This installation of the Counterplay series is going to zero in on one very specific thing: dealing the the Bane of Heroes upgrade from the Hungering Parasite deck. As you’ll see quite easily on the R77 Nemesis Data Project, as well as discussed on this Path to Glory podcast episode, the Hungering Parasite was already among the top meta contenders and something all competitive players needed an answer to. Now that the newest Errata/FAQ have dropped and (rightfully) taken Breakneck Slaughter and Rimewyrm’s Bite down a peg, Hungering Parasite stands alone at the top. That means you can expect to see buckets of stagger rerolls coming right at your fighters’ faces in the near future. But what can you do to shut down the problem? Simple: you Kill the Batman, and become the Bane of Banes.

The single most powerful thing you can do to counterplay a Hungering Parasite build is to take the Bane of Heroes out of the picture. If it isn’t on the board, it can’t be used to get rerolls against you, nor can it be helpful for scoring objectives. There are a couple ways to accomplish this that I want to call out – one that anybody can use, one that the Thricefold Discord can use, and another handful for people playing Rimelocked Relics or Malevolent Masks.

If you’re interested in reading how to counterplay other Rivals decks more broadly, click here to see the rest of the series.

If you’re interested to read more about how the last few Rivals Deck releases have been stellar and all counterplay into each other well, click here.

Leave Them on Read: The Universal Bane Antidote

The single most available way to ‘shut down’ the Bane of Heroes is to make sure it is off the table for the end phase, which means you have to let the Bane’s end-of-round ping deal the finishing blow for you. If, after the final activation, power, and surge steps, the fighter with the bane is vulnerable and has nobody adjacent to them (or nobody eligible in the event they’re safe thanks to a ‘can’t be pinged’ style upgrade like those in Rimewyrm’s Bite), they must deal the damage to themselves.

That damage will take them out of action, but it will do it in the End Phase. The Bane breaks, goes to the power discard pile, and then sits there until the next Inspire step – notably occurring AFTER the Parasite player scores their end phase objectives. With no Bane on the table, they won’t be scoring any of the six end phase Objectives from that Rivals deck, so you’ve locked out ~50% of their possible scoring for the round.

Should your opponent decide to give one of your fighters the Bane, don’t forget you can do this to yourself! Run them through a lethal and leave them vulnerable for the end phase if possible. If they keep it for themselves, make sure you hit them just enough to put them on death’s door but no further, and then run away from them. Drive them back after successful attacks, and kill or push away other fighters who get close enough to pass the hot potato to for the rest of the round.

The risk you take by trying for this strategy is that the Parasite player has several ways to break and pass around the Bane regardless, and several ways to heal fighters, and sever ways to get pushes or moves out of other fighters, AND a way to prevent taking damage from the Bane, so setting up the ‘vulnerable and alone’ scenario is sometimes a tall ask. That said, it’s something any warband can possibly do, and with the potential 1-6 glory you block by doing so and the slowing down of their deck draw it’s more than worth it if the opportunity presents itself.

Malevolence Unmasked: Reveal the Envy of Your Peers

From the Hungering Parasite Plot Card: “In an Inspire Step, if the Bane of Heroes is in YOUR power discard pile” you give that upgrade to a friendly fighter or an enemy adjacent to a friendly. If that Bane of Heroes is in the opponent’s power discard pile, well that’s just the farm upstate where it goes to play with the other parasites.

‘That sounds great, Fishmode,’ I hear you say, ‘but how do I keep it out of their discard pile?’ Glad you asked – I’ll be right back. Here, hold this.

Revealed Aspect is an excellent tool in your belt in effectively any Masks build, but it reaches screaming heights when faced with the Hungering Parasite matchup. In some situations, your opponent might want to apply the Bane to one of your fighters. This could be in an attempt to score one of the several Objective cards that ask for that, or possibly to un-inspire one of your important fighters, or simply to get permanent rerolls against a juicy target. However good this might normally be for the Parasite player, it’s a mistake against Malevolent Masks.

If you draw this card in the Parasite matchup, hold on to it for three rounds if you have to. The instant they apply the Parasite to one of your fighters, you play this card. That takes the Bane off the fighter and places it in your hand. Then, you hold it for the rest of the game. It cannot score any objectives and bricks a huge amount of the Parasite player’s plan.

The most recent FAQ states that when discarded in this way, the Bane goes to ‘the owner’s discard pile’, which sounds like the HP player who brought it. That means you’re not safe to discard it or they get it back, but you can also just hold the parasite in your hand and never discard it. Yes, you’re then limited to playing with just 4 useable power cards for the rest of the game, but in nearly every scenario it will still be worth it. Revealed Aspect is the ultimate Uno Reverse.

It’s not the only way Malevolent Masks can stop the Bane of heroes, however. Envy’s Shroud can also break the Bane since it’s the only upgrade the fighter is allowed to have, and can also block the Bane from being applied to the fighter.

If your fighter has been given the Bane and you’d rather they not have it (especially if that fighter is, say, your leader and you’re worried they’re trying to score Powerful Pawn), Envy’s Shroud will remove the Bane and make them ineligible to receive it again. The Bane will go back to the other player and therefore is not as back breaking as Revealed Aspect, but still good for situationally denying the use of the Bane that the opponent was hoping for. A corner case for this as well is in a situation where you have tabled the parasite warband but they have the Bane on your fighters – break it with Envy’s Shroud and there will be no way the Parasite player can get it back on the board.

Additionally, there is one other nasty trick that I legitimately don’t think others have discussed yet. In an end phase, the player who went first scores first. after they score, they can then apply upgrades and so on before the other player goes to scoring. There is no inspire step until after both players have scored and prior to the next round starting. This is niche, but I wanted to call it out: If one of your fighters has the Bane in an end phase and you score first, you can apply Envy’s Shroud to that fighter, breaking the Bane, and it will not be applied to any other fighter until AFTER your opponent scores their end phases. This can potentially prevent them from scoring Beyond Exhausted, Far and Wide, Powerful Pawn, and Their Problem Now, all of could be scored with an enemy fighter having the Bane in an End Phase.

Again, both of these tools require your opponent to give you the Bane of Heroes. Many Hungering Parasite builds these days just keep it for themselves, but if your opponent is so foolish to hand it over while you’re playing Masks, you have a couple ways to make them regret that decision, likely winning you the game. In a best of three you’ll probably only get away with it once, but it’s still great to have in your pocket. Please play Malevolent Masks! It’s a fun deck! Here’s my Grymwatch take on it for those interested.

Rimelock and Drop It

Face Down, ‘Locked Up, that’s the way we like to… take a fighter out of action when they have a Parasite. Let’s explore the Rimelock mechanic from RR. The effect is that when a Rimelocked Upgrade is placed on a fighter (or when an existing Upgrade becomes Rimelocked – more on this later) it turns face down. While face down, it still counts as an Upgrade and has the Rimelocked keyword (so can score RR cards) but otherwise does nothing until it thaws.

If you manage to Rimelock the Bane of Heroes, you then have three activations where it effectively is not on the field. If you kill the fighter in those one or two activations you’ll get, the Bane remains Rimelocked and goes to the graveyard with them. Failing that, you can always Rimelock it in the last power step or activation of a round to turn it off for the End Phase scoring at least. So how do we do that?

Frozen Solid is a Gambit that should be in most RR decks regardless of what you’re up against – on a 66% chance, it allows you to Rimelock one of your own cards to get an extra keyworded upgrade on the field, but it also acts as a great control piece. The card allows you to target an enemy fighter and choose which upgrade gets flipped, so you can select the Bane of Heroes (no matter who it is on). You’ll miss 1/3 of the time, but those are good odds. Time this in activation 3 or 4 of a round to ensure that even if you don’t kill the fighter with the Bane, it won’t have thawed until the next round to shut down some End Phase scores.

Frostbite is an Upgrade that might not be in your RR decks right now (as there are usually better options) but if there’s a chance you’re facing the Hungering Parasite (and right now, there absolutely is) you’ll probably want to find a way to slot it in. It allows you to Rimelock an upgrade after an activation that included a successful Range 1 hit. If you pull it off, you have the same benefits of Frozen Solid with potentially extra chances to do so since maybe you can do a second attack later on. You also may have decent chances of hitting the Bane given the fact you’ll get Stagger rerolls – but it has to be during an activation (so no reaction or power step attacks), and it has to be a range 1 attack, AND you have to have this upgrade on the fighter in question. Obviously the lesser of the two ways to Rimelock out the Bane, but I am not sure I’m leaving home without it for a while unless I have a great reason.

The good news for RR players is that you can stop the Bane in a proactive manner where you have some control – Masqueraders like me have to wait for our opponent to hand it over themselves and they might not do that at all. Side note, should you manage to Rimelock the Bane and kill their fighter, you’ll be able to score Steaming Corpses – I still probably won’t take this card but if you don’t have better options you might as well get some extra mileage out of this strategy.

One last bit to give Rimelocking an extra wrinkle is that, once Rimelocked, an upgrade follows those rules ‘for the rest of the game’. Even if you fail to kill the fighter holding the Bane while Rimelocked (thus preventing it from coming back), it still counts as Rimelocked. If at any time later in the game the HP player breaks the face-up Bane, it will be turned face down again when it is next applied and will need to start acruing Thaw counters once more. As a result, even when failing to finish off the Bane in that initial attempt, you’ve more or less (Rime)locked it in place or your opponent risks giving you another chance at removing it/another three activations they can’t score their HP objectives.

Give Them the Perfect Gift this Parasite Season with the Thricefold Discord

Maybe you don’t like or don’t have RR or MM as Rivals Decks. Fine, hater. Not everybody likes flex hold, I get it. You have another option that doesn’t depend on Universal cards – the Thricefold Discord warband.

One of the Thricefold’s fanciest mechanics are ‘False Gifts’ – upgrades that come with a benefit and a cost and can be handed to enemy fighters if you so choose. Perfect Blade hands a fighter a very powerful weapon, but at the cost that the fighter is considered to have no other upgrades or attack actions aside from this one. This means a fighter with the Bane of Heroes who is given the Perfect Blade suddenly doesn’t have the Bane. Anything they do can’t count as having been done by a fighter with the Bane of Heroes, and so it won’t score them any Objectives.

One thing to be aware of is that False Gifts have the ‘Resist’ action printed on the card – the fighter with Perfect Blade can spend an activation to break it and then remember they have a parasitic buddy. If the Bane is on an enemy fighter, then ideally you do this in the last power step so they can’t use an action to resist prior to the End Phase. Alternatively you could hand it over in the end phase as long as you score first so you block in a similar fashion to the Envy’s Shroud trick described above. Should you manage to kill the fighter while they’re holding the Blade, the Bane will go to the graveyard with them just like in our Rimelocked scenario as well.

Other Bandaids

While the following won’t actually remove the Bane of Heroes from play, these ideas can be used to mitigate some of it’s spookiest effects and might slow down a little bit of their efficacy and scoring/kills. These aren’t as good of a counter as the ones listed above, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The Rimewyrm’s Bite Rivals Deck has some ‘can’t be pinged’ options in it which can stop the Bane from dealing a damage to you if you’re adjacent at the end of the round, which can help your survivability but doesn’t get the bane out of the picture. That is, unless you force that ping back onto them and they’re vulnerable. You probably want to be including Tough Enough and Boots of Warding in most decks anyway, but now you definitely will. Just Pure Luck can protect you but won’t shunt the damage back to the Bane-bearer, unfortunately. Something people have not really been including in RB decks are the two stagger Domains which make them sad to have the bane as well. Heaving Ground will allow you to put extra damage out on their Bane fighter, and Unstable Footing will make them very grouchy since they probably were planning a Bane Charge and now have to eat a damage to pull it off. Again, not the best counters, but that’s what’s on offer.

Some warbands or decks have ‘can’t be staggered’ such as Mark of the Stampede from Tooth and Claw or Advancing Juggernaut in Rimewyrm’s Bite, which can possibly help avoid the aggro hit, but this won’t block their scoring for the most part, just up your survivability. It does have the benefit of turning off a few things you’re likely to see such as stagger-dependent effects and scoring conditions on other cards and abilities, slowing down warbands like Skittershank especially.

If you’re playing the Starblood Stalkers and Otapatl is somehow given the Bane (maybe they’re trying to cut through that 3 dodge) you have the option of Playing Invisible Hunter. Otapatl leaves the field but is not taken out of action, and thus the Bane does not break, and thus is gone until the end of the round – notably after the scoring in the end phase. I know this is extremely niche, but would definitely be funny.

Skritter, when the lil guy dies, is not taken out of action. That means the Bane doesn’t break and heads to the graveyard with him. The odds of him getting the Bane when the end of round ping will kill him and brick stuff is basically zero anyway, but that’s something for you sad souls playing Skabbik’s Plaguepack to hold onto. Elathain’s players can find Spinefin has the same story but you have even more control over that – though again I doubt anybody is going to be silly enough to put it on the fish.

Give the Parasite a move token to prevent charges and block the “Charged Out” condition with cards like Iara’s Frozen Bonds from Force of Frost or Ill-Prepared from Toxic Terrors (which also has a great counter in Freezing Venom). Alternatively you can punish movement with things like momentum from Breakneck Slaughter (like the Slick Ice Domain) or net counters from Skittershank, or Force of Frost’s Frozen to the Spot, among others.

Failing these wonderful options, you can always aggro them harder – if all their fighters are dead there’s nowhere for the Bane to go. I know it’s not much, but it’s honest work.

Wrap

There are certainly things you can do to counterplay certain Parasite cards beyond this direct Bane-block approach, but those will be covered in a separate article sometime in the future. Today’s goal was to talk about some of the highest-yield strategies to stop the Hungering Parasite from taking over the meta post-errata. Pop into the Counterplay category to see other articles in this vein. Let me know what you think and if I missed anything, and until next time, don’t forget to Spend that Glory!