Eight Willpower, and It Still Gets Banished by a Three-Ink Card
Shere Khan - Fierce and Furious is 8 strength, 8 willpower, and costs 8 ink. Everything about that card wants you to think it's immune to removal. It isn't.
- Shift 5 is the real cost. You're playing 5 ink on top of a base Shere Khan already in play, not 8.
- WILD RAGE readies him, but costs a damage counter. He can challenge twice in one turn. He can't quest again that same turn.
- That self-damage is a liability. Cards that target "chosen damaged character" now have a legal target on your own side.
- World's Greatest Criminal Mind banishes him for 3 ink. Eight willpower doesn't matter when the removal ignores stats entirely.
What you're actually paying
His ink cost is 8, but nobody is paying 8. Shift 5 means: if you have any Shere Khan in play, you can put this on top for 5 ink (rule 8.10.1). That's a 5-ink 8/8 with a repeatable ready effect. That changes the conversation completely.
The base Shere Khan you shift onto is doing real work first. He's holding down a board spot, threatening challenges, keeping your opponent honest. Then you drop Fierce and Furious on top and the whole thing upgrades mid-game.
That's the pitch. Here's where it gets more complicated.
What WILD RAGE actually says
The text reads: "1 ink, Deal 1 damage to this character. Ready this character. He can't quest for the rest of this turn."
Three things in one activation. You pay 1 ink, you deal 1 damage to him, and he readies. The no-questing clause only applies to that turn, so if you activate this turn, he can quest next turn without restriction.
The obvious use is challenging twice. Exert him into a challenge, pay 1 ink, take 1 damage, ready him, challenge again. Two characters banished in one turn. At 8 strength, he wins almost everything he touches.
He can also ready after questing, pay the cost, and challenge. The text only stops him from questing a second time. Challenging after questing is legal (rule 4.1.2 does not restrict it).
But here's the thing nobody says out loud: you are putting damage on him yourself.
The damage counter problem
Damage that WILD RAGE deals is placed by an effect using the word "deal" (rule 1.9.2.1). That means it is live damage. It sits on him. And any card that cares about "chosen damaged character" now has Shere Khan as a target on your side of the table.
Jetsam - Opportunistic Eel, Chomp!, To Wither a Flower. All of those target damaged characters. If your opponent holds one while you're stacking WILD RAGE activations, they may have a legal target on your best character.
One activation puts him at 7 of 8 willpower. Two activations and he's at 6. He does not get banished easily, but the window opens.
Speculation here: this probably doesn't come up against most decks. But against Pepa Madrigal - Calm Before the Storm, whose STORMY WEATHER self-damage is mandatory and creates the same targeting opportunity, you and your opponent are both building live-damage ecosystems. Whoever holds the answer wins that exchange.
What actually removes him
His 8 willpower means he absorbs almost every damage-based removal in the game without flinching (rule 1.9.2.1). But on its own, damage was never the main threat.
World's Greatest Criminal Mind banishes any character with strength 5 or greater for 3 ink. Shere Khan's 8 strength puts him directly in range. Three ink. That's it.
Gaston - Superior Archer does the same job for 5 ink. Both of these cards look at strength, not willpower. His best defensive stat is irrelevant to either of them.
Dragon Fire banishes any character outright for 5 ink and doesn't care about his stats at all. Red Moon Ritual does the same at 7 ink. These don't target. They don't deal damage. They just remove him (rule 1.9.2.1 is irrelevant when there's no damage involved).
Firefly Swarm banishes a chosen character outright for 3 ink on its second mode, which asks only that two or more other cards went to your discard this turn. His stats are not consulted, and neither is his damage. That's the combination worth watching: they let you challenge twice, you let them banish him cheaply.
Eight willpower stops challenges. It doesn't stop World's Greatest Criminal Mind.
His actual job, and who competes for it
Shere Khan - Fierce and Furious is a late-game pressure piece, not a stat wall. He generates lore (2 per quest), threatens to clear two characters in one turn, and is hard to remove through conventional challenges. That's the role.
The closest competition in the same ink slot is Omnidroid - Ultimate Iteration, which also has Shift and brings 8/8 stats. Omnidroid's Resist +2 is genuinely different: it survives some removal that straight willpower doesn't, and its RETURN ON INVESTMENT trigger gets cards back when you shift.
What Shere Khan has that Omnidroid doesn't is repeatability. WILD RAGE can fire every turn you have 1 ink to spend. Omnidroid's value is front-loaded at the moment you shift it.
Neither is wrong. They're solving slightly different problems at the same cost. If your deck wants an engine that builds pressure over multiple turns, Shere Khan fits better. If you want a single-turn power spike and card recovery, Omnidroid has the edge.
One rule about the ready
Something that comes up: you cannot use WILD RAGE on your opponent's turn to ambush-ready him as a defender. Activated abilities can only be used by the active player (rules 4.4.3, 4.1.2, 4.6.4.2). If Shere Khan is exerted when your opponent starts their challenge step, he stays exerted. WILD RAGE has to happen on your turn.
Plan accordingly. Don't exert him into a challenge and assume you can ready him before your opponent's board move. You can't.
The build decision
If you're running Ruby and you want a shift target in that color, your base Shere Khan needs to be in the deck already. That's a cost that's easy to overlook: you need at least two base Shere Khans for this to work consistently, which means slots and ink allocation before Fierce and Furious ever hits the board.
Once he's out, be intentional with WILD RAGE. One activation for a second challenge is usually worth it. Stacking damage on him to fish for a third is probably not, especially if your opponent has anything in hand that cares about damaged characters.
Watch for removal that banishes a character with 5 strength or less in the room. If World's Greatest Criminal Mind is in the format and your opponent could be holding it, don't over-invest.
Challenge, quest, and make them answer him. Don't pay ink to put him in a worse position than he started. Figure out which of these removal threats your local meta leans on and build your activation count around that.
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