The Willow Bends…
Event
Cost: Hand 0
Provides: Hand
Play when a card is damaged, but not removed from play :: Heal that card.
This little card may not look like a valuable addition to your deck at first. Free healing, but it’s not reusable, and I have to do it right away instead of being able to wait for the best moment? How is this good in a faction with Healing Earth and literally dozens of cards that prevent or heal damage to themselves or others?
Well, let’s look at the most important part of the card first: the lower right hand corner. Yep, it provides a Hand resource. For free. There are other events in different factions that do this (the Gambits), but of all of these cards, Willow Bends is probably easiest to trigger. This is great for any kind of deck that needs fast resource ramp, and considering that most Hand characters with a decent fighting require two or more resources, Willow Bends will quickly find a home in all fast Hand decks. It may even pay to attack a site in your first turn and heal the target of your attack, just to get the resource, if you have a big character that you can drop in your next turn. As a nice side effect, Inauspicious Reburial bothers you less, since it can’t touch events. In fact, any kind of deck that wants to have Hand resources but not Hand character will find Willow Bends useful. Mostly, these are Netherworld Return or “There Is Always One More..” decks that toast characters out of the smoked pile with Plains of Ash to leave only the strongest characters for the “random” return. Willow Bends can provide the Hand resource for Into the Light, Confucian Stability, or Rigorous Discipline in such decks.
Now that we’ve determined that the card is good even if we have to use its effect to the opponent’s benefit, let’s look at what good it does for ourselves. First off, note that the card can heal both sites and characters, which means it can practically turn any site into a City Park. Temple of the Angry Spirits, anyone? Other useful sites this card can heal in a pinch are Ancestral Tomb and Phlogiston Mine. It also doesn’t limit the amount of damage healed, like Healing Earth, which makes it much better in the early game (or even late game if you don’t pack a lot of Chi). It also doesn’t cost power, like Chinese Connection, Beneficial Realignment or Dawn of the Righteous. Willow Bends is a great way of reinforcing an early hitter. Ideally, you will be holding Confucian Stability or Shaolin Hoedown to protect your character from events. However, neither of those to cards prevents your opponents from throwing characters at your stick until he dies, especially if he was damaged while attacking in your turn. With Willow Bends around, they have to finish your character off in one fell swoop, and possibly overkill, since missing by even one point means that they will face your hitter at full strength again in your next turn. Many players will be discouraged just by the prospect of using up that many resources in vain and instead will go looking for easier targets.
Another interesting feature of Willow Bends is its timing. It can be played directly after combat, in a window where only post-combat or post-attack effects are allowed. This makes it difficult for opponents to mess with your healing attempts. With any other healing effect, the opponent can play a damaging effect in response, which takes effect before healing effect resolves and lets it go to waste. All damage-dealing effects are voluntary, however, or occur in response to playing an event or effect, and thus cannot be played in the scene that directly follows combat. In fact, the only effect that can heal a pumped-up Vassal of Chin or Plasma Trooper that just ran into a Temple of the Angry Spirits is The Willow Bends; any other healing effect has no opportunity to heal them after the end of the attack.
The most efficient way of using The Willow Bends is as a mini-Blood of the Valiant. You attack a defended site with a big stick and play the Willow Bends after you’ve romped over the defense, before you hit the site. This makes for a very effective bluffing tool: after you’ve played this combo a couple of times, opponents are fairly likely to just let you through, because they know blocking might be futile even when you have zero power. Of course, there will be many occasions when Blood of the Valiant would be better, especially when the defender has characters that are as big as your guy, but in most situations, the Willow Bends is preferable, since it is free. Incidentally, Willow Bends will also allow you to heal damage taken from other sources (such as states or events), which Blood cannot prevent.
Despite all of its benefits, The Willow Bends is not a card for every Hand deck. It is great if you pack large characters that will survive at least one combat, or sites that benefit from healing. Hung Hei Kwon deserves special mention, since he grows when intercepted, which makes him a perfect combo card for Willow Bends. Willow Bends is marginal if all your characters have fighting 4 or less, and you’re doing your damage with states. In that case, you’d probably rather play Festival of Giants or Blood of the Valiant.
Given that The Willow Bends only requires a single Hand resource, it is very easy to splash into multi-faction decks. Willow Bends is, pound for pound, the most efficient healing card available. It costs only one resource and zero power, and it heals characters as well as sites. While healing in theory helps any deck, there are some that will perform quite a bit better when adding several Willow Bends: decks that feature characters that have to damage themselves to perform an effect and decks that include characters with a conditional, temporary fighting boost. Characters like Elsa, Concourse, Sergeant Blightman, Tommy Hsu, Children of the Sharp Knives and 200 Knives of Pain all inflict damage on themselves, either to generate an effect or as a built-in drawback, and could always use healing to get more uses out of their ability before they have to turn to heal (if they can do so at all). Vassals of Chin, Plasma Trooper and Aztec Mummy all face the problem of a potential sudden death at the end of an attack or the turn, and Willow Bends lets them survive.
Commonly, the reaction of an opponent who hasn’t seen The Willow Bends played before is a cry of “Broken!”. If you haven’t added this fantastic card to your decks yet, then now would be a good time to do so.