Euraxia Tharn – Uses and Synergies
Euraxia Tharn – A Brief Look at the Lore
Euraxia Tharn, the younger half-sister of Abnur Tharn, conquered Northern Elsweyr and the city of Rimmen during the Frostfall Coup. She is known in the region as the Usurper Queen, was a ruthless monarch who tortured the Khajiit citizens of Rimmen with stupid laws. She threatened to use the city’s own Siege Weapons against the city population in order to protect herself from an uprising. While in control of Rimmen, Euraxia learned of the Wrathstone and a great weapon hidden within the Halls of Colossus. Though she sought to control it, she lost the race to find the weapon to Abnur. When the dragons were released from the halls, she and her chief strategist Zumog-Phoom made a pact with them to obtain power: in the end, however, she was betrayed by Kalogrontiid. She died when Rimmen was retaken by the Elsweyr Defense Force, led by Khamira.
Euraxia Tharn in The Elder Scrolls Legends
In the Legends’ Moons of Elsweyr expansion, Euraxia Tharn is a dual-color card in the spellsword class (yellow/ purple). At 9 magicka, she has relatively small stats of 6/6 due to her strong summon ability: when she is summoned, you may steal an enemy creature or support card. When she dies, your opponent steals the card back. This makes her the only card in Legends to date that allows players to steal an enemy support card. A truly special ability for a unique Legendary.
Due to her high cost, Euraxia Tharn is too slow a card for aggressive decks. Her ability shines in a control deck during a midrange or control matchup. As your opponent’s deck will often be structured to gain long-term value through one or multiple support cards, Euraxia’s tempo swing may just help you turn a game around. But even just using her ability to steal a big creature can be powerful move.
Is Euraxia worth her cost?
At 9 magicka, the ability to steal a creature is at a one card discount below Chodala’s Treachery‘s plot ability, and costs two less than Miraak, Dragonborn. With Arrest and Thieves Guild Shadowfoot, a spellsword deck can now run up to 11 cards that steal creatures. If you also count Mecinar’s Will, which steals creatures with 3 power or less and gives them charge, that number is as high as 14.
The good news from a card design perspective is that she is a dual-color card, which limits her use to decks in spellsword, Empire of Cyrodiil, Tribunal Temple or House Redoran. As a balance to the power-level, your opponent can steal the card back if they are able to remove her. There are ways around this, as we will see when we look at synergies, but let’s first evaluate the card using quadrant theory.
Euraxia Tharn during Opening
During the opening phase of the game, Euraxia Tharn is unplayable due to its high magicka cost. If your game is still in the opening phase on turn 8 or 9, you are probably engaged in a control mirror, and your opponent might have put down a support card that you want to steal. However, they will probably also have removal in hand to quickly steal it back.
Euraxia Tharn at Parity
At parity, when both players are relying on their top deck draw, Euraxia Tharn works magic. Depending on the board state, you might want to wait until your opponent draws a juicy, sizable threat (a 7/7 or higher; ideally a guard to protect her) and steal it from them. All of a sudden you’ll be in control of the board and have a reasonable chance of beating down your opponent or putting them on a clock.
But it’s not only her ability to steal a creature that works well at parity. Assuming your opponent has a support card in play that is gaining them long-term value, pulling that away from them and adding its ability to your side of the board can swing the game hard. Although you can’t always make use of that support card, just denying your opponent that power can be worth playing her. Plus, the 6/6 in stats requires an answer and can help to protect smaller threats for a turn.
Euraxia Tharn when Winning
When you are winning, Euraxia Tharn can steal a guard or other big threat from your opponent and help to close the game. The ability to steal a support is not always as relevant in this phase of the game, although it might still help if your opponent can use it to regain life or otherwise mess-up your board state. The stats Euraxia brings to the battle will also help your assault. She really is good when you are winning: however, be a little bit careful, as your opponent might have an incentive to use their hard removal to get their guard or support back.
Euraxia Tharn as a Turnaround
Euraxia Tharn’s ability also has its uses when you need a turnaround. However, how good she actually is will heavily depend on the creatures or supports your opponent has in play. Oftentimes, taking the biggest power creature away from your opponent can allow you to stay alive for another turn. Her ability is particularly good if you can steal a guard to block more damage from its lane. Ideally, you’ll be looking for a Nahagliiv, Lava Atronach or Vigilant Giant, or a drain creature to regain some life. But not in all situations will you be able to find the solution to your problems. Particularly against a deck that looks to push damage across a lot of smaller creatures, like a Conscription deck, her ability can feel a little bit underpowered.
Card Evaluation Summary
Euraxia Tharn is a reasonable choice for a top-end card in control and midrange decks. Aside from opening, she can be used across all phases of the game and provides good value. As she taps into the cards of your opponent, she will allow you to benefit from one of their top-end cards. For example, stealing a Lava Atronach from your opponent’s Mighty Conjuring or an exalted Sotha Sil will almost always be a really strong play.
She also attracts your opponent’s removal, as destroying her will get them their creature/support back. Her ability could make her an important tech choice in a support-deck meta (with cards like Forward Camp). Euraxia may also be a key ingredient in making a support-based control archetype a little bit more viable. But before we look at possible synergies, let’s wrap-up the card review by giving Euraxia her well-deserved, largely positive ratings.
| Quadrant | Opening | Parity | Winning | Losing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating | 1 | 4 | 3.5 | 4 |
Rating Scale: 1 – Very Weak. 2- Weak. 3- OK. 4- Strong. 5- Very Strong.
Synergies
What Supports to Steal with Euraxia Tharn?
Since the ability to steal a support is new to Legends, it’s worth spending some time looking at which supports are worth stealing. You could argue that stealing any support from your opponent will usually be a good idea, even if you cannot make use of it yourself. Just denying your opponent the value from that support can be enough to justify the steal.
This is particularly obvious if that support is a combo piece in your opponent’s win condition, like Ring of Namira or Swindler’s Market. Even if it doesn’t advance your own gameplan much, it keeps your opponent in check. Other support cards provide their value across multiple turns. The immediate impact of stealing them is a little bit less obvious. Sometimes the correct timing of the steal is important. For example, if your opponent gets their Night Mother to 19 kills and you steal it only then, you can easily close out the game.
- Steal combo piece & remove opponent’s win condition: Rimmen Siege Weapons, World Eater’s Eyrie, Corsair’s Ship, Conjurer’s Spirit, Forward Camp, Swindler’s Market, Unrelenting Siege, Ring of Namira, High Hrothgar, Halls of the Dwemer,
- Deny long-term value: Arcane Enchanter, Necromancer’s Amulet, Hist Grove, The Night Mother, Altar of Despair.
- Remove buffs, reduce reach and ability to trade: Northwind Outpost, Volendrung, Divine Fervor, Hidden Trail, Thieves’ Den, Training Grounds, Haunted Manor.
- Use support proactively for yourself: Wrothgar Forge, Dark Rift, College of Winterhold, Spider Lair, Mushroom Tower, Transitus Shrine, Mundus Stone, Wabbajack, Orb of Vaermina, Goldbrand.
Euraxia Tharn in Creature Steal Decks
Steal Mage has been a thing on ladder since quite a while ago. The idea of these decks is to leverage your cards with steal abilities to gain access to your opponent’s resources. Prominent cards in the archetype have been Willpower cards, like Arrest, Chodala’s Treachery, Miraak, Dragonborn, Thievesguild Shadowfoot, Blackmail and a few more synergistic cards. Euraxia is another card that can support such strategies (in spellsword or tricolor), although it’s rather doubtful that it will be “enough” to make these dedicated steal decks viable for high-ladder or competitive play.
They are, however, definitely fun if you like to mess up your opponent’s game plan. A sample decklist has been published by JackAries on legends-decks.com: the Duke of Klepto-Mania.
Blinking Euraxia Tharn…
When steal decks use Arrest, they almost always include so-called blink cards. These send the stolen (and permanently shackled) card to a place called “nowhere” before they return to the board at the end of your turn. A Night to Remember and Winterhold Illusionist are the best examples of this.
These two are amazing in combination with Euraxia Tharn, as they will break the link between Euraxia and the stolen card. Why is this useful? Because this will no longer return the card to your opponent when Euraxia gets killed. Even better, when she reappears, you get to steal another card from your opponent.
With A Night to Remember and Winterhold Illusionist in your deck, you also want a lot of creatures with strong summon-effects to leverage the blink ability on them as well. Another option to re-trigger Euraxia’s ability and steal another creature or support are Ulfric’s Uprising or Abnur Tharn. Both will flourish in a deck with lots of summon abilities.
Another option to break the link and retain the stolen creature is to unsummon Euraxia Tharn. While this requires a considerable amount of magicka, it allows you to steal another creature. At the same time, of course, your opponent will have to deal with both stolen threats. For House Redoran, Fear Totem also reduces the magicka cost of a card that you unsummon.
…or the Stolen Creature
As an alternative to blinking Euraxia, you can blink the stolen creature. With Dark Rebirth you can kill and re-summon the stolen creature. This can be helpful if it has a strong last gasp, summon or even consume or wax/wane effect that you want to leverage. If you are afraid of losing the creature to your opponent or if you have to trade Euraxia, cards like Doppelganger or Dark Experiment also allow you to retain a copy of the stolen card on your side of the board.
Summary
Euraxia Tharn provides control decks with counter-play to midrange, control or combo decks that rely on supports or single-creature finishers as their win condition. At a cost slightly below Miraak, Dragonborn she can help you to turn the board around a few turns earlier. By returning the stolen card when she gets killed, your opponent has reasonable counter-play options, and she promotes interesting game play as things can wave back and forth. She is not a must craft, as there are other ways to remove supports or to steal and remove creatures. Nonetheless, she supports players that like to disrupt their opponent’s strategy in a neat way.
