How to play : Rek'Sai Void Burrower

Every conquer is one more card. Moving onto a battlefield nobody controls counts, and so does winning a fight for one. When it happens, exhaust the legend: reveal the top two cards of your Main Deck, play one if you can pay for it, and recycle the other. She exhausts to do it, so it works once per turn: save her for the conquer where you still have energy left. Twelve units in this list cost two energy, so the reveal usually finds something you can afford, and a unit played this way can go straight onto the battlefield you just took, where it helps you hold it for a point at your next Beginning Phase.

Undertitan is the best card to reveal. As it is revealed from your deck, it adds two energy, whether you play it or not; when the legend is the one revealing it, those two energy can just as well pay for the other card. Void Rush reveals two and takes two energy off the one you play, so an Undertitan it finds costs four, and two of those four are the energy it just added: two more energy and an Order power buy a 5-might unit that gives your other units +2 might this turn, and Void Rush draws the card you did not play. Rek’Sai, Breacher, your champion, adds the last piece: while she is on the board, every unit you play from anywhere but your hand has Accelerate, so a unit from a reveal can pay one more energy and one power of its own domain to enter ready and attack the same turn.

You draw four and may send back up to two. Keep the two-energy units: Honest Broker, Carrion Dredger, Inferna and Noxian Emissary need no power, so any rune pays for them, and your first turn is played on two runes (three if you go second). Two of them is a keep. One of them with Void Rush, Faithful Manufactor or Noxus Hopeful is a keep too: Noxus Hopeful costs two on any turn you have already played another card.

In your hand, Undertitan is a plain six-energy unit: its two energy only arrive when a reveal turns it over from the deck. Unless the rest of the hand is cheap units, send it back, and Vi, Peacekeeper with it. Keep at most one Cleave or Blood Rush in total, since neither does anything without an attacker. Never mulligan to find your champion: Rek’Sai, Breacher waits in the Champion Zone from the first turn.

Play a unit every turn and move every turn. Units arrive exhausted, so a two-energy unit played on turn one walks to a battlefield on turn two, and if nobody controls that battlefield, walking in is already a conquer: the legend starts revealing from your second turn. Play a card before Noxus Hopeful whenever you can, since Legion makes it a 4-might unit for two energy, and the same holds when the legend reveals it after you have played a card that turn. Faithful Manufactor brings two units for three energy: itself and a 1-might Recruit token where it lands. That token is exactly the unit Escaped Grayback and Cull the Weak will ask you to give up later.

In a best of three you pick the battlefield for each game, and all three of ours suit a wide board. Trifarian War Camp gives +1 might to every unit there, attackers and the opponent’s units included, so it favours the side with more units, and that is usually us. Forbidding Waste gives -2 might to a unit defending alone: keep two or more of yours there and the -2 never touches you. The Candlelit Sanctum lets you look at your top two cards when you conquer it and recycle one or both. You look at them without revealing them, so an Undertitan seen there adds nothing yet: leave it on top for the next reveal.

Count your energy before you move. A card played from the legend’s reveal is paid in full, so attack with two energy still open for a two-energy unit, plus one more energy and one power of its domain if Rek’Sai, Breacher is on the board and you want that unit to enter ready. Void Rush works the other way round: it is not an Action, so it cannot be played during a showdown, and its place is before the attack. Cast it first, and a unit it plays can pay for the Accelerate Breacher grants and join the attack, an Undertitan’s +2 counts in the fight, and Void Rush is itself the other card Legion asks for: a Noxus Hopeful it reveals costs nothing.

Give the sacrifice cards the right units. Escaped Grayback’s Empower cost is killing a friendly unit, and once Empowered it has +2 might: a 5-might unit for three energy. Cull the Weak makes each player kill one of their own units. Feed both a Recruit token, a Carrion Dredger (its Bird token with Deflect arrives at your base), an Honest Broker (its Gold gear token stays behind) or an Empowered Noxian Emissary (two Recruit tokens), never a unit that matters. The opponent chooses which of theirs dies, so Cull the Weak is at its best when they have a single unit and at its worst against a board of tokens.

Cleave and Blood Rush are Actions, so they can be played inside a showdown, and both help only an attacker: Cleave gives Assault 3 (+3 might while attacking) for one energy, Blood Rush gives Assault 2 for one energy, and paying its Repeat, one more energy, does it a second time. On the opponent’s turn your answers are the Ambush units, played as a Reaction to a battlefield where you have units: Inferna adds one more unit for two energy, and Vi, Peacekeeper lands with 5 might for five energy and an Order power. On your own turn, when Vi attacks she stuns an enemy unit there, and a stunned unit deals no combat damage that turn.

Falling Star and Cull the Weak are your removal spells, and neither is an Action: play them on your own turn, outside a showdown, to clear a defender before you move in. Falling Star deals 3 twice, to one unit or split between two, so it kills two 3-might units or one 6-might unit. It asks for two Fury power, and only six of your twelve runes are Fury, so keep an Honest Broker’s Gold token for it: Gold pays one power of any domain. Mischievous Marai is the answer that waits face down: pay one power of any domain to hide it at a battlefield you control, and from the next turn on, the opponent’s included, play it from there as a Reaction for 0 energy, and it deals 2 to an enemy unit at that battlefield.