As you can see, “Warwick, Hunter” is a 6 Energy, 1 Power, 5 Might Champion unit whose ability reads: “I enter ready. When I attack, kill all damaged enemy units here.” To explain the keywords (this article dives into the game’s rules in more detail), 6 Energy means that you need to exhaust (tap) 6 rune cards of any color to play him, while 1 Power means that you also then need to recycle an orange rune card (put the rune card on the bottom of your rune deck). Warwick is a Champion unit, so this means he may get a corresponding Legend card at some point, either in the Origin set or later, which would allow you to start each game with a single Warwick card face-up on the board.
As for the first part of his ability text that reads “I enter ready,” this means that the unit can move and attack immediately after being played, making it seem like it could fit nicely with an aggressive game plan embodied by many of the red cards. What’s notable about this ability is that most cards that start ready can only do this after paying an additional “Accelerate” cost of 1 Energy and 1 Power (although you could argue that’s already baked into Warwick’s 6 Energy and 1 Power summoning cost).
As for the second part of Warwick’s ability description, when he attacks a battlefield, he instantly kills any enemies who have pre-existing damage from before combat. For instance, if you use a spell to deal damage to units at a battlefield and then move Warwick there, he will kill these damaged enemies as combat initiates.
Because of this, you will want to pair him with spells that dish out damage like the orange card “Challenge” (Choose a friendly unit and an enemy unit. They deal damage equal to their Mights to each other) or the red card “Get Excited!” (Discard 1. Deal its Energy cost as damage to a unit at a battlefield). He also pairs great with Volibear’s Signature Spell, “Stormbringer” (Choose a friendly unit in your base. Deal damage equal to its Might to all enemy units at a battlefield, then move your unit there) and Captain Fortune’s “Bullet Time” (Pay any amount of Power to deal that much damage to all enemy units at a battlefield).
In general, Volibear decks seem like a solid home for him, especially because he pairs excellently with the Champion unit “Volibear, Furious” (When I attack, deal 5 damage split among any number of units here), as the duo is almost guaranteed to wipe out a battlefield if they attack together. And since Warwick is a Mighty unit (when a card has 5 or more Might), he would also fit in well with the orange and red Volibear Legend card “Relentless Storm,” which reads, “When you play a Mighty unit, you may exhaust me to channel 1 rune exhausted.” Basically, if you play Warwick, you can tap this Legend to play a tapped rune, which lets you ramp quicker. It’s also easy to imagine him working in aggro decks to complement cards with Accelerate like “Blazing Scorcher,” “Legion Rearguard,” “Jinx, Demolitionist,” and “Miss Fortune, Captain.”
Overall, Warwick seems like a card that has the potential to do well in Volibear and Captain Fortune decks, as he pairs great with both of their Signature Spells and Legend cards. In the case of Captain Fortune’s Signature Spell, you could potentially spend 1 Power and 1 Energy to deal damage to all enemies at a Battlefield with “Bullet Time,” and then, in the same turn, play Warwick to instantly clear out that battlefield. If there’s one element holding the card back, it’s that it really needs these kinds of damaging spells to shine, and there don’t seem to be too many AOE damage spells announced at the moment.
That said, that could very much change over the next few weeks, and it will be fun to check in with the upcoming announcements to see how Warwick stacks up with the rest of the cards in Origins. Having had hands-on with Riftbound a few times now, here’s hoping that both this tragic werewolf man and the game as a whole live up to their promise when they come out later this year.
