Aiming High

Tom “Warrior King” Penny is a developer at Legend Story Studios, and brings us the fourth chapter of a series of deep dives into the heroes in Outsiders, focusing on both limited and constructed play. Today we draw our bowstrings with the returning fan favourite - Azalea, Ace in the Hole!

The ship creaked gently upon the black waters of the pier as its crew slumbered.

Pinwheel pressed a finger to his lips to silence his partner in crime as they carefully rolled a barrel down the gangway and onto the dock, where several other barrels rested on a waiting cart.

“This is some premium grog - Blockheads’ll pay us a fortune.” chortled Bazz gleefully, before Pinwheel yanked him close.

“We don’t want that old tavern owner gettin’ wind that we was here,” Pinwheel hissed into his ear. “Help me lift the last of this grog and let’s hightail - quietly.”

Bazz clamped his big mouth shut and nodded. Pinwheel turned and tiptoed back towards the ship. He paused at the sound of a splash.

“Bazz?” Pinwheel rushed to the side of the dock, peering into its dark depths.

Bazz’s limp body bobbed to the surface, an arrow protruding from the center of his forehead like a flagpole.

Pinwheel whirled around, eyes darting to and fro, trying in vain to spot their attacker.

For a split second he heard the whistle of rushing air before an arrow pierced him between the eyes. He staggered back, and toppled off the side, plunging into the oily water.

From her perch above, Azalea leaped to the ground with feline poise. She sauntered over to the dock, checking both targets were dispatched.

Job done.

Heading back, she paused near the barrels, and produced a small leather flask from her belt. She unplugged the bunghole, and let the rich dark red liquid flow into her flask, before neatly plugging it back up.

“Why not?” She thought to herself, taking a swig. “A little extra fruit for my labour.”

Draft

Azalea is back, baby! Look no further to get the inside scoop on drafting the Ace and dominating your opponents!

Firstly, let’s talk arrows.

Azalea is at her best when using her hero ability to put arrows from the top of the deck into your arsenal, giving them dominate, and using Crow’s Nest to add aim counters.

We want to draft cards that help us maximize the consistency of Azalea’s hero ability.

Ravenous Rabble and Scout the Periphery are common generic cards that let us check the top of our deck and confidently decide whether to go all-in. Seek Horizon is another common generic card that goes a step further and lets us line up the perfect shot from our hand, all while providing a valuable go again attack to further pressure your opponent.

Spire Sniping is a common ranger card that signals Azalea is open - it gives us even more information and lets us manipulate the top two cards of our deck!

Azalea doesn’t always need to rely on go again attacks, and can find success by firing just one big attack at your opponent per turn.

We want to take advantage of dominate by making our arrows as big as possible. Non-attack actions that pump our arrows are an absolute premium.

Come to Fight, Fletch a Red Tail, and Lace with Bloodrot are prime examples of pumps that will elevate an Azalea draft deck to the next level.

In addition to defense reactions available to both rangers and assassins, generics such as Peace of Mind and Brush Off are fairly easy to pick up in draft and do a lot of work defending dominated arrows.

Murkmire Grapnel and Widowmaker provide the perfect anti-control tools to round out your deck so you can counter these defensive measures with cold-blooded determination!

Finding the right ratio of arrows, pumps, and tech cards can be challenging, but the ceiling is high and the payoff can be immense!

Constructed

For a lot of her stay in Classic Constructed Azalea has been an underdog. Outsiders introduces several new features to help her finally tackle the top heroes.

Most notably, we have a brand new equipment type - Quivers!

A Quiver can be played alongside to a two-handed Bow in the weapon slot, which makes it a free addition to the ranger inventory.

Two common roadblocks for Azalea in the past have been bricking on a turn cycle with no arrow to shoot, or running out of arrows in deck entirely.

Quiver of Rustling Leaves and Quiver of Abyssal Depths help plug these weaknesses, while Crow’s Nest lets you easily add aim counters to your arrows to enable powerful effects.

Dynasty introduced us to aim counters, with great payoff cards such as Dead Eye and Hemorrhage Bore.

If that wasn’t enough, Outsiders solidifies the aim counter mechanic with several arrows and non-attack actions that reward you for enabling them.

Even the innocuous looking commons can hit very hard when lined up correctly with an aim counter.

The card pool for Azalea is massive and she has a toolbox of tech cards at her disposal.

She can work as a ‘go wide’ aggressive deck, or a midrange deck with defensive options, but the main build you’ll see often is ‘go tall’.

‘Go tall’ typically refers to attacking once per turn with a single arrow, pumped by as many non-attack actions as possible.

Attacking this way is very public for the opponent, compared to a ‘go wide’ strategy, where our opponents don’t know what our next attack is.

In order to justify this, we must make our attacks difficult or impossible to fully defend, and also triggering devastating on-hit effects. Azalea has some of the best on-hits in the game, such as her ace arrow Red in the Ledger, and Outsiders continues this tradition not just with arrows, but with pumps too.

Combine the ‘Lace’ cards with each other and with other pumps to supercharge your arrows and cause a complete turmoil of on-hit triggers that often play really nicely together.

Going tall only scratches the surface of the new possibilities and card combinations available to Azalea. Outsiders has broadened the horizons and I hope Azalea fans, old and new, will be inspired to get working on some spicy builds!