Hello everyone! Remetic here! With ALC coming out in just a month, we recently received the Alchemical Revolution Design Notes Part 2, going over the new advanced elements, Neos, Astra, and Umbra. In this article I will be going over what those elements do, going into some in depth explanations of new mechanics, and also mentioning some rulings to watch out for in upcoming tournaments like Ascent Ontario and Worlds.

NEOS

The first revealed Advanced Element is Neos, the element of creation. In general, Neos will be about making tokens, and getting large payoffs from controlling multiple tokens. The 3 new Obelisks Tonoris can summon each have a powerful ability, along with being Domains.

Being token domains already gives them payoffs, having synergy with cards like Navigate the Streets, Summon Sentinels, and the new Neos sword Archon Broadsword.

Notably about the Obelisks and more extensively tokens, the new card Astarte, Celestial Dawn is a hard counter, banishing them face-down as soon as they hit the board. You cannot choose to not resolve Tonoris, Genesis Aegis’s effect. If they respond to it using an Astarte and you can’t remove it before Tonoris’s effect resolves, you will effectively be locked out of that domain unless you can delevel to refresh his effect.

ASTRA

The second Advanced Element is Arisanna’s Astra, the element of divination. With out first impression Astra focuses almost entirely around the “Starcall” keyword. Starcall is built into the existing glimpse mechanic, and will have interesting timings associated with it. 

Whenever you are glimpsing and have the Astra element enabled, if you look at a card with the Starcall keyword, you have the option to pay the associated cost to directly activate that card, regardless of the card being Slow or Fast speed. If you do, the rest of the cards glimpsed go to the bottom of the deck.

Where this is complicated is when you look at timings associated with Starcall, and cards that glimpse before doing something else. I’ll use the example of Scry the Skies, which will also work the same as Fairy Whispers. First, you will Glimpse X, in which case you will see a card with Starcall. While glimpsing, you will reveal the Starcalled card and pay it’s cost, bottom decking the rest of the cards, and adding it to the effects stack. Then, you will resolve the last part of Scry the Skies, drawing the top card of your deck into memory. Scry the Skies has now resolved, and the players will receive opportunity in order of the playing who Starcalled, then the other player, with the Starcalled card as the top card of the stack.

UMBRA

Finally there is Umbra, the element of darkness.

Diana will be focused on using curses, but there seems to be a lot of room for innovation with “Darkness” being a very broad theme. Diana will create Creeping Torment, cards that punish your opponents that draw more than 1 card per turn. Notably, Creeping Torment is playable in your main deck, so you will likely need to include them in your main deck list when playing in tournaments. However, she also features the new “Generate” keyword. Cards that are generated come from outside the game, and do not need to be included in your deck list in any way. However, if you do not have enough Creeping Torment, you can “fail” to generate one, so make sure you bring more than you think you need for particularly long games.

Using Creeping Torment, you will gain benefits from the more “cursed” your opponent is. Cards like Umbral Tithe and Anathema’s End like to see lots of Curses in your opponents lineage, with other cards revealed helping to accelerate the number of curses you place. 

Notably, curses must be in the same sleeves as your main deck, so after games double check how many you put back into your deck to make sure you don’t have an illegal deck list, as this can lead to a game loss infraction. If a generated card is somehow removed from a champion’s lineage, they will go to the owner’s zones, so using something like Anathema’s End with place extra creeping torment into its owner’s banish pile, which may lead to confusion.