The Four Triggers, Part 5: Heal Triggers

Passive, Damage

Heal triggers, run four, article over.
Just kidding, I actually am going to talk about them.


Heal triggers are an incredibly powerful trigger type, and are thus limited to four per deck. They have the unique ability to remove damage from your damage zone, so long as you have more of it than your opponent. This can hugely swing a game around, and they are capable of turning the tables in a close game alone. They add a small element of chance into the game that can allow for devastating comebacks on your opponent if he didn't correctly track and predict your use of heal triggers.
Heal triggers have a downside, and that is that you have equal to or more damage than your opponent for them to go off. This is dangerous, as it puts you in range for Criticals to propel you directly into lategame. In addition, if you aren't behind in damage, heal triggers become disappointing slackers in your deck... worse than stand triggers!
Since the current meta is to run four in every deck, no exceptions, you should step in line and do the same in most cases. Your opponent having an effective 7 or 8 damage a game before death while you perish at 6 can be a huge deal. However, I'm not going to be the one who says that Heals should always be used, and I can think of a couple of circumstances in which they might be better left at home. But I'll get to that later. First I'm going to explain how to get the most out of your Heals and negate your opponent's.


Let's examine the Heal trigger's conditions for activation briefly:
-Drive or Damage Check the trigger
-Have at least one damage before check
-Have equal to or more damage than opponent


To ensure our Heals go off, we must fulfill all of those conditions. This means our Heals don't matter until we take that first damage. So if we want to get the most out of our heals, we need to take damage early. But that's bad. Early game is (generally) when we can guard attacks for small amounts of damage and thus can avoid damage for very little cost. Letting a damage through just so that we can maybe heal it off and save us the card we would've shielded isn't a very viable gambit, and seems rather silly. Or at least, it does in a vacuum.

Oh look, a card that rewards us for taking damage during early game.

Some decks excel when they let early damage through. Royal Paladins come to mind with the Blaster Blade superior ride chain. Combined with a card like Llew, taking this damage isn't a gamble or a detriment, it is an inherent part of our game plan.

Anywho, back on subject. To make our Heals work, we also need to keep our opponent equal to or below us in damage. That means taking more attacks on the chin to maintain this advantage (typically from the Vanguard), while focusing on keeping the game even. Instead of dealing that extra damage to your opponent, pick off a vital rearguard instead. Keep the heals available throughout Midgame.

Once Lategame comes around, we want to go on the offensive with the card advantage that we have. With any luck, we've healed off our little gambit, making any cards we conserved by not guarding earlier useful now. You can still try to stay even with your opponent here, up to the bitter end, but it really doesn't matter past 4 damage, as you're guaranteed your heal going off at damage 5 (if you check it). So before you and your opponent hit 5, you are expecting to heal and get your investment (taking a damage and conserving a card) back.

There is another important aspect to Heal triggers. Sealing off and negating your opponent's use of them. Looking up at the conditions, we notice that we can only control two of them; we can avoid dealing damage to our opponent, but that can only last so long, and honestly attempting to do that for a long period of time would mean giving up Drive Checks and thus being utter fools. What we can do throughout the game is stop our opponent from being at "equal or greater damage" than us. To do that, we need to make sure we stay at higher damage than our opponent until most of his Heal triggers have been exhausted from the deck (watch for them on Checks and Guards). The danger here is that your opponent has a small advantage in damage, which can blow out of proportion fast. 

When your opponent is at 0 damage, Heal triggers don't activate so you don't need to seal him. When your opponent is at 1 damage, you must be at 2 to seal him off. This means if he gets an attack through and Crits you go to 4 damage... Late Game! While your opponent sits pretty at 1 damage. This is a very difficult situation to fight out of, as you must desperately guard while your opponent has leeway to make choices and scale quickly. Be careful when you decide to seal off an opponent, especially if their deck runs Criticals.

Finally, a little bit of theory on when you can avoid to run Heals. Personally, I don't advocate dropping them at all, but I can see them not being completely necessary in certain decks.

First off, decks that have a Winning Image built entirely around on-hit Megablasts, can afford to drop them. Keeping them runs the risk of Drive Checking into them when you plan on Megablasting, throwing a huge wrench into your plans. Imagine going all out to get off CEO's effect, banking on those 5 cards to keep you alive next turn and then boom. Heal trigger sabotages you. Granted, giving up recycling Heal triggers like Lozenge Magus is a huge price to pay for avoiding a small chance of screwing up (especially considering that CEO can remove a Heal trigger from the top of the deck).

Another possible deck type that could (theoretically) go with out Heals are incredibly aggressive, damage based decks. If your Winning Image is to rush your opponent with huge amounts of damage, never having more damage then them and quickly ending the game, Heal triggers won't really heal any damage for you. In this case, you're better off with Criticals or Draws. Still this takes away your safety net; if your opponent gets that advantage, you don't have heals to help you get back.

Well, that ends this segment on triggers.