Wow, sure the announcement post they wanted the new pandora mode to be like a “sudden death mode”, but it was way better before the most recent changes; now its just an RNG deathmatch. The Hammer of Auros is the incredibly stupid compared to most of them, and it seems to only be possible to do well at all in this mode if you get lucky on your treasure picks. I have literally won about 6 games by simply playing the hammer every turn after I get it. Most of the treasure isn’t extremely good because of huge costs or horrible drawbacks, but some of them seem to have no drawbacks whatsoever. Sure the Hammer of Auros costs you 3 mana a turn, but in a draft mode you can almost win any game with that one card. If the game mode continues like this, the only people that will do well are the people that draft the OP treasure and build decks specifically around the best treasures available (i.e. not picking high attack, low health minions because of the hammer). Personally, I would much rather have a vanilla draft mode with no treasure than the current pandora mode.
While I do agree the Hammer of Auros is strong, it’s far from being the strongest treasure. Pandora has always been a game about tempo where you try to get as much value as you can from every card you play. The Hammer is 3 damage for 3 Faeria, which is exactly like a Flame Burst. In other words, playing the Hammer over and over is like playing a normal card every turn. Sure, it comes back to your hand, but only speaking about tempo, you didn’t gain any by playing the Hammer … and beside, do you often run out of cards in your hand during Faeria ?? So is the fact the Hammer returns every turn to your hand that big a deal ??
Now, notice how a lot of treasures have crazy effects for their cost. So crazy in fact it creates a strong tempo swing you would never be able to get with the Hammer since it does “normal” effect for its cost. In fact, if I had to say which treasures are the strongest ones, I would pick the 4 following treasures :
- Dark Crystal : 4 damage to opponent god, heal 4 damage, deal 3 damage to all enemy creatures and draw 2 for 7 Faeria. That alone is worth 4-5 Hammer of Auros.
- Scale of whatever deals 3 damage to everything for 1 Faeria.
- Feast : Or otherwise known as summon a 9/7 Wind Soldier for 5 Faeria and deal 9 face damage.
- That one event that kills a creature and spawn a 6/1 in its place.
Those 4 are the ones that will turn the state of the board around and allow you to steal a game. As for the Hammer of Auros, it’s best suited to win the fatigue race … cause even if you spawn god damage with it turn after turn, chances are your opponent will rush you down with superior tempo.
