TNE 18/12/20 – Deck Tech and Tournament Report – Kerendon Midrange in Expedition

Hi everyone! It’s stormguard798, and following the weekend’s TNE tournament, I’ve got another deck tech and tournament report coming your way. Expedition has just rotated: there’s a brand new set, the card pool has completely changed, and everyone is trying their hand at spicy new brews and synergistic tribal decks. So what do I do? I go back to the deck that had dominated old Expedition and play Kerendon. Obviously. I’m a grinch for fun, so obviously. On a more serious note, given that it’s still a fairly open meta, I’m very much inclined to simply jam all the solid ‘glue’ cards and all the strong value cards in 1 deck. I also expected to see at least some number of Grenadin decks and Pyrotech combo decks, and I felt this deck was quite well-positioned against both of those, which is why I ended up taking it. Let’s take a look at the various cards!

(Btw, I’m just going to skip past the old cards like Know Thy Enemy (KTE), Send An Agent (SAA), cause…they’re good. You play them. Moving on.)

Decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/JketwVFY0fM/did-you-miss-me-anti-pyrotech-kerendon

VODs! (I didn’t play in any initial feature match I don’t believe, but there’s a lot of fantastic play and commentary, and gives you a pretty good cross-section of how every other deck plays, so you can see what lines THEY take, and therefore how to block them. :}) Thanks to Telemokos for uploading them! ^-^

Inclusions:

• Onoris Roa – Now that Feartracker is no longer in EXP, I was looking for another strong defensive unit that would be good value by itself, but also a great hit off KTE, and Onoris just perfectly fit that bill. With Annihilate out of the meta, there aren’t too many popular options right now to deal with it outside of SAA, and if you have the excess power to sink into gaining the extra life, it can close the door against the aggro decks. Other than that, the spell damage invulnerability also comes in handy against Pyrotech decks since they need 2 Pyrotech Explosions, 1 to deal with this and 1 to hit your face, and it only gets worse in multiple. Finally, being a 5/5 Overwhelm for 5 is honestly a perfectly fine unit for beating down with, which sometimes we do need to switch to depending on the matchup.

• Deathwing – It’s a perfectly serviceable unit on 3 (a Vampire Nighthawk is never really too bad, for those people who have played MtG before): gains some health against aggro, blocks big fliers out of their side, and is just another hit off KTE. Not the most exciting card, but I think one that is necessary, at least in the current format.

• Enter the Monastery – With Display of Vision no longer being an option, a card that helps ramp is important to peel ahead and ensure you get to the power that you need late game for massive KTEs and the like. Ultimately, I felt that I’d rather have a Draw 2 Justice Sigils as opposed to the possibility of merely playing a Scheme in the form of Bartholo’s Keepsake, which would be the fail case here; I also didn’t feel that I had a lot of good non-power hits for Keepsake other than Deathwing since you do want to ambush in Alchemist as opposed to playing it on your turn, which is why I leaned towards playing Enter. (I am open to hearing why I am dead wrong here.) As such, I’m playing 6 Combrei duals in the form of 2 Seats and 4 Paintings, and only 3 copies of Enter since I only have a total of 7 Justice Sigils.

• Exploit – It’s a fantastic hand attack spell, and plundering also helps fix some of the influence issues you might encounter. Particularly considering that Pyrotech Combo is still popular in not only EXP but in Throne, it’s just disruption that you need to pack right now. Easy 4 of in any Shadow deck, no question. Next. Whilst we’re on the topic of plundering, I’m running 25 power with 8 ways to plunder and the 3 Enter, which I’ve found to work well to get the necessary power for this deck, and therefore have no need to run even more power.

• Builder’s Decree – Again, probably one of the generically strongest cards to come out of the new set. You usually don’t want to play this on 1 since you’re still down a card with the effect, but it’s nice to be able to do that in a pinch; particularly in the late game, if you can get 1 or 2 Sentinels off this, it’s going to be absolutely game-changing. Since there aren’t many board wipes particularly in Expedition, dropping this, blocking their board wipe and just crashing in ends the game pretty quickly. We are only running 2 of it in this deck because realistically it is a 5 drop that makes a 5/5 with some bonuses and flexibility, and it can have quite a low floor, but the modality of this card is so powerful to not run at least a couple.

• Suffocate – Similarly to what Doc28 had pointed out in their article (go check it out if you haven’t already!) with Mandrakes and Argenport Valkyries being so prolific in the meta as of now, there are so many fantastic targets for a Suffocate from The Merriest Mandrake (TMM) to Deathwing to Rolant – a lot of the commonly played defensive value threats are cleared by a Suffocate. I couldn’t quite fit 4 in, but in the current meta, I do believe that playing 4 is certainly fairly defensible.

• The Sites – I decided to address both sites at one point because they sort of serve the same function: a source of constant value that culminates in a massive game-ending unit if it isn’t dealt with; with all the removal and disruption that this deck packs alongside some fantastic defensive units, the deck can definitely protect both sites well. The question now becomes which site is better. On the one hand, The Speaking Circle works better with our curve since only KTE is at 6, and is also slightly heftier and harder to deal with; being able to block opposing sites out of control decks is great. On the other hand, Lord Steyer’s Tower has a reliably strong agenda even if I very rarely trigger the Valkyrie-Warp clause on it, whereas I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with the randomness of The Speaking Circle. We ultimately went for a 2 Tower/1 Circle split, but following the tournament and seeing all the sites that people are playing particularly out of AP, I almost certainly would go for 3 Speaking Circle. It is kind of clunky at 6, which is why we aren’t running 4 of it.

Exclusions:

• Just Desserts/Vanquish – Lumping the 2 of these together because they’re both 2 power Justice removal spells. My biggest problem with both of these is that they both sort of rely on high power creatures; whilst they were both solid back when FTP Sling was a popular deck in the meta, particularly Just Desserts which reflected back the unit’s own damage. Since the archetype has been pushed out due to a lack of good 4 power 6 attack units, and with Mandrakes and AP Valkyries as creature decks flooding the ladder, there aren’t just that many units that these removal spells can hit that can’t be answered by more versatile options such as SAA. Also, given the strong Tribal theme of this set coupled with the fact that tribal units tend to be fairly cheap, I don’t think we’ll be seeing a lot of both of these for a while, at least in the main deck.

• Combrei Healer – Another option that I had considered over Deathwing in the 3 drop slot; a 2/5 unit blocks well and passes me a Water of Life is certainly fine. However, power creep in this game has not been great for Healer, and the flying coupled with the deadly is just so much more versatile in holding threats back; the flying on Deathwing also allows me to go aggressive should the situation call for it. If I felt I needed more units for KTE, this could perhaps warrant inclusion, but for now, it’s just been edged out by better options.

• Nectar of Unlife – This deck doesn’t pressure all that well and hence I thought it might struggle with sites, so I initially included this as an option that can do direct damage to sites, and also have additional utility to buy back some units in the late game – and boy do we have some truly delightful units to buyback. The problem arose when Grenadins, which this can still act as a removal spell for, started to thin out of the meta, and Mandrakes shot up in popularity, which this doesn’t deal with at all due to their high toughness. Whilst having the option to buy back units is nice, it’s still not a particularly power-efficient way of doing so, and ultimately more effective options just edged this out of the deck.

• Seek Power – After you’ve had an entire Expedition of Petition and then you go back to Seek Power, my gosh is the contrast painfully stark. Yes, it can help you fix in a pinch if need be, which this deck occasionally struggles with given its tough influence requirements, being only able to grab 1 influence at a time is still rather painful. Ultimately, I found it better to simply roll the dice with our 8 Plunder cards, and with those, I didn’t find myself into many raw power issues. This was cemented by the decision to run Enter the Monastery as I wanted to maximise the number of Justice Sigils I had.

• Massive Greatsword/Backbreaker – Man, does anyone remember how broken Backbreaker was at only 5 power? Wow. On a different note, however, with SAA being such a clean answer to Backbreaker in the format, I didn’t like my odds on using something like a Backbreaker to try and stabilise. Whilst the ability to recur it with Maeve is nice, that’s a little bit random and dicey, and I don’t think TJS is quite the faction for target relic weapon recursion. On the other hand, whilst not being able to be pipped by SAA is nice, but I feel the late game value that Massive Greatsword provides just pales compared to what the sites can do. Definitely worth some consideration in the market, however.

Market:

• Winchest Merchant – Somehow probably one of the most controversial pieces of the deck. Between this and Plate Grafter, I feel as though the flying is just a more powerful keyword both offensively and defensively, and whilst being able to grant something like a Deathwing or Onoris Endurance is very strong indeed, you don’t often have turns where you just have a bonus 3 power sitting around, nor could you afford the tempo loss. Tell me if I’m wrong here. On the other hand, Regen is definitely a much spicier keyword, which is why I considered Vine Grafter; giving a regen shield to something like a Rolant or Onoris could absolutely completely change combat. However, the shadow market is absolutely awful; there’s no generically strong top-end cards like a Svetya or Greatsword, and although there is some void hate and a lot of efficient removal, there is no interaction for relics (which makes sense, given the lack of relic removal in Shadow outside Burglarize, period) and overall just a weaker market despite the stronger Merchant.

• From Anguish – This slot was either going to be From Anguish or Vanquish, but after a quick look at the meta, the only thing of major concern that Vanquish could hit that From Anguish can’t is Wasteland Broker, which I think I’m pretty fine with. Hence, I elect for the more versatile option.

• Equalize – I will be completely blunt here: I am very, very bad at using this card properly, as you shall see later on. Having said that, this is a very efficient boardwipe, and prior to this TNE tournament, I hadn’t seen too much Face Aegis out of control at all, which also enables the discard part of it as well. As a deck that typically does want to dump most of its power on the board anyway, we don’t often have a lot of cards in hand, and coupled with the Enter, we could get some pretty spicy Equalize turns off. I say could, since my teammates have pulled this off to much greater success than I have. I swear I’ll work out how to play this card eventually! (But seriously, it’s great. Even warranted some main deck discussion if we were running the Relic Weapon suite, but still fantastic even then.)

• Tayana the Mender – Not the flashiest form of relic interaction, and it doesn’t deal with relic weapons at all. However, if control decks are on the rise after TheBergund’s win, then Tayana is sort of necessary piece to deal with Worldpyre and possibly Beacon Control decks (if those become a thing again). However, if the meta does have a consistent shift away from that, since we don’t have use for Tayana’s first line of text, I could see removing her for something like Greatsword.

• Reality Warden – Originally I had Gavel in this slot. However, do you know want Mandrakes have a really tough time dealing with? A multifaction giant unit – pretty much only Express Route is a clean answer to Reality Warden. Shutting off Shoal Stirrings and other recursive shanhooligans from the Mandrake, as well as Maeve’s recursion in the mirror will steal games, and I’m willing to sacrifice the efficiency of Gavel for an absolute tank of a unit.

• Svetya, Lightbringer – A little awkward against relic weapons, but Svetya has been a staple of Justice markets and occasionally main since she was released. Whilst she can be a little awkward at 6 being missed by KTE, which is why she isn’t in the main deck, she is still a must-answer late-game threat that can completely take over the game in right spots. My favourite play? Dropping her just before an opposing site is about to complete its agenda. Sorry not sorry. 🙂

• Combrei Vow – I originally had a market power in the original iteration of the deck, but since switching to Enter the Monastery, I didn’t include any Time Sigils in my deck, so I wasn’t able to fix with the Vow anyway, and I didn’t really have a use for power in my void. In addition, it was mostly there for fixing rather than raw power, so I felt that it ultimately wasn’t too necessary.

(Disclaimer: I am now about to include the tournament report section of this article, which I tried to detail for all of y’all the best that I can. However, I will say that this is probably 1 of the worst tournaments that I have ever played. The number of punts that I made per match is nigh astronomical; I’m not as familiar with the deck as I was with Stonescar, so I definitely didn’t play as well. Hopefully, you can take all the mistakes I made, and proceed to NOT repeat them. :D)

Match 1 (VS Narttram):

On Xenan Mandrakes, I’m really hoping to draw a number of Suffocates to stave off the 3 drops and 4 drops, before sweeping up the rest of the 2 drops with a KTE. Whilst Exploit can be kind of strong in taking a key value piece like TMM, considering this is a tribal deck, amongst the rest of them there is a large redundancy of Mandrakes to get their engine started. I think if we’re able to stick a Reality Warden to shut off the Shoal Stirrings and cut off their late game recursion plan, which the deck does have a difficult time removing other than Express Route, then we should be able to outvalue them in the long game fairly easily. My prerogative is to spend their removal aggressively because as with all tribal decks, the synergy between all the mandrakes really amplifies their power the more they have on board.

Game 1:

I mulliganed my first hand since it only had 1 power; I keep a second hand with a Justice Sigil, an AP seat, an AP Cylix, KTE, SAA, a Merchant, and an Exploit. I decide to keep this hand because if I really need to, I can attempt to plunder the SAA in order to attempt to get some Time influence, but with a SAA, a KTE and the Merchant to snag a Warden later on, this hand seems great if I can piece together the influence this round. Fortunately, I topdeck a painting, and we’re off to the races. On Turn 2, I Exploit and see a Tangler and a Vine Grafter; I decide to take the Tangler here because both can be hit by a SAA and Vine Grafter can still get swept up by a KTE; I decide to plunder my Diana here to find a 2^nd Time influence, but alas, no dice. On Turn 3 I play the Merchant and grab the Reality Warden in hopes of playing it eventually.

They then play out a slew of Mandrakes; I manage to kill a Shadowcreeper with a SAA, but couldn’t find any more removal for the 3 drop Venomous Mandrake and Invasive Creeper, instead deploying a 2^nd Merchant for Svetya putting away KTE. They play the Vine Grafter and ult it, giving their legion of Mandrakes lifesteal and deadly; I hop in with an Alchemist and plunder away the Warden, but they’ve gained a ton of life. Even after deploying Svetya next turn, I have to throw her in front one of the deadly mandrakes to stay alive and die on the following turn. In terms of decision points here: I think my choice or going after the Tangler with Exploit was correct, but should have probably saved my Send An Agent for not a 2 drop since I knew I had the KTE in hand; got a little trigger happy there. I think that in that position since I was feeling kind of overwhelmed by their board presence and we were pretty even in terms of cards in hand, I think Equalize would have been a pretty good choice. Frankly, Equalize would have been pretty good throughout this matchup, but as you see, I’m too much of a buffoon to realise I need to pull it. As I will aptly demonstrate…right now.

Game 2:

…I am so ashamed of how I played this game, my goodness. XD My opening hand was 2 Justice Sigils, an AP Cylix, 2 Dianas, a SAA and a From Beyond; I decide to mulligan this hand because I have 3 Time cards and no way to play them. My 2^nd hand has 2 power, a Combrei Seat and a Justice Sigil, but fortunately, I do have 2 Alchemists and a mono-Shadow card in a From Beyond to plunder away and get my Shadow influence, so I end up keeping this hand. In addition, I have a Merchant, as well as a KTE. I end up doing exactly just that on Turn 2, and on Turn 3 I draw an Exploit and take a peek at their hand: a TMM, a Vine Grafter, a Goliath Flytrap, a Shadowcreeper, and a Fatal Misstep. I end up taking the TMM because they have 3 cards that can ultimate in hand and 1 more on the board, and at present I don’t have a removal spell that can deal with it, so I don’t want them to get too much insurmountable value. I keep the KTE in hand to hopefully clear their 2 drops, which is my rationale when I block the Vine Grafter they play the next turn with my 2^nd Alchemist just to blow the Regen. Oops. .-. I think that signalled far too hard to them that I had a KTE and stopped them from overcommitting.

On Turn 5 I punt again, dropping an Onoris Roa to stop their blockers and completely forgetting about the Fatal Misstep I just saw in their hand. Should have tried to make them burn it on a cheap unit or at least one with a summon effect. I sweep their board on Turn with a KTE and find a 2^nd Onoris, which is great; they follow up the KTE with a Regen-buffed Shadow Creeper off the Grafter alongside a 2^nd Grafter. At this point, I have a Maeve, an uncastable Rolant (been kind of unlucky off those Alchemist Plunders, and a Merchant.) Given that they are almost empty-handed save for possibly the Flytrap in hand, I definitely shouldn’t have run Maeve out and instead gone for the Merchant into Equalize or Reality Warden; if I can get them to use the Creeper ultimate on the Onoris, I should well clear to drop the Maeve and start accruing value. Of course, I drop the Maeve there and then, and it predictably eats the ultimate of the creeper. Why did I do that? Punts I say. Punts.

On my following turn, I play the Merchant, putting away Rolant to grab a Svetya, entirely forgetting about the Aegis nullifying part of Shadowcreeper. I think here I maybe should have just pressed with Onoris just so I can start getting some damage in whilst I’m still sort of ahead. On their turn, they simply ultimate with the Vine Grafter, so I run out the Svetya to block any more units from hitting the board, realising my punt when the Svetya’s Aegis immediately gets popped. They pass without doing anything, and then I topdeck an Exploit to take a quick peek at their hand; for context, at this point I still have a single Merchant in my hand. They have a Slug, a Regen boosted Broker, a Goliath Flytrap, and a Suffocate. I punt by taking the Slug here: my rationale was that I didn’t want them to take my only source of damage now in the form of my flying Merchant, but obviously looking back at it, they could just do that with Suffocate instead. Here, I absolutely should have taken the Broker, because right now I don’t need them gaining a bunch of life to put this game far out of reach for me. I plunder the 2^nd Rolant now into a Justice Sigil (oh dear), and I don’t feel great right now.

They play the Broker as expected, and the following turn I drew a Diana, draw a SAA, and clock that Broker. At this point, given that I have 2 5/5s on board, I think I should just start clearing the way and knocking off those Regen buffs. This is the reasoning: they don’t have a lot of gas left in hand, and as I pointed out, Mandrakes is a deck that’s all about unit density. Although I’m trading down, I have the far stronger late game (at least in my opinion) and I need to clear the way so that when an Invasive Creeper or Venomous Nightshade comes down, it won’t be nearly as impactful. However, I didn’t and you’ll see how it all falls off the rails. They Suffocate Diana, which tracks, and play out the Flytrap, which I clock with a 2^nd SAA. They then play out a 2^nd Flytrap and a Shoaldredger. I play out Merchant and grab…Reality Warden?? (In my mind, I wanted a blocker, but I think given how cards-even we are right now, Equalize was the correct play.)

They attack with the Shoal Dredger, play out a Vine Tangler, and I play a Warden on my next turn. They attack with the dredger on the following turn, and forgetting about the 1 of Temple Tactic in their deck, double block and get completely blown out. They then play out an Invasive Vinecreeper. Fortunately, I do have 2 Shadow at this point, which allows me to drop a pretty beefy Rolant from all the Svetya procs. (Yes, she is still on board.) They play power and pass, creeping up to that ultimate on Vine Tangler. I play an Enter the Monastery and play out both power; what I should have done here is grab Equalize with my Merchant, because when they drop their 7^th power and completely destroy my board with killer attacks backed up by Regen and Lifesteal, I wasn’t able to come back at all. Even if I had played out Merchant at that point, they still have massive Shoaldredgers that I couldn’t clear because I had 2 units out. Definitely a game that I perhaps could have won if I had played more intelligently. Darn.

Match 2: (VS Slepher)

^^the deck I literally brought this one to fight against. I definitely feel good about having lots of disruption to hopefully pick off Merchants, Realign and Machinations at various points, depending on what is offered to me. Hopefully, I’ll be able to back up that disruption with some decent pressure particularly in the form of Onoris; I don’t have to be concerned about Fatal Misstep out of this decklist (thank goodness, oops), and there’s only 2 Pyrotech Explosion; if I can take 1 away from them and stick an Onoris, they essentially cannot win. Which would be great. I think seeing the Discard, they’ll know not to make an early grab of Overloader since they only have the 1 of, so I’m also hoping to keep up SAA in order to hopefully interrupt, well, something if I see it coming.

Game 2:

(Game 1 Slepher unfortunately got stuck on 2 power for about 10 turns. Moving on.)

My first hand has 2 Paintings, a Justice Sigil, 2 SAAs, 1 Enter, and 1 From Beyond; whilst I love the perfect power to go into a Turn 3 Enter, I also don’t have any Shadow influence, which I need to cast all my Discard. Hence, this is an unfortunate mulligan. My next hand I keep an AP Seat, an AP Cylix, an Onoris, a Speaking Circle, an Exploit, a Tower, and a From Beyond. Whilst I do have a lot of depleted power, Exploit can hopefully plunder these not-very-impactful-in-this-matchup sites into some more power. So I keep it. On Turn 2 I play the From Beyond and take a Realign the Stars over a Hardiness and Beseech; perhaps it was correct to take the hardiness so that can’t combo with Overloader, but I don’t see a Merchant or Condemn right now, so I want to cut off their route to finding Machinations. On the following turn, I play Exploit, and take a Wisdom over the Trove or the Hardiness; not seeing a Machinations or any other pieces, really, besides the Hardiness is fantastic, and I certainly don’t want them to dig into 1. I unfortunately have to plunder away the Onoris here since I still haven’t found any Time influence, but it’s not too big of a deal.

The next turn I go for an Alchemist, plundering away my Speaking Circle whilst they go for the Wisdom. The following turn, I go for Tower to try and get some pressure on the board; I just Plundered away my big unit, and I need to find a way to close this out in short order whilst I have the upper hand. They cash in a Trove and Exploit taking the Deathwing, which I think is defensible since I still can’t play the 2^nd Onoris that I’ve drawn. **sigh** They follow up with an Ixtun Merchant, which is screaming alarm bells and hopefully I can find some hand attack. However, the next turn, I don’t draw anything meaningful whilst they Overloader with Hardiness into Machinations and take the win. Maybe I should have taken Hardiness there to slow down the combo, but them finding a 2^nd Wisdom and just drawing into another Machinations AND a market card was rather unfortunate.

Game 3:

My first hand only had Justice influence and no way to plunder, so I ship that; my 2^nd hand had 1 Combrei Seat, 1 Justice Sigil, 1 Diana, 1 KTE, 1 Circle, 1 Deathwing, and 1 Onoris. This hand is also not fantastic either with no hand attack, and no way to cast anything in my hand. Unfortunately, I think it’s correct to mulligan this as well, and my hand of 6 consists of 2 AP Cylices, 1 Painting, 1 Suffocate, 1 KTE and 1 Rolant. Definitely not a great hand, and I’m kind of worried that I might lose to the matchup I specifically geared this deck to beat. Which would be rather mortifying. XD On Turn 2 they Exploit and take my Rolant which is a bummer; but I draw an Alchemist on Turn 2 and plunder away Suffocate which is fairly useless in this matchup. On Turn 3 I play the Shadow Sigil and decide to not run out the Merchant so that I could market away the Trove the nest turn. On Turn 4, I do just that, but honestly I’m not entirely sure what to take from the market since my hand is all over the place; I also have an Onoris in hand but right now I don’t have the 2^nd Time influence. I settle on Equalize as the best option right now over Svetya since I’m not sure if I’ll be able to cast her.

Nothing really happens over the next few turns; I do luck into topdecking the Exploit and Turn 6 and taking their Machinations over Hardiness and Beseech; they just play the Beseech next turn and put their influence together, which is very worrying. They play power and pass, and next turn I completely whiff off the KTE. They play power and pass, which is rough. I choose this moment to Equalize because I’m so low on cards and don’t have a board of any kind, and just taking cards out of their hand makes it harder to have enough cards to Merchant away. They pitch Permafrost, Hardiness and a Primal Sigil, probably keep some card draw in hand. They From Beyond the SAA out of my hand, but fortunately I immediately top deck a 2^nd one. Although I still don’t have any board, which is unfortunate. We go back and forth drawing nothing for a couple of turns in the world’s most awkward standoff.

Then I topdeck a Maeve to hopefully get back into this. However, there’s a couple more turns of awkward me bashing Slepher for 4 whilst I keep drawing power. They Exploit my hand, but have nothing better to take than the SAA. I get a Cylix, play a Trove, draw into a Diana, and I am off to the races. They grab a Suffocate and then follow up with an Ixtun Merchant. On my turn I play Onoris – not amplified, so that I could still play Winchest Merchant, which I use to grab Svetya to pressure and lock out the combo. Next turn, they play Wisdom on their turn and pass, which tells me they’re probably digging for a combo piece, so I slam that Svetya, thinking they’re only moments away from finishing me off.

On their turn, they keep digging with Beseech, a Trove, and Wisdom, either digging for a combo piece or just cause they can’t play any units. I once again invoke the luck sack and rip an Exploit off the top, taking the Machinations they have in hand (which is sitting next to an Overloader) and clock them for enough damage that next turn should be lethal. They don’t find anything, and I narrowly take the win here. It was a lot closer than I want it to be considering played well, I think we’re quite favoured in this matchup. I also got some extremely lucky draws, and the fact that Slepher was unable to piece together the combo even after drawing so many cards was extremely unfortunate.

Match 3: (VS Frafa)

Honestly when you break it down Argenport and Kerendon have very similar game plans; some early disruption, value units, and just a very strong late game; whilst I think that having the SAA is fantastic against Backbreaker, Tavrod and the like, sites in general, as I had mentioned previously, can be tough for this deck to deal with, and 8 of them on the opposing side can amount to a big problem. On the ladder this matchup turned out to be pretty even; let’s see how it pans out now.

Game 1:

(For the record, this may be the MOST exhausting game of competitive Eternal that I have ever played. To be clear: most matchups were done with Game 3 by the time we finished this one.)

I keep a hand with 1 Xenan Cylix, 1 Combrei Seat, 1 AP Seat, 1 Onoris, 1 Enter, 1 Rolant, and 1 KTE. A good mix of power and threats plus all my influence sorted out – it was a very easy keep for me. And I even draw the Sigil to enable my turn 3 Enter. They end up playing a Deathwing on Turn 3, and I decide to go with the T4 Onoris over the Rolant as the more power-efficient play. Following that, they go for a Turn 4 Merchant, and I Exploit following that: I elect to take the Tavrod because I don’t have any removal for it in hand right now, and it’s honestly not the worst if they just Vanquish my Onoris here since they can’t play both that and the hammer; I end up Plundering Rolant here because I don’t have any removal to back it up, and I want to try and make my power drops.

The next turn they go for a Tower, but I clear the 1/1 Valkyries with KTE and plop down a Deathwing of my own before finishing off the Tower – I’m fine with not getting too much value here and just go for the board clear now because I don’t want them to come up with more ways to defend their site. They end up Vanquishing the Onoris and playing out a Merchant, but since I’ve drawn SAA two turns in a row, I’m fine with playing out my 2^nd Rolant here. They play out the Svetya, which I’m happy to 2 for 1 myself for before that gets out of control with the double SAA. However, this opens up the window for them to drop a Backbreaker and take out Rolant, but now it doesn’t have enough attack to deal with the Maeve I just drew and played. They instead elect to play a Tavrod and use the Backbreaker to take out the Deathwing instead. Following that, I go for an Enter and pass, setting up the KTE for the next turns while I take a Tavrod hit to the face.

I KTE the next turn, hitting a Desert Alchemist and a Rolant, but they immediately clear the way with Hammer and Suffocate out of hand, with me taking yet another Tavrod hit. (Insert brief interlude where I can’t read my own scribbling scrawl, oops – of what I can parse, important thing here is that I play a Speaking Circle with enough defensive options to let me eventually complete the Agenda and play a Queen of Glass. They attempted to clear my blockers with Backbreakers: I had 1 SAA in hand, but another one buffed by Tavrod takes out the Queen of Glass.) I play Merchant into Svetya to lock out their units for a turn, but they assemble a motley crew of Deathwings to clear my leftover Circle and make way for their own. However, they didn’t find anything good off the Circle, and I just crack it with Svetya. Following that, I Exploit their hand and take the Backbreaker over a KTE from their side since I want to keep the train rolling with my Svetya.

They manage to get 2 Rolants on board to really clog it up and get me down to 3 with their Merchant, but I topdeck Builder’s Decree, block another site, and stabilise against those Rolants with 14/14 Sentinels. I whack in with both to get them down to 4, and when they retaliate for a last-ditch effort, I have an Alchemist in hand to ambush them, and that’s an exhausting Game 1. Truly. That took 23 turns, and I don’t think I’ve conveyed the depth of that through this. 😛

Game 2:

I keep an opening hand with 2 Justice Sigils, 1 AP Cylix, 1 AP Seat, 1 Alchemist, 1 Enter, and 1 Exploit. Quite power heavy, but between the 2 Plunder cards I think I can work it out. I snap off the Turn 2 Exploit and I see: Merchant, Deathwing, Tavrod, Exploit, Circle, and Backbreaker; I take Circle since I believe I would have the hardest time dealing with it down the line; they then Exploit on their turn and take the Enter. I play a Cylix and pass on Turn 3 whilst they drop a Deathwing; I play my Rolant and they play a Merchant. I From Beyond to snag that Edict that they had marketed for, and use 1 Alchemist to plunder another for a 2^nd Time influence.

On Turn 7 I decide to put away Onoris for Svetya with a Merchant seeing as they’re both 5/5 beatsticks but Svetya has much more utility in this matchup. They then drop the Speaking Circle and kill my Rolant with Pillage. I dig with a KTE the next turn, hoping to find something, but only snag a Deathwing; since I know at this point I can’t pressure the site effectively through their fliers, I hold off the Svetya until right before the site is completed so that I can block them getting a Queen of Glass. I then Exploit and take a Tavrod from their hand, but still can’t stop the pair of Deathwings getting in every turn in the air. I draw an unplayable Tower, and with nothing else that sends it into the deciding game. I haven’t been giving Deathwing enough credit as a card; lifesteal swings a race well, and flying allows you to race in some spots if need be. I think it may have been a mistake to put away Onoris at this point since as I said, it’s still my best option for threatening sites; however, grabbing that Svetya for that sweet play was great, even if I didn’t win.

Game 3:

I keep a questionable opening hand with 2 Justice Sigils, 1 Merchant, 1 Diana, 1 Xenan Cylix, 1 From Beyond, and 1 KTE. It’s a dicey hand to keep, but I’m hoping I can disrupt them enough to keep them off balance. I draw an Exploit on Turn 2 and fire it off; I see a Speaking Circle, Backbreaker, Merchant and a Tower; here I take the Tower over the Circle even though Circle is a harder site to deal with since I kept a slow hand and would rather not have to contend with a site so early. They play a T3 Deathwing whilst I decide to go with an unenabled Enter to keep hitting my power drops. On T4, they Exploit taking a Winchest Merchant, and just keep pecking in with that Deathwing. I play a Diana on T5, but they eat it with a Backbreaker. The following turn, I play a Merchant grabbing a From Anguish: my thought process is that there’s no way I would be able to contend with the Circle that they clearly will drop the next turn; Equalize doesn’t help me if they have an active relic weapon, and Svetya will just eat the Backbreaker; perhaps Reality Warden should have been the choice here, but I’m not entirely sure.

They play the Circle as expected, and get Auric Herdward, Kemmo’s Blueprints, and Soldrain Smithing much to my complete dismay. They play the Herdward to protect their Backbreaker before taking out my Merchant; unfortunately the next turn I just draw power and have to pass. They play the Blueprints and drop a Tavrod. I play a KTE for 8 the following turn hitting a Deathwing and Desert Alchemist, which would normally be fine save for the giant relic weapon that they get back with Smithing. They clear a deadly blocker, and I block Tavrod with the other. The next turn, I play out my Maeve, hoping to somehow get lucky with some big units off the top, knowing that it’ll be eaten by 1 of the 2 Relic Weapons in hand. That is exactly what happens, the agenda is completed, and a 2^nd Speaking Circle is played. (If I wasn’t very dead already, I definitely would have been here.) I From Anguish the Queen of Glass, but have no units left to avoid taking a massive Backbreaker hit. I do manage to find an Onoris to gain 15 life, and have a SAA for the Queen of Glass, but it’s just not enough to deal with the relic weapon – and the backup one. Sort of got off to a slow start that Frafa capitalised on perfectly, and could never quite come back.

Match 4: (VS EarthsOverseer)

(I’m out of Top 4 contention at this point, but fortunately I don’t get a bye or anything like that, and my opponent is also happy to play out the match. So here we go!)

This is another similar Argenport Valkyries-esque deck, but I feel that our matchup is actually better than against TBC’s iteration, and here’s why: there are more 2 drops units which all get cleaned up by KTE; the inclusion of Halberd doesn’t really help against something like Rolant or Diana; and there are less sites, so hopefully it’s all just slightly more manageable. Otherwise our strategy is pretty much the same: just out grind them, and hope that our KTEs and late-game power carry us over the finish line.

Game 1:

I keep an opening hand with 2 Justice Sigils, 1 AP Seat, 1 AP Cylix, Exploit, Deathwing and KTE. Although I don’t have any Time influence in this hand, I am able to play the entirety of my hand with the power that I have, so I feel comfortable keeping this hand. On Turn 2, 1 Exploit and get the choice between Kitaxius, Tower, Rolant, Merchant and Backbreaker; I take the Tower because frankly, I’m not confident I’ll be able to pressure past it with this hand. And also it’s just the best card right now. 😛 They run out their Kitaxius and an Unmoored Valkyrie, which I’m more than happy to sweep up with a KTE on T4. They then Merchant into more power on T4, which signals to me they’re probably strapped on power, which is great news for me.

On my Turn 5, I play Diana, and on theirs they play another Kitaxius. On my T6, I deploy a KTE for 6 which kills their unit and nets me another Diana; they still unfortunately cannot play their Rolant due to influenc troubles. The following turn I just play a Builder’s Decree to lock them out even further, and although they’re able to eventually find a 6^th power, I’d gone Merchant into Svetya the following turn to completely seal the deal. As I had hoped, the 2 KTEs really shut down any hopes of them developing a board, and particularly with them stumbling on power, they just couldn’t apply any pressure before I got set up. Now one more draw like that pretty please. XD

Game 2:

I mulligan my first hand since it only had 1 power, and keep a hand with Xenan Cylix, AP Cylix, AP Seat, 1 Painting, Onoris, Deathwing and a Suffocate. Not the strongest hand for this matchup I believe, especially if they can stick a Tower, but hopefully they don’t deploy too many threats too quickly. They open with a Shadowfang Valkyrie on T1 and a Kitaxius on T2; I quickly Suffocate the Kitaxius before they get too much value off that, possibly with a Halberd the next turn. On Turn 3 they Exploit the Deathwing, which means I just play a depleted power and pass; however, they drop a Tower on Turn 4 and just start whacking in. I can’t seem to find any undepleted power, which means by the time I get to start playing and attacking with Onoris, it’d already be too late to pressure the site. My plan now is to just hold the SAA for the Rota when it drops, but they manage to Exploit it out of my hand the turn Rota drops and draw a bunch of cards.

With the rest of my hand being power, I just plop down an amplified once Onoris Roa, but the next turn they drop a Kitaxius and another Tower, and this time I can’t get past their giant Rota. I draw a Builder’s Decree to block the Rolant they have in hand and make a huge unit, but I still can’t deal with the fliers and they have sufficient chump blockers for my Sentinel, at least for a while. I draw Exploit and take the Rolant, but the following turn, they draw and drop a Backbreaker to clear my Onoris. Then I die to Rota in the air. Definitely a risky keep against this deck considering I got out-tempo’ed pretty much as expected, but I don’t think going for a new hand would necessarily have been better.

Game 3:

I keep an opening hand with Xenan Cylix, 1 Painting, 1 Justice Sigil, SAA, 1 Merchant, 1 Diana, and 1 KTE. Pretty happy with this overall – although I don’t have the influence for Diana just yet, I have some removal and a KTE to sweep through the early units. They open with a Turn 2 Exploit taking my Merchant, following up with a Turn 3 Deathwing; I Exploit on Turn 3 instead, messing up the sequencing of my power in the previous turns, and take the 2^nd Deathwing over the Trove or the Unmoored Valkyrie, plundering the Diana into a Time Sigil. They then proceed to warp a Tower off the top of their deck and Ironclad Oath up their Deathwing; I pass whilst doing nothing on Turn 4 hoping to sweep things up once they play Steyer’s Beckoning. On their turn, they Exploit the SAA in my hand, and warp a Kitaxius off the top, which is wonderful. I decide to deploy a Rolant before dropping the KTE the following turn, hoping to get some blockers out of it; massive punt, as they go Merchant into Edict to take it out. Staring a huge board at sub 10 life and no way to deal with the upcoming Rota which will completely refill their hand, I just scoop there. Whilst I think going for the KTE and not being greedy there was the correct play, I don’t think that it would have made much of a difference as I wouldn’t have been able to answer the Rota anyway, and it just would have put them way too far ahead.

BONUS!!!

That’s right; as you guys might have seen from the decklists, my teammate Iplongno and I piloted the same 80 cards on Friday, and we had worked on this deck together throughout the week since they released. They, of course, being an actually good Eternal player, piloted this deck to a 4-0 in the Swiss before dropping in the semis. So here are his thoughts and insight for 2 matches that were caught on the Twitch vod.

Round 4: (VS theovermaster on AP Valkyries)

We jump straight into the middle of Game 2 where Ip is already up a game. Whilst Ip right now has a very strong hand, he knows from a previous Exploit that Theo has 3 Equalizes in hand alongside 2 Rolants, an Exploit, a Hammer and a Suffocate, which is a similarly stacked hand. Ip starts by Builder’s Decreeing the 3 Equalize since the rest of Theo’s hand doesn’t have a way to deal with the Onoris nor the 7/7 that the Decree generates. Since there are 3 board wipes in hand, Ip spreads out his threats so as not to get completely blown out; hence he played out an Onoris Roa following the 2^nd Equalize not only to reduce the cards in hand for Rota, but also to force out another Equalize whilst still essentially being the same for cards despite not being able to amplify it – not that their life total was in much danger.

On a subsequent turn where Ip played out both a Maeve and an Onoris, they left up sufficient power to be able to play either an Alchemist or SAA depending on whether Theo went for Hammer of Authority or Backbreaker. For the following Equalize, Ip pitched a Rolant and a SAA since they had enough beef on board to contest a relic weapon at this point, and could rebuild with KTE if necessary; they’d rather save the Suffocate for dealing with the Rolant Theo has still yet to play. Truly incredibly played making very informed decisions on what Theo had in hand, and proceeding to play around it at literally every opportunity so as not to ever give up his advantage.

Semifinals: (VS johnkkez on AP Valkyries)

There’s a very specific play that Ip wanted to highlight here: he’s staring down a massive board from johnkkez’s side filled with Valkyries, and decides to triple block a Rolant with all of his units except for the Rota; this is not to kill the Rolant, but rather to reduce the number of units on his board to only 2; the reason for this is that he has taken both an Equalize and From Anguish from the market. When Ip drops the Equalize, johnkkez has to sacrifice most of their board, and is left with a Rota and a Rolant; Ip then plays the From Anguish on the Rota, and swing in to take out a Tower that was threatening to spawn a 2^nd Rota. With this play, he has very much Equalized the board and set it back to a fairly even game.

However, there was a slight punt: at this time, johnkkez has a Hammer of Authority out, which isn’t large enough to take out the Rota. However, Ip is suspicious that johnkkez might have a Backbreaker in hand. Instead of firing off the SAA on the Hammer right there and then to draw an extra card with Rota, he reasoned that he should have instead waited for them to replace the Hammer with a Backbreaker to try and take out the Rota before blowing them out with SAA; given the open decklists, we know that the list doesn’t have good ways of dealing with a Rota main, and having that Rota stick for a few turns could have made all the difference. Johnkkez did indeed have a Backbreaker to take out the Rolant, and the massive relic weapon smashed all the way to victory.

Final Thoughts:

For anyone who thought this pile of good cards would be straightforward to play, it’s not. I don’t consider myself a particularly poor player, but there were so many lines that I just didn’t see with this deck when playing it; perhaps it’s the freshness of it, but looking back on the various plays and evaluating what I did, hopefully it’ll help me – and you, the reader – pilot this deck better in the future.

In terms of playing this deck on the ladder and in upcoming tournaments in the future, I might consider playing Sharp Tactician in the market over the Reality Warden as pioneered by all the other JSx decks this weekend, especially if units jam packed with keywords like Rota, Rolant and Deathwing become popular courtesy of AP Valkyries. It has also been pointed out to me by my friend Mail that it may not be worth it to run Enter the Monastery because you can’t always reliably get the second clause to trigger, and while draw 2 Justice Sigils is fine, it’s not particularly exciting; it may be worth to fill out the deck with additional interaction and units instead, or some more diverse fixing such as Seek.  

Of course, a very special thanks to iplongno for lending his insight to the deckbuilding process and the lines of play. I think this is still an incredibly viable deck to bring to the upcoming TNE tournament on Tuesday that truly rewards you for knowing both yours and your opponents’ decks inside and out, and that massively rewards players who can find the correct line. If you are seeing this article as it is released, take it for a spin. Who knows? You may end up liking it as much as I did.

As per always, hit me up on Twitter @stormguard798, in the FE or TEJ discords if you have any comments about my terrible gameplay or questionable deckbuilding choices. Until next time. 🙂

P.S. I don’t really draft in Eternal – I believe I am currently unranked despite the rest of my team all being in Masters or something, who knows – but Schaab writes fantastic articles about limited, and all of their advice on a recent article about evaluating cards segues smoothly into constructed as well. I don’t have a credit card nor disposable income, but I’m sending my support here. ❤