Shadow Era Spoilers #23: Crystal Titan

Insert early Final Fantasy reference here.

Dark Prophecies 100/150: Crystal Titan
Spoiled by Kyle on 1/13/2013
Source

By itself, Shadow Energy is an extremely important tool. I think most people are aware of that.

Large allies are also important, in that they beat face to win you games. I'd say most are also aware of that.

Are these two things good together?

Sure?

Are they playable?

Maybe not.

An overwhelming trend in Shadow Era is for allies that give an immediate bonus when summoned. There's a reason why Shadow Knight sees more play than Plasma Behemoth. If you play the knight and it dies before getting an attack, you at least got something out of it. If the behemoth dies pre-emptively, you get nothing.

The idea is that if you play an ally and the opponent can't kill it, you're winning. You can play allies with large amounts of health, stealth, or other tricks that help it survive. You could also play an ally that does something when played, so that even if they do kill it, you still have some form of advantage. Playing an ally that only does something if it survives (and does nothing to ensure its survival) is foolish. Either it won't die, in which case you're winning just as much as a tankier ally except with worse odds of survival, or it does die, in which case you were better off playing an ally with immediate value.

Without a way of giving Crystal Titan haste, the only way to profit from this card is to guarantee its survival, which simply isn't possible. It's not like you can play this in a Portal deck or use Lance and immediately accelerate toward your next hasted ally.

My feeling is that the Titan will fall into the same category of Plasma Behemoth at best. It will win plenty of games, sure, and will feel powerful when it does. That's just because the titan is an unnecessary gamble, but succeeding will result in overkill. Again, it's the same deal as Plasma Behemoth.

I can, however, see an Elementalis deck with this card, not that Elementalis is that good either. The 6/8 titan will be much harder to kill, and when followed up with an Io Void Leviathan (also from Dark Prophecies), hilarity will ensue.

It all depends on how common removal that doesn't care about size is, cards like Assassination and Mind Control. Such a deck could never get very far as the meta would quickly shift around it, but I can still see something along those lines causing an upset or two.

Rating: 6/10. It's not like this is inherently a bad card. It just doesn't do as much as some current alternatives. It will stay in play eventually and it will make opponents cry themselves to sleep when it does, as the extra boost in Elementalis could really prove to be something special. However, it isn't consistent nor effective enough to really reach the top tier.