Whispers from the Maze pre-release weekend was a blast! I’ve laid out the decks I ended up playing at each of the three pre-releases I attended. I’ve also included the sealed pools themselves so that you can see if you would have built them differently!

General observations

After playing with the set in person, I’d add the following observations to the ones I made in my limited preview.

Cheap reserve costs are scarce

Many cards in the set cost 3 or more from reserve to balance around passive support abilities accumulating boosts. The lack of cheap reserve plays makes the ones that do exist more valuable. Sap Sniffer (C), BLISS Fan (C), and Burrowing Noosh (C) are some of the highlights.

Balancing reserve space is a puzzle

With passive support abilities, there’s tension between letting your cards sit in reserve for longer to accumulate boosts and not letting your reserve overflow. Sometimes you’ll have to choose between playing your cards before they reach max value or being wasteful with resources.

As a simple example, if you play a card with a passive support ability on D1 and don’t play it on D2, playing two cards from hand will result in overflow.

Cards like Lyra Contortionist and Tech Lab Unit are even more valuable than I expected.

At-noon support abilities need to already be in reserve to trigger

Cards that arrive in reserve at noon aren’t there in time to see the at-noon trigger. As a result, Fen, Subhash, and Treyst prefer Bravos, Lyra, and Ordis passive support abilities to Axiom and Muna ones. Flore, Caring Gardener becomes slightly less appealing.

Saturday: The band’s all here

The pool

Pool 1

I locked into Lyra and Muna almost instantly. Lyra lets me play Fen, my strongest hero, and the faction is deep enough to support the 0-stat theme. Muna offers high card quality along with reserve synergies in the form of Flore, Caring Gardener (C) and Sap Dispersal (C).

I considered both Axiom and Bravos for my third faction. Bravos is deeper, but the average card quality is lower, and the mana costs are higher than I’d want for Fen. I went with Axiom instead; my 10th Axiom card is worse, but the highlights such as Aby, Sap Courier are stronger.

Notes

Deck 1

Record: WWW

  • Lyra Contortionist (C)’s support ability more valuable than I expected due to the number of cards you want to let stew in reserve. At one point, I had both copies of Flore, Caring Gardener in reserve with a Contortionist to let me distribute the boosts more flexibly.
  • BLISS Fan overperformed. Just playing it out triggered it twice when I had both copies of BLISS Bassist in reserve. Costing just 1 from reserve makes a huge difference in a set with so many high reserve costs. I imagine the card would get even better with Ordis and Bravos passive support abilities.
  • Staff Clerk (C) looked solid in a Fen world. My opponent landed two Clerks and forced me to pass with 2 mana up and a playable Lyra Contortionist (C) in reserve.
  • The Little Mouse (C) on a Lyra Contortionist (F) forced my opponent to overflow by replacing it with a card that didn’t have an extra slot.
  • Sap Extractor (C) felt great when I had Flores, but there was one game where it ended up doing very little.
  • Sap Duende (C) ended up being 2 mana to draw a card. The rare’s ability to target a non-boosted character makes all the difference.
  • Daedalus (C) requires a reasonable character density and/or ways to get characters into reserve. I was once forced to play it targeting a character in my opponent’s reserve.

Sunday: Many cupsa sap

The pool

Pool 2

My Lyra is quite weak and too light to support the 0-stat theme, but it allows me to play Fen as my hero.

Bravos is an auto-include as my deepest faction. In addition to playing well with Fen, the three copies of Cuppa Sap make Spirit Wielder, Bravos Excavator, and Sap Dispersal worthwhile.

Axiom narrowly beat out Ordis as my third faction. I wanted some sabotage via the Drillmoles, and I thought the third Cuppa Sap would be cute. The Ordis 1-3 drop commons are stronger than my Axiom, and the two copies of Conscription play great both as Fen and against Fen. What tipped me towards Axiom, however, was that Ordis has 1-2 fewer cards I’d be happy including when I was already a few playables short.

Notes

Deck 2

Record: WWW

  • The lack of sabotage in the format meant I was mostly able to play Cuppa Sap with impunity. My Cuppa Sap (R) on The Grems threatening to take out The Refinery (R) forced a preemptive Sap Dispersal (C), which I was honestly fine with. I did get blown out once by The Little Mouse (C) and once by Qorgan Informant (C) - on a Bravos Excavator (C), no less.
  • BLISS Fan from reserve + Cuppa Sap + 2-drop let me 2-0 on D2.
  • Cuppa Sap let me sabotage with a Drillmole that had been resupplied that day.
  • I couldn’t play around a resupplied X Marks the Spot forever. It ate a 4-boost Designer Drone (C) in an empty expedition to prevent me from winning the game that day. Similarly, Subhash’s License Withdrawl (R) placed into reserve was a nightmare to play around.
  • Ordis Accountant (C) was very threatening. Eventually, I had no better option than to play a Swift Jinn (C), despite the Accountant being face-up in reserve. Incidentally, this did let me Encore (C) it on the following day.
  • Lernaean Hydra (C) had a massive 11 boosts by the end of one game, with the help of Swift Jinn (C).

Monday: Anchored 4-drops

The pool

Pool 3

I didn’t get a picture of the heroes in my pool, but I know I didn’t have any Axiom or Lyra heroes. Teija was clearly my strongest option.

Fortunately, my Muna and Ordis were very strong. I had three copies of Luminous Swarm and two copies of Gran Bwa (R/F) between them for a total of five characters that could get extra mileage from the Teija boost.

The generic strength of my Axiom characters made the faction an easy third choice. Lyra is deeper, but most of the cards got their value from reserve and 0-stat synergies, which I would have limited access to as Teija.

Notes

Deck 3

Record: WLW

  • Luminous Swarm and Gran Bwa felt incredible with Teija. Gran Bwa (R/F) in particular looked excellent against Fen.
  • Fair Fox (C) didn’t have a downside against Rin. On D1, we each had a 1-2 start. I ended with the Fair Fox so that they couldn’t play the resupplied card that day, and their two characters going to reserve plus the Rin trigger resulted in a 2-card overflow.
  • I took my loss against a sweet Atsadi deck. I got off to an overwhelming 1/6 expedition lead while they ramped three times with Swift Jinn (C) and Sustenance (C). Once they had enough mana, they were able to after-you as the second player into The Hunger (C), discarding the anchored characters I had played. They proceeded to 2-0 with a 1-drop they had held back, and I never advanced again.
  • One misplay I made was leading with a 2-drop against Yzmir instead of a 3-drop. This gave the Teija boost to the 2-drop, which my opponent removed with Evanescence (C).
  • Turn order matters a lot with Gran Bwa. I didn’t feel comfortable running out an anchored Gran Bwa as the first player on D2 (this was partially due to knowledge that my opponent had three copies of Theseus in their deck).