The Power of Recycling
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Recycling Overview
As the card pool in Legends of Norrath has slowly increased, the amount of cards that bring other cards back from the graveyard has also increased. One of the most popular decks around right now is the Shadow Priest which leans heavily on the ability to recycle its own cards.
Recycling your best abilities is good for a number of reasons. First is simply the ability to continuously replay your most powerful cards. Zealotry is a very powerful card. But when combined with a Scepter of Shielding, you can play it every turn which is even more powerful. It seems like common sense, if you play the best cards in your deck over and over every turn, you're going to gain a sizable advantage.
The other main strength in recycling is exploiting an Achilles' heel. For example, let's say you're playing against a deck that wants to win through questing. If you can draw a single Disable, you will be able to use it repeatedly, turn after turn. They may be able to fight through it for a couple of turns, but eventually that never-ending Disable will run them out of abilities to apply at those quests. Recycling a card that is that powerful against a specific Archetype gives you a lot of power in matchups you might not otherwise have it in.
Let's take a quick look at some of the main recyclers.
Popular Recyclers
Iksar Avatar
One of the powers you can get if you choose an Iksar avatar is pay two Power and return a Shadow card to your hand. While this one doesn't have the raw power of some of the other because of the continuous power investment, but it's also not capable of being destroyed since it's part of your avatar. This recycle ability can be quite powerful when used with Zealotry's ability to get the power you spent right back.
Scepter of Shielding
This one probably requires the least amount of work to use repeatedly. You draw two cards every turn for free, so you shouldn't ever run into a problem having the cards to fuel up the Scepter. As an Item, it is less vulnerable than Units or Abilities because you'll never have to apply it at a Quest when you don't want to. Because of its overall power, it is limited to the Priest Archetype.
Quill of the Archlich
The Quill of the Arch Lich is also an Item, but unlike the Scepter of Shielding any class can use it. Instead of discarding a card to activate it though, you must destroy one of your own Units. This has some advantages and disadvantages associated with it. On the advantages side, if you use units like Runnyeye Cook and Runnyeye Sorcerer, you actually WANT to destroy them anyway. This way, you can go ahead and get an Ability back and destroy the units you want to die anyway.
On the disadvantages side, it's much easier to run out of Units in play than it is to run out of cards in hand. You also have to invest the Power each turn to get those units into play which is more than the other recyclers will require. However, these small disadvantages aren't really enough to outweigh the synergy with Runnyeye type cards and the fact that Archetypes other than Priest don't have a cheap way to recycle. In fact, the card is good enough that many Priest decks use it in addition to Scepter of Shielding.
Elven Summoner
The only card on this list is Light. The Elven Summoner is almost always used to return Barbarian Hunters to get extra damage out of them. Occasionally, they will be used to get other Light units like Dwarven Champions or Dwarven Clerics, but most of the time they might as well read: "Discard a card, return Barbarian Hunter to your hand". As a unit, they are probably the most vulnerable of the recyclers, but they have a high health total and are relatively easy to protect with the other units you will often see in a White Wall deck.
Combating Recycling
Recycling is becoming increasingly popular in tournament decks, so what's the best way to fight it? Well, right now, there just aren't enough tools to combat the recycling head on so you need to get creative if you want to find ways around it.
The two biggest recycling threats are Items, so cards like Sunder and Disintegrate offer some help on this front. If they are playing the Iksar avatar though, it will only be a matter of time before they get their items back with the Iksar power so you need to take advantage of the time they take to set up their recycling. The best way to do this is to throw a little disruption into an otherwise fast deck.
Dissension is a great example. If you can keep it in play for a couple of turns, you can keep the recycling items offline while you use units or AvA combat to bring your opponent's health total to zero. If you can deal 5-6 damage while you've got the Dissension in play, they will be under too much pressure to set up the recycling engine.
One thing that you cannot do as answer to recycling is put in four Hinder cards and think you've got things under control. First of all, Hinder is actually slightly underpowered versus recycling because of the timing with recycling. A good opponent will never have abilities he wants recycled in the graveyard during your turn to allow you to hit them with a Hinder. That means if you plan on Hindering his plans, you have to destroy the ability during your turn and then put it on the bottom of his library which requires a bigger Power investment and is generally not worth the effort unless you can do it very cheaply.
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