Big Fish in a Small Pond: Riptide in Blitz

With the release of Outsiders, The new ranger Riptide is ready to break into the meta and look to force changes. With two unique abilities, Riptide can carve his path into the Blitz meta standing among the greats and bringing glory to the Ranger name. Many have already started to sow the seeds of doubt about Riptide without looking deeper into the monster he truly can become.

Riptide’s power comes from his two hero abilities that grant him consistency, a great balance of offense and defense, and a secondary win condition if your game state enables it.

His first ability is the real treat, essentially being able to reload whenever you play a card from hand. Ranger arrows and attacks are required to be played from the arsenal zone; playing a game where you aren't able to attack due to a clogged arsenal zone or inability to move an attack to your arsenal can cause a losing situation. Riptide removes this problem by causing a reload whenever you play from hand, increasing the consistency of your turns dramatically.

Two new Ranger attacks from Outsiders take advantage of this ability while also being some of Riptide's strongest attacks. Both have the clause of “can't be played from hand”, which is not an issue for Riptide (fellow Rangers Lexi and Azalea struggle with consistently playing these out).

This ability can also be used defensively by letting us sidestep dominate by playing a defense reaction from hand to trigger Riptide’s ability, then putting a second one in the arsenal.

Lurking in the dockyard, the hunter awaits his next victims eagerly, wielding an assortment of traps and hazards to end lives swiftly. Riptide’s second hero ability lets us deal damage while defending when we trigger our traps. From a numbers perspective, this makes those 3-defense traps effectively 0-for-4s, where we trade greater offense for a mix of offense and defense. This in turn creates a situation in Blitz where each one of our traps has a meaningful impact over the course of either a short or long game.

Riptide’s ability can best punish decks looking to close the game quickly. Against go-wide aggro strategies, Collapsing Trap is your best friend, allowing you to dump your opponent's planned-out hand after blocking an attack with go again. Buzzsaw Trap, on the other hand, takes care of the big and tall, letting you block an attack that means certain doom for free while also adding insult to injury with that sweet one-damage bonus. Other handy traps ability include being able to stop on-hit abilities, giving your opponents debuffs for the rest of the turn, or my personal favorite Pitfall Trap that can swiftly end an opponent who over-committed by dealing a total of three damage to those who can’t pay for the trap's cost.

It's best to cycle your traps to the bottom to ensure you can be aggressive in the early game while having a backup plan to win through your traps once your opponent is already low and feeling the sting of your attacks. You always want to use your traps optimally when they can be triggered unless it’s a do-or-die situation. This gives you the full value of Riptide’s second ability.

Riptide's first ability allows him to abuse cards other heroes would never find true value in, but for now I want to focus in on one particular combo that may stand out on my list.

Riptide’s ability allows Crown of Dominion to go beyond its full effect by allowing us to do something no other hero can currently pull off. When starting second in Blitz with Cash In and either a trap or an instant in your hand, we can arsenal Cash In through Riptide’s ability, letting us start our turn one with a full six-card hand! This staggering advantage grants the potential to greatly outpace our opponents even on decks such as Fai or Dash. Combined with our damaging on-hits and large buffed attacks we can repeatedly throw, Riptide spells doom for aggro decks. In addition, Cash In fixes hands when forced to block to keep the tempo going or to just find the correct balance of cards to buff and swing.

Riptide is a force to be reckoned with and shouldn’t be taken lightly inside of the Blitz meta. His shocking speed and disruption can easily throw off other aggro decks trying to outpace you, while his use of traps can be blended in against decks looking to go tall against you. Riptide has great flexibility in the way he can be constructed and allows for a variety of builds, ranging from aggressive Crown builds to trap-heavy builds that look to constantly ruin the plans of the opponent while also whittling them down slowly but surely. He breathes ocean air into the meta, giving players a unique form of Ranger while still sticking with similar concepts they have come to love in the class. I believe Riptide will outperform everyone’s expectations in Blitz, and I can’t wait to see how others build him for Skirmish Season and beyond.