Winds of Exchange Previews: Adult Swim and Brikk Nastee

Thanks for joining Timeshapers as we explore two new Keyforge cards. Before we do, though, we want to thank Christian T. Petersen for providing us the opportunity to do these card previews. It’s great that Ghost Galaxy is supporting Keyforge content creators, as it really energizes those of us who do this work. Now, on to the cards.

Spoilers ahead!

Adult Swim

John Ziegler

In a different meta, this card might not be amazing. A close comparison might be Warriors’ Refrain, which is certainly not a great card. However, in a meta full of token creatures, this card becomes a lot better.

Adult Swim seems most comparable to Mælstrom. Mælstrom is certainly an excellent card, capable of completely messing up an opponent’s game plan by forcing them to put a bunch of creatures that they have already played back on top of their deck. This not only clears their board, but also slows down their future draws, as they must re-draw cards that they have previously drawn. Of course, Mælstrom does have the disadvantage of two chains.

What if you could have a Mælstrom-like effect, but instead of taking two chains, it actually rewarded you with an Æmber? This is the value of Adult Swim. As far as we know, all token creatures other than Berserker are three power or lower, so this card will send almost all token creatures (and any small non-token creatures) back to the top of their owner’s deck. Now, it is worth noting that those token creatures will go back to being normal cards when they are returned to the deck, so it’s almost like a game state reset to before the token creatures were created. That means that it doesn’t create quite the disadvantage that Mælstrom does, as the opponent won’t be stuck drawing exclusively creatures for their next few turns.

However, it also presents an opportunity. Given that you are allowed to look at what the card is under one of your tokens, you can use Adult Swim to get back a valuable card that became a token. Maybe your Æmbitrage got tokened? No problem! Use Adult Swim to put it back on top of your deck where you’ll be able to re-draw it.

Another important note is that Adult Swim solves the problem presented by Scout tokens. Scout tokens seemingly leave the opponent with an impossible choice – either leave the Scouts alive to reap, or destroy them and let the controller of the Scouts draw a bunch of cards. Given that Adult Swim won’t trigger the Destroyed ability on Scout, it seems a perfect way to resolve the impossible choice.

On a non-competitive note, I also have to say that I love the art and the flavor on this card. The fact that it shows an adult Aquan telling some young Aquans that they can’t swim because it’s Adult Swim time is not only well reflected in the art, but also in the mechanic of the card. I can imagine a Squire token having to go away because the adult (Champion Anaphiel or their in-set equivalent) is working. And, of course, it’s a great pop culture reference as well.

Adult Swim offers a lot of possibilities. What I especially like about it is that it will be a skill-testing card. Much like with Mælstrom, players will have to judge how much relative benefit they get out of the card compared to what their opponent gets. Being able to make good judgments will be important to getting maximum value out of Adult Swim. There are times when just playing it for the Æmber could be a big mistake.

Aurore Inara

The best way to get a grasp on the value of a new card is to compare it to older existing cards and how they have played in the past. Mælstrom is the only card with a similar effect of placing multiple creatures on top of their owner’s decks, but is it the best comparison? Another card feels very similar to me and that is Warrior’s Refrain. Warrior’s refrain has a similar condition and the same Æmber pip to go with it, and by and large, it’s a pretty terrible card.

But the reason Warrior’s Refrain is such a bad card has nothing to do with the card itself and lots to do with the set it is in. Worlds Collide Brobnar is one of the weakests houses in all of KeyForge, and maybe even the weakest one. It not only performs poorly overall, but it is the set with the most Brobnar creatures of power 3 or less. Not only that, it is the set that introduced some of the best 2 and 3 power creatures in the game in Star Alliance.

Generally speaking, you’ll want Adult Swim to affect your opponent and not yourself, and to know whether that is likely or not, we’ll have to see the rest of the cards in the set. That said, we do know about token creatures, and considering the Grunt token is a vanilla token creature with 3 power, it is safe to assume no creature token other than Berserker will have naturally higher than 3 power. So Adult Swim is most likely going to be a token sweep. However, due to the tokens turning back into their original card type when put on top of the deck, Adult Swim is not going to have the same deck clogging effect of Mælstrom.

But the reason I am excited about Adult Swim is because of how it will allow me to manipulate token cards. We’ve been told we’re allowed to look at the face-down token cards, which means we will have the opportunity to suicide with tokens that are cards we don’t want to draw, and then Adult Swim the cards we do want to draw on top of our deck. This will be easier if the tokens are Unfathomable, but I can see doing the same with off-house tokens.

Brikk Nastee

John Ziegler

In Episode 135 of Help from Future Self, they talked about Brobnar coming back into the game. One thing that stuck with me from that episode was their insistence that the reason why Brobnar was so much better in Call of the Archons than it was in future sets was because that version of Brobnar had cards like Warsong, Headhunter, and Loot the Bodies that rewarded them for fighting and destroying creatures.

There was also Looter Goblin, but it had several problems. First, it had to reap to activate its ability, which meant it took two turns to come online. Second, it was a two power creature, meaning that it was fairly easy to kill. However, what if you had a Brobnar creature that always gave you an Æmber for fighting with a friendly Brobnar creature, and worked as soon as it hit the board? It would be like Warsong on a stick. That’s what Brikk Nastee is.

Better yet, Brikk Nastee is a common, and it effectively turns every one of your Brobnar creatures into Headhunter. In fact, even better than Headhunter, because they don’t need to survive the fight to gain the Æmber. Brikk is going to be a priority target for your opponent to kill. Not only that, but if a player knows that Brikk is in deck, it makes the rest of a Brobnar battle line more of a threat. Other times a line of Goblin tokens might not seem like much of a threat. However, the knowledge that your opponent could drop Brikk the next turn and earn Æmber for fighting with all those Goblin tokens, while at the same destroying your board, Might make them think twice about leaving those tokens sitting around. You better hope that you have Adult Swim!

Like Adult Swim, Brikk Nastee is also fantastic from a flavor perspective. He appears to be the lead singer of the Brobnar band Bräkken, which debuted all the way back in Age of Ascension. I don’t claim to be a flavor expert, so I will leave it to someone like Ketzer to expound more upon that, but I also have to point out that I now want Thom, Brobnar Music Critic to show up as a card.

Brikk Nastee is a card that gives me a lot of hope for Brobnar in this set. After their disastrous performance in Worlds Collide, Brobnar needed to come back strong in this set to re-earn player trust. Brikk is a good indication that they are headed in the correct direction. I know that if I open Brobnar in a Winds of Exchange deck, Brikk is a card that I will be looking for.

Aurore Inara

Brikk Nastee is a Warsong with a body. It’s amazing. It’s a witch with 5 power. Enabling Brobnar to finally do the fighting they want to do while not being a situationally awful draw like warsong. Brikk Nastee can be used just like a Warsong on the turn it is played and it can stick around to Warsong some more the next turn. Also, just imagine having two of these beauties out, cha-ching!

Obviously, the value of Brikk Nastee will depends on the power of the rest of the Brobnar cards, but it certainly gives me hope for a powerful smashy house!

Summary

We hope these cards got you as excited for Winds of Exchange as they got us. They both seem like powerful cards with great uses (and they’re both common!). Remember that if you want to learn more about Winds of Exchange, you can follow Ghost Galaxy at keyforging.com or back the GameFound campaign. If you want to find us, we can be found on Sanctumonious-Timeshapers Discord server as Aurore or SecondAct. Thanks for reading!