What's For Lunch?

Jacob Pearson is a game developer at Legend Story Studios, teaching us how to pick a path with Levia, Shadowborn Abomination. Will you learn to control the Shadows with Levia, Redeemed, or surrender to the hunger with Blasmophet, Levia Consumed?

Your armour feels heavy. Your squadron is nowhere to be found. The inky walls of the Demonastery loom overhead like nightmares from under your childhood bed. How did you end up in a place like this?

You start running down the darkened corridors, heart pulsing painfully, searching in vain for an exit. Muffled sounds of tormented agony echo through the walls, accompanied by the haunted whispers of strange entities you can’t quite comprehend.

Suddenly, you freeze in your tracks. A hideous shape hunches over an eviscerated corpse. The wet squelching of flesh being torn by bare teeth sickens you to your roots. Forcing down your disgust you painstakingly tiptoe back the way you came, never letting the thing out of your sight.

There is a slight clink as the folds of your armour grate together ever so softly. The beast snaps up straight, head swiveling around, revealing a blood-smeared face that once belonged to a maiden. Two violet pinpricks peer at you from the shrouds of darkness, lasering you with a curious gaze.

Forget stealth. You turn and race down the gothic hallway, mind roaring with fear, vision blurring from frantic desperation. Something slimy coils around your ankle and yanks you to the ground. Your eyes widen in terror at the convulsing tentacle, belonging to that ghastly creature, as it begins reeling you in.

The mottled torso parts, expanding into two glistening jaws adorned with rows of jagged teeth. Several mandibles burst forth from the monster’s newly formed gullet, dripping with blood and saliva.

As Levia slowly drags you into her gaping maw, you scream all the way.

Dusk till Dawn features the return of the fascinating Shadow Brute, with all the blood, guts, and expendable appendages that the class is known for, as well as some of the wildest cards we’ve ever seen. The first place to start is with the new Legendary that marks Levia’s ultimate decision - whether to redeem yourself or give in to the hunger.

This transformation card stays in your inventory during a game of Flesh and Blood until you meet the condition and activation requirement mentioned on either side. Once met, your hero will transform into either Levia, Redeemed, shrugging off the chains of blood debt for the rest of the game, or give in to the bloodthirst and become Blasmophet, Levia Consumed, flipping the banish mechanic upside down. Transforming into Redeemed means you are no longer required to banish a 6+ power attack every turn to avoid the crippling debt you tend to accumulate over the course of the game. This allows the savvy Levia player to transition to a more value oriented play pattern to close out the game. Redeemed lets us set up late game Bloodrush Bellow, Spoiled Skull, and Convulsions from the Bellows of Hell plays while still defending, keeping us safe from the blood debt toll.

On the flip side, Blasmophet, Levia Consumed requires a more interesting deck construction to get the most value. We want to stack our banished zone with as many cards with blood debt as we can, while trading life back and forth with our enemies before intentionally submitting ourselves to the demon’s will, taking a few points of blood debt to get us to the magic life total of 13. This is by far the way I prefer to play Levia. It's so much fun managing your graveyard, banished zone and life total. Trying to weave all three into a hauntingly harmonious ballad that crescendos into a non-stop avalanche of your enemy’s entrails. Once we are Consumed we can either play a value game by defending with up to 3 cards then playing a big attack like Endless Maw by pitching 1-2 cards (Mr Shaden Death Hydra I’m looking at you!). Or we can go for a final all out assault utilizing Dread Screamers to consistently have access to go again.

Playing Consumed lets us use a weapon like Hexagore, the Death Hydra, which has a crazy amount of value at 2-cost for a 6 power! Avoiding the self-inflicting damage is so easy to achieve with this style of play. We also have access to power cards like Blood Dripping Frenzy. This card is a blue resource that piles up the blood debt and powers big spike turns, it just fits like a glove. Just make sure we invest fully into blood debt cards and ways to banish attacks from hand, such as Ram Raider.

The key to this strategy is managing all three of the following steps:

• Step 1: Stock up our banished zone with lots of blood debt.
• Step 2: Aggressively trade life back and forth with our enemies.
• Step 3: Take the 1-3 blood debt necessary to bring us to 13 life and let them be consumed by our awesome might.

This transformation is not the only thing bringing Levia into the limelight. Standard Levia builds of the past with little blood debt and a raw unbridled focus on value still have a lot to gain here. Cards like Slithering Shadowpede and Diabolic Offering pair very nicely with the new common and rare Shadow cycles in the set, as well as enablers like Art of War. Drawing two extra cards, giving go again, and putting a Shadowpede into your banished zone feels pretty amazing! Even better if you’ve got a cheeky additional 1 cost 6 power Diabolic Offering waiting in the wings.

Dusk till Dawn also brings several disruptive options for the discerning Shadow Brute player. With the crème de la crème being Scowling Flesh Bag - the new king of midrange equipment. Intimidating a card at random during your opponent's turn is one of the most disruptive things you can do in the entire game when timed correctly. This is even better when you consider that Brute is a class that has typically given up on disruption in favor of pure damage. So any source of disruption is at a premium. Scowling Flesh Bag is very strong in the typical Brute value deck, allowing a turn of reprieve from an aggressive opponent's avalanche of annihilation. With a single block we can instantly switch the tempo of a game and unleash the beats. Even cards like Dimenxxional Vortex and Chains of Mephetis give Shadow Brute a lot of options for interacting with opposing heroes.

Levia has truly had the breath of darkness bring new life into her deck. Don’t feel down if you don’t get it at first. Managing all her different abilities and combos can take a while to get your head around. But the more we play, the more we see. The more we see, the more power we have over our enemies. What are you waiting for! Succumb to our dark lord Blasmophet and join your brethren on our quest to tear Solana asunder at your local game store. It's Show Time!