Fence Rail Dog, who let the dogs out?

Hello everyone, BurnedByKevin here! Today I wanted to go over Fence Rail Dog and why I think it’s a great card for competitive play! 

So Base stats are actually pretty good here, a nice 70 LP, 2 dark 1 neutral to contract, swings for 50, 70 with nighttime out, and also has the fear trait. 

On paper alone, the stats are fairly impressive, a nice lp that avoids the meta games most relevant direct damage pages, explosion, unholy fire, and now even Cairn. To me the card is useful on base stats alone. Fear I think right now is huge in MetaZoo as most beasties have evasive traits within Seance, spirit, burrow, invisible, and flying just to name a few. You have a chance at also setting a tempo play, meaning if you get the coin flip, or die roll with fear you set your opponent back a turn, and set up an attack with your beastie next turn, assuming the opposing beastie you bounced to their hand doesn’t have fleet. Now, Fence rail dog swings for 50, which currently can destroy most beasties right now that are 3 aura cost or less, most. The tradeoff is super worth it with a beefy 70 Lp, meaning most of the time when they attack Fence Rail Dog, its attack back will kill it. Given the fact most small drop beasties have low Lp for the most part.

Now the power here is very interesting and super useful, somewhat of a final stand effect. So, when you activate the power of Fence Rail Dog, it loses its attack, recovers 50 lp, gains defender, and has a new arena affect that makes your opponent's attacks only able to target Fence Rail Dog. So, think about it this way, if he already has low lp, you can activate his power to recover 50 lp and essentially have a brand-new beastie wall. This is going to set up some nice protection for your more valuable pages on board which I think is huge and offers a lot of utility. 2 in 1.

Now when you attack with Fence Rail Dog, you can bark, and inflict scared on an opposing beastie, that is HUGE. Once again, a possible tempo play, and able to target evasive beasties. You can destroy your original target with the attack, and inflict scared on another beastie in the arena, since it doesn’t specify it has to be the beastie you are in combat with. So much utility in one card, and a lot of tempo here. And assuming you are playing this card in a dark deck, having nighttime out makes this card a menace, swinging for 70 on a 3 drop is crazy enough. I think this card won’t see play because people won’t realize this exists since it’s only in the release event decks. I for one can tell you I’ll be playtesting with this, and I’m super excited to put in some work with the dogs! What do you guys think? 

CAST ON!