Shadow Era Spoilers #11 - Shatter Ice

Today's spoiler is difficult to appraise, but speaks volumes about Dark Prophecies itself. Let's take a peek.


Dark Prophecies 49 - Shatter Ice
Spoiled by Kyle on 12/21/2012
Source

The first thing I have to point out with this card is that it doesn't specify ENEMY allies; if anything of your own is frozen, it will be removed as well.

Another interesting note is that this is the very first card spoiled that can remove opposing cards from the game. A few elemental cards let you remove your own cards from the game, but this is the first that affects opponents.

The third thing to point out is that this card is uncommon... which means that freezing enemies may not quite be so easy. If meeting the condition for this card were easy, Shatter Ice would be higher on the rarity curve, if not the cost curve.

Now let's talk about what the card actually does. While the remove from game clause is nice, that's not what's important. This is a boon for cards such as Shadow Knight, but also a bane if you're removing Brutal Minotaur so you don't get the damage bonus. It goes both ways.

This card is an easy way to finish off enemies that you've already incapacitated, but remember you've already used one card incapacitating them in the first place. For most enemies, one or two burn spells could do the job just as well and may actually be cheaper.

This only changes when you're using a reusable source of freeze, in other words Snow Sapphire and Voice of Winter. These two cards could set you up for a very nice Shatter Ice... but only if your opponent plays into it fully knowing the card exists. Also remember that Voice of Winter freezes your own cards as well, which brings me back to the first point that this new card kills both friend and foe.

Rating: 5/10. The big problem with this card in the current pool is predictability. Dropping one of the freeze equipment makes it blatantly obvious what you're trying to do, and also makes it fairly easy to play around. Very rarely will you ever kill more than one ally with this card, and it's an ally you already spent a card on disabling anyways. It's possible that Dark Prophecies has something else to break this card with, but given the uncommon rarity, I doubt that. Shatter Ice could be powerful, but the setup required to make it work makes the card very easy to predict and play around.