Witches! How fitting for the Halloween season. Witches have been part of the Destiny since its inception, first coming to prominence in the meta with Nightsister’s inclusion in the infamous rainbow 9’s lineup and they never really left. Though typically supporting other more powerful characters or merely a rainbow team’s access point for blue, within that sphere witches have continued to be popular and thanks to a certain downgrade focused burn deck, witches continue to have a presence in the meta today. However, we would like to see a greater variety of witch decks, the same as other subtypes within Destiny have thrived. Combined with the changes to the RL and a few of the new cards below we hope to give witches some much-needed love and care.
To that end, we have our first spoiler: Nightsister Acolyte.
Wow! What an amazing piece of donated art by Steph! Be sure to check out her work on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/steph_does.art/). Thanks a lot, Steph!
Much like the original Nightsister, she evokes the original’s ability to reroll any die, virtually on-demand, but also reinforces the odds matter mechanics of witches first used in Legacies. One of the core issues behind playing an odds matter archetype has been having to deal with the perceived cost of including less (or even no) even cost cards, which has the side effect of not playing with some of the best cards in Destiny. So, Nightsister Acolyte actively rewards drawing & playing those odd-costed cards with its action to give those cards additional value and hopefully make those decks more competitive. As such with the new RL we’ve included the potent card Witch Magick, which should give witches a powerful, cheap heal card to offset their low HP that comes with their cost. Energy Bow also on the RL gets additional rerolls in addition to her action, atop of being an odd card itself for multiple synergies. As for partners, Mother Talzin herself is an ideal partner, to capitalize on those odd cards being in your deck before they even hit your hand, but Nightsister Acolyte can find several witch (and non-witch) partners due to its aggressive cost.
Our next spoiler card is Influence.
One of the first powers a Nightsister masters in canon, this continues of the increasingly lengthy list of curse downgrades and is yet another target for cards like Nightsister Zombies and Nightsister Lair. This card might seem odd (pardon the pun, I couldn’t help myself) since it generates a resource on a blue curse, but thematically it is forcing an opponent to either help you generate the resource or hurt themselves in defiance. It is intended to fulfill a similar role to Possessed without being quite so punishing on its own while also being potentially powerful in concert with it and other removal. Though these kind of choice cards tend to be inherently weaker, a smart opponent will almost always give you what you do not want, but we are hopeful that this will find a home as a cheap new curse for decks that do not want to branch into yellow for Dead or Alive but could still like to some potential resource generation.
Lastly, we have the Water of Life.
This card fills the role of a cheap utility upgrade the same way that Dark Counsel did, so it is appropriate that it shares its die. The idea being that this, in concert with the previously mentioned Witch Magick, is meant to bolster the life pool of witches. The hope is that Water of Life could give an existing witch character, Old Daka for example, enough extra life to close out a game. Also, though potentially infinite healing is unprecedented, seeing cards like Black One (ATG) and Force Storm exist without issue dealing theoretically infinite damage, we do not anticipate runaway specials with Water of Life being a real problem for this card currently.
All these things hope to make witches a powerful subtype in the Unlikely Heroes meta with the new RL. In any case, thank you for your continued support and I wish everyone a Happy Halloween!
