Today on Draco Temple, I’m looking at The Moonveil Sirens, the achrom faction in A Conjuring at Curdle Cove, and the new keyword CURSE.

On an aside, Sirens feature in a lovely passage from Homer’s Odyssey, in which Odysseus plugs his comrades’ ears with beeswax so they cannot hear the bewitching song of the Sirens. Odysseus himself asks to be tied to the mast of his ship, so he may hear the song and survive. When he begs his comrades to let him go as they are passing, they only bind him tighter, and in so doing save his life from these Sea Witches.

Anyway, The Moonveil Sirens introduce CURSE, an elegant new Keyword and mechanic. If an effect lets you CURSE a card on a canvas, you turn it sideways, and it is now Cursed. Some cards are also “Cursed” in their card type. Abilities which target Cursed cards can target both these naturally Cursed cards and cards you CURSE.

To show this in action, here are the legendaries from this faction:

Our Sea Witches have a distinctly “Ursula from the Little Mermaid” feel to them, though more elfine and less Disney.

Pearl of Caluda is a big 6 cost 6 strength character, and is the first card in the game to have a natural -3, though Tenebris did have steal 3. Just like Tenebris, she has a very powerful ACTION. When deployed, CURSE all cards with a shard colour of your choice, then Erase a Cursed card. This allows you to set up plays that trigger off Cursed cards and Erase a card of your choice (except pure achrom cards). This is an extremely powerful effect, and combined with the heavy drain makes her a strong choice.

Eldoris of Culuda however is also extremely strong. 3Δ for steal 2 is already decent, but her ACTION Erases all cards with magenta, yellow, red, and green (essentially the non-blue shards, which makes sense for a water dweller). Few non-achrom cards are pure blue or achrom, with the exception of Brisgavi and several dragons, so this is likely to be as good as a board wipe in many matchups, especially as you can build around it so it barely affects your canvas. On balance, I think Eldoris is the more generically powerful, while Pearl looks more like a build-around for CURSE decks.

Talking of Curse decks, here’s a reason to build around Curse:

This image was lovingly called “Ugly guy” by Charles, and that Mooveil Harpy sure is one frightening looking Witch. With an ACTION of -1 for each Cursed card on all Canvases, this could be extremely strong, especially in multi-player. Note that this character is a Cursed Character, so as a minimum will always get a -1.

Culuda Dwelling pushes the CURSE theme, as a simple 3Δ location with steal 1, and an ACTION: CURSE. A steal 1 location would normally cost 2Δ, so you’re paying a shard for the Curse, which seems fair.

And finally, some more support for CURSE:

Bahari of Culuda is expensive at 4Δ for -1, but giving all your characters PROTECTION from Cursed cards means that so long as you Curse all the opponent’s characters, or at least their big hitters, they cannot erase your characters in attacks. This does put you in the slightly strange position of maybe wanting to attack and erase their characters with impunity to prevent them resolving, or maybe wanting those Cursed characters of your opponent’s to remain to boost the power of effects like the Harpy. A tricky card to evaluate at present.

The Coral Crown adorning the heads of Bahari and Pearl come in at 3Δ for -2, which is about 1Δ too much, but every turn you get to CURSE a card, including the turn you play it.

It’s hard to evaluate the power of the Harpy, Dwelling, Bahari, and the Crown in a vacuum. At present we’re seeing some very nice synergies develop, and if we continue to see more Curse cards, this archetype could be extremely strong.

That’s all the card reviews for now. Thanks for reading. Luxmore Freefolk next.

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