Clockman Junk Picker Preview


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January 7th, 2013

Shade Preview - Clockman Junk Picker

by Lester E. Tisdale IV

Hey everybody! A new set for the best card game ever is on its way. I know you Spoils fanatics are just pining with anticipation, and I'm right there with you. The fine folks at Anime & Games in Lafayette, Louisiana have supported the game continuously for about 6 months now, and have waited patiently for the new set. And you know what? It was worth the wait! The guys over at Arcane Tinmen have rewarded our patience with our very own preview of the new set! Let's take a look at it then, shall we?

There are so many elements of this card that I want to talk about!

First, let's talk about the flavor. The name and picture go pretty well together, the depiction of a Gearsmith character rummaging through junk, seemingly excited over a found Micromajig. The flavor text puts the image and name into perspective, and I imagine the voice of the character, excited over finding any old junk... But there's not much else there. It's cute, sure, but not the best The Spoils has to offer. There are no pop culture references (from what I can tell) and nothing too clever either. Luckily, they make up for it with what the card does.

Clockman Junk Picker has a great early game cost of 4 with a threshold of 2 Elitism, making it very easy to play in any deck running a normal amount of Elitism threshold (either starting 2 Elitism or running a bunch in the deck). Of course, when looking at cards with cost 4 in Gearsmith, one card always comes to my mind: of course! This card is a prime candidate to be played with because of how far ahead it gets you... But I'll talk about that in a second. Let's first talk about the character's stats.

Clockman Junk Picker is moderately weak with the stats 2/1/3. It's killed by most anything, and doesn't necessarily kill much itself; basically, a 2/1/3 for 4EE is not aggressive, defensive or even efficient--but luckily, this card's beauty is not in it's stats. No, instead of being vanilla, this card has an amazing trigger and a very useful ability slapped on its moderately weak body.

The trigger on this card is simply incredible and has a number of uses that come to mind. First, (and perhaps most importantly) it gets an item from your deck. That alone would be great, but this guy goes one step further and puts the thing into play as a face down resource. Of course, everyone is thinking, "GO GET ," and rightly so; only costs 1EE to Flip Up, and so, it pays for itself. That means that even if all this character does is tutor that card out of your deck and puts it online, it's a +1. But that's not all it does folks. The amazing thing about this guy is that no matter what item you get, you will be getting another resource as well as thinning out your deck.

Compare this card to : for one more threshold, you still get a resource, but its not attached to your faction and get the utility of using that item if it has Flip Up or some reveal face down ability. Now think about that with , just how far ahead you can get... and that's only the tip of the iceberg. I can see this guy going into a number of decks based on his tutoring ability alone. It can also get other great items with Flip Up, like , , or . I'll definitely use Clockman Junk Picker in my deck to go and get either of the cards that make a character unblockable, still ramping myself for a turn 3 , all with the added tech of occasionally grabbing a needed and still having a blocker.

But the awesomeness of the ability STILL doesn't end there. Clockman Junk Picker also fits into another deck of mine that uses the engine, with the Gearsmith tactic . Normally, the only use for is to reveal a and draw a card for 1 instead of the usual 3. But with Clockman Junk Picker, I can actually get items that do not have Flip Up (like, say, or ) then use one of the four face down s to play the item Clockman Junk Picker picked, even during my opponent's turn! This can be huge with , as then I can (probably) pay 2 to activate it, returning my Clockman Junk Picker! Rinse, repeat. Amazing!

Oh, and if I still haven't convinced you Clockman Junk Picker is awesome, you can always go get and you know, have some sick card advantage. Not to mention cards that don't exist yet. There's just so much in this first ability it's redonkulous.

Not only does this character have the extremely versatile enters play trigger, it also has a nice ability to go along with his trigger. Only accessible to the decks most dedicated to playing Gearsmith, the ability Trash can only be played if you have six Elitism threshold, which is steep, but not too steep to be unrealistic. This ability is a much more straight forward one: basically, pay 1 to destroy this and a picked item. So far, this is the only character in Gearsmith that can destroy items. This will be very clutch vs item based decks like and can pop a Crest or if need be. What's awesome is that you can use the unattached item you just put face down to activate the ability! So you get to make some awesome late game plays like digging out a , but having the option still to block and use Clockman Junk Picker's ability to destroy a problem item.

Obviously, I think this card is extremely useful, and as such, I believe it might be a slightly more valuable uncommon, much like going to about two dollars in value. The utility it offers is so great that any deck with the threshold to support it will probably run it, and even decks that only run 2 Elitism would find its setup worth it as well.

I can't say too much about how useful this card will be in Limited, because I haven't seen any items with Flip Up from the new set (yet), but if my hunch is correct, there will be a couple of cards to go alongside this one at some point in the block. Based purely on stats, this card is likely to be picked up late. Personally though, I'm likely to pull as many of these as I can so long as it doesn't set my deck too far back! I'm definitely going to need 12 of these (at least) for Constructed!

I'm really into ratings, so I'm going to break it down for you:

Flavor: 3/5
Design: 5/5
Playability: 4/5

Overall: 4/5

I hope everyone has enjoyed my review of this card! Once the new set is out, I'm going to write more Card Analysis articles on new cards I like/dislike. Thanks AT for making such a great game, and for giving Anime & Games (Lafayette, LA) our own preview card! Have fun, play The Spoils!