but today I want to talk about Scanlan Shorthalt, Devious Troubadour. Scanlan has a lot of fun bits of motion he gets to engage in, but I think the biggest Scanlan question is basically "how do I eventually win?" I think that face-up Momentum scaling is one of the better ways to get there. Armor of the Wolf and Black Abyss are are scaling-power Attacks, using Manifest to quickly load them into Momentum. We use tools like Get the Scoop and Show Off to scout the top of our deck, making sure we can guarantee a non-Foundation so we can pick up Manifest every turn. We are also jamming four copies of both Scanlan’s Hand and Dark Tournament Looms to ensure we hit our once-per-turn EVERY turn. Signal Shot is in the attack line so you can pick up the attacks you build off of Scanlan’s ability. Of course, there’s plenty of room for personalization in the deck, but these core cards are really important to the deck's functionality.

Tim Frie has some more options to provide:

I have so many different builds from Heroes of Exandria that I enjoy. One of my favorites is "big attacks" Lady Kima of Vord. Of course she likes Resilient Charge, but you can keep going with awesome attacks like Titan Armbar and Unyielding Heat from the Attack on Titan sets. Beast Titan Attacks! Doesn’t have to gain Throw if you prefer the damage bonus Kima provides, but also the Beast Titan can help you refill your hand. Speaking of filling your hand, Offensive to Retake Wall Maria is a great tool for that, if we can make all of our attacks have either the Ranged or Weapon keywords! And, to help you play all of these cards, Strong Windup will give you the boost needed to pass the checks they require.

Do you like the idea of juggling bears? Not the kind of bear that juggles that you can find at the circus–I’m talking about the idea of juggling your own bear in and out of your Stage and Card Pool. It might be a bit obvious, but Vex’ahlia, Protector of the Wilds pairs really, really well with the Trinket asset from the Vox Machina Challenger Series. Important cards here also include A Trinket for Vex and Hunter’s Ally. With the right hand, you can get Trinket’s damage bonus to work multiple times on an attack turn, and provide an equal amount of protection while defending. And because Trinket returns to hand after reducing damage as Vex, he’s right there to play again the next turn. Since Hunter’s Ally is a high attack, it pairs very nicely with both Battle Aura Release and Falling Skies for a high Attack deck that takes off at a quick pace.

There’s so many more interesting and fun combos you can create using the characters and other cards in Critical Role: Heroes of Exandria. We hope some of the ideas that we’ve provided sound fun or spark some of your own creativity! We’d love to hear some of the ideas our fans have, so please share them with us on one of our social channels!