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

[Wtzky]

Wtzky's beginners guide to Shadow Era heroes

Zaladar has always hung around about the top tier mark in almost every version. His ability has stayed consistent (ly good) and his card pool remains amongst the strongest in the game.

Zaladar



Faction: Shadow
Class: Elemental
Tier: 1
Utilisation: Seen quite often in competitive play because of his versatility and all round general strength, Zaladar is used to his potential. His strength is not so much that he has lots of good match ups, more that he really doesn’t have many bad match ups.

Pros and Cons (explanations after table):

Pros:	Strong ability 1	Access to one of the best card pools2	Access to one of the best single ally control cards3	Consistent4	Very versatile 4
Cons:	Sparks are great – if you get them all early5

¹ Zaladar has one of the better abilities out there. It is basically a free Lightning Strike, and just like Lightning Strike it can be used either for board control (defensively) or hero damage (offensively). The middle game control you get from this card can be game turning and allow you to play some of your bigger allies safely. The late game damage it gives can turn a close game to your advantage or be used to finish off a hero (if you combo this with a Plasma Behemoth for example you can do 10 damage in a turn for 3 resources – ability + Plasma Behemoth ability + Plasma Behemoth attack). There’s not much else to say about this ability really. It’s good. Trust me!

² Elementals do a lot well. Their card pool doesn’t lack much. Let’s examine the potential:

- Board wipe: Not only a board wipe, but one that allows your allies to live. This gives you a great board advantage if you find yourself flooded by allies that you need to get rid of but want to keep your allies at hand (unlike Tidal Wave or Supernova). The other handy thing is that, unlike Supernova, it definitely kills all enemy allies
- Heal: two cards dedicated to heal, which allows for varied tactics
- Resource acceleration: apart from Jeweler’s dream and Stop Thief!, Feedback is the only other resource acceleration card available. It allows for a lot of good plays; on turn 5 you can play a 2cc ally and 5cc card (mind control or ally for example or multiples of). On turn 6 you can play a 3cc card + 5cc card (or multiples of). You get the picture; it speeds up your game as opposed to your opponent.
- Access to card modifiers: Zaladar can use Bloodlust for great damage amplification, Life Infusion for added ally defence (and potentially a combo with conversion for added heal) and Shard of Power which combos well with Bloodlust. The only thing Zaladar is missing is protection for his allies, but with strong board control he doesn’t desperately need it.
- Access to weapons/armours: Zaladar has some pretty good choices here. Armour of Ages has the best protection of all the armours, and unlike Warriors Zaladar is not so weapon reliant and so can make good use of this armour. He also has access to Dimension Ripper, which together with Mind Control and Transference adds extra “steal” to your deck
- Access to good shadow energy modifiers: Shadow Font and Shadowspawn. I know that all shadow heroes have access to these cards, but they just add a lot of extra strength to Zaladar. You can either use Shadow Font for extra “Lightning Strike” (same cost as a Lightning Strike with same effect) or use Shadowspawn which works especially well going second where you get to play your ability then use Shadowspawn to deny your opponent his/her ability (great against Eladwen for example).

Of course, you also have plenty of choices now for item destruction in Shadow decks (Shriek, Ley Line Nexus and Acid Jet) and Zaladar can really make good use of Sacrificial Lamb for some decent unilateral draw.

³ Mind Control used to be a very overpowered card, but recent changes have balanced it out a lot more. It now works to not only destroy any ally out there but gives you damage to the opposing hero, which makes it a great single ally control card. Arguably the best in the game at controlling single opposing allies, it also works great as a deterrent, as people tend to hold off from playing their best allies when they think you have a Mind Control in your hand! Some people even change the way they play specifically for this card and sac their better allies more readily than they normally would. Bonus!

⁴It is hard to pick which cards to add/exclude from a Zaladar as there are so many options. Zaladar has such a great card pool that he can be played in a number of ways. With creative deck building Zaladar is very versatile. He can be played as a weenie rush deck utilising shard/bloodlust. He can be played as a stall deck using eternal renewal. He can be played as a control deck using his ability and tougher allies. He can have a mix of strategies quite effectively. He can be played as a thief deck with transference/dimension ripper (see combo’s for an advanced thief tactic). He can make full use of feedback loops, to be played as a great quasi mill/control style. You get the point, he is very versatile and is suitable to a creative mind.

The other thing that he is, is consistent. He basically is a great all-rounder and can tough it out against all other classes, and more importantly, play styles. What I mean by that is that he is a tough match up for rush decks as much as he is a tough match up for control decks and so on. Built right, Zaladar will give you a good chance of winning against any deck, without being in a situation where he will autowin against some heroes and automatically lose against others.

⁵Honestly, there aren’t a whole lot of downsides to playing Zaladar. He doesn’t have any glaring faults, which is one of the reasons he is such a consistent all rounder. It really isn’t a con, but I will point out that sparks are not as great in 40 card minimum as they used to be as their strength really lies on being able to be used together. Back when the minimum deck size was 30 cards, sparks used to be fantastic (especially with Shard of Power/Bloodlust). Now though Sparks have lost a lot of their power and there are much better 1 card drops now (Kris, Brigitte Skullborn and Firesnake).

[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:

6-7

The toughest part that beginners will have with Zaladar is focusing a deck. There are so many good cards it is easy to make the deck either too big, or too unfocused, and beginners may find themselves being put off by poor results from poorly built decks. Once you have some experience with deck building (or have some from other tcg’s) though this hero is great to use.

Good match ups:

Essentially you can count on giving most decks a good fight. Some decks you can deal with much more comfortably than others, including:

- Eladwen
- Lance
- Zhanna
- Logan
- Ter Adun
- Majiya
- Zaladar

Bad match ups:

Outright bad match ups are not really common. Certain deck builds may cause problems but heroes that often have a decent build that will deal with Zaladar very easily without specifically teching for it are hard to find, and only include:

- Banebow
- Gwen

Best suited style of play:

Very versatile. Whatever style you like, you can make him play well to.

Cost of creating a good deck:

Cheap to expensive – depending on what type of deck you want to create with him. On a side note; elemental starter packs get you the most gold when sold, so starting with an Elemental hero is not a bad way to go as you can sell the excess cards to save for your next hero.

Combos:

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

Bad Santa + Dimension Ripper – one of my favourite combo’s to use. Fill up your opponent’s hand, then use Dimension Ripper for a one way steal (you need to play a cheap card to empty your hand first for those not paying attention)

Soul Reaper + Eternal Renewal – a good way to get back your extra good cards like Mind Control or Energy Discharge as it ensures your draw is not diluted by allies (and it gives you heal!)

Transference + Soul Reaper + Eternal Renewal – this is a good combo to steal lots of cards from your opponent. Use Soul Reaper to empty your graveyard once it is filled with your transference. Then use Eternal Renewal to get back your Transference for 4 extra steals (or more if you use multiple Eternal Renewals)

Bad Santa + Feedback – the essence of using Feedback successfully is draw. Using Bad Santa in your combo’s will soon net you Feedback after Feedback that you can use in quick succession.

Sacrificial Lamb + Feedback – Feedback bombs are quite tricky to pull off because you need so much draw. Sacrificial Lamb is often a very good way to get some much needed draw to pull off those Feedback bombs

Turn 5: 2cc ally + Feedback + Plasma Behemoth (or another 5cc card or another 3cc card + 2cc card)
Turn 6: 3cc ally + Feedback + Plasma Behemoth (or any other cards that you want to play for 6 resources)
Turn 8: Plasma Behemoth (or other 5cc card) + Feedback + Anything else up to 5cc (another Plasma Behemoth or Mind control?) + Feedback + Anything else up to 8cc – hard to pull off, godly when you do! Being able to play 2 Mind Control’s in a row + fill the board will allies is just… awesome.
Turn 8: Bad Santa + Any card combination up to 3cc + Feedback + Any card combination up to 5cc + Feedback + Bad Santa + Any card combination up to 4cc + Feedback + Bad Santa + Any card combination up to 4cc + Feedback + Any card combination up to 8cc – this is the ultimate Feedback bomb/combo. So many cards to play on one turn. Good luck pulling it off (when you do, it feels amazing!). Note that while it seems impossible, it isn’t and you can manage it in a number of games if you play your cards right.

Transference + Feedback – This is a really cool combo in my books. You not only steal a card from your opponents deck unilaterally, you essentially get it for free. In a loop like the big one mentioned above (or an abbreviated version), you can steal a number of cards for free and get to play them all in the one go. Handy because it not only stifles your opponent by removing his good cards from his deck, but you can flood the board with your cards.

Life Infusion + Conversion – bit of extra heal never hurt

Shard of Power + Bloodlust - best used when you have a board with a few allies and you can play both together for an amazing +4 damage. Extra effective when you have 2 or more sparks down (with 4 sparks, that is a huge 32 damage in one turn…)

Zaladar in the future:

With his card pool and ability you can safely expect Zaladar to stay in touch with the top for a while to come. Has always been a very solid hero choice, and will continue to be one. Good old, dependable Zal 

Good decks to check out on the forum:

Since Zaladar hasn’t changed that much for a few versions, it may even be worthwhile checking out some of the earlier decks. Nonetheless it isn’t hard to find great Zaladar discussions on the forum with some very strong Zaladar decks being posted. Check out the following examples:

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....eedbomb-Dynamo – No tactics given here, but BlanketEffect’s deck is superb, and having faced it several times I can attest to its strength. Nicely crafted and a work of art when you get it going like it’s meant to. Worth checking out and trying to figure out how it works.

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....-Version-1-503 – To help you try to figure out how the deck works, here is a nice video of BlanketEffect’s ZTC Zaladar in action.

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....ontrol-for-1-5 – A control Zaladar

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....ladar-Rush-1-5 – And a rush Zaladar. Can you see the versatility yet?

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....-RUSH-YOU-DOWN – If not, then here is a shard rush Zaladar

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....-Glutton-1-503 – Another strong control deck with great discussion to follow

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....My-1-5-Zaladar – Finally, another control style Zaladar.

Overall Recommendation:

A great all rounder. He is dependable like that old mangled blanket you kept from your childhood, which is starting to wear away at the edges and has some questionable stains, but that you know will always be there to warm you when times are tough. He is strong, like popeye having just popped a tin full of spinach and roids. He is versatile, like um that thing that is really versatile. Best of all, just like Halle Berry in her orange bikini, Zaladar is a lot of fun.


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[Preybird]

Brilliant write up as always Wtzky! Just one thing...

Turn 8: Bad Santa + Any card combination up to 3cc + Feedback + Any card combination up to 5cc + Feedback + Bad Santa + Any card combination up to 4cc + Feedback + Bad Santa + Any card combination up to 4cc + Feedback + Any card combination up to 8cc – this is the ultimate Feedback bomb/combo. So many cards to play on one turn. Good luck pulling it off (when you do, it feels amazing!). Note that while it seems impossible, it isn’t and you can manage it in a number of games if you play your cards right.

If you have 8cc to spend at the start, those should read 3cc, not 4cc. (Santa = 2cc, Feedback = 3cc, leaving 3cc to spend.)

Just a minor typo in an otherwise brilliant article

[stevevai1983]

I would add Amber to "Bad match ups", especially when they use Mocking Armor.

It's not that bad, but still very tough for Zaladar

[Preybird]

I would add Amber to "Bad match ups", especially when they use Mocking Armor.

It's not that bad, but still very tough for Zaladar

Yeah, a rush Amber makes a meal out of Zal.

[Mew Two]

You forgot to mention his biggest flaw: a lack of a good draw engine... just pointing that out. Otherwise, great guide

[Preybird]

You forgot to mention his biggest flaw: a lack of a good draw engine... just pointing that out. Otherwise, great guide

I don't think that's as big a flaw as it used to be anymore. You've now got Sac Lamb, Bad Santa, Bazaar, Wulven Tracker. Plus incidental draw from Dimension Ripper, Ley Line Nexus, Here Be Monsters.

It's not as straight forward as Warriors or Mages for example, but a well crafted Zal can generate a lot of card draw

[Wtzky]

Yep, agree with Preybird here. He's way better now at drawing cards than before and while it's still not perfect he certainly doesn't struggle.

@preybird - I see what you mean, what I meant by up to was that it was not inclusive of 4cc. As in; anything up to and including 3cc. Too confusing how I worded it?

[Keaven]

I would add Amber to "Bad match ups", especially when they use Mocking Armor.

It's not that bad, but still very tough for Zaladar

I agree. My win streaks were all ended by Amber.

You should use image links for these threads much better res

[akratch]

I find this quite comical since the elemental card pool had almost no real positive changes aside from sacrifical lamb. Makes me wonder if people were just irrationally scared to use him before 1.5. In any case, I can agree that he is a great hero, now.