Wyvankaye has been widely quoted among high level players as the reason that you play the Grovetenders and about half of the total Grovetender strength. This is both due to her insane abilities on the battlefield and arguably more about how many resources your opponent is forced to use to counter her before you have even selected her for deployment. Wyvankaye has the most powerful talent in the game, Peaceful. This causes her to be immune to all damage from non-mercenary sources, and be displaced by any other unit. Yes, if it deals damage and is not a mercenary hero, minion, or spire, then the damage is prevented. This includes landmarks, fortress gate retaliation, non-mercenary talents, or damage from fortress advancements. There are a couple holes in this invulnerability, where if something says to destroy or defeat an opposing unit/hero, it will still affect Wyvankaye. Most notably, this includes Gateports and Echri’s Consume talent. While this means that there are ways to kill Wyvankaye during the wave, your opponent still needs to work extremely hard to defeat her due to the massive threat that she produces.
Applying Impale to Wyvankaye through Basic Form is the strongest upgrade to her kit and one that you should be using every game. This gives her a strong and consistent way to deal damage to units, possibly even killing them outright. In combination with Pacify, Wyvankaye is able to dive into the midst of multiple enemy units, dealing damage to each of them and leaving unharmed. This is before even talking about Wyvankaye’s innate talents. The first of which is Yrtel’s Way, which allows Wyvankaye to send an adjacent faction minion with equal or less health than Wyvankaye back to their barracks, promoting her in the process. This is an extremely powerful way to surgically remove certain threatening minions from the opponent’s forces as well as providing an easy way to promote Wyvankaye. Because of the relatively low health that any damaging mercenary minions have, she can usually engage and send them away without any danger to her. The one thing that you need to keep in mind is having opposing units displace her into range of the mercenary minion, allowing her to be killed. Because Yrtel’s Way is essentially a 2-4 health kill ability, she is extremely resilient even against some units that are supposed to counter her. It should be noted that this talent does not say opposing faction minions, meaning that in a pinch, you can send back one of your own minions as a way to quickly promote Wyvankaye and have access to her promoted talent.
Wyvankaye’s promoted side gives her an additional movement speed, mountain terrain allowance, and the talent Yrtel’s Will. The increased mobility is not something to be scoffed at, as this means that she is faster than most units in the game and can easily escape or engage, making Impale even more effective. Yrtel’s Will gives her the ability to demote in order to either remove all attack upgrades from an adjacent spire, or to repeat the Pacify effect. This ability will almost never be used for the Pacify effect, so I will solely be focusing on the spire destruction. Removing all attack upgrades from a spire means that it cannot attack at all. This is excellent defense against any mercenary spires that are zoning Wyvankaye, as they require 4 range upgrades in order to deal any damage to her before she removes their attack upgrades. A notable wording of this ability is that it can be used on spires with no attack upgrades, as well as your own spires. Because of this, if you need access to Yrtel’s Way at any point in the wave, you can use attackless or friendly spires to flip Wyvankaye back to her basic side.
On the topic of flipping Wyvankaye back and forth, there is an important note of information to make. No unit may activate the same talent more than once per turn (with the exception of triggered talents), but it is crucial to note that Yrtel’s Way and Yrtel’s Will are two separate talents. This means that Wyvankaye can use both talents in the same turn, which is made extremely easy due to the fact that using one grants her access to the other talent. A very common play pattern in particularly rough waves is to secure a position next to a spire with no attack upgrades, then continually use both talents to remove all of your opponent’s minions so that yours don’t have to lose health fighting them.
Master Form seems to be tailor made for Wyvankaye, as the additional health is an insane bonus to her effectiveness, while the attack makes her a lethal threat alone. Adding an additional health to Wyvankaye increases the threshold for Yrtel’s Will by 50%, and with the Impale talent, she can send home every minion in the game with 4 or less health. That is an insanely versatile power, one that only compounds for each health you roll on the Master Form die. Any health that you roll there should be added to Wyvankaye without a doubt. If you add enough health, then she can even fight mercenary heroes in some cases. If an attack is rolled, then there is a very fun play you can do by putting it on Wyvankaye. This will allow her to attack enemy units, spires, and fortress gates without taking any damage in retaliation. This means that she can effectively fight any opposing unit and dismantle spires all by herself. One thing to note with this strategy is that upon flipping Wyvankaye using either of her talents will remove any attack upgrades from her, so be aware of this mechanic when using this strategy. Alongside the attack upgrade, you can make sure that you preserve a very slow opposing unit, run Wyvankaye to the opposing faction gate, then deal 10 damage to the gate before their minion dies. This is something that your opponent will be aware about and is very hard to pull off, but is so satisfying to do!
For all of these reasons, Wyvankaye is game and matchup defining, something that your opponents are forced to prepare against before you even deploy her. If they haven’t bought a market option to zone or kill her and do not have an alternate plan, she wins waves all by herself. This allows the Grovetenders to stall the game by forcing opponents (other than Uprising) to buy additional or more expensive market purchases than normal, detracting from the amount of source that they spend on their main gameplan. Either they are less effective at dealing damage to your fortress gate throughout the game or they don’t find an answer to Wyvankaye, allowing her to completely take over the game and prevent any damage from minions entirely. Either of these outcomes contribute massively to the Grovtenders alternate win condition of surviving until scoring at the end of the game, meaning that either they commit resources to answering something you won’t use or they have a significantly harder time dealing damage to your fortress gate. There is no world in which Wyvankaye isn’t considered a top tier hero and should always be at the forefront of your mind when playing with or against the Grovetenders.
