Gods Unchained has a new mini set, Mortal Judgement: Light’s Verdict, to conclude GU’s first season of expansions, Champions Rise. The mini set will contain 12 new cards and releases on September 28th.
The first of these new cards, The Divine Coronet, was spoiled on Twitter by Justin Hulog, Executive Producer of Gods Unchained.
https://twitter.com/BathalaX/status/1570584362248474626
- BathalaX
The Divine Coronet, Legendary, Creature, Structure, Neutral
4 Mana, 1 Strength, 1 Health
Can’t Attack.
Roar: Gain +4 health. If this creature has 9 health or more, delve a 9 mana creature and summon it. If it has less, shuffle it into your deck.
The card looks pretty bad on first look, having to spend 4 mana to do nothing, then hope to draw it and spend 4 more mana to summon a 9 drop. If you’re lucky, you can get it as soon as Turn 4.
Normally, you’re supposed to draw it over the course of the game to play it twice and get the 9 drop, but you can build your deck around it to always draw it early. I think this card is going to be a meme combo deck, Coronet Turbo, aiming to draw and play it ASAP, but we will have to see how it pans out when Light’s Verdict comes out. The payoff is huge, but it takes a big commitment to pull it off consistently and the 9 drops can get answered easily.
The Portal Wrangler deck has a perfect shell already for Coronet Turbo with Lost in the Depths. Jam your deck full of 1 drops to obliterate with Lost in the Depths so Coronet will be the only card left, then you always draw into it. You can also run Warp Engineers and Clones to have multiple 0-cost Coronets. An alternative is to run it in Control Magic with a small package of Coronet and Enchanted Chariot to draw it. Amplureal is the Coronet placeholder.
Spoils of War and Out of Its Misery both pull a creature from your deck to your hand, so if Coronet is your only creature in the deck they will always draw it. The Fox’s Venture can buff it in hand so you only need to play Coronet once if you pulled it off of Out of Its Misery. You can run it in a Big Relic War shell with Valka’s Presence for Out of Its Misery.
Nature doesn’t have a way to draw it, but you can mill your entire deck with Miss Scythia. You can use United Reinforcements to tutor for Miss Scythia. You can also run Curious Wisp which gets tutored too and not die to fatigue.
Light doesn’t have a Coronet Turbo build, but the recently changed Enlightenment lets you discard 2 cards to add any 2 cards from your deck to your hand, letting you get Coronet easily. This slots in easy for Control Light, which sometimes runs Enlightenment to search for tech cards. Control Light has the stall to afford the tempo loss from searching for Coronet and playing it. You can even shuffle a 9hp Coronet back into the deck with Lysander’s Mercy or get it back from the void with Radiant Embalmer to summon more 9 drops.
Getting a 9 drop as early as Turn 4 is powerful, but they are easy ways to answer a 9 drop and if your opponent invested their entire deck into getting it out, then they are going to rage quit when you kill their 9 drop. Out of the 16 9 drops you can summon, 7 have Ward, 4 have Protected, and 3 have both Ward and Protected.
Most gods (RIP Nature) have easy answers with hard removal, stalling it, bouncing it, or disrupting the combo. And you can always rush them down before they pull off the combo. You will usually have 3-5 turns to find an answer as the 9 drop bashes your head in unless they pick Arius or Anagreos for the 2 turn clock with no protection.
You can pop ward with a ping or sleep, then transform the 9 drop. Only Magic has meta relevant transformation. Malfunctioning Servitor and Grass Roots are both random transforms, making them unreliable since Coronet will also be on board with the 9 drop.
Hard removal is more common for other gods, but they have a tougher time getting rid of the ward. If you opt for damage based removal, you will have to pop the protected too.
Obliterate goes through ward but Divine Judgement takes some setup.
If they dedicated their deck to Coronet, it’s unlikely they have any other threats, so you can stall the 9 drop with order or sleep until you can find removal.
Bouncing is the best answer to 9 drops since it bypasses ward and they won’t be able to play it for a long time.
If you know your opponent has Coronet in hand, you can steal it with Cutthroat Insight, or obliterate with Hope Lost if it hasn’t gained health.
The Divine Coronet is an interesting build around card but I don't feel that the payoff is strong enough and consistent enough to be meta relevant, especially with the plethora of answers already run in decks leaving Coronet in the meme dreams pile.
