Introducing the Feral spec hero, Calamandra Moss of the Moss Sentinels. She has a deep connection with the forest. Animals sense this, respect her, and fight for her. She can unleash the full feral force of animals, as well as employ their cunning and stealth abilities. Here's her hero card:
Her first ability is a constant threat to the opponent. Even when a level 1 Calamandra is on the board, the opponent has to factor in that at any moment they could take 4 damage to anything. That’s because the Calamandra player might dump 4 gold into leveling her to max so she can be a 4/5, and discard two cards to give her stealth. That lets her ignore patrollers, so she can attack anything she wants. The cost of discarding two cards is very high, so you won’t want to actually use the ability very much, but the threat of it is a game changer that opponents must do their best to play around. Opponents might consider building a Tower add-on against her to nullify the threat of her stealth.
Her max level ability is also notable in that it can get tech II tigers from your codex and put them into play even if you don’t have a tech II building. That means you can focus a lot on spells yet still access some pretty ferocious 4/4 tigers without sinking 4 gold into making a tech II building.
Let's take a look at her spells.
Ferocity gives its buffs to ALL your units (even untargetable ones, by the way). Armor piercing is most likely to be relevant against an opposing Squad Leader. Usually the Squad Leader slot in the patrol zone gets 1 armor, but that's useless against Ferocious units. Even more terrifying, all your units get swift strike. If you have all units that are the same size as your opponent, it means you get to kill all of theirs without taking any damage to any of yours. Your 3/3 with swift strike remains unharmed when it kills their 3/3, your swift strike 2/2 is unharmed when it kill a 2/2, etc.). You can't always make this line up, but you generally have beefy units with green so it's definitely possible to blow out opponents with this.
Murkwood Allies wins games:
Calling upon her friends from Argagarg’s swampy Murkwood Marsh, she can get four 1/1 frogs or a 4/4 beast...or both! (Is Midori around? His middle ability will give those all +2/+2 because they are units that don’t have abilities).
You can see Calamandra’s cunning in her Behind the Ferns spell:
Small units, such as all the frogs you just got from Murkwood Allies, can sneak past patrollers. That can be dominating because it allows you to take out an opponent’s hero to lock them out of certain spells, or take out a tech building to lock them out of certain units, or just win the game by attacking their base, no matter what they had patrolling. Remember that you’re threatening to attack for an additional 4 damage with stealth from Calamandra herself anytime you’re willing to discard two cards to activate that.
Prefer to win by the tooth and nail of powerful units? Try this:
If you boost it for a total of 8 gold, you can put two units from codex directly into play, without even bothering to wait a couple turns to draw them. If you have a tech II building, those can be tech II units. If you have a tech III building, they can be tech III units, which is just totally crazy overkill at that point.
Back to reality though, the Feral tech I units are notable in what “workhorses” they are, so to speak:
These are some of the most solid tech Is in the game. What I mean by that is they aren’t trickshots, they aren’t reliant on certain combos or anything, they are great, simple units you can count on no matter what happens. For 2 gold, you get a 3/3 with some combat abilities, and for 3 you get a 3/4 with overpower. Centaur is actually one of the focal points of the game. A 3/4 at tech I is so powerful that opponents often have to spend a lot of resources to deal with it. If you patrol it as your Squad Leader, it will get 1 armor, making it effectively a 3/5. That’s pretty hard for early game units to deal with.
Barkcoat Bear is a similarly solid guy at tech II:
A 5/5 for 4 gold is pretty good, especially with a combat ability like overpower. Resist 2 really puts it over the top, because it means spells that might kill it now cost 2 more—quite significant. That encourages opponents to fight in combat instead, but it’s a damn 5/5! Also, look at that art, it’s so great. He is truly a “Barkcoat Bear.”
If you want something more splashy, try Rampaging Elephant:
The 6/7 body is pretty nuts to begin with, but it can attack TWICE?! That’s one deadly elephant—he’s dishing out 12 damage when he attacks, and that's before you even buff him!
Check out Gigadon:
An 8/8 with overpower is so enormous that it’s really difficult to kill. But if they don’t kill him, he’s threatening to wipe out two patrollers at a time because of overpower (if that deals enough damage to kill one patroller, it can send the excess damage to a second patroller, though that doesn't cascade to kill a third). Pretty high cost though, right? In reality, you can play him for a lot less than 9. Maybe even 0 if you’re lucky. Get some frogs in there from Murkwood Allies and make sure to use one of these pandas, too:
They each come with a wisp, and those count as green units that reduce Gigadon’s cost. The Giant Panda is a Growth card rather than a Feral one, but as long as you have the Growth hero on your team, your tech I building can still produce it.
At tech III, you can unleash massive Feral power with...squirrels:
The squirrels he summons have haste (can attack right away) and are invisible. The invisible part means they can ignore patrollers and attack whatever they want, and it also means opponents can’t attack them or even target them on their turn unless they have a detector or a Tower add-on, which they probably don’t.
Let’s do the math with Moss Ancient. Let’s say you want to do all the damage you can to your opponent’s base. The turn he arrives, he can have 3 squirrels attack for a total of 3 damage. On the second turn, he can surely attack *something* and live, which means he’ll summon 3 more squirrels. So the squirrels alone will do 6 damage this turn. Same story on the following turn, except there will be 9 squirrels by then.
The summary is that on turn 1, 2, 3 of having him your squirrels did a total of 3, then 9, then 18 damage. That’s 18 damage that probably can’t be stopped by patrollers, PLUS 16 more damage from Moss Ancient himself attacking on turns 2 and 3 of this sequence. Also factor in that tech III units are generally hard to get rid of with spells, and Moss Ancient is untargetable, making him practically impossible to deal with outside of combat.
From the biggest of creatures to the smallest, the Feral spec commands them all!