Gods Unchained - Winter Wanderlands set card review, card 4-9

I will continue to review and look at the cards as I come across them. Today we will take a look at cards 4 to 9, so 6 cards in total. I hope you will find this review and look useful.

Winter Wanderlands

A quick recap, the set will be available from December 14th, and will be 20 cards in total. They will be available for purchase and through ranked play. Maybe some other holiday was as well, we will see. The set will "disappear" on January 11th, so it will only be available for a 4-week period.

Let us look at the new cards, cards 4-6

These new cards were revealed in a similar way, through tweets from a Gods Unchained partner. The first three cards we will look at are cards 4-6.

The Reinnapper, Roar: obliterate a creature with mana cost 3 or less. Afterlife: Summon a base copy of the creature for its controller. 4 mana 4/3, looking at the stats alone the card is not great value. The Roar and Afterlife effect appears to be a combination of the two cards Dearly Departed and Sines on Us All.

Dearly departed sees very little play as it is now, and it is combined with a card that transforms it. Meaning the card you took from your opponent's hand is now lost forever. I assume it is this fact that makes the card so sparsely used. Shine on Us All also sees very sparing use. Mostly in control Nature decks as far as I know. There it is used as a buff remover, or debuff remover/creature heal.

I see the Reinnappers use as neither of these. I think if it will be used, it most likely will be used in a similar way as to how order is used. It allows you to buy tempo by temporarily removing the opponent's creature. With the card being a neutral card I think that will allow for more flexibility and more use cases. But if it will see wide use, not sure. There could be a case made for it to fin in both control and aggro decks, as it will allow a at least temporary tempo swing.

The Pallas' Wonderwagon, is a 4 mana 3/6 that swaps its health and strength every time a spell is played, and the card is a structure. The stats of the card are nice for a 4 mana card, 9 stats points. It is on par with other good taunt creatures. But I think the fact it is swapping its stats can make the execution or use of the card a bit tricky. And I think because of that it will only see limited if any use.

Spirit Storm, a Death spell that cost 2 mana, when played will trigger the Afterlife of all friendly creatures. I think this card will see play in decks that utilize the Afterlife effect. This would allow you to take advantage of this to an even greater extent. And I definitely think it will see play in decks that play into the Afterlife effects. So far it is one of the better cards I have been so far.

Cards 7 to 9

Now let of look at the three next cards that were revealed. And it is looking like War is getting some gifts this time around.

Thawed Heart, a 2 mana light spell. Obliterate your opponent´s void. For each creature obliterated heal your god for 1. This card is very similar to Gleamweaver. But instead of removing 2 cards in any void, it removes all cards in your opponent's void. And instead of a 2/2 creature, this heals your god. It looks to me like this is an attempt to combat the Anubians to some extent. This might have been the reason that the GU team was unwilling to do anything with the balance of the Anubian deck used right now.

I also see this card being good in matchups versus control War decks. As it would hamper the effectiveness of their End to War spell. I definitely see this card being used in control Light decks. And maybe in other light decks as well to some extent.

Take the Reins, a 3 mana War spell. Gain control of the strongest enemy creature with less strength than the strongest friendly creature until the end of turn. Empower 4: Gain control of any enemy creature until the end of the turn instead. This spell is a 1 mana cheaper version of the Deception card Anti-Magic Expert, the 8 mana 7/6 creature that lets you take control of an enemy creature for one turn. 

While the card costing 7 mana instead of 8 is a big deal, as it allows you to use it 3 turns earlier. It is still an expensive card. And if you will use it to kill a threat, or require your opponent to have 2 great threats in play. And if that's the case you are pretty close to dead. And using it to kill your opponents, that's fairly uncertain as well. 

One of the great tempo swing cards

Where I think the card will be used to swing momentum, in a similar way to how Umber Arrow is used. The caveat here being it is more expensive and has a prerequisite. But the upside is greater. The late-game addition to the card I think allows it to have more than one use case. Which is good. I do think this card can see played in some war decks. But it most likely will not be an automatic inclusion, but more of a situational card. 

Woodcutter Imp, this card on the other hand will most likely be included in almost every aggro War deck. Because a 2 mana 3/3 with Godblitz is extremely useful. There are only a handful of cards that have the Godblitx rate, and even fewer creatures. The drawback of taking the same amount of damage just see as a small price to pay.

I hope that you have enjoyed this look at the 6 new cards that were made public. I will keep looking for the rest of the cards and do similar reviews of them.

If you think I made any wrong assumption or messed up in some way. Or am plainly barking up the wrong tree with my assessments of the cards? Please let me know and let me know why I am wrong, or correct for that matter. I would love to hear your opinions on these cards. If you would like to support me and the content I make, please consider following me, reading my other posts, or why not do both instead.

See you on the interwebs!

Picture provided by: https://twitter.com/NFTradeOfficial/status/1599752291032391681, https://twitter.com/AdamantiumZero/status/1599987832474701824