Card Highlights #7 - Gemscout Owl

Welcome to Card of the Week! The purpose of this series is to prompt strategy discussion and answer any rules questions about specific cards. Feel free to share stories of how you’ve used the featured card in the past, speculations of how you might use it in the future, and any strong synergies or counters you may think of. And feel free to message me with any card requests for next week! Otherwise cards will be chosen randomly.

Previously on Card of the Week

Card Highlights #6 - Tricycloid


Sorry for the delay on this one, but now it’s time to talk about Gemscout Owl:

Gemscout Owl is a very unassuming Tech I unit. As a 0/1 for 1 that can’t attack, it has no ability to help you with board control at all. However, since it has Flying and Resist 1, it’s very annoying for your opponent to remove as well. So what’s the point of playing something that sticks around and does basically nothing?

Well, in addition to thinning your deck, the Owl will find you one additional gold per turn - it’s like playing an extra worker. You can even skip worker the turn you play this to play an additional thing to the board, since the Owl fills very much the same role. However, as we’ll see down below, there are more reasons to use these than just extra workers.

In-spec Synergies
Circle of Life - this card is extremely good with Gemscout Owls. Once you’ve gotten some good value out of the owl, you can turn it into another large green creature from your Codex, without any tech building requirements. For example, if your opponent has anything with Haste in play, then fetching a Wandering Mimic can result in quite the board swing.

Counters
Gemscout Owl is pretty weak to one strategy that most if not all colors have access to: see this video for an explanation of the strategy, and be aware that if your opponent isn’t playing slowly, they will try to do that to you as soon as they see the Owl.

5 Likes

Gemscout Owl patrolling in Elite or Squad Lead is a great defense/counter to Nullcraft specifically.

It’s also fine as a chump blocker against some of the Tech 2 flying options.

And it’s the best unit (and by far the cheapest) for Circle of Life (as mentioned)

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I was wondering when that particular Day[9] quote would show up on these boards. :smile:

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Never seen that video before, was not disappointed

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I like owl cuz as player 1, cancels the worker adv of player 2.
If opponent does not play flyers, keeping him out of patrol is usually a guarantee to keep him alive.
Plus if u play a mimic, it gets fly from him!

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A flying Hasty mimic vs red is pretty much my favorite thing about gemscout owl.

He can also make a pretty good sac the weak buffer for some other unit because deteriorate is made more expensive.

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I’ve been playing him a bit as past/peace/balance and really like it. The synergy with flagstone garrison/drill seargent is really nice.

1 Like