Second HOST Warring Card Game Exclusive Preview Card!

Article by Connor McIndewar

Oh dear readers, today is a joyous day, a most momentous day. For I, Connor aka Akhariou, get to talk about one of my favourite things in the world… Otters. That’s right! The semi-aquatic mammals that capture people's hearts just like their favourite rocks is what I get to gush to you all today about. But that's not all! Nope, I get to also talk about a game that myself and Adam champion and love oh so dearly in Host. Oh yes! Host now has an otter! And I didn’t even have to play the creator for it… yet.

Meet Rosa, The Otter Spirit. A beautiful specimen of an Otter drawn in a most Minty way. Now dear readers, those eagle eyed amongst you may notice that Rosa is not in fact an entity, but instead an Sorcery Equipment. How playful.

She is from the Amity Faction and this doubly, or should I say triply, reflects in her cost of three whole Amity to play. The effect of “Equipped Entity gets Prey: Discard a card.” Led me to a lot of weird places for how this card is to be used. Firstly Prey is a keyword introduced in the Binky Character deck, a mechanic that triggers its effect upon a Predator entering play and gaining them as markers. This gives a bit of insight into how the card is supposed to be played, placing them onto not typically Prey entities… But that's what Binky helps facilitate. Why would we need to take up deck slots and pay three precious resources to then also make ourselves discard a card?

The Otter Came to Play

Enter the real purpose of this card. Removal. Playful, painful, powerful, removal. This can be equipped to opponent's entities that are hard to remove, such as Mystic Sphinx of Old and Meridius, to then play a Predator entity and destroy it. But otters are playful creatures and so they take a treasure with them, in this case causing our opponent to not only lose an entity but also discard a card! Incredibly powerful in such a card resource demanding game like Host. 

But surely a powerful, albeit expensive, piece of interaction can have other applications right? Well I scoured the database and I found!... Nothing. At least nothing too tangible yet, a few recursion to hand cards like Racine if you discard a Sorcery or potential recycling the card with Mountain’s Peak (Still the bane of my existence- AN), but no combo worthy of not placing Rosa onto an opponent's entity… For now.

In the future, having access to a discard outlet as well as a way to cause markers could lead to reanimation effects being played in Amity to cheat out larger entities or sorceries, who knows what the future will hold. 

Rosa is a part of the first of two expansion sets being released to Host soon, and with it being the one year anniversary of the games release next month I am incredibly proud to be a part of its community and a player within it. I must always thank Jamie for allowing myself and Adam to be a part of its spoiler season and he always does what is best for the game and so with the anniversary coming, and likely a year in review episode on our Podcast, until next time, Keep on Hosting.