Type: Hex Power
Effect Text: Attach to any unit on the field and discard up to three cards from your hand. Add five times the number of discarded cards to the unit's base strength.
Flavor Text: Doom has come to the empire. We are fated for lesser days and lesser deeds.
Artwork: After Igor Svyatoslavich's fighting with the Cumans by Viktor Vasnetsov (1880)
Strategy:
Ruin is a powerful tool to rapidly increase your total strength. It is likely that the discarded cards have less than five strength each, making a savvy investment. However, concentrating so much strength into a single unit is vulnerable to counters like Death or swapping units. It’s prudent to play after your opponent has already passed, or protect the unit with e.g. Fortress.
About the card:
The swirling mass of horse archers, who were more used to the gallop than walking with their own feet, were a constant threat to settled societies since antiquity. The emperors of China, Persia, and Rome alike spent much time and effort fighting, appeasing, and bribing the tribes of the Tartary, and if they were good at their jobs, they would make sure that no one tribe amassed too much power.
So when Igor Svyatoslavich, the Prince of Novgorod-Severskiy, and his army went to face the army of the Cumans, the local step tribe in northern Ukraine, only disaster could be expected. Before their departure it is said that an Eclipse foretold their doom, but Igor marched on anyway. For three days and nights, the Cumans rained arrows down on the Rus slaying many. In the end Igor was captured, but with some wit and some luck, he managed to escape the Khan and return to Novgorod-Severskiy and prepare the defense of the city.
Just 40 years after the death of Igor, the Kievan Rus would be invaded by the largest land empire the world has ever seen, the Mongol Horde. Wether by declaring themselves vassals to the Mongols, or by being violently replaced, much of Eastern Europe would pay tribute in gold and slaves for the next few centuries to the Khan (see also Terror King). If you want to learn more about this period of time, I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Wrath of the Khans audio series, but be warned it is not for the feint of heart.
