Deliver destruction with Marmelee Greyheart, a specialist with supreme artillery and magical blasting capability.

Backstory

"The history of this land is a story of conflict, suffering, and war. I'm ready to end the cycle my father began."

The last princess of the dragons, hatched several centuries after the fall of her father’s empire. Marmelee was raised by dryads in the faraway land of Amalao, where she became fascinated with the history of the world and with the draconic wars in particular.

A powerful sorceress with natural talent in destructive magic, Marmelee has returned to the continent of Indines along with her bodyguards Karin and Jager to discover the truth of her lineage and to prevent her father’s return from a millennia of imprisonment.

Pros

• Launches powerful, uncontestable attacks.
• Provides huge card advantage with Vision and Astral Trance.
• Offers the ability to bluff and contest attacks passively while building advantages.

Cons

• Completely useless without hand or positional advantage.
• Offers few tools to deal with opponents’ point control.

Gameplay

Marmelee is a Specialist. This class is more of a wildcard, and doesn’t come with specific play conventions like the other four roles do. Instead, Specialists articulate a unique game plan and often serve as the lynchpin of their teams—providing a unique advantage, win condition, or strategic option that other team members support.

In Marmelee’s case, this advantage is siege tactics. Marmelee has excellent range, but is easy to disrupt and rather incapable at melee combat. She requires a balanced team to escort her to a defensible position where she can launch long-ranged attacks to assault the opposing team’s base directly.

Marmelee’s unique ability allows her to play a card face-up for +3 Power (when attacking). This makes her best ranged attacks nearly uncontestable on a power basis. It also means that opponents have full information to plan a counter—if the attack can be countered, then it will be countered. This requires very careful consideration of the opponent’s position and options.

Team Role

In addition to a clear win condition in the form of Mystic Ballista, Marmelee provides incredible attack advantage to her party through her artifacts, and reliable execution through the additional card draw of her Vision and Astral Trance effects. These feed into a more calculated, deliberate style of play—draw lots of cards, set up a solid position, and strike preemptively with overwhelming force when you have clear advantage.

Marmelee pairs well with strong front-liners who can give her the breathing room she needs to set up and find Mystic Ballista, such as Eligor and Percival. Marmelee’s card advantage allows her to pair well with more tempo-hungry characters, such as Clinhyde and Kehrolyn, who consume cards quickly and benefit from her combat-support artifacts.

Card Preview

Mystic Ballista

This is Marmelee’s alternate win condition, and the card that will keep your opponents awake at night and shaking their fists.

Arced means it shoots over terrain. With long and extended range, Mystic Ballista can siege the opponent’s base from more than half a table away—a deadly combination of abilities that your opponent will be forced to answer proactively.

However, the attack is both slow and fragile. Fragile means that any hit will disrupt it. So all the opponent has to do to win this exchange is hit Marmelee for 0 damage at normal speed. Setup is key.

The Speed Potion provides additional speed to your other allies, allowing slower Wardens (like Marmelee and most tanks) a chance to hold their own against faster assassins and brawlers. Speed is where combat tricks and disruption happen, so the Speed Potion is an enabler or a disrupter, depending on which side of the tricks you are on.

Astral Trance

Marmelee’s advanced version of her normal, Vision. Astral Trance is a very competent attack when you are already at a card advantage. Fragile makes it dangerous to use on defense, but on offense, and with a decent hand of cards to start, it’s a very scary attack that wins big when it wins.

Crisis Badge is effective when assaulting the opponent’s base directly, reinforcing Marmelee’s style of direct confrontation rather than contesting points. Combined with her built in +3, Marmelee can use the Crisis Badge to get +6 when striking a base face-up. That’s very hard to deal with.

Petrifying Stare

Petrifying Stare is a preemptive counter against Wardens who may move into position to target Marmelee. It is especially effective against mobile Wardens (usually bruiser classes), who can fly over terrain or move before attacking. It’s no defense against those who will pull you out of position (such as Eligor and Percival) so know your target before reacting with this.

It can also be used reactively to spoil enemy engagements. Even if Marmelee won’t hit, you can prevent an opponent from using a skill that will bring them into combat, such as those favored by bruisers like Hikaru and Khadath.

Eagle Badge is another high-power confrontational artifact that will let you reliably win combat when you have the speed advantage.

Vision (Normal)

Slow, low power, and with limited range—Vision will rarely win combat outright. However, it doesn’t need to. Drawing two cards is a decent throw even in exchanges you know you will lose. If you bait out an opponent’s artifact because they think you have a stronger response, you’ll have even more card advantage.

Another use of vision is to bluff. Have a Warden with great range declare vision against an opponent who will have difficulty retaliating, or even their base. You might be able to psych them into playing some of their best defensive cards to counter a perceived Mystic Ballista. Even if they call your bluff and opt out of the attack, you’ll end it without losing your card advantage.

Talkstone is an incredibly flexible artifact that can be used to contest points or set up flanks on demand. It’s useful in so many situations that it’s almost pointless to talk about them.

Conclusion

Marmelee’s toolset opens up new avenues of play and combat tricks that affect the entire table. However, she requires significant support to put these plans into motion. These facts make her a centerpiece for teams where she appears and forces both allies and opponents to adjust their strategies to deal with her.

Learn more about the game Wardens on Gamefound!