Gray Angel vs Crusader Griffin

[Halewijn]

The skies have a new holy battler, the Crusader Griffin! I'm a huge fan of the [mwcard=MW1C19]Gray Angel[/mwcard], and I use them a lot, so I wanted to compare them. I know many players consider the [mwcard=MWSTX1CKC06]Guardian Angel[/mwcard] to replace the gray angel, but I think that's giberish since they have completely different purposes.

Manacost
The angel costs 12 while the griffin costs 13 mana. The Angel has thus a very small edge here.
Movement:
Flying vs Fast + Flying, here the griffin has a big advantage. It will most like be able to hit it's target more often and easier.
Constitution:
They both have 2 armor, the angel has 10 life while the griffin has 9 life. There is thus a very small edge for the angel here.
Attack:
4 dice vs 3 dice + charge 2. In combination with fast, the griffin can very often strike with 5 dice.

Looking at this I think most people would conclude, and not be wrong, that the griffin is much better since it can hit harder and fast. It is not unreasonable to think that the griffin will hit with 5 dice every attack.

HOWEVER

The griffin is a lot easier to take down! EDIT: It is much easier to stop the griffin from being dangerous! And this is my main concern with him. He is great to take down opposing ground troops, but he's pretty weak once your enemy has its own team of flyers. He will be hindered and will not be able to sprint out of the zone and back again to gain the charge bonus, reducing the attack value to 3 dice. Cards like tanglevine, maim wings, Chains of Agony, ... can all mitigate the strength of the griffin easily and I believe this is the biggest downside of this magestic beast.

Last but not least

The Angel can kill himself to heal something else (your mage of course) 6 dice of damage. If you know that your angel is probably going to die, or your opponent made sure he is useless like a combo of curses, it is great to be able to have some last awesome use out of him. I have heard many people say that they never use that ability, but I have used it tons of times. It is simply a GREAT ability. You don't have to use your mages quickcast in the heat of the battle and it does not cost any additional mana.

I'm not saying the angel is better in every situation though. My priestess will probably change all her gray angels in griffins since she is amazing at supporting creatures. My priest however will stick with gray (holy avenging) angels for now.

Sidenote: In the PVS review, coshade mentioned that it was great to cast lion savagery on the griffin. I agree that you gain a lot of extra power with it, but it makes his biggest weakness even worse.

[Coshade]

This is a fantastic analysis. Thanks hale

[Puddnhead]

As you mentioned, the Crusader Griffin's main weaknesses are his health total and enemy flying creatures.  Your Priest's Holy Avenger ability actually fixes one of those weaknesses for only 4 mana and no additional actions.

Another option for running the Griffin in a Priest book would be to focus on Archers.  Artemis, Royal Archer and Temple Sharpshooter can all deal with the flying creautres that would hinder your griffin and are tempting targets for your enemy to try and eliminate.  However, if he does try without dealing with the Avenger Griffin then he's in for a 7-dice reprisal attack that can hit almost anywhere in the arena.

Just food for thought.

[Halewijn]

Thanks Coshade.

As you mentioned, the Crusader Griffin's main weaknesses are his health total

The health total is not a main issue, I think you misread that. I consider that a very minor thing.

and enemy flying creatures. 

Not only enemy flying creatures, but everything that can hinder, restrain, punish movement or take away the flying of the griffin! That's what I consider his largest weakness.

Another option for running the Griffin in a Priest book would be to focus on Archers.  Artemis, Royal Archer and Temple Sharpshooter can all deal with the flying creautres that would hinder your griffin and are tempting targets for your enemy to try and eliminate. 

Sounds like an amazing Priestess book!  (For reall, I wanna try that!)

[jacksmack]

While i personally disagree on he 1 health point you made, i'm still confused.

There is thus a very small edge for the angel here.

And yet you end up concluding that the griffin is much easier to take out?


If the enemy gets fliers than Griffins suffer the same challenge as regular creatures with charge.
In general charge is difficult (or atleast require work) to fully take advantage of the bonus when focusing on the same creature round after round.

As it is with many other strategies - often its better to take a mix instead of building solely on a single type of approach.
If you build a pure poison zombie book you will fail horribly against another necromancer.
If you build a book on creatures that all have vampiric and are suppost to handle themselves then  there will be trouble against deathlock.
If you build a book that focus on spamming weak tokens on everything it will suffer against iron golems and undead.

Building a book purely on charge - then your at a disadvantage if the opponent clumps everything in 1 zone.
When that is said - in general - fliers are fairly weak and cannot be guarded (or intercept supported) so use timing and a well placed jetstream against a flier that has already taken its turn and you should be able to focus down the creature in 1 round with just 2 griffins, the jetstream and a possible finishing attack.

But in general... Charge creatures require if not the most then at least a lot of positioning and timing.

[Puddnhead]

Sounds like an amazing Priestess book!  (For reall, I wanna try that!)

The point of using the Priest is that the Griffin Holy Avenger is much more punishing than just a standard griffin as well as having more survivability.  This forces your opponent into making a bad choice either by attacking the griffin or by attacking the archers.

Using the Priestess the griffin can be mostly ignored or killed quickly.  Let me know how it goes if you do try it.

I, on the other hand, will be experimenting more with Gray Angel given your experience with it.  I had honestly not paid much attention to whether it was worth including.

[Halewijn]

While i personally disagree on he 1 health point you made, i'm still confused.

There is thus a very small edge for the angel here.

And yet you end up concluding that the griffin is much easier to take out?

I may have phrased that wrong. With "take out" I didn't mean "to kill", I meant: "to stop from being treathening". Also, If they nullify the angel, he can sacrifice himself.

As I mentioned, for combined, multi creature books I mostly use the priestess, or probably also the paladin in the near future. But when you use a buddy build, I prefer it to need the least possible support, aka in this case the angel.

Also, I'm not comparing the griffin to other charging creatures, simply to his counterpart the Gray Angel. Everybody was hyped about the griffin and it being an amazing avenger, and I just wanted to point out some reasons why I'll stick with the gray angel for priests/buddy builds.

[Mystery]

Gray Angel can guard for the same dice, your griffin won't thats another option.

Lastly I personally don't rate flying higher than 1 armor and defense of a KoW.

For me also plain non-situational dice (5 vs 4 vs 3+2charge) are always better as you'll get exactly the same dice on Defense. Of course from the Griffin you can't escape that easy, but KoW is better for me.

What trouble I generally have with all those is that still attack spells are very common (the more in timed matches, two hawkeye hurl rocks on average kill the griffin, boulder+rock does which is still cheaper) and if you lion it its even a harder target.

Chains of Agony of course cripple the griffin, but they still mean either you have to be attacked or got 4 attacks out with 5dice, is fine for 10mana more spent.

I'd say the Griffin mainly shines as HA, as flyers have easier time using the ability than ground units which are attack directly as HA

[Halewijn]

I rate flying higher than you. Knight of westlock is a completely different creature than either if the flying ones. I fear them a lot when my opponent casts them, but I prefer angels in my playstyle. 

Come to think of it, it could have been cool if the paladin wasn't trained in angels, then they could feel like priestess only.

[Kelanen]

For my money the Griffin is a REALLY good Avenger. If not an Avenger (including for Priestess/Paladin) then Knight of Westlock is miles better.

Perhaps it's a meta thing, but in my experience L3+ creatures are only going to die to attack spells, and at that point Flying makes no difference - an opponent will want to kill it enough or not. In fact the Defence and Armour makes KoW far more survivable than a flyer.

Griffin's power as an Avenger is that he always gets the bonus if you want it.

[Halewijn]

Attack spells do damage, damage is pretty easy to heal for a holy mage. All the other ways to deal with them are a lot harder for a holy mage to counter. 

But, nevertheless, I am not at all disputing that the Griffin is a very good holy avenger!

[Kelanen]

Attack spells do damage, damage is pretty easy to heal for a holy mage.

Damage typically goes from zero to lethal before you get an action in my experience, so there's very limited time for healing. I do highly rate Healing Charm for this very reason though.

[Sailor Vulcan]

Attack spells do damage, damage is pretty easy to heal for a holy mage.

Damage typically goes from zero to lethal before you get an action in my experience, so there's very limited time for healing. I do highly rate Healing Charm for this very reason though.

Maybe you need to heal sooner, and take better advantage of initiative? What's your meta like?


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[Halewijn]

Kelanen, if you have problems with attack spells, go for the whitecloak knight avenger! Very awesome qnd cheap option.

[Kelanen]

Maybe you need to heal sooner, and take better advantage of initiative? What's your meta like?

You are misunderstanding me - I pass my action and there is no damage on it - when I get my next action it's dead - you can't heal something without damage on it. If you want to take a creature out, you QC+Action in sucession - the only possible response is revealing an enchantment.

This is why we put more store in things like Brace Yourself, Reverse Attack, etc.  Heal is used almost exclusively on mages.

Kelanen, if you have problems with attack spells, go for the whitecloak knight avenger! Very awesome qnd cheap option.

It is, and it would remain alive - I have been playing around with it. But I'm not complaining about the creatures dying - it generally takes 2 actions and 25% more mana to kill them than I paid. Or they get ignored - both are fine.

I was just observing that I don't see creature vs creature wars with things chipped away at with incremental damage over rounds. Occasionally, but not that often.