A Huntsman Main's Wishlist for Compendium of Rathe

As we get nearer and nearer to reveal season for Flesh and Blood's next season, PEN, I personally have been waiting not so patiently with an incredible amount of desire. This feeling extends from a very specific place, the nature of the Assassin class.

Assassin was first released in Dynasty, a set that emerged long after the likes of Crucible of War and Everfest. While Dynasty was technically a supplemental set, the ideas presented in the set were far from ordinary when it came to designs you could expect to see in the relevant classes. Crucible of War and Everfest, on the other hand, were sets that actively expanded on and explored ideas within each class in the game.

Since the release of DYN, there has been exactly one supplemental set: DTD, which featured a grand total of 0 Assassin cards.

All this to say, Assassin support since release was entirely relegated to sets designed to support specific archetypes and one-off card designs in the incredibly well-implemented expansion slot.

This means that while Assassin cards are interesting and unique, they're very isolated. Every card in Assassin's card pool has generally had to play around the unique ideas presented in the various sets. DYN cards were contracts. OUT cards were diseases and utility. MST cards were mill. HNT cards were mark. Outside of majestic cards and the occasional incidental common or rare, a Huntsman player could reasonably expect not to care about anything in any Assassin set as it was released. The same would be true for Uzuri players, or Nuu players, or hypothetically Marionette players when the next set comes.

Assassin players are conditioned not to expect cards like Deadwood Dirge or Buckwild.

And the unfortunate thing is that we never had a supplemental set; we never got cards like Sleep Dart, Hit and Run, Macho Grande, or Haze Bending. Every other class (save Necromancer) got a supplemental set where they could receive that "untargeted" support, that glue.

Enter: Compendium of Rathe, a set designed to support every single hero in the game in some way. And among them, we're expecting around 14 Assassin cards. 14 Assassin cards that I, for one, am super excited to see.

Now, there's not much space for everything. But there's enough space.

Enough for me to have some desires.

So here's my wishlist, as a Huntsman main who's completely obsessed with Assassin, Huntsman, and Redback Shroud.

We're gonna start with my most selfish desires and work outward to get to some broader, less selfish desires.

Arakni, Huntsman on a midrange Redback Shroud decklist is an incredible deck. The playlines are smooth, the power is there, and the impact is felt. But it's missing something. The deck struggles in two specific areas: Variance and Disruption.

Huntsman decks are inherently silver hungry. Buyback equipment is largely what makes Huntsman work, and every activation essentially costs two silver. As the only major silver generation in the game, Huntsman heavily relies on Hunter or Hunted to function.

Fatigue Huntsman has a lot of time, though, meaning a late Hunter or Hunted isn't a huge deal. But midrange Huntsman is actively trying to end the game, meaning a late Hunter or Hunted is often the difference between winning and losing.

Currently, midrange Huntsman has access to a single playline to reduce that variance. Flick Knives + Hunters Klaive. Redback Shroud reduces every reaction in the list; Flick Knives + Hunters Klaive reduces just your Stains of Redback. Even in its limits, though, it does reduce the reliance on Hunter or Hunted by allowing you more 0-cost reactions before you need to dig for Hunter or Hunted.

(Quick edit: While putting on the finishing touches of this article, LSS finally revealed the new Armory Deck for Arakni. Within the deck is the card Prey Spotters, which does massively help in this area. Stick around for the end of the article for more thoughts on it.)

This leads to a couple of ideas to reduce that variance even further.

First, an obvious idea: More Stains. If Mark is already reducing some cards in the deck, perhaps we could get a few more cards that are reduced by Mark to open up more of our card pool to that emergency reduction Flick Knives + Klaive can provide.

Now, as far as what this card might look like, I had a ton of ideas that came to mind. But I wanted to keep the ideas of Marionette present in the card. Stains of Redback very specifically works within the framework of Arakni, Redback. If I were to create a new Stains card, I'd probably want to give it an ability like one of the other Agents of Chaos. There are then 5 other options: Black Widow, Funnel Web, Orb Weaver, Tarantula, and Trap Door. I think Trap Door and Black Widow have too many problems to make work both in mechanics and power level, and Tarantula wouldn't make a ton of sense for a Stealth react. Orb Weaver and Funnel Web, though, are good candidates. I ended up choosing Orb Weaver because I believe it creates an interesting card that's widely applicable in a ton of different heroes and matchups. In Huntsman, this largely means a free Flick Knives reaction, which turns it into essentially a 0 for +4 reaction, an incredible rate.

Second is an idea that keys off of the thoughts I had with that last idea, while making it more widely applicable and less predatory by Marionette: A reaction that gets reduced by dagger hits. Now, we can both reduce with Klaive and by throwing the Graven Call right next to it, opening up another avenue for variance reduction.

As far as what that card is specifically, I decided that the variation of the card I was most interested in seeing is one that gives more value to Graphene chain links. The intended playline with this card is Klaive -> Graphene -> This, which includes go again on the active chain link for a built-in follow-up. Hence, the card in question.

Huntsman doesn't often get to utilize the secondary effect, but in the few situations where they can, you get a pretty neat 0 for +4 attack reaction.

Third, an idea that takes a completely different stance on variance reduction: A reaction that incites the same ideas as Hunter or Hunted. Targeted deck banish that relies on information gathered to create a load of silver. This is the most ambitious idea presented, and it is honestly pretty hard to balance. I ended up settling on only a single graveyard banish, which means that you're only able to get two Silver off of it alone. The card on top and the potential card in the grave that shares a name. That said, if you play this on a Contract chain link, the extra contracts can lead to up to 4 additional Silver, which is valuable enough to me.

Shroud Huntsman plays this card, but it's definitely a card that needs some work to set the card up effectively. Most likely, this card sits around until you see a Plunder the Poor, which then allows you to drop a two-card 7 with up to 3 banishes and 5 silver. There are a couple of good playlines, but you're often not playing it on a Stealth chain link, and the card's existence means Plunder the Poor isn't leaving the deck anytime soon.

The other place in which midrange Huntsman lacks power comes in the disruption, or lack thereof. Midrange Huntsman has really good damage. Double Trouble + Spike with Redback is a two-card 10. Kiss of Death with Stains of the Redback and Plunder the Poor is a three-card 13. The list goes on. But the moment you walk up to a deck that doesn't worry about your damage, you feel like you can't do much. Cindra can sometimes just hold a hand of 5 cards and deal 20 damage to you through blocks.

The only ways midrange Huntsman can present disruption are the following cards: Persuasive Prognosis, a stealth that can banish from hand, Leave No Witnesses and Surgical Extraction, contracts that banish from arsenal and hand but lack the ability to be pushed over by reactions, Spike with Frailty and Spike with Inertia, reactions that represent relevant but niche disruption into specific decks, and the occasional Hunter or Hunted hitting a card in hand or arsenal.

Every single one of the above has problems: Variance, lack of pushing through, ease of blocking, or semi-irrelevance.

But what if we had some relevant disruption?

First, my favorite tech in the game: I fell in love with Sneak Attack the moment LSS printed the card. The mechanical tech of "If you've played or activated an attack reaction, this chain link" is a gold mine of interesting card designs. We've seen a few more in this space, but I think it's a perfect space to see some disruption. Imagine Mark of the Black Widow, except the hand attack came from reactions and not from marking. That's what I'm hoping for.

This card has a ton of relevance across the board for nearly every single Assassin, in nearly every single format. It would definitely be a divisive card, as the condition is relatively easy for players to work through, and the disruption is something that targets anyone and everyone. Considering everything I've presented so far, this is actually potentially the most likely card to be printed in PEN.

Second, more reactions: The currently existing spikes feature strong but niche disruption. Personally, I would love to see a spike with more relevant text. It could be a powerful hand attack like Pummel, but I'd much prefer something a bit more interesting, like the idea provided in the example, which allows us to eat a Tunic or Flick Knives if given the opportunity.

In fact, Spike with Brittleness is a game-changer for the class. Just taking a look at the current meta, Brittleness takes out Flick Knives from Cindra, Storm Striders from Verdance, Gold-Baited Hook from Gravy Bones. Beyond the meta, though, it also hits Tunic, Valiant Dynamo, Spellbound Creepers, Rampart, and a ton of other cards.

You might argue that losing an equipment card is insane value on a reaction; my rebuttal to that is that LSS seems very willing to create strong equipment destruction options (Palantir Aeronaught, Art of the Dragon: Scale, Frozen to Death, etc.), many of which have very limited counterplay options.

Third, why not take a page out of Ice's book: Maybe we can put some stealths into the game where the condition for disruption is on your opponent instead of you. If they take a specific action, they're good. If they don't, you manage to take something from them. In either instance, they're not happy about it.

Specifically here, I think a good idea is to simply take a card from their arsenal unless they pay a life. This is worded in a specific way, though, to guarantee the extra damage if they can't pay a card from their arsenal. I think this is the least likely idea to be printed, but I couldn't help working outside the box to find some neat disruption clauses.

Moving beyond midrange Arakni, LSS has directly stated that the set is intended to support and supplement the Silver Age format.

As someone who already really enjoys the format, I have a few ideas.

Firstly, a major problem with Assassin in Silver Age is that the best hero in the game is completely unplayable. That's right, in the format named Silver Age, the hero based around Silver has nothing to do with the Silver they generate.

Arakni needs a way to utilize Silver, and I have a pretty good idea.

Buyback equipment is pretty cool for Arakni, but there's one slot that's notably absent from the game: The off-hand. We have a dagger, we have all four equipment zones, the only missing piece is an off-hand. And we have an off-hand in the flavor of the hero: The knife case Huntsman carries in their adult art.

As a rare, to make it Silver Age legal, this card inherently needs a lower complexity compared to regular buyback gear. So, I think restricting it to just two abilities, buyback and activation, is necessary.

As written, this card has the potential to be absolutely disgusting. I've purposefully chosen to drag daggers from your inventory to limit the upper end. You can't repeatedly bring back Hunters Klaive infinitely; you only get to do 3 of them. That does, however, create some additional gameplay implications. Notably, every single Assassin in the game can choose to start with two knife cases and then activate them early to grab some daggers in response to your opponent's deck build. Thankfully, as strong as that is, it is relatively limited in impact due to the hidden cost of sideboard space. You only have so many slots, and choosing to take this playline does mean you have fewer slots to devote to other matchups. For all of these reasons, I think in non-Huntsman heroes, the impact of this card is relatively limited.

In Silver Age, though, it does create a unique deck design. As the only buyback card present in the format, it makes it so that base Arakni is mostly playing to find those dagger-throwing synergies, relying on inherent destruction like Mark of the Huntsman's mark or extra destruction like Danger Digits, Hurl, and Throw Yourself at Them.

Does this make Arakni a good deck in Silver Age? Definitely not. But it does make Arakni a deck in Silver Age, which I, for one, am a fan of.

In Classic Constructed, though, this card puts in some insane work and brings back an idea in Huntsman that has mostly been lost: Toolbox gameplay.

You can essentially start with any daggers at the start of the game. Perhaps a Scale Peeler to hit the equipment? And then, as your opponent manages to find the occasional windows to block with their equipment, maybe you swap out your Scale Peeler for a Nerve Scalpel, allowing you to hit their reactions? And when you're out of reactions to hit, you can bring in Spider's Bite late in the game to get every ounce of value you can. And when all is said and done, you always have two copies of Graven Call to find a disgusting end-game should you need it. And don't even get me started on potential lines with Hunters Klaive and Mark synergies for midrange Arakni.

There's a lot more to be said about this card, a lot more of which I have barely scratched the surface. In all honesty, this is probably my favorite Assassin card I have ever designed.

Now, I don't want this whole thing to be "me me me", so here are some designs from a few other respectable players:

Huge shout-out to Clement for contributing this card to the article. Double shout-out to Clement for actually saving me some time and creating the card in Fabkit, and putting some art on it. This is an incredible defensive tool for Silver Age, giving Assassins a free 4 block. In Huntsman, though, you can set up some lines using the hero ability to get an extra silver and some extra block. In Silver Age specifically, base Arakni is in love with this card, turning into a super defensive fatigue deck focused around setting up 6 copies of this card for upwards of 30 total block.

You gotta give Bryku some props where props are due. This is perhaps the simplest card in the whole article. Just a 1 cost +3 to anything. In simplicity, though, there's a ton of strength. Without being limited to Stealth attacks, you can target anything from E-Strike to CnC to Pain in the Bakside. Personally, I find this design dangerous and would not be a big fan of its printing, but I can see a lot of reasons why others may be foaming at the mouth for this idea.

I also reached out to the Plague Hive and the Spider's Web creator. Both had very, very similar ideas with very, very different methods: Give Uzuri some relevancy.

Kitterfox decided to take an easy route, expanding on Uzuri's unique ability to turn Graphene Chelicera into CnCs. To put it simply, if you took Whittle from Bone and replaced the mark requirement with a dagger hit requirement, Uzuri is suddenly very in business.

Pentregarth took a bit of an extreme approach, presenting one of the most powerful blue Assassin cards in the game. It's a 0 for +1 and hand attack. It's probably included in every single Assassin deck. Oh, and I guess Uzuri can also activate her hero ability earlier in the game to throw this into banish and then sit on it until she wants to play it out.

Again, thanks to all four for helping me out!

And this is where the article would have ended, if I had finished it on time and released it on Saturday, the 6th of December, when I intended to. And then LSS decided to reveal the contents of the Arakni armory deck.

So, given this is my blog and I can do what I want, here's a quick section about my thoughts on the deck.

Meet Madness - Locked into Chaos heroes. Very playable, but nothing I care about, and the randomness would turn me off.

Horrors of the Past - Basically only playable in Slipy. Very strong, with some degenerate playlines, not something I'm actively invested in.

Creep - Also only playable in Slipy, definitely not unplayable, definitely not something I care about.

Night's Embrace - Okay, now we're into some good stuff. Without go again, this is still just a Razor's Edge. With go again, you're sometimes looking at +2 or even +3 power. Every single Assassin in the game, including Huntsman, is currently running enough Stealth cards and enough go again to where this card can typically be a +2. That's some incredible value in a blue. This will, in fact, go down as one of the most relevant staple Assassin cards ever printed.

Moving on to equipment cards:

Inverter's Nightcowl - I currently don't see which hero even wants this. Slipy gets the most value out of it, but even they aren't a huge fan.

Stalker's Steps - This is very relevant for Silver Age, giving some in-class Arcane Barrier, in which you don't have to sacrifice a slot. It's not insane, but it's a much-needed tool for the format.

Prey Spotters - Firstly, this is good in Silver Age. Let's get that out of the way. This is an auto-include in every single Assassin in Silver Age.

Okay, onto why I am mildly freaking out about this. Let me just copy + paste a message I sent in the Spider's Web discord earlier today:

Midrange Huntsman currently suffers in two big areas: Variance and Disruption.

Prey Spotters helps in the former category, and nothing much helps in the latter.

In Midrange Huntsman, we're running a bunch of Spikes: 3 Bloodrot, 1-2 Inertia, 1-2 Frailty, 5-6 Stains of Redback. Imagine you only have Redback Shroud. Until you find your Hunter or Hunteds, you get one activation. If that first copy of Hunter or Hunted comes early, you are completely fine. You get to activate Shroud, reduce something, buy it back, and you don't have to worry about running out of activations.

If the Hunter or Hunted comes too late, you kinda get screwed. You can play out from under that variance, but if you only get one activation in the first 10 turns, you kinda throw up on yourself and die. Because of this, Midrange Huntsman has some insane macro variance problems. See Hunter early? You win. See it late or don't see it at all? You lose. So, how can we reduce the variance?

Well, a few weeks ago, I decided to replace my utility dagger with Hunter's Klaive. Now, you can use Flick Knives to throw Klaive as an emergency button to reduce a Stains, giving you an extra cost reduction while you wait for your first Hunter or Hunted. Turns out, this was actually incredible. It genuinely reduced that macro variance by an insane amount.

Well, now we get two button presses. So for 5-6 of our 10-13 Spikes in our deck, we now have 3 on board cost reducers.

Prey Spotters didn't delete our macro variance; you still get screwed over if you never see Hunter or Hunted. But it reduces that macro variance by such an extreme degree, I'm not sure Fatigue Huntsman can even compete with the deck anymore.

So long story short, I am currently testing out a variant of Shroud Huntsman that replaces Perdition with Prey Spotters. On top of that, I'm cutting two blues for Night's Embrace, and testing out the idea of bringing in two Mantles in the place of yellow Double Trouble.

I'm super excited for PEN spoiler season, and I hope you are as well. Join me, and wait with bated breath for any fun toys the class gets.