Out of the Shadows…Tomb Guardian: Paragon Construct

Out of the Shadows…is a series of articles highlighting fun, helpful cards that aren’t getting a lot of attention.  They may or may not be meta-worthy, but are definitely worth looking at for casual play.

Tomb Guardian: Paragon Construct

Up to this point, I’ve been focusing this article series on newer cards that are available to all from recent Campaign Boxes and Team Packs, but this is a card that we here at DM North don’t think will be in the Shadows much longer, thanks to the current global-heavy meta, and we feel it’s an important card to highlight.

Tomb Guardian: Paragon Construct is a 4 cost shield character from the Dungeons & Dragons: Tomb of Annihilation (TOA) set. Our Tomb Guardian is a Rare card, and has a While Active ability. “While Tomb Guardian is active, Global Abilities cost an additional 1 to use.”

He also has Fabricate. This means that you can purchase his die by KO’ing 2 of your own character dies with a total purchase cost of 3 or more to purchase the die for free. Tomb Guardian does not need to be active to use his Fabricate ability.

Why is this special?

In recent Out of the Shadows articles (here, and here), you’ve seen me highlight a few cards & combos that are strong in the current meta, including Iceman: Right on Schedule and The Atom: Professor. These cards rely on Global Abilities to do direct damage to your opponent. Tomb Guardian makes each one of those Global Abilities cost one extra energy. That can be a huge pain in the butt for you as a player, as it will take you twice as much energy, every time you want to use a Global Ability. It can really slow down a fast team, which gives your opponent time to get set up with his or her own win condition.

Every Global Ability will cost an extra energy. Want to use a mask to field a Sidekick with Professor X? It’s going to cost you a mask, plus 1. How about resetting your bag with an Atlas or Resurrection prep Global Ability? Yup, add an extra energy to make that happen. I think you can see how quickly this can get out of control and slow down a team.

This is one of those double-edged sword abilities – it affects all Global Abilities, including ones you choose to activate yourself, so if you put our Tomb Guardian on a team, you will want to be prepared to spend that extra energy on each Global Ability you use, as well.

What else can our Tomb Guardian do?

The other thing that I like about our Tomb Guardian is the purchase cost via Fabricate. A player simply has to KO two of their own character dice totalling a cost of 3 energy to make the purchase. This not only purchases a die for you, but also gives you ramp for your next turn.

I expect that we will see our Tomb Guardian at the upcoming World’s event in Memphis on September 7, as it’s a great counter to these Global-heavy meta teams. What do you think? Will this Rare from TOA make an appearance? Will it slow down or stop the direct damage meta? Or will players focus on cards like Wrecker: Enchanted Crowbar or Polaris: Hail, Queen of Mutants to slow down or stop Global Abilities?

We’d love to hear from you, let us know your thoughts or questions in the comments.

Until next time,

-jbouwme