Excessive Spoilers - Compendium's Huntsman Sage Reveals

Well, LSS has dropped the mother load on us. Every single Common and Rare in Compendium of Rathe is now in our hands. And with them, there is a lot to talk about.

Without further ado or preamble, let's jump into some cards.

The first and best place to start looking at spoilers is Excessive Bloodloss, the very clear star of the show.

Excessive is perhaps the best card Fatigue Huntsman has gotten since release. Obviously, Hunter or Hunted still likely holds the crown of relevancy, but Excessive Bloodloss makes a good case.

Excessive is a 1 for 5 contract that comes in all 3 colors, making it immediately a premium for the deck. Huntsman is well known for their reliance on cards like Annihilate the Armed and Eradicate (historically). These cards present a powerful breakpoint while fitting into the cost curve incredibly nicely. A single blue pitched into a Graven Call or Spiders Bite, ending on a 1 for 5 is just good math.

But obviously, we're not running Nix the Nimble, so the effect needs to be pretty good to warrant the slot. Thankfully, Excessive Bloodloss has perhaps the strongest contract effect we've ever seen.

According to the Contract Banish Hit% spreadsheet that I created and updated back during PQ Yokohama, Excessive Bloodloss's contract condition (Which it shares with Leave No Witnesses) has a 70.22% chance to create a Silver token. This puts it just behind our best contract in Plunder the Poor at 82.13%. In losing the 11.91% Silver chance, though, we are gaining an entire extra banish on hit with another 47.19% chance to create a Silver on our second banish.

In total, you're looking at a 47.09% chance to create one silver and get two banishes, a 33.13% chance to create two silvers and two banishes, and a 19.78% chance to get no silver and one banish.

All things considered, Excessive Bloodloss has very quickly jumped up to first place as our best contract attack in the deck. Even ignoring silver, a 70.22% chance on hit to banish two cards instead of one is math that rivals the other best deck damage engine in the game from Double Trouble. And then you start adding in silver as a secondary effect and you very quickly realize that this might be a card to consider 9 copies of for Huntsman.

The question has to be asked on how many you run, and I think that total will be up for debate for a long time. Obviously, you run three reds, and there is no Huntsman deck that won't. But do you run any yellows? Do you run any blues? It may take a bit to solve that conundrum.

Alongside Excessive Bloodloss, we are also given the substantially less impactful but substantially more exciting Mist Hunter.

Mist Hunter does nothing... Right now.

However, the moment LSS prints more Mystic heroes, this card becomes not just a silver bullet, but potentially a silver orbital laser. Imagine this: Your Mystic opponent has played 5 Chi cards this game, and you swing in with your third copy of Mist Hunter. Devoid of defensive resources that they've spent on the previous two Mist Hunters, you manage to Cut to the Chase the card over their blocks and hit them for 1 damage. As a consequence, you banish 5 cards from deck, semi-permanently turn off their hero ability, and snag another 5 silver to fuel any and all of your Graven shenanigans.

I'm not gonna say it will make these future matchups free, imagine how quickly a Zen alternative might tear apart our life total, but the card will basically turn it into a 90:10 matchup.

Speaking of those aforementioned Graven shenanigans, I do need to bring up perhaps the strongest thing that LSS granted us in the set.

In CC, Excessive Bloodloss still takes the cake for relevancy, as only a single equipment of the Graven cycle will likely be entering our decks, and it's fighting for the premium silver resources with Graven Call and Mask of Perdition.

That said, we are still likely replacing Blacktek Whisperers with Graven Walkers. Blacktek has always been lowest on the pecking order for buyback equipment. Go again is good, but requires you to hold onto a much larger hand than Huntsman is comfortable holding onto. Now, though, instead of buying back a 1 block equipment that occasionally sees relevance, we can instead use Graven Walkers to buyback a 2 block tank.

Turning 2 silver into 2 life is an incredible rate to stall the game out and drag together some insane gamestates. Especially when you increased silver production from Excessive, Graven Walkers are an incredible staple to add to Huntsman's arsenal.

But I'm less excited about them in CC as I am in SAge. My biggest complaint with SAge pre-pen was the insane irrelevancy that Young Arakni had in the format. Their hero ability was based around contract, a mechanic that creates silver, a token that has literally zero uses in the format outside of Mystic cards that Arakni had zero ability to play.

Well, now we have a payoff. And it's an incredible payoff. In the format, block and life are premium for fatigue piles, as shown in the relevancy of Olympia due to the sole reason that he had a 2 block temper helmet while other Warriors did not. Contract Assassin just got a repeatable 2 block blade break equipment piece. That's incredible.

On the face, playing a single copy of Plunder the Poor can now result in 4 damage, a deck banish, and a silver which can turn into 2 block alongside another silver, meaning each silver now represents an entire life point.

Combine that with Excessive Bloodloss and you're in business.

Fatigue Assassin may genuinely be a contender for one of the strongest fatigue piles in the format thanks to these equipment pieces and the relevance of Excessive Bloodloss. But the question has to be asked on which Assassin hero to choose.

Each Assassin brings with them a lot of good tools to the table.

Young Arakni massively increases your silver generation, as each copy of Excessive Bloodloss goesf from a 47.19% chance to hit a red and banish two cards to a 70.22% chance to hit a red and banish two cards.

Web of Deceit and Nuu both bring with them their respective talents, each with good tech cards and matchup spreads to consider their deck builds.

For example, Web of Deceit can run Descend into Madness, a card that freely removes a card from your opponent (and potentially triggers a contract while doing so) while also potentially ripping up their hand consistency. Additionally, it brings you Topsy Turvy to target heroes with top deck manipulation.

On the flip side, you have Nuu, who grants you two incredible equipment pieces in Arousing Wave and Undertow Stilletos, as well as a far stronger end game thanks to Chi and incredible reactions in Hiss and Intimate Inducement.

Even Uzuri brings something to the table thanks to her ability to conceal the Excessive Bloodloss until after blocks are declared.

As a whole, I personally believe Nuu to be the strongest contender for this deck, though both Young Arakni and Web of Deceit make a strong case.

Moving away from SAge and back to Huntsman, alongside the Graven cycle comes, well, another Graven card. This majestic off-hand is a sleeper pick into a niche few matchups.

Currently, the card is basically irrelevant unless your meta is 90% or more Verdance and Oscilio. If it's not, or until the global meta starts favoring these wizard heroes, I would recommend picking up your bling copy of this card anyways.

To put it simply, imagine your Wizard opponent is looking at a hand with three sources of Arcane damage that can potentially present upwards of 20 damage. Unfortunately, you have Graven Gaslight and four silver on board. Your opponent plays all the cards, and for each one you break Gaslight and recur it.

In short, Graven Gaslight effectively allows you to bank arcane prevention in the form of Silver. You can't use it all on a single Arcane source, but you can still use it all with enough sources, especially on those pesky combo turns. Essentially, Graven Gaslight turns already good Wizard matchups into unlosable ones.

Unfortunately, the current meta doesn't call for all that sideboard space to be used on the card, but we now have it for the future, and that's pretty good to know.

As people here know, my baby is Redback Shroud Midrange Huntsman. I've been playing the deck and optimizing it for a fair bit, and I was super excited to get some more support in PEN.

Unfortunately, I have some bad news. As of right now, with current spoilers, Midrange Huntsman gets nothing. The only card worth considering is Knife Through, as the deck doesn't really pitch enough to use Excessive and would rather put silver into Redback Shroud than Graven equips. Knife Through, unfortunately, is just not good enough to take the slot from any of our other Stealth attacks.

That said, the card is really good in Uzuri, as I've heard. I can't speak much on it, nor do I fully understand why Uzuri players love the card so much, but apparently they're all having a great time putting their decks together with it. Thankfully, though I am not an Uzuri player, I am friends with someone who is. Shoutout to Colin, the world's biggest Uzuri fan, better known by the discord handle Morgan the Kitterfox, for providing the following details:

Knife through is probably the most important card that has been made for Uzuri ever since the release of Uzuri, Switchblade in Outsiders in 2023. Knife through solves the #1 core issue that Uzuri has faced ever since she was released, the issue of “Just block 6”.

Uzuri has in the past found a lot of success due to primarily her ability to bluff, she can either have the disruptive piece that could kill your entire turn, or she could not and just be trying to get a card into her arsenal, or she could just be buffing said stealth attack to the moon and just trying to hit you with that stealth attack. There’s a large problem with that though, if your plan is to swap in an attack and they block 6, unless you have a shred, there’s not a lot you can do.

The way Uzuri handled this in the past is primarily through the stealth attack Isolate, which had built in Dominate, which made it really hard for your opponents to block. But then this raises a second issue, what if you had complete air and you wanted your opponents to block, well if your only stealth in hand was Isolate they can’t put down more than 1 card because of Dominate. Isolate is an amazing card when you had a card you wanted to force through vs Defense Reaction lite decks, but since defense reactions has been the bane of her for the longest time now, Uzuri has had little tools to actually punish her opponent for blocking 6 on the stealth attack, outside of popping Starting Point, Snappies or the new Stalker Steps from the Arakni Armory Deck.

Then this raises a question, what if Uzuri had a stealth attack that had go again that could lead your opponent to a catch 22 scenario, where if they blocked it they were in trouble because the Uzuri player could just either arsenal their attack or just hard play it/play another stealth, or if the opponent didn't block they just flipped in the attack and force through their on-hit.

That’s the issue & hole that Knife Through solves for Uzuri’s kit, giving us a new way to bluff our opponents with a stealth attack that’s always a headache for our opponent.

There’s 2 primary ways to abuse Knife through in Uzuri’s kit, the first one is through the Dagger Buff package that we gained in The Hunted. Cards like Savor Bloodshed & Cut from the same cloth makes our dagger a huge damage threat, while also either giving us an additional on-hit to our dagger or giving us a bunch of info about the contents of our opponents hand, letting us make perfect decisions. However, with Knife through now in the card pool, this just makes our buffed dagger swings even more of an issue, since now our opponents needs to consider not only just the disruptive effects of our dagger hitting, but the potential that if they tried to block the stealth attack that comes after, it could be Knife Through, one that could be tip-toed if blocked using the built-in go again with a dagger hitting that combat chain. This means that our daggers are even scarier, and with all of our META RELEVANT daggers (sorry mark of the huntsman) having built in Pierce, it’s really hard to block it efficiently without using cards like Shelter from the storm if it’s just coming in for 1, or just dropping 2 cards in front of a buffed version, it’s a gigantic headache for our opponent. This is even before considering cards like Shred on the dagger swing.

The second way to use Knife through is as a Flick Knives partner. Since Flicking a dagger at your opponent will trigger the go again on Knife Through, this allows you to do a 2 card hand that bluffs out your opponent, asking for blocks on the stealth attack, meanwhile holding a second card you were planning to play instead such as Codex of Frailty, or Leave no Witnesses. Granted the codex play will only work on opponents who have been previously conditioned or have shown to heavily respect your stealth attacks, but now with Knife Through you can pull off so many more bluffs, threatening your hero ability over and over again, making your opponent reconsider all of their blocks, until finally you catch them off guard with the perfect uzuri flip once they get complacent on a Knife Through.

Overall, Knife Through solves one of the most major issues that has been plaguing Uzuri players ever since she was released in Outsiders, the fact we had little to no recourse if our stealth attack was blocked out, and with the increasing heroes who find joy in blocking such as Victor Goldmane, a card like this that could circumvent our intent and punish our opponent for blocking the stealth attack by giving it or it having base go again is one of the biggest boons that Uzuri players have gotten ever since the release of outsiders.

Beyond Assassin cards, Huntsman did get some pretty significant generic tech cards. Huntsman has historically been a hero with an incredibly flexible blue base. Currently, we run a mix of Stealth and utility blues, and those utility blues are the perfect place to look for more tech.

The obviously best of the three is an easy Pilfer the Tomb. Due to it's strength into the incredibly relevant Gravy Bones, theres a lot of value out of playing it out. Additionally, thanks to the banish triggers, it can actually serve double duty and occasionally generate a silver or two on the right chain links.

The moment we enter a meta with big item/auras or a meta with Oscilio at the forefront, the other two blues can always end up as relevant and playable tech slots.

When looking at the Assassin cards as a whole, it's clear that Huntsman is the big winner of the class. Yes, Nuu and the Chaos duo get some good tools in their talent pool, but Huntsman is walking away with the jackpot.

Between Midrange and Fatigue Huntsman, it's also not hard to see that Fatigue is the undisputed champion. As of right now, I expect to shelve Midrange Huntsman indefinitely in favor of Fatigue.

That said, it is worth noting that Midrange Huntsman does still carry the highest potential ceiling. Every single set with more Assassin support will require us to take a look at Redback Shroud and consider it's space in the meta. It's not gone forever, just for right now. And hey, maybe the last two unrevealed cards of the set are just enough to accidentally break Midrange Huntsman wide open.

My excitement for the set doesn't stop there, though. I may be an Assassin main, but my true passion in this game is limited, and now a new format in SAge is rearing it's head as one of the most exciting formats to start exploring.

We'll start by exploring some individual card designs that just make me stare at the screen and think "Holy crap LSS has done it again!"

Roaring Beam is easily my favorite card spoiled so far, and it's honestly not even close. As sacrilege as it is for the Huntsman to say their favorite card in the set is a Boltyn card, it's true.

Roaring Beam is honestly one of the most intelligently designed cards I have seen in my entire history of the game, save maybe exclusively Wander With Purpose and Hunter or Hunted.

Light Warrior has always had a significant design problem: Warrior is the weapon class and Light Warrior seemingly left it's weapon at home. Light Warrior needs to charge, and every single charge card was an attack. But there were hints of weapon design.

Courageous Steelhand and Beacon of Victory targets any attack, Lumina Ascension effects weapons exclusively, and Raydn never cared about the source of the charge. As more cards were printed, V for Valor, Warband of Bellona, and Prayer for Bellona became the first sources of non-attack charging.

Well, we got another source of non-attack charging with Roaring Beam, and it is maybe the best one we've seen yet.

Assume you have a Roaring Beam in your arsenal and at least one random card in hand. Swing with Raydn for 0. In reactions, play the Roaring Beam. Due to having 0 cards in your soul, it bounces to your hand and you get to charge that other random card in your hand into your soul. You then get to use Boltyn immediately to banish the card in your soul for go again, but more importantly to free up your soul for more Roaring Beams later. After all is said and done, you can go ahead and arsenal your Roaring Beam at the end of your turn and pass to do it again next turn.

That's right. That entire interaction doesn't include a single attack action card. And it gets preserved for following turns. You can build a Boltyn deck where you never play a single attack action card. You can build a Boltyn deck that plays like and feels like any other Warrior in the game.

Consider the exact playline above, except now you have an Edict of Steel in hand, the new card from the Hala precon. Put a +1 counter on Raydn, create a Flurry, swing for 4 into 5 for a two card 9. Add in Lumina Ascension for lifegain and extra attacks. Run Slice and Dice as a 0 for 4, Provoke for discard disruption, Twinning Blade for more attacks, the list goes on.

And if we really don't care about attack actions not being "Warrior", you can get even more powerful playlines with Solflare as the "random" card and other powerful attacks like Battlefield Beacon and Bolt of Courage.

I may not play Boltyn, but I am so excited from both a design stance and a viewer stance to see what this card means for the hero. I just want to see Boltyn players break this card in half, and I may even have to take the hero for a spin in Sage.

Whoever at LSS came up with these three equipment cards needs to be applauded. These are without a doubt some of the most flavorful cards in the set.

Riptide has always been a magnet for some of the most incredible designs in the game. I often think back to Take the Bait as one of the most flavorful cards to ever see printing. You quite literally bait your opponent into getting hit by every single one of your traps. I could go on and on about Take the Bait, about Intoxicating Shot, about Plan for the Worst, Reel In, and Chain Reaction.

This suite of Concealed equipment is just the next in line for my praise. You start the game with one of them face down. Your opponent can maybe guess as to which it is, but can't ever know for certain until you flip it up, deal 1 damage to them and create the deadly disease of your choice.

And maybe you as the player chose the wrong trap. Well, here's Bait for you to get the effect anyways.

I have no idea whether these cards are playable, they may just be too cute for CC. If they are, I will cry tears for the loss of such wonderfully flavorful equipment. I hope they're playable, because they're just too cool not to see pop up in gameplay.

The biggest winner of this set, though, is cube players.

Let's take a view specifically at Mechanologist. In the game, you have Dash IE, who needs 2 cost items to have a hero ability, Dash I/O, who needs 0 and 1 cost items to play off the top, Maxx, who needs Hyper Drivers, Teklo, who needs Evos, and Puffin, who needs cogs. These 5 heroes are about as diverse and different as they come, and the whole card pool is mostly just boost slop that works well in any of the heroes regardless of specialties.

And suddenly, the Mech cards are fixing this disparity.

mBrio Base Digits allows Cogs to have text in non-Puffin heroes, Speed Demon takes Teklo's Scrap and Maxx's Hyper Driver and finds common ground, Assembly Module can be played off the top by Dash I/O and finds the Hyper Drivers for Maxx to search up.

Every single card in the pool here seems positioned perfectly to create bleed between two or more Mechanologist heroes, allowing for some Mechanologist cubes that were previously unconscionable.

But this doesn't stop with just Mechanologist.

Excessive Bloodloss creates enough of a threat for non-contract Assassinsto look at the buyback gear, allowing you to put Arakni in the same cubes as Nuu or Uzuri.

Soul Bound Belief, as well as the other Light cards, starts filling the Light pool with non-Shadow hate pieces, allowing you to put Boltyn in a cube without worrying about needing Levia on the other side (And go reread the Roaring Beam section for how nicely he places with other weapon Warriors).

Speaking of Levia, Shadow gets the exact same treatment, meaning you don't have to worry at all about putting Light in your Shadow cube.

We could go on and on with different effects. Card creation for Mystic, Intimidate and Go again in Brutes, Valahai Riven in Guardian, Dyed Silk Sleeves for Ninja, Sharpen in Warrior, Traps on actions for Ranger, more Runeblade Auras, Sigil of Fates in Wizard, Mirage in Illusionist, you could basically make an exhaustive list.

Already, my gears are turning and grinding for a Teklo, Dash I/O, Huntsman, Nuu, Terra, and Oldhim HVY style 6 hero cube with banish and top deck shenanigans. But there's even more that I haven't even thought of that I know someone smarter than me is already coming up with.

The possibilities are endless, it has literally never been a better time than today to be a cube player.

Would you like to start cubing? Join the FaBCube discord and start working off of the site to put your first cube together. This format is only getting better every single set release.

If anyone of you is interested in what I've put together in this early spoiler season, here are the three decks I've crafted up:

Arakni Huntsman Wheel Spider update: https://fabrary.net/decks/01GTYH5DW94ECW7HY9EZ1JRVAP

Sage Nuu fatigue pile: https://fabrary.net/decks/01KG92PW2JHDJFTM8ZHPMWJ7S3

Sage Boltyn Roaring Beam: https://fabrary.net/decks/01KG925TJKJDZJHF7J1511WJ8G

As more cards are spoiled and decks start settling down, I'll probably be updating my old deck techs and writing new deck techs for y'all to read and consume. If you would like to get a jump on the strategy and discussion before then, make sure to join the Spider's Web Discord and hop in the Assassin discussion in real time!

If you want to support the website and help keep the lights on, consider buying me a coffee on Metafy. It's not technically required to support, but I wouldn't be able to spend as much time on these articles as I do without the support of the community around me.

I'm excited to see what all people can come up with in this new world post Compendium!