Card Appreciation Thread: Cintrian Envoy

Cintrian Envoy: The card in question.

I have not seen enough people talking about this card. Redesigned Pincer Maneuver has become the de facto ability to run for Devotion decks that need consistency without Oneiromancy. I can see why this card would be pretty redundant if you run it with that leader, but after getting tired of playing NG Assimilate and having no real desire to play Foltest Commandos or Siege, I decided to make a NR deck.

After trying to make a mage deck work and getting frustrated, I dumped 4-prov mages and have now been having incredible luck running a Shieldwall deck with two Envoys in it.

Some of the things I really like that it enables includes:

• Almost guarantee you draw key golds for the rest of the game.
• Put shitty cards on top of your deck to fuck with Mill decks (although these have not been as popular since the new expansion dropped).
• Significantly improved round 2 and short round outlook. NR many times has issues with round 2 and short rounds. Lots of engines in the faction can be problematic. If I won round 1 and I'm facing something like MO Relicts, Spellatiel, Mill, or anything that has a Round 3 that is a death sentence and/or should be 2-0'd or bled, AA into Envoy is a solid 9/10 points right off the bat and ensures I can win a short round 3 if need be.
• Literally the best possible dry pass play for NR (besides Pavetta I guess).
• Nobody even removes it. Seriously. I can count on my fingers the number of times somebody gets rid of it. It doesn't generate any points at all and so getting rid of it pretty much just trades down. And it serves as a nice bait play for your actual engines in round 1.
• Don't have to choose any of the options. The recent change to the card means you can choose to not put any of the shown cards on top of your deck.

Cons:

• Doesn't generate points over the course of the round. I guess unless you're running cards that benefit from order usage in general. I find this to be offset well enough from the fact that I can slightly overcommit more in round 1 if I'm guaranteed better cards later on.

I should also note that I haven't even been running this card alongside other cards that draw cards. Having a much-improved round 2/3 is worth it enough.

Back before Master Mirror I used to love playing Draug decks, but the lack of Oneiromancy, new Pincer, and even no AA made consistency really difficult to achieve. I myself recall one specific game that Redrame played long ago that he lost because he failed to draw Draug. Situations like that really sucked and honestly happened pretty often.

But I'd say gone is that situation occurring as frequently as before, as consistency in the game has been improved as a whole (which I also really appreciate), but this cheap 4-prov card allows anybody to significantly improve their consistency and in turn be more creative (by not being forced into running Oneiro/Pincer).

Anybody else been playing with this card?