Wings of Wisdom

Jacob Pearson is a game developer at Legend Story Studios, bringing us a breakdown on commanding an army of Archangels with Prism, Awakener of Sol!

It was unlike any beast she had seen before. Scorched skin rippling with dark magic, meat-flecked battleaxe swinging haphazardly, flaming crimson eyes beneath a giant set of cruel horns. And it was heading straight for the gates of Solana…

Prism leaped into the air as her gleaming wings unfurled, and rocketed towards the beast like a thunderbolt. A flock of winged creatures attempted to intercept her, but with a flick of her wrist she blanketed herself within the shimmering folds of an Arc Light Sentinel. The golden illusions dissipated as quickly as they had appeared, leaving the flying menaces disoriented and confused.

Soaring through the sky towards the gargantuan charging monster, Prism felt her hope sink. There was no way she would reach it in time. She closed her eyes, heart thumping with adrenaline, and whispered a desperate prayer. Sekem answered her call.

The heavens parted with an ear shattering boom, as the Archangel of Ravages descended upon the unworldly horror, sword blazing with blinding light. The demon halted dead in its tracks, cowering before the almighty slayer of shadows. As Sekem swooped down and plunged her searing blade into the foul creature’s heart, Prism could have sworn she glimpsed a wry smile cross the Archangel’s lips.

Prism, Awakener of Sol is the new Light Illusionist introduced in Dusk till Dawn. You might recognize her visage from an earlier form - Prism, Sculptor of Arc Light. Some may be doubtful as to what this new incarnation could possibly awaken that has yet to be seen. But do not fret, open the bounds of your mind and let the light flow through the many figments of your imagination. You may just find your new herald of victory.

So where else to start than with the figments themselves? This new card type plays very similar to auras of the past, as they are a ‘stay in play’ card. This means that once they are added to the arena they are there for good. All of the figments featured in Dusk till Dawn are Legendary 4-cost yellow Light instants that have a small effect when they enter the arena. From there, they just wait for you to awaken their true potential to transform, flipping into their respective evangelical protectors.

One of the biggest differences between the new and old iterations of Prism is her emphasis on heraldic warfare and severely reduced life total. Prism, Awakener of Sol relies on finding ways of adding heralds to her soul to threaten any of our righteous power plays. The easiest way is getting them to hit, but it's often quite hard to rely on that happening naturally. The threat of opposing 6+ power attacks often stands in our way of establishing a reliable attack sequence. This combined with our low life total means we need to strategically sneak a herald or two in there to make sure we can capitalize on a weak turn from our opponent. If we can have the right figment ready to awaken we can dramatically turn the tide of battle at any time.

The best ways of accomplishing this are using equipment like Halo of Illumination, which allows us to directly place a herald from our hand into our soul. Then we can fetch a figment at instant speed to ready a potential protector or to influence the game with its ‘enter the arena’ ability. Or we can play auras like Merciful Retribution, so if any opposing heroes try to destroy our heralds when they attack they’ll simply go to our soul instead.

Just remember when constructing your deck that these figments are real cards. What I mean by that is these figments are cards you will see drawn into your hand meaning it is very important to make sure you have enough to fetch out of your deck. But not so many that you draw hands that struggle to pay costs or defend. To mitigate this density of cards that don’t defend it’s good to include some solutions to drawing hands like this. Having access to things like Phantasmal Footsteps or even the Ironhide equipment can be pivotal in getting the figments back into your deck while defending attacks.

Otherwise, aiming to get a figment that is not a focal point of your gameplan into the arena can be greatly rewarding. Getting a less important figment set up that can then be awakened by simply pitching away another figment to prevent some damage via the angel’s ward ability can make or break a game. There will be times where sacrifices must be made for the greater good, so don’t be afraid to put your angels in the line of fire when needed.

While figments can just be played out into the arena, they do not have a lot of impact by themselves and are quite costly so it’s best to try to leave that to your hero ability. When building Prism I have found that it is best to lean hard into what you're trying to achieve. If you're all in on the heralds, playing cards like Angelic Wrath, Angelic Descent and Celestial Reprimand are almost a necessity, which doesn’t leave us much room for setup or defensive tools. We hit hard, fast, and compound our board into winning positions very quickly, but we sacrifice any thought of a secondary gameplan, which leaves us susceptible to hate cards or midrange and control strategies that can naturally play at a slower pace with lots of interaction.

If we want to slow things down we can start playing things like Soul Shield (great at pitching away those sometimes hazardous figments), Oasis Respite, and Sink Below. These in combination with some of the spectra auras, which give our opponents a lot of pause when trying to go after us directly, give us a lot more time to slip through the defensive walls and set up devastating counterattacks with our angelic hordes. However this leaves us much more open to getting run over by hyper aggressive decks that try to race from the very start.

Prism is a very capable hero with a myriad of different configurations available, so treat these suggestions as mere teasers as to what can be accomplished. Figuring out which heroes you can run over and which heroes will stomp you is key to seeing success with Prism. It will take time to craft the perfect build and sideboard to help against those rough matchups, but if you persevere, you’ll soon find you can run circles around your enemies without them knowing what’s even happening or how to stop it.

Don’t be disheartened if you fall flat as you learn to play with the Awakener of Sol. Having a low starting life total means every mistake can be that much more devastating. Knowing when and where to awaken, what figments to get, what order to attack with your heralds, and a million more things will begin to flow through your mind as you play. Prism is incredibly rewarding once mastered and can achieve some truly magnificent things - she’s just waiting for someone to unlock her secrets…