Final Say – Bacon’s Bits

Intro

I bet you weren’t expecting an article shortly after such a heavy release cycle! Well, as always, when I’m motivated by a topic, I get an itch to type out my thoughts and figure they ought not go to waste. To satisfy this urge, I have decided to kick off the “Bacon’s Bits” article series, which I will essentially be treating as an extended, written version of the “Sleeve it or Leave it” segment we do on the podcast. While the subject may not always be one particular card—I may instead focus on a particular card motif or combo/synergy—the goal will be to do a deeper dive and try to tease out the ultimate use cases of a card or cards.

Today’s card is actually something I had been workshopping on my own strictly because I was curious about whether this card actually ought to make its way into my Gravebreakers Nemesis deck. The card, of course, is [Final Say]. I had long ago written this card off due to some frustrations about getting hit with cards where felt like they should be stopped, but actually were not. However, as I played around with this particular Nemesis pairing, I found I had an upgrade slot that was flexible and wanted to take a look at whether [Final Say] might make sense in that slot. I eventually determined that the only way to decide would be to look wholistically at what cards it could and could not stop and assess which ones have significant play rates. While there are obviously a number of “choose” effects which are not under the umbrella of pings and pushes, I felt that was the easiest cutoff to make and the two primary effects you would want to be taking this card to stop. For my own sanity, I’ve also capped my analysis to only warbands that have complete Rivals decks, as well as the current universal decks that are in rotation (plus the Essentials Card Pack for Championship play). Apologies if I have missed any cards, I’m sure one or two fell through the cracks, but I tried to catch everything. Lastly, note that there is some debate about when the reaction from this upgrade kicks in. I am operating under the assumption that you can use it at the time the gambit chooses the friendly fighter, even if there are instructions prior to that text, to prevent resolution of the rest of the gambit. Let’s take a look at whether this card really lives up to its name…

Does Final Say always protect my fighters from being PINGED by [INSERT GAMBIT] …?

Consult the table for a summary of whether [Final Say] can stop a ping, but the overall answer varies depending on the matchup. Between universals and warband-specific cards (within the set of decks I have limited my analysis to), I counted 37 total ping gambits which can be stopped by this card and 37 that cannot, assuming, of course, you have the upgrade down at the time the gambits are played. Note that I have counted [Jealous Hex] among the ping gambits even though it is technically not one, although the effect is nearly equivalent. This broad analysis would imply about a 50-50 matchup dependency on whether or not the card could be useful if it comes out early enough, which I would generally say is not too inspiring to merit deck inclusion. However, several of those “cannots” have some asterisks. For example, the card could protect you from [Dark Command] in cases where your opponent might try to ping from your own adjacent beasts and/or savage fighters, but the more common use case is still them choosing their own fighter adjacent to one of yours. More often than not, you’re not stopping that one. [Wound the Realm], meanwhile, is closer to “counter-playable”. You can always stop the single ping variant onto one of your fighters with the reaction, but the Gorechosen player does have a workaround where they can choose a friendly fighter at the start, spend the blood tithe counter(s), then damage each fighter within 1 hex of no one’s territory. Still, I think that can make things quite restrictive for them, mostly to your benefit. Furthermore, 6 of the universals and 2 of the warband cards are some form of persisting gambit (usually domains), which you are at least aware of before they take their effect.

Overall, you do miss out on a number of very meta-relevant universal cards like [Dark Command], [Quickroots], [Abasoth’s Screaming Idols], and [Final Curse], but I would say you actually net an advantage here in blocking more meta cards than you don’t. This is even more true when we couple the analysis with the warband cards, as you block arguably the most reliable ping cards/modes for Stormcoven, Pandaemonium, and Gorechosen. The primary concerns there would be Purifiers and Thricefold Discord, but we can’t have everything. Still, this all still bakes in the idea of having the card down before those pings come out, and your upgrade obviously requires glory while the ping does not. I think it’s worth looking at the case of enemy pushes before we settle on a final decision.

Does Final Say always protect my fighters from being PUSHED by [INSERT GAMBIT] …?

Looking at the list of push gambits here, I think you’ll agree that you come out way ahead on enemy pushes. You stop 10 universals and only miss out on 2, where one of them is [Can’t Stop], which is literally an impossible interaction, as, even in Championship, there is no way for your fighter to have momentum counters after their own activation if you are playing Daring Delvers as your plot deck. While there are some notable pushes in the warband pool that can get around [Final Say] (once again, 3XD with their pesky tricks!), I think stopping enemy pushes is generally the more consistent use of the card and would therefore be a more significant impetus towards playing it. This means that warbands looking to cash in on positional scoring (assuming they have the bodies to expend on the reaction) should at least be intrigued by the potential to hold their ground. Furthermore, warbands that have particular lynchpins might consider eating the charge token on one of their expendable fighters if it means that critical fighter doesn’t get pushed into a bad position.

Conclusion

While I’ve obviously not covered a lot of other card interactions in the interest of time (it’s actually quite rude to a couple of Headsmen’s Curse gambits, for example, that neither push nor ping), I hope this was at least useful in providing a more complete picture of what [Final Say] can or cannot stop. The big question you’d probably still like to answer is whether it is worth including in your deck when all is said and done. Back when I was in college, my professor told us that the answer to just about any engineering question is “it depends” and unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) the answer is often the same in Underworlds. Where and when this will be useful is going to be a major judgement call, as there will be cases where you might know your opponent’s highest value choose gambit that might be in-hand while simultaneously wanting to halt a lesser effect here and now. To at least provide some kind of guidance on whether you might want to include the card in your deck, I have listed below some questions you’ll want to answer. My “answer” is that I don’t think you can totally write this card off, with the exception of Championship, where I suspect you will generally have higher-value and/or more consistent options at your disposal.

1. Does your warband have a particular need for denying these gambit effects (i.e., will the effect of doing so be greater than that of another upgrade that you are excluding from your build)?
2. Does your warband struggle or excel against matchups where this upgrade would or would not be favored?
3. Does your warband have the ability to quickly draw and/or play upgrades so that you have a better chance of getting this effect active by the time your opponent draws the gambit(s) you would like to counter?
4. Is your warband/deck comfortable taking a more aggressive mulligan to try and get this card down sooner?
5. Does your warband have fighters who don’t mind being given Charge tokens and are those fighters sufficiently “sticky” to make sure they’ll be on the board at a time when they can deny the gambit of interest?
6. Is the target meta going to include a lot of warbands and/or cards that are actually susceptible to this upgrade?

I know that’s a lot of what-ifs, but the reality is that neither myself nor any other content creator can give “100% always do XYZ” advice on most game interactions. All we can do is provide information and our own perspectives. That being said, I do hope this gave you more to think about and encourages you to take a more critical look at your deck build and matchup spread. Ultimately, inclusion of this card will likely still be pretty niche in Nemesis and next to non-existent in Championship. While I would say that is fair usage for it, what I am hoping to highlight is that you ought not to just immediately dismiss it as a consideration for whatever deck you’re building.

Please let me know if you guys enjoy this type of content, and of course if you have particular suggestions as to how to improve the format and/or cards you think would be good to study in future articles. Thanks for reading and we wish you the best of luck (and the final say) on YOUR Path to Glory!