Blitz Deck Tech & Upgrades Guide: Riptide - Ranger

After getting to know and understanding Uzuri, let's continue with our sequence of heroes from Outsiders talking about the new Ranger Riptide.

If you are not familiar with Outsiders' mechanics and cards, I recommend reading my set review..

Riptide was a highly anticipated hero during the spoiler season, not only because of his rougher appearance, but also because he has less health - indicating that he could have a slightly stronger ability, and indeed his ability excited many people.

The Rangers mechanic involves putting arrows in the arsenal (usually through their weapons, which are bows) so that they can attack with them, but putting these arrows in the arsenal involves either passing the turn or paying a resource to place them. Riptide dodges all of that with its built-in ability to place arrows without needing bows (but won't necessarily fail to use them).

Also, Riptide has a second theme around Traps (a mechanic never explored by the Rangers), drawing the community's attention to how interesting and different the hero could be for the class.

Riptide's precon mixes between the number of attacks, buffs (cards that increase power) and Traps, building the idea of taking value from the hero's two skills. As usual, we're going to remove several cards for the next upgrades, but we'll comment on the best ones and their functions in the deck.

Arrows

As the hero is a Ranger, his arrows couldn't be missing, and Outsiders brings several new ones.

Sedation Shot (1), Withering Shot (1) and Infecting Shot (2) are the highlights in this deck for generating the disease tokens (Bloodrot Pox, Inertia and Frailty) to the opponent if they deal damage, and these are the most important arrows here.

Salvage Shot (1) and Searing Shot (1) also have good on-hit effects and make a good part of the list.

Another two arrows in the deck have a purpose other than having effects when dealing damage, Falcon Wing (1) and Murkmire Grapnel (1) are intended to be aggressive with the Aim counter mechanic (introduced in Dynasty) and with his bow, Barbed Castaway, we can place these counters.

Ravenous Rabble (1), despite not being an arrow, is a very aggressive card and with the high density of red cards it further enhances this attack.

Other Cards

In addition to these attacks, we also have two cards that increase the power of an attack.

Scout the Periphery (1) is not that amazing, since it only grows cards in your arsenal, but with Riptide we can do it and already put a card in the arsenal, making it a perfect fit in the deck, and Increase the Tension (1) has the disadvantage of only buffing arrows, but it makes it difficult for the opponent to block.

The other cards are Traps, which are nothing more than Defense Reactions that block three. However, they all have some additional effect when defending.

In addition to Bloodrot Trap (1), Frailty Trap (1) and Inertia Trap (1) which grant the respective tokens to the opponent, Boulder Trap (2), Pendulum Trap (2) and Tarpit Trap (2) punish the opponent for playing certain cards or performing certain action.

Equipment

As with all precon equipment, the ones here are very basic, but very useful considering the hero, and as a budget option.

Barbed Castaway is Riptide's signature weapon. Although the first skill is less relevant (since Riptide himself puts arrows in the arsenal), its second skill is very useful, mainly for arrows that require Aim counters, but as these arrows leave the list, we will also change the bow.

Another very useful piece of equipment is Driftwood Quiver, which can help both to get a card stuck in the arsenal and to improve the second cycle towards the end of the game.

The other pieces don't many complex interactions. Mask of Malicious Manifestations to find an arrow when ours has no attack, Ironrot Legs for extra protection, Toxic Tips to add an effect on-hit to the next attack and Threadbare Tunic to generate one more resource.

This precon has some problems and questionable card choices, but Riptide is challenging in terms of deckbuilding due to its abilities and the other heroes of the Ranger class.

We can build Riptide as a go-tall where we focus on growing an arrow's power and attacking with a giant arrow, but Azalea also has that plan and performs better since her ability grants Dominate to the arrow.

So if we think about a go-wide where we want to do as many attacks as possible, it's also viable, but Lexi does it better thanks to her bow Voltaire, Strike Twice and the Lightning talent, and a deck focused on Traps can be problematic in getting stagnant - where we can have an extremely defensive hand, but no attacks. So, how to build Riptide?

We're going down a path where the ability to deal damage with Traps is a bonus, as we can get stuck with them, and focusing on a deck around Traps can be problematic.

Therefore, the best value to get with the hero is through his first skill, and for that, we can make a mix between buffs and attacks (both arrows and non-arrows), where we can play cards from our hand (be it attacks or buffs) and put the arrows in the arsenal.

With that in mind, let's look at the precon list and assess which cards go against our game plan:

- A large number of Traps;

- Some arrows aren't so relevant;

- Attack buffs are missing.

So for the first upgrade, we're going to address those issues with our goal of making a hybrid plan.

The first card we will include is Scar for a Scar (1). This attack is excellent on its own, but it takes away great value on heroes that naturally have less health (like Iyslander, for example), where we can gain go again from the first turn of the game. To put it in the deck, we will remove the copies of Pendulum Trap (2)

Two other excellent attacks that can be abused with Riptide's ability are Death Touch (1) and Virulent Touch (1). Both can only be played from the arsenal and aren't arrows - which makes it difficult for the other Rangers to put them in the arsenal, but with our hero, it is enough to play a card from the hand so that we can prepare these attacks and play them in the same turn.

To support this attack, we will strip all copies and colors of Murkmire Grapnel (1).

Going to the arrows, let's put some more aggressive ones with good on-hit effects. Bolt'n Shot (1) is a staple of the class. Although we need to increase its power so that it gains go again and an on-hit effect, it won't be a problem since we will use several buffs.

Another great arrow that we can include is Drill Shot (1), where putting the -1 counter on equipment is extremely relevant, especially in a format in which the hero's health is lower. To support these two attacks, we are going to remove all copies of Bloodrot Trap (1) and Frailty Trap (1).

A small change is to swap the yellow copies of Infecting Shot (2) and put the red ones.

For buffs, we are going to insert some that don't focus specifically on arrows so that we can also increase the other attacks.

Nimblism (1), Plunder Run (1) and Razor Reflex (1) will be our featured additions to Plunder Run (1). The banned card in Classic Constructed always presents a threat to decks of this type, where an extra card draw can mean three or four more damage on the turn.

To place them, we will remove the yellow copies of Scout the Periphery (2), Inertia Trap (1) and the yellow copies of Falcon Wing (2).

Although we don't focus on Traps, some deserve to be on the list both for Riptide ability and for its effect that may be relevant.

The hero's three specializations, Buzzsaw Trap, Collapsing Trap and Spike Pit Trap can shine brightly in some games and still offer additional protection in others - plus they're all a blue pitch. Another excellent Trap is Pitfall Trap, which deals two damage if the opponent doesn't pay one resource. Remember that in a format where health is lower, causing this damage is very relevant.

(An important note about Pitfall Trap: in its original release, Trap-type cards had a reminder text that they could only be played from the arsenal, but with the arrival of Outsiders the mechanic had errata, eliminating this restriction. Despite the errata, all Crucible of War Traps still have this restriction. For information, these Traps are Pitfall Trap, Rockslide Trap and Tripwire Trap; the rest can be played from hand).

To support one of each specialization and two copies of Pitfall Trap, we will remove all copies of Hemorrhage Bore (1), a Boulder Trap (2) and Tarpit Trap (2)

On the equipment, we will make slight changes in favor of the new behavior of our deck. Let's change Ironrot Legs for Snapdragon Scalers (giving cadence to all the attacks on the list), Threadbare Tunic for Blossom of Spring (for not having any restriction to gain a resource), Barbed Castaway for Death Dealer (since we no longer work with aim counters) and Toxic Tips for Bull's Eye Bracers (equipment widely used by Rangers that has synergy with Bolt'n Shot (1)).

At the end, we have the following list:

The list already has a very solid plan, but there are still cards with better cost - leaving our list less dependent on generating resources and more optimized, arriving at this list:

Enlightened Strike is, undoubtedly, one of the best zero-cost attacks in the game. Its modes power up the card and allow for unique flexibility. To insert it, we will remove Salvage Shot (1), and this will be the only non-arrow attack that we will put on the list.

Rangers have excellent arrows that will not be left out of the list. Endless Arrow, if not blocked completely, will always come back to our hand and grant us an arrow to attack.

Another excellent arrow is Remorseless, which heavily punishes aggressive decks that want to attack multiple times a turn. Let's remove Sedation Shot (1) and Withering Shot (1), since these arrows are the ones that generate less relevant tokens in Blitz, to put these new arrows.

Finally, let's insert two more excellent Majestics from Outsiders: Premeditate and Codex of Frailty.

Thanks to our hero's skill, we can get the most value out of Premeditate easily, its effect of creating a Ponder is great, since we use our whole hand and, thanks to the token, we still have an arsenal.

Codex of Frailty is a card that deserves to be highlighted in the deck. Although both players return an attack from the graveyard to the armory, thanks to the Frailty token generated, the opponent's attack will be lowered, while we will return some powerful arrow that is hard to deal with. We also create a Ponder token to guarantee the arsenal. It is an absurd value. Codex of Frailty is by far the best Codex cycle in the set and can definitely jumpstart you in the game.

To place the two Actions we will remove Increase the Tension (1), the other copy of Boulder Trap (2) and a Razor Reflex (1).

Crown of Providence defends well when necessary and still protects our arsenal from Command and Conquer or better filters our hand, even though it's easy to put cards in the arsenal, it's not a problem to remove the arsenal with the crown.

On the chest, the new Trench of Sunken Treasure does a similar effect to Fyendal's Spring Tunic at the cost of placing an armory card on the bottom. The ease with which we put the cards in the arsenal means we can get a good value from the equipment - besides, of course, that it has Blade Break and Arcane Barrier, which is an extremely flexible defense.

In addition to these changes, we are adding three sideboard equipment: Nullrune Hood (closing Arcane Barrier 3), Hornet's Sting and Perch Grapplers (for times when we need to take a more defensive stance).

The list doesn't have many quirky secrets or interactions. The idea is to be extremely aggressive, increasing attacks and arrows and sometimes looking to protect yourself with Traps.

We will use defensive equipment against heroes that can have dangerous on-hit effects (such as Azalea or Bravo) and Nullrune Hood against Wizards (Kano and Iyslander), however, as the deck lacks blue cards, these games can be an annoyance.

Remember that Legendary Traps are excellent in some games, but do nothing in others. Traps excels at:

- Buzzsaw Trap against decks that grow attacks (Dash with Teklo Pounder on the field, or Dorinthea with a Dawnblade with multiple counters);

- Collapsing Trap for go-wide decks like Fai, Lexi or Ira, Crimson Haze;

- Spike Pit Trap for decks that intend to extend the game and fill the graveyard, like Oldhim and Bravo.

Riptide introduces a different and alternative way to play Rangers. He seems to combine Lexi's cadence advantage with Azalea's big attacks in his own way, as well as having a defensive bonus when using Traps. The hero still has a lot of potential to discover and invent, but it already presents a nice challenge for the community.

Thanks for reading this far and until next time with Outsiders' latest new hero, Arakni, Solitary Confinement!