Ter Adun - Wtzky's beginner's guide to SE Heroes v1.5!

[Wtzky]

Wtzky's beginners guide to Shadow Era heroes

The potential for Ter Adun to get better with the addition of new weapons and armours was always something I had hoped for. Unfortunately, the overall nerfs to the Warrior card pool and the way that other heroes have accelerated forward in their progress has left Ter Adun way behind. Some builds can work well on him, however overall he will be unlikely to see much serious play.

Ter Adun



Faction: Shadow
Class: Warrior
Tier: 3
Utilisation: Rarely seen in competitions or on higher level quick match, his utilisation is a reflection of his weaknesses against others and the difficulty in making a decent build with him that works against a multitude of heroes.

Pros and Cons (explanations after table):

Pros:	Endless item/ability destruction 1	Access to warrior weapon and armor pool 2
Cons:	Has not got strong board control3	Slower damage output 4	Very difficult to use effectively5

¹ Not only does Ter Adun have his 4 shadow energy cost ability (which allows him to have a free item destroy on every 4th turn after turn 4 if going second or turn 5 if going first), but he has access to a strong card pool that allows for extra item destruction ability including: Smashing Blow, Shriek, Acid Jet, Ley Line Nexus and Shadow Font. For almost complete control of all items adding a few of these in to supplement his ability makes for a very frustrated opponent as he tries to use items only to see them being countered with ease.

² Coupled with control of opponent weapon/armor with item destruction this can be very strong. Warriors have without question the best weapons and armors. They have weapons that can give buffs (Beserker's/Mournblade), give you extra resources to allow for faster game play (Jeweler's Dream), allow you to steal cards (Dimension Ripper) and so on. The armors are also versatile from allowing buffs (King's Pride) to stopping damage (Armor of Ages/Nova Infusion) to disabling opponents (Snow Sapphire)

³ Let’s face it, if Ter Adun is going second, a double gargoyle drop by your opponent is almost enough to cripple him for the rest of the game unless he finds a quick way to deal with it.

By having his ability deal directly with the support section of the board, Ter Adun has a marked disadvantage to those heroes that use their ability directly for board control in that he struggles to compete with them when the crucial time to use abilities comes. Most top decks are often built to go second, maximising the benefits of going second by using the extra Shadow Energy to use your ability first, and maximising the extra card gained by going second. Ter Adun is much weaker going second because while he does get the extra card advantage, he has no direct way to get the board back for ‘free’ with his ability like other classes (for example; Eladwen/Lance/Victor) or by dropping a useful beefed up item (for example; Gwen/Amber).

Ter Adun's only real board control comes from crippling blow - even this still allows for abilities to be used (think Death Mage or Plasma Behemoth or Jasmine). Apart from that, his other board control cards are really only workarounds rather than solutions. Valiant Defender does not stop spell or ability damage and does not stop defensive damage when your allies attack. Not only that but Valiant Defender allows all of your opponents allies to concentrate on you and does not deter your opponent to continue to place down allies at will. Rain delay does not allow for board control, just delays the inevitable. Other solutions include Shield Bash (a good burn card but only targets one ally), Evil Ascendant (also damages your allies), Warrior Training (protects some of your weaker allies but has way too many counters to be very useful) and King's Pride (extra health and damage for your allies to fight with against the enemy, but very expensive card and can be fairly easily dealt with). Contrast this to some of the stronger board control abilities like Tidal Wave or Energy Discharge and you can see the problem.

⁴ Ter Adun is more suited to a slower, build up style of play. While he does have access to shadow weenies and Bloodlust to buff them, his lack of clear board control and inability to resurrect his weenies or protect them easily makes a weenie rush Ter Adun an inconsistent and easily counterable play style (note that I don't think you CANT play him like this, just that it probably isn't the best way).
Because his ability is more of a 'control' (control the items and tempo of card draw by taking item draw cards), Ter Adun benefits more from his mid-late game allies holding the board and dishing out damage, rather than direct damage from his weapons or from his abilities and card pool (no direct burn for example). This can hurt him when facing a fast paced rush deck, or when facing another control deck that is simply stronger.

Ter Adun can also play quite well as a solo hero, stalling allies and controlling items in an attempt to stall or set up his weapons. Again, this is a deck that has problems against quite a few archetypes and is easy to counter.

⁶It’s really not easy to make a good Ter Adun deck, and requires a bit of creative thinking and experience. Knowing the right balance between allies and ability cards is quite hard on a hero that doesn’t have an inherent board control ability.

[Wtzky]

Ease of play for beginners - On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is hardest hero pick up and 10 is easiest hero to pick up:

1

Ter Adun is not easy to use if you are a beginner. Even after spending lots of time analysing and playing ShadowEra, a lot of senior players struggle to use him well. Definitely not easy to play.

Good match ups:

Obviously any heroes that rely on items heavily and can be crippled by lots of item destruction:

- Darkclaw
- Baduuru
- Gwen

Bad match ups:

Basically, the stronger decks around. Some of the Tier 2 heroes are equivocal match ups for Ter and depend on how you build your deck.

- Eladwen
- Amber
- Boris
- Jericho
- Lance
- Zhanna
- Zaladar
- Majiya
- Gravebone
- Moonstalker
- Elementalis

Best suited style of play:

Actually can be quite versatile given that his ability doesn’t dictate his style (unlike say a Gwen, who really needs to play a certain way with weapons to maximise her ability). Ter Adun can go solo, rush or control.

Cost of creating a good deck:

Cheap – Expensive. Depends which way you want to go really. If you want to go a solo Ter Adun, which does rely on quite expensive items, prepare to fork over some cash for all the good cards. If you go a more conventional build that is ally heavy, you can make a deck without spending too many crystals.

Combos:

Here I will include some interesting/fun/good plays or combos.

Rain delay + ability - one of my old favorite tricks was to play rain delay while building up your allies and then use Ter Adun's ability to destroy your own rain delay thereby allowing your allies to attack while your opponent's couldn't

Jewelers' Dream + Valiant Defender/Crippling Blow: Jeweler's Dream is the perfect turn 4 play to be able to then play Valiant defender and allow for your 3cc allies to have some protection (if still alive) or to allow you to play a fatty on turn 5. Failing that, Crippling Blow/Blood Frenzy are also good combos (Blood Frenzy only after turn 4 now of course).

Dimension Ripper: actually quite a nice card, but not as strong as on Amber or Logan because it does less damage. Nonetheless it can be used for unilateral steal in later rounds - play Bad Santa to fill your opponents hand and then play a cheap card like crippling blow to leave your hand open for a steal before you attack with Dimension Ripper. It also is a decent card against mages because generally stealing one of their burn cards will help you more than them stealing one of your warrior cards. Be careful how you use this card however, if you lose key cards to an opponent that can make good use of them it can cost you the game (eg. losing Kings Pride to an ally heavy opponent, losing Crippling Blow etc)

Shadow Font + ability: useful on turn 4 if you have control of the board to get rid of an annoying item and still have Shadow Energy left

Ability on opponent’s draw cards: with access to unilateral draw you want to try to stifle your opponent. Using your ability to destroy an opponent Bazaar or Ill Gotten Gains not only stifles their draw, but stops a counter to blood frenzy (bazaar gives a 3/2 card advantage instead of a 2/1 card advantage and is thus a useful card to counter the advantage given by Blood Frenzy)

Ter Adun in the future:

Like Logan, Ter Adun really needs something added to his card pool to help him with board control – especially given that his ability does not have a direct effect on the board but affects the support area. The problem with Ter Adun is that the addition of more Warrior specific board control cards are likely to just help Amber and Boris more, and so he may continue to languish near the bottom.

Ter Adun could be very strong if the meta ever shifts to be very item orientated. However, given the ally centred nature of the game in general, I don’t see this happening much.

Ter Adun is thus more likely to remain a niche hero with great potential that will probably go unrealised as other heroes surpass him.

Good decks to check out on the forum:

Is it any surprise that there are essentially no Ter Adun decks apart from those posted by Caitlyn0, who always finds time to test one of her favourite heroes? Definitely worth checking out some of her crazy named decks as she is one of the few players that consistently uses Ter Adun and has some good ideas on how to play him:

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....uot-CRANK-quot

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....ammer-Ter-Adun

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....ANVIL-ter-Adun

Overall Recommendation:

Not really suited to beginners and so not recommended until you have a good grasp of the game and have an idea of how to manipulate the board without relying on your ability. Recommended more as a niche or fun hero.


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[AngelKiller07]

What! No comments from anyone? Thats a bit sad
I myself have never tried out this Hero before but he seems decent enough. Anyway, great work as usual, I've been finding your Hero Guides quite useful and am reading up on all of them. Keep it up!