Get ready to cross slash those arms and unleash the Sonic Boom!
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Sonic Boom is the first of the non-specialization wizard Majestic Rares to be revealed from the upcoming Arcane Rising booster set and it is absolutely epic! I'm anticipating seeing 3 of these in nearly all competitive wizard constructed decks very quickly.

So let's break down the card and what makes it so good.

• Pitch 2, Cost 2, Defend 3
• Deal 3 arcane damage to opposing hero
• If Sonic Boom deals damage, look at the top card of your deck. If it's a Wizard ‘non-attack’ action card, you may banish it. If you do, you may play it this turn as though it were an instant and it costs X resource points less to play, where X is the damage dealt by Sonic Boom.

3 arcane damage for 2 cost is ok but not spectacular when compared with Voltic Bolt for instance. However it is the second part of the card text which contains Sonic Boom's true power. In effect it allows you to play a second wizard ‘non-attack’ action at instant speed and, even better, it reduces the cost of that action too.

This allows the wizard player to go wider and deal more arcane damage or force their opponent to pitch more cards to power their arcane defense equipment. Either way that's a good thing.

The true possibilities lie when we start to add in other action cards and Kano's equipment and ability to the mix as well to produce some insane levels of damage.

Consider the following chain of events:

1. Pitch for 3
2. Use Crucible of Aetherweave
3. Play Aether Flare ( R)
4. Pitch for 3
5. Activate Kano's ability
6. Banish & play Sonic Boom
7. Banish & play Blazing Aether.

Crucible of Aetherweave boosts the next arcane damage by 1. This will make Aether Flare deal 4 arcane damage. Aether Flare in turn boosts the next lot of arcane damage by the damage it dealt, so a maximum of +4 in this case. Kano's ability sets up Sonic Boom at instant speed and it's boosted to 7 arcane damage. Finally Blazing Aether is banished and played at instant speed dealing the arcane damage dealt so far in the turn, so a maximum of 11 if nothing has been blocked so far.

Total arcane damage for the chain: 22!

Find a way to get another Blazing Aether at the end of the chain and you can get the arcane damage up to 44.

Now the example above does rely on a lot of things which aren't likely to happen in a real game scenario- you're opponent will most likely try to block Aether Flare's arcane damage and then again on the Sonic Boom to prevent them from powering the later cards in the chain.

It also relies on you having the exact order of cards at the top of your deck to pull it off, which will require careful pitch stacking earlier in the game to pull off. Alternatively you could use the new Opt mechanic first shown on Wizard of the Oracle to stack the top of your deck and set it up.

There will be plenty of there are ways in which you can combo wizard actions together in succession to threaten very large amounts of damage and Kano will definitely shake up the state of play considerably.

Mighty Ape Arcane Rising Pre-release- Sunday 22nd March 1pm

Mighty Ape will be hosting our Arcane Rising Pre-relase on Sunday 22nd March starting at 1pm.

This is a sealed pre-release event with a $35 entry fee. The first 16 entries on the day will receive a young hero foil promo card.

We will have a limited number of buy a box promos available on the day of the event. These are limited to 1 per customer and available while stocks last.

For more details see our event page

Which of the new classes is your favourite so far?