With the new set’s Chinese release coming up in December, Riot Games is revealing all of the cards that will be included in the next set as part of its spoiler season. We’ve been given an exclusive preview of one of these new additions: Chemtech Cask.
As shown above, Chemtech Cask is a gear card, meaning it stays out on the field like a unit after being played. As long as it’s out, if you play a spell on an opponent’s turn, you may exhaust (tap) Chemtech Cask to play a Gold gear token exhausted. As previously mentioned, you can tap Gold tokens to sacrifice them and generate a power, which can be used to play powerful cards. Basically, when you use spells to hinder your opponent during their turn, you also get a Gold token, which can later be spent to play more spells during the opponent’s turn and get even more Gold.
Depending on how strong Gold ends up being, it’s easy to imagine that Chemtech Cask could potentially become useful in many Blue decks, as it seems like a relatively consistent way to generate Gold. As for synergies with other new cards, the Cask would pair well with the Legend Chem-Baroness, Renata Glasc (who is quoted in the card’s flavor text). She makes it so that Gold generates one additional rune when your score is within 3 points of victory, making you stronger as the game comes to a close.
Similarly, there’s Prodigal Explorer, Ezreal, a Legend that lets you draw cards when you target an enemy unit twice in a turn—if you did this during your opponent’s turn, Chemtech Cask would let you generate a Gold as well. Since Gold could be used to pay the Power cost of these spells, it’s easy to see how the card could potentially be used to create a virtuous cycle in these sorts of decks.
It might even fit into the current meta powerhouse deck, Kai’Sa, letting you cast damaging spells like Falling Star, Void Seeker, and Hextech Ray without having to recycle as many of your runes. Still, given how TCGs usually go, the new cards added will likely make Kai’Sa decks at least a little bit “obsolete” as they currently are, but we will see.
We’ll likely find out how Chemtech Cask and the Gold mechanic pan out as soon as next month, once players in China begin to experiment with Spiritforged. Until then, we can continue to theorycraft as Riot adds more reveals to its card gallery in the coming weeks.
