Now that we are back in the era of a deckbuilding-relevant Forsaken and Restricted List (FaR), it’s worth checking out the various pairings and assessing which cards make the cut, so to speak. Seeing as the current FaR allows for a Nemesis deck to take only one Restricted card, there’s far less granularity than the first edition days of 3 restricted options from a huge pool in Championship format.

Since our options and restrictions are limited, we can tackle them all in a single article! Let’s dive in: first looking at the Restricted list itself, then at each combination. Some warbands or strategies will prefer one restricted card over another, but generally one should be the ‘best choice’.

Right off the rip we can see that there are no Restricted cards in two of our decks. This means that in any pairing containing Realmstone Raiders or Wrack and Ruin, you don’t have to worry about the FaR and can take the Restricted card from your other deck without issue (assuming you actually want it). For our other pairings, we will need to look a little closer. There are fourteen combos that are relevant here (since plot cards prevent Cata/Edge from existing), and I’ll work through them in order!

Restricted Card Showdown

Blazing Assault/Emberstone Sentinels

If you’re pairing these two and not taking Supremacy, you’re taking a pretty significant hit to your End Phase ceiling. The best use of this combination is to provide better Ploys and Surge Objectives to the typical ES approach, and while Illusory Fighter is a solid card, it’s less likely to help here. There’s a niche case you want to teleport somebody back to your territory to hold a home Treasure or get out of danger, but that doesn’t outweigh the loss of 3 glory for most warbands or strategies. And if you’re leaning into Annihilation instead, why are you pairing with ES?

Verdict: Supremacy

Blazing Assault/Pillage and Plunder

Illusory Fighter can potentially be a very strong card in this pairing, as you can pull a key fighter out of danger (after being staggered from delving in enemy territory), jump back to delve something for Desolate Homeland, shut down their ‘hold in your backfield’ scheme to score Strip the Realm, Torn Landscape, Careful Survey, Lost in the Depths, and more. Delving for Wealth is strong and also very scorable though, and having smooth Surges is often a very nice thing to build around. The issue is, Blazing Assault already has great Surges and with this pairing you have little trouble getting to 6. The general approach of ‘Objectives are better than Ploys’ rings true, but this one really could go either way. If you have the right fighter stats for the dice-based Surges in BA, you can go for Illusory Fighter. If you feel the need for more dependable surge scoring, keep Delving for Wealth.

Verdict: Coin Toss! Depends on your Warband.

Blazing Assault/Countdown to Cataclysm

Spread Havoc is the best card in the game, guaranteed to score for 1 no matter what, and very likely to score for 2. This is especially true now that the Cataclysm tracker MUST advance at each opportunity, and your opponents might even intentionally behave in ways that advance it faster to counterplay Wreckers. With nothing even close to speak of in the End Phase package for BA, you’d be silly to take Illusory Fighter instead.

Verdict: Spread Havoc

Blazing Assault/Reckless Fury

Bladecatcher has the potential to keep a key fighter alive for a couple more activations, which this pairing loves. That said, there are plenty of great Upgrades available here, so you won’t necessarily miss leaving it at home. Illusory Fighter has some pros and cons – while some of the better Objectives in RF want you in enemy territory and this brings you out of it, Illusory Fighter also can allow an out of position fighter into charge range, pull somebody to safety, or even land a cheeky Arena Mortis score when your opponent thought they had it blocked. This one is a pretty tough call with good arguments for both sides, so it might come down to your warband stats and what they’re lacking most – mobility vs survivability.

Verdict: Coin Toss! Depends on your Warband.

Blazing Assault/Edge of the Knife

Mobbed! on the right fighter is bonkers good but is also two glory cost, positionally dependent, and is lost when the fighter dies. In Elite warbands, that positioning is even more difficult and the reposition from Illusory Fighter is more valuable. But you’ll also get more mileage out of Mobbed! when a strong fighter has it equipped. According to Whizzwang, an expert in this pairing, Elites prefer Mobbed! as “you’re playing Crash Aggro, and want all the action happening in enemy territory”. Hordes generally benefit much less from Illusory Fighter than Elites do, so the choice is easier for them unless you want the positioning silliness to cluster some tempered minions.

Verdict: Probably Mobbed! but both are reasonable

Emberstone Sentinels/Pillage and Plunder

This fun pairing took a hit with the FaR for sure. It’s very hard to suggest leaving Supremacy at home unless you have leaned all the way into delving and don’t plan to hold much Treasure, in which case you should likely pair PnP with something else. The other case for dropping Supremacy is when playing a Horde with poor defense that will struggle to hold 3 Treasures. In the majority of ES/PP-enjoying warbands, you can probably Drop Delving for Wealth and still be comfortable replacing it with what might have otherwise been an on-the-bubble Surge like Careful Survey or Hostile Takeover. That’s what I’m doing with my Gardeners, anyway.

Verdict: Supremacy, unless you’re playing a fragile/raising horde

Emberstone Sentinels/Countdown to Cataclysm

Spread Havoc is the best card in the game, guaranteed to score for 1 no matter what, and very likely to score for 2. This is especially true now that the Cataclysm tracker MUST advance at each opportunity, and your opponents might even intentionally behave in ways that advance it faster to counterplay Wreckers. Unfortunately, it’s in direct competition with Supremacy as a staple End Phase Objective. You can probably go either way on this one depending on your plan, but you’ll be sad. This pairing is the most hurt by the current Restricted list.

Verdict: Supremacy if you’re very confident in your consistency to score it, Spread Havoc otherwise.

Emberstone Sentinels/Reckless Fury

This pairing is pretty rough to begin with, and while on one hand the FaR didn’t make it easier, on the other you weren’t able to take Bladecatcher beforehand anyway so maybe this didn’t change anything. If you’re taking this pairing, you’re charging onto Treasure you presumably want to hold. Bladecatcher can help you stay on/alive, but without Supremacy your reward for that survival is much worse.

Verdict: Supremacy

Emberstone Sentinels/Edge of the Knife

Seeing as the end phases here are much better on the ES side of the equation, and that pairing doesn’t really help you score Trial of the Tempered all that well, you’re probably looking to keep taking Supremacy. Mobbed! being an awesome card is still true, but doesn’t help you hold Treasure (which you’ll need for many of the other Objectives) and if you’re standing on a bunch of tokens you’ll have a harder time meeting the positional requirements of that card anyway. Unless you have a bunch of 1 bounty fighters and don’t think Supremacy is reliable, you have to go with the bigger score.

Verdict: Supremacy, unless you’re playing a fragile/raising horde

Pillage and Plunder/Countdown to Cataclysm

Spread Havoc is the best card in the game, guaranteed to score for 1 no matter what, and very likely to score for 2. This is especially true now that the Cataclysm tracker MUST advance at each opportunity, and your opponents might even intentionally behave in ways that advance it faster to counterplay Wreckers. Delving for Wealth is strong and also very scorable though, and having smooth Surges is often a very nice thing to build around. Spread Havoc is scoring for you no matter what, so if you think there’s a chance you’ll need to abandon the Delving plan and do something else then that’s the winner for you.

Verdict: Spread Havoc in most cases, but Delving for Wealth is reasonable.

Pillage and Plunder/Reckless Fury

In a similar argument to the one I put on ES/RF, the addition of Bladecatcher to the equation doesn’t really help you score cards much better, and has perhaps an even lesser impact on delving than it does on holding. That said, ES has plenty of decent Upgrades where as PnP could use some help. THAT said though, RF is pretty weak in the Surge department, and those matter a lot more than Upgrades in your average game.

Verdict: Probably Delving for Wealth unless Grievous/Cleave really hurt your warband

Pillage and Plunder/Edge of the Knife

Having played a fair amount of Pill/Edge (teehee) I have come to appreciate Mobbed! as it is a very solid upgrade in a pairing that otherwise doesn’t have very many. Unfortunately, if you’re taking this pairing it’s because you want to score all the delve stuff which Mobbed! doesn’t help you do. If you’re taking Edge of the Knife because you want to go hard into the “Tempered Fighter does X” type things or score Trial of the Tempered, there’s actually very little in Pillage & Plunder that helps out with that and you should probably have gone for a different pairing. And if you’re spreading out to cover as many tokens as possible, Mobbed! might not even trigger for you.

Verdict: Delving for Wealth

Countdown to Cataclysm/Reckless Fury

Spread Havoc is the best card in the game, guaranteed to score for 1 no matter what, and very likely to score for 2. This is especially true now that the Cataclysm tracker MUST advance at each opportunity, and your opponents might even intentionally behave in ways that advance it faster to counterplay Wreckers. Everybody loves Bladecatcher, but if it isn’t out at the right time, on the right fighter, or your opponent isn’t making use of Runemarks, it’s useless. If it’s bottom-decked, you’re SOL. If your fighter dies (save for a niche Lost Legacy maneuver) it’s also dead. You know what’s useful every game? Guaranteed 1-2 glory.

Verdict: Spread Havoc

Reckless Fury/Edge of the Knife

Both are Upgrades, but Mobbed! costs two glory. If you’re playing a horde going for Trial of the Tempered, Mobbed will help you do that more reliably. If you’re going for Elites and a charged-out state/more durability from your lone wolves, Bladecatcher is better. You won’t be happy dropping either one, but this is among the least-played pairings already so if you’re reaching for this you either have a mad scientist plan (In which case please consider writing a Love Letter) or are immune to disappointment.

Verdict: Coin Toss! Depends on your Warband.

Wrap

With the head-to-heads done, here’s the breakdown by each card, which roughly aligns to the cards’ perceived power levels.

I do want to caution people though! I am by no means the authority on this and I’m sure great counter-arguments exist, and you can probably do well choosing the other card in a given pairing. In one of my new FaR test games I was totally taken by surprise when my Blazing/Cata opponent played Illusory Fighter against me. I had assumed he was taking Spread Havoc and was caught flat-footed and unprepared for the sudden repositioning. There’s an advantage to taking the ‘lesser’ card in a pairing if it’s rare enough to catch people out, so don’t just choose the ‘best’ one by default!

What do you think about the new FaR and which pairings have it best or worst? Do you agree with my assessments? Let me know in the comments or by emailing SpentGlory@gmail.com and until next time, I hope you enjoy Spending Glory as we explore this new meta landscape.