Spell Spotlight
Empower

Here’s another of Eric Stormbringer’s Spell Spotlights, this time about the Death spell Empower! Check out our other Spell Guides here.

What is Empower?

Empower is an interesting card. For the price of one pip and some damage to yourself it adds 3 white pips to your wizard. This is a net gain of 2 pips for the cost of some health. This card is readily available at the bazaar but comes with a hefty price tag of around 3000 gold.

Why is it Useful?

The utility of empower is often overlooked especially in this meta. With the advent of 100% pip chance many people are in effect sacrificing a power pip to cast this spell leading to what seems like a measly net gain of a single pip. However even with a net gain of only one pip the way in which empower adds pips can be extremely useful. It adds those 3 pips as 3 white pips which means 3 pip slots. This is incredibly useful in many different situations such as:

• Low on Cards/Pips: By utilizing this spell when you are low on cards and pips this allows you to reshuffle the very next round. This can save you time and prevent you from being reshuffle locked(balance dispelled and being unable to reshuffle)
• Mana Burn Counter: If you can predict a mana burn then empower can help you to retain your power pips. Mana burn removes white pips before power pips and empower adds just the amount of white pips that mana burn removes.
• Off School Spells: It can give you the pips needed to efficiently use off school spells such as enfeeble or shatter without ruining your set-up or pip count
• Sudden Damage or Heal Spikes: If you have just exhausted your pips the previous round then empower allows you to quickly build pips to a sudden damage or heal spike. Two common tactics include using your empower when you have 1 power pip allowing you to use your shadow enhanced spell the very next round or a life wizard using empower immediately after they revive with GS

Defensive/Clerical Utility

One of the lesser known benefits of empower is it’s power as a defensive or clerical spell. Since empower does damage to yourself it is an easy way to remove an opponent’s weakness while leaving your blades intact(for any school not named death or balance). It is also one of the few ways available to wizards to deal with universal trap stacking particularly feint. Since empower deals relatively low damage of 250 this spell allows you to clear yourself of universal traps at a small price while prempting a game ending scenario. The defensive/clerical utility of empower should not be ignored! Some may say “But Eric I have full pips”-My response would be: if you have several feints circling your feet a loss of potential utility is still better than losing the game.

Tell us what you think of empower in the comments below!