Why You Should NOT Run Relic Removal
@theking24 recently wrote an article on Hive claiming "you should run relic removal 90% of the time!". I don't want them to think I'm attacking them personally in any way, I enjoy their content, but I completely disagree with this sentiment, and so I decided to do a deep dive into the subject to learn more myself. (So big shouts to @theking24 for inspiring this article!)
I believe their article is incorrect for a number of reasons (that it is very important to run it; that it takes a "huge amount of luck" to get relic removal from the Sanctum when you need it) which I will go over in this article, wherein I will make the case against including relic removal most of the time.
The Sacrifice
Relic Removal comes at a cost. We can quickly look at a handful of relic removal creatures to see what we're sacrificing.
If you play a 2 mana 2/2 Iron Tooth Goblin, you could've played a 2/4 Skeleton Heavy instead. If you played a 2/4 Bronze Servant for 3 mana, you could've played a domain-specific creature that is strictly better than vanilla 3/4s (ex. Cruel Overseer, which also spits out two free 1/1s every turn if you're at 15 or less health, or Rabid Bear which is 3/4 OR 4/4 if frenzied). Not into a bunch of free stats? Ok how about all the 3 mana 3/3s with Blessed. These will all grant you a good chunk of favor on average which can be used to grab some free relic removal from the Sanctum if you actually need it!
When I say "actually need it", I don't mean on that turn. I mean in the relatively few matches that have key relics, you can pick up the removal as soon as possible. We'll go over those key match ups in a bit.
First this brings up the important point of the Sanctum, and we should examine it very carefully.
The Sanctum
There are exactly 20 cards in Sanctum Decks inside 5 decks. One deck contains two relic removers: Bronze Servant and Wiccan Trapper. That means 10% of the Sanctum cards are relic removal. As three decks are showing simultaneously, and one deck has a 50% chance of giving you removal, there's a 60% chance the relic removal deck is face up and a 50% chance that the card for sale from that deck is relic removal.
This means there's a 30% chance that you will see relic removal face up when you start a new game.
Of course people then purchase cards from the Sanctum and it rotates during the course of play, so you have even more chances of grabbing removal later as well.
Don't Blessed creature sound even better now than under-statted creatures? You get the favor first and grab the removal in 1 out of 3 games when you need it. (And sometimes you can still get it as it cycles through, if not at the start, let's say an average of 3 cards are purchased, that means 25% of the entire sanctum will be face up at some point, and if you carefully choose the right Sanctum deck to cycle, you might just get there quicker!).
Game States
Let's say you ARE running relic removal in your deck. This doesn't magically make opponents' relics disappear. There are 3 game states that we will look at to start off with.
- You are holding relic removal in hand BUT opponent has no relic equipped.
- You are not holding relic removal in hand BUT your opponent has a relic equipped.
- You are holding relic removal AND your opponent has a relic equipped.
Now point 3 needs further subdivision, because of something called Durability. Not all relic removal is equal, and not all relics can be removed all the time.
3a. You can't remove their relic even with your removal because their durability is too high.
3b. You CAN remove their relic because you can remove enough Durability.
And yet, point 3b. has further subdivisions even still.
3b I. You have a better / more important play to make anyway.
3b II. You do NOT have a better play to make and you play the relic removal!
Let's look at an example from the tournament match I played earlier. I had 5 health remaining, my opponent had a 2/2 creature on board and a 2 durability Cudgel of Atonement equipped. In the Sanctum I could afford the answer to either the creature OR the relic, but not both! Vow of Champions OR Bronze Servant? What to do?? The relic is going to do 4 damage over two turns, and I had an answer to the 2/2 the following turn. So grab the relic removal of course!
Hold up, not so fast. My opponent still had a Canonize left, and with merely a few cards remaining in their deck and a full hand, the odds they were holding lethal were far too high. I grabbed the Vow of Champions, killed the 2/2, and lived to see another day, ate the 4 damage over two turns while knowing I very likely dodged lethal, at least for a few turns more!
The point here is merely that removing relics isn't even always the most important thing you could be doing, even in the niche situations where you can use it and where it would even be considered very beneficial.
IN ALL OF THE OTHER SITUATIONS you have put yourself at a disadvantage! You could've had those better statted, better passive ability and/or Blessed creatures!
The Meta
Another major factor to look at before deciding if you want to include a subpar creature is what are people actually playing? Yes, Necroscepter is busted and if you can't remove it you will likely lose!
In the last 6 hours in Mythic, only 4% of games have been Soul Burn. (source: www.godsunchainedrightnow.com)
You queue into Zombie Death, and now you're in the Game States breakdown. Does he get the Necroscepter equipped on turn 2? Trick question, they ALWAYS GET IT EQUIPPED ON TURN 2 WTF.
Ahem. Sorry, it's actually closer to 40-50% (depending on going first vs. second) if they hard mulligan for it. (And that's also assuming that 100% of Soul Burn decks are running 2x copies of Necroscepter, which obviously isn't true, but sure, I'll give it to you).
But now the question becomes: do you have the answer in hand? If you run 2x Iron Tooth Goblins and hard mulligan for them you're gonna be holding them roughly 40-50% of the time.
So 1% of your games you are the hero and slay the mighty Necroscepter on turn 2!! Hooray! 🎉 🎉 And in 99% of games you've got bad creatures!
Ok ok, there are other relics. But do we need to remove them? Pallas' Wand is the next biggest offender of "if they play it you need to remove it or you will lose". However, it is legendary, so they will have it less frequently at the start, and it is expensive so not everyone runs it (11% of matches in the last 6 hours were Mage Bolt, but only a few thousand copies of the Wand exist, so the number actually running this is probably closer to 5% of the 11%, so overall less than 1% of decks are running it). Secondly, it has "infinite durability" and thus if your opponent is deck peeking and knows you have removal, can play around it and keep the durability high enough that you can't touch it anyway.
If you're deck peeking and know your opponent has these relics then you can hard mulligan for removal. This is key. If you're not deck peeking, you are hard mulliganing for subpar cards. Even if they are running important relics but don't get their relic, you are now stuck holding cards in hand when you could have had a better playable card in hand.
You might be saying "war has lots of relics!" However, they mostly have blitz (outside of Enduring Shield) and therefore will only have 1 durability left when you remove them most of the time. You're not taking away the full value, so you really need to justify the downgraded creatures to remove one durability on a Blade of Styx with a Bronze Servant. (Or remove 1 durability on a Magic Missile Launcher and watch as that splash damage kills your Iron-Tooth Goblin anyway!)
Let's look closer at Iron-Tooth vs. Skeleton Heavy when your opponent has a 1 durability Blade of Styx equipped. If you drop the 2/2 Iron-Tooth, your opponent loses out on 3 damage, but you sacrificed 2 stats. So you've gained 1 stat overall if he were to have swung the Blade into your Skeleton Heavy. However, as established, this is niche. You've lost 2 stats in all other scenarios, which are the majority of scenarios. Of course Blade can also hit face and HP is definitely something that needs to be considered against War. However, if you're dropping better creatures, you're also pressuring them to use their relic hit on your important creatures rather than hit face anyway. Ex. You drop a Miraculous Familiar or Celestial Stag instead of a Bronze Servant. They will kill the 3/3 not hit your face or you'll end up with a ton of value. However, you already got some value from Blessed and probably free cards by making it proc the turn you dropped it.
Infinite Durability Relics Are Busted
Other very annoying relics that would be nice to remove are the Champions' Relics. Nerferu's Khopesh is nasty and wins games, but starts at 3 durability and isn't needed until later in the game, so it is very easy for this durability to get up to 10 or more. There's also Selena's Bow, Lysander's Spear, Valka's Axe, and Orfeo's Mask (in addition to the previously discussed Pallas' Wand).
If you don't have the answer in hand on the very turn it is equipped (and often even if you do, depending on what you're running) it's not going to be enough. (Ex. Wiccan Trapper does nothing to the infinite durability relics, Bronze Servant doesn't really help more most of the time either).
When Should You Run Relic Removal?
Below is a thorough, complete, and comprehensive list of all the excellent relic removal in Gods Unchained:
- Chiron, The Teacher
End of list.
Why is that? The relic removal here is completely free! Chiron is effectively an old Shieldbearer (a 1/1 for 1 Mana with "give +1/+1 to a friendly creature"), and even this was deemed too good to exist, so they nerfed Shieldbearer down to a 0/1. On top of the Shieldbearer text however, we also get Remove 1 Durability from your opponents relic.
Outside of Chiron, you're always losing something. So when is it ok to lose something?
- Tournaments. The match I played tonight we were each allowed to ban one god. I chose to ban Magic. Now I didn't need to run relic removal in any one of my decks because there was nothing worth removing that is also possible to remove (again, Khopesh is busted and this is why they introduced Counterfeit, but they gave it to the one domain that doesn't need it!). No one in the top level of the game is bringing Zombies to a $7000 tournament!
However, if I had banned a different God, maybe I'd have wanted to run 1x Iron-Tooth until I could no longer face Pallas' Wand, and then I'd have removed the Iron-Tooth.
- If the Meta is so overrun with OP relics that it is favorable in the majority of your matches. As established earlier in the Game States discussion, it is not favorable in the majority of matches and often not even in matches you need it in.
Let's say Necroscepter death jumps up to 15% of all matches being played. And they buff another relic to the same level of being busted. Now you can start making legitimate arguments for including removal.
- If you're playing the type of deck that can hold cards in hand long term without getting punished. Control decks with card draw. Decks where you are constantly holding 7-8 cards in hand can get away with playing the waiting game, holding up a relic removal for 7 turns waiting for your opponent to finally play something. And yet the type of deck that can stall like this doesn't even need relic removal anyway! (Study the top 100 BWD decks and you'll see no relic removal in any of them). Perhaps a midrange deck is the only correct place for relic removal, but midrange has struggled to find a place in Gods Unchained.
Aggro decks don't have this luxury. You need to be playing the best creatures you can as fast as you can. This may be the most important point. Most people play aggro and there's just no room in their deck - or time for - for relic removal.
In Conclusion
Sometimes you'll have removal and you'll slam it down triumphantly, removing your opponents awesome turn 2 Necroscepter like a boss! Trust me, that feels amazing. But most of the time you simply don't need it OR when you do need it, you don't have it in hand anyway. Also there's a decent chance you can just get it from the Sanctum.
One last consideration is that removal is like herd immunity: if enough other people are running it it will protect the whole herd. People with relics will be kept in check and the meta won't become too overrun with relics that it forces you to use removal yourself. So uh...just don't tell anyone about this article and keep convincing them to run removal on your behalf. 😎
I'm sure people will have many thoughts on this article. Let me know in the comments that you're going to disregard everything I said and that you're going to run your 2x Wiccan Trappers + 2x Bronze Servants anyway, because sometimes it just feels good to remove a relic or two!
If I were to guess the correct percentage of decks you should be running relic removal in it would be closer to 20%, and certainly not 90%!
~Copper
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