The Proving Ground – Even Elysian

Good day everyone, it’s stormguard798, and welcome to the 2^nd Edition of the Proving Ground. Now, the Throne metagame has been a little stale as of late – since the nerfs to Huntress and Icaria, First Reaper, there hasn’t been any new infusion of cards into the format, which means Combrei Relics, Menace Trove, and Skycrag Sling have been dominating the Throne ladder for quite a while now.

Certainly, these decks are incredibly strong and potent, but they’re certainly still vulnerable to being targeted or hated out. When pondering what options we had for taking these down, the Even Elysian deck stood out as a viable option with an interesting mix of value, tempo and interaction. Initially popularised by [TIL] camomilk at the 2020 Throne Winter Championships, it soon exploded into popularity on ladder and quickly adopted the potent combination of Torrential Downpour/Touch of Battle to sweep the boards of opposing Even decks. Whilst the deck has been hit with nerfs in the form of Teacher of Humility to Sodi’s Spellshaper to the Even-Handed Golem themself, the original ‘Battle’ 1-2 punch is quite intact. So today, we’ll see if the introduction of Wump and Mizo, Helio and Jarrall Ascending in recent sets give this once potent archetype the boost it needs to be competitive again.

I’ll address the obvious question first: why Even Elysian over Even Feln? One common thread that sticks out about all the decks that I’ve mentioned are the powerful relics that all of them are playing. And do you know what Feln as a faction pairing are terrible at answering? Relic hate is certainly not something that all faction pairings have access to, and I feel that dipping into Elysian gives the deck more tools to deal with all the powerful relics that are currently perched at the top of the metagame.

Decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/xmkc9qIwlD4/the-proving-ground-even-elysian

Main deck:

Torrential Downpour/Touch of Battle/Tamarys, the Earthshaker:

One of the biggest weaknesses of dropping Shadow from your Even decks is that you lose access to a lot of fantastic unit removal. You don’t have the Huntress and Icaria in Feln either due to the nerfs, but you’re also down Annihilate and Defile, on top of the conditional removal and sweepers that you get out of the market. As such, Elysian typically has a lot more issues dealing with units than its Feln counterpart, particularly without Huntress. (Gosh, the more you think about it, the more you realise how completely broken a card Huntress was.) In any case, that’s where the Torrential Downpour/Touch of Battle combo works. By giving Torrential Downpour deadly, you’ll be able to generate a 1-sided unit boardwipe that’ll leave your opponents very sad. Granted, between Silverblade Intrusion and the various Regen units, it isn’t quite as potent as previously, but it can certainly still pack a punch against an opponent who isn’t expecting it.

Now, which of the 2 ‘Reverberating Strike’ effects should you go with? Torrential Downpour costs less and doesn’t miss flying units, but the floor on the card is incredibly low. It’s also a spell to pick up with Jarrall which has negligible upside, but is still upside. On the other hand, Tamarys does give you a 4/6 flier in 3 turns, and also gives you something to do on your off-turns with this being an Even deck at all. I ultimately went with Torrential Downpour as my 4-of after the ‘without Flying’ on Tamarys came back to bite me a couple of times, but I could certainly see it going either way.

Now, I am packing a Time Market (more on that in a bit), so there was an iteration of this deck where I had the Touch of Battle in the market instead. Truth be told, the card is very situational and doesn’t do anything without a Strike effect or Overgrowth in hand since very few of my units have Overwhelm, or Quickdraw, or any battle skills really that work well with Deadly. That being said, tacking an additional 5 power to that effect caused me to struggle quite a fair bit against the more midrange decks in the format. Let’s be clear: I don’t think fair midrange is particularly good right now since it loses horribly to combo, but it’s still something 1 will see plenty off on ladder. Without the possibility of a quick sweep on Turn 4 or 6, it made me rely much more heavily on card-negative soft removal, which ultimately just wasn’t a winning proposition even if I do have more card draw in my deck. If I had more targeted market access, I could see maybe revisiting stuffing it in the market, but since it’s the same either way (as an Even deck, there really aren’t many market options), I’d rather just shove away my excess copies.

Strategize:

Speaking of shoving away excess copies, Strategize is a fantastic way of not only digging for the 1-2 punch in situations where you need it, but also putting away cards that you don’t need right now – this means excess combo pieces a majority of the time, but also a clunky Helio without the power, or your 3^rd Grafter in some spots. Since you have enough draw power in other spots, this being an Even deck and all, I’m fine with this spell not accruing any advantage and only selection.

Dazzle:

There was a point in time where I only ran 2 copies of this card. I was sorely mistaken. As I’ve said previously with regards to Even Feln, you can, at times, afford to go down cards to hit your power drops and tempo them out with the stun mode on Dazzle since you are an Even deck and on average have more cards to work with. I have certainly used Dazzles for minimal value before just to make sure that I hit my power drops before – desperate times call for desperate measures. On top of that, pretty much every deck short of fast aggro are running impactful spells, from sweepers to card draw, so there are plenty of hits off of Dazzle. The card is just so potent in furthering both your proactive and defensive strategies that in hindsight, it’d be silly to not include the full 4 of. The argument for only running 2 of in a deck like Even Feln makes more sense because that deck has more interactive pieces between the removal and market hate like Damara and the Snooki Pooki (thanks gato) that you don’t have to rely on the Dazzles as heavily. I concede that with the draw power of this deck, we will more than likely draw into multiple copies, but that’s not something we necessarily mind having.

Petition:

Unsurprisingly, this deck, like literally every other Even deck, is incredibly power-hungry. Plus, this faction pairing has a Cylix, so Petition just seems delightful. It helps to make sure that you hit your power drops: you tend to have plenty to do with your power even in the late-game, and even though we don’t have a way to take advantage of going Petition into Cylix into Treasure Trove a la Master Conjurer, it’s still a great card to have a couple copies of. I wouldn’t run the full 4 of simply because after picking up a Cylix, your options to pick up with the Petition fall off quite a bit, but a couple are nice to make sure that your deck functions on curve. Well, as on curve as an Even deck can be.

Saber-Tooth Prideleader:

I love this card, particularly for ladder play. Not only is ladder skewed towards aggressive decks, which Saber-Tooth Prideleader is great against, but the relic clause is also great against Trove, Sling, and Combrei Relic decks, particularly if they’re not respecting relic removal out of you. Granted, the Even Xenan decks don’t need to include this since they do have SAA and Banish out of the market, but since we are Elysian, this is one of our best options to deal with relics, and though it’s not great in every meta, right now I certainly think it warrants the full 4 of main.

All the incentives for going Heavy Time (Sand Warrior, Alhed Ascending, Ubsat the Savior) VS Jarrall Ascending:

So I received a comment on Eternal Warcry about Jarrall not being particularly effective in this deck, so I wanted to address why I elected to go for a Primal Heavy route as opposed to a Time-Heavy route. I consider the above the biggest payoffs for going heavy Time; Sand Warrior and Alhed are great for playing a more tempo-oriented game, making sure that you can commit to the board whilst still being able to pick up cards for cheap. The deck typically also plays cards like Cykalis, the Burning Sand, Dusk Raider and Teacher of Humility to really press that tempo advantage.

Unfortunately, these aggressive-leaning decks aren’t in the best position right now. Being an Even deck naturally has its pitfalls in terms of tempo, so it’s still looking to be fairly aggressive, but being an Even deck hinders that. It often means that on the draw, you get fairly easily overwhelmed by decks like Mono F and Yetis, and your build doesn’t have an effective catch-up mechanic either. Outside of draws with Sand Warriors, you just get rushed down too quickly. Against control, everything you have outside of Ubsat is susceptible to a Hailstorm – one of the advantages of a more-midrange tempo deck like Stonescar is that they need to rely on bigger sweepers to completely clear your board, which is not something that Time-based Even Elysian really has – you have Dazzle to protect your board which is helpful, but it’s unlikely that you can kill them quickly enough for the control player not to just play around it. The nerfs to Teacher and Spellshaper have also hit this version of the deck much harder: it just means you’re far less likely to get a good aggressive draw that can close out the game.

You have the option of going slightly bigger with the Ubsat, more 4 and 6 drops and the like, but as we’ve seen, big Time midrange just doesn’t cut it against all the cheap removal that every deck has access to nowadays, and the Ubsat silence isn’t particularly helpful with so many multifaction units running around. There are metagames where Time-based Elysian can be quite potent – I just don’t think this is one of them.

Conversely, the biggest payoffs for going heavy Primal are Jarrall, Wump and Mizo and Helio. Wump and Mizo is still an incredibly busted card, no surprise there, and I think it is definitely a worthwhile payoff for going heavy Primal – multifaction means that it’s a pinch harder to remove, and whilst the ceiling on how big your Alhed can grow is higher, an unanswered Wump and Mizo will not only end the game in quite the jiffy, but is also great for setting up future W&Ms as well.

With 25 spells maindeck, your likelihood of being able to hit a spell off Jarrall is close to being on par with the Elysian Spells deck, so that’s a lot of spells. Even if your spell count was lower, however, what is in a lot of cases a 3/5 for 2 power with the potential of being a game-ending threat later in the game is certainly quite playable in my book. You won’t be able to protect it as well as non-Even Elysian since you don’t have access to Pause, but I don’t think that’s a reason not to play the card.

Helio, the Skywinder V Honor of Claws:

Helio is another fantastic pay-off for going heavy Primal, being able to completely restock your hand; unfortunately, it does sit at a very clunky 6 cost slot on the curve, which means it often will sit there rotting in my hand. It may also reach a point in the late-game where I will end up drawing too many cards for me to cast at a given time – in the more grindy and controlling matchups, running out of cards to draw is a legitimate concern in a deck that doesn’t have great ways of pressuring the opponent.

On the other hand, Honor of Claws provides less card advantage than Helio, and also doesn’t put a body out on the board; it does only cost 4 power and is a spell for Jarrall, however. Ultimately, I think that the boatloads of card draw from Helio is such a unique and powerful effect that I had to play it – topdecking it in the late-game feels absolutely amazing. I’m running 3 copies which means I’ll see at least 1, possibly 2 most games, which is where I want to be, and if they’re clunky in the moment, I can always plunder it or shove it away.

Vicious Overgrowth:

It’s a cheap removal spell that works nicely with Touch of Battle – in a faction pair that doesn’t have a lot of hard removal, a couple of copies is great to have. That being said, I have it in here primarily as a way to deal with problematic sites; this build is incredibly reactive and therefore not great at pressuring sites, so Vicious Overgrowth is a great way to deal with them fairly cleanly.

Sky Serpent:

Another potential pay-off for going heavy Primal, Sky Serpent is an aggressively costed evasive unit for closing out the game. Unfortunately, the card just runs too differently to the primary gameplan of the deck. We are mostly a defensive deck, and whilst a 3/3 flier is fine for closing out the game through a board stall, (as we’ve seen many times in the recent Draft format – heyo!) we’re not going to be able to make use of an aggressively costed 3/3 evasive unit very often. On defense, a 3/3 for 2 is fine but unexciting. Perhaps I should be including this just to make sure we can close out the game more easily, but I’ve generally been unimpressed by the card.

Derry Cathain:

An option I briefly tested out as a disruptive element that can turn into a beater late-game. Ultimately, the tax on my opponents’ spells was nice but not very impactful, and this being as power-hungry of a deck as it is, I never really got the opportunity to ever activate its ultimate – and frankly, paying 5 power total for a 4/4 Overwhelm isn’t particularly exciting anyway. It was a fun option to try out, but it just fell flat a little.

Desert Alchemist:

For a while whilst I was trying out the Touch of Battle in the market, I had a rough time dealing with big units before I could piece the 1-2 punch, and that’s where Desert Alchemist comes in, acting as additional interaction whilst also having plunder to smooth out my draws. Once I put the Touch of Battle back into the deck, the Desert Alchemists felt redundant since there was too much of a density of these effects, so I ended up cutting them. I also don’t think that Desert Alchemist is particularly well-positioned against these grindy, value midrange decks – rarely will you be able to trade up in power, and most players will know how to play around this card if they’re playing bigger units.

Royal Decree:

Okay, because I spent most of high school doing MUN and realising that diplomacy doesn’t get you very far: I’m going to put it out there in the bluntest way I possibly can. I do think that there are good answers to specifically target the archetypes that you’d like to – if you think about it, the entire basis of this article is about picking a deck to specifically target a metagame. So I do think that there are plenty of viable tools that you can play with.

That being said, I do think these tools are very narrow. Royal Decree played in the right spot will single-handedly win you the game, no doubt about it, sometimes even without the Onslaught. However, being a defensive Even Primal-based deck, the odds that I can cleanly get in with an Onslaught trigger isn’t very high. On the other hand, there are plenty of situations where this card is just awful – it does nothing against aggro whatsoever, and in other matchups, you’re going down a card for your disruption since they still have a Seek Power.

That why, even though by not including this card the deck is kind of soft to Combo in particular, I’m making the call to not include this card in my deck. Ladder skews towards aggressive decks, which is the archetype that this card is the worst against.

*Side note: I have not tried Boom, Snooki Pooki in any way because I don’t own any copies, and am not really in the mood to craft new cards when a new set is about to release. I think I would consider going down the Tamarys and maybe 1 Petition to try out 3 copies of it; it’s a fine card to play on Turn 3, and with a lot of potent cards hiding in markets even outside of Combo (Looking at you, Shrine to Karvet) it could certainly be something worth adopting just as Even Feln has.

Market:

Speed Grafter VS Rage Grafter:

Ok, for starters, I’m dismissing Wasteland Broker as an option entirely. It’s certainly a good Limited card, but most of the time in Constructed, you’re putting a card in the market because it’s conditional, and when you want it, you want it immediately. I do believe that the Speed Grafter is a little better in terms of the unit itself and the keyword it provides, but I certainly concede that the Primal market is probably overall stronger. What ultimately tipped the scales for me was the dominance of Sling: Skycrag Sling has been at the top of the Throne metagame for weeks now, and nothing in Primal is capable of dealing with an on-board Sling thanks to its anti-transform text. Part of why Elysian Spells has been completely pushed out of the meta is because its matchup against Sling is abysmal. As such, I feel that I’m hard-pressed into that Time market just to make sure I have the Relic interaction.

Impound:

…and this is exactly what I mean by relic interaction. I don’t have any Sentinels in my deck, so Impound is here to do exactly one thing – take out a Sling even through a Transpose. That’s it. I’m not going to pull it often, but this is exactly the type of narrow but potent answer that I need to deal with the relics of the current metagame. Next.

Grodov’s Stranger VS Glimpse Another Age:

I also wanted to have some kind of void hate in the market, so my options were between Glimpse Another Age, Lumen Reclaimer or Grodov’s Stranger. Glimpse Another Age is the cleanest option, but doing nothing else makes it incredibly narrow, and I don’t recall pulling the card even once in testing. Lumen Reclaimer is fine in that it provides a body as well, but a 4/4 Vanilla really doesn’t do all that much and isn’t necessarily something you’d like to draw oodles of copies of in the late-game. Grodov’s Stranger is expensive, it’s clunky, and sometimes it just gets eaten horribly by a Send an Agent. But it’s a fantastic threat that will run away with this game if unanswered with the upside of repeatedly bodying my opponent’s void.

One more thing to bring up while we’re here: my philosophy with building this market is to keep all the cheap, ‘bread and butter’ effects main-deck whilst I have all my splashy, game-ending effects in the market. Unlike in a deck like Even Feln where your 6 drops don’t actually cost 6, or Even Xenan where the 4-cost Mask is essentially your 10-cost finisher, you don’t have a lot of good options for cheap that can effectively close out the game, which is why you stuff all of them into your market to bring out when the time is right. They might be pricey, but boy do they pack a punch deployed at the right time.

Swirl the Sands VS Gnash, Desert Prince:

We have another similar situation here with a spell that is cheaper but doesn’t provide any board presence against a card who is an absolute honker. Granted, there is certainly an argument that I don’t need this slot of flier market interaction anymore now that Shadow Icaria is significantly less popular, but since I’m not running any Sky Serpents main, some interaction to contest the skies is certainly nice. Again, my decision to have the cheaper, lower-impact cards main and the massive haymakers in the market led me to land on Gnash as my flier-hate market option. I just need to be careful not to bring to ground my own Helios.

Sodi’s Spellshaper:

One of the strongest multifaction cards in Elysian, despite being nerfed to 3-cost, it can still provide a massive tempo advantage by deploying it in the right spot. Unfortunately in this deck, with no units with natural Aegis unlike Jennev Merchant, the risk of being blown out when playing this weapon is generally too high – there are still a couple situations where you can safely deploy it, but again, with an Even deck you’re less likely to play a tempo game, so Spellshaper just wasn’t effective enough of the time to warrant inclusion.

Master Conjurer:

This card is one of the features of non-Even Elysian, and for obvious reasons, at best it has to be relegated to the market. I tried it out as a cheaper finisher, but since your spells are more expensive and far more reactive than traditional Elysian Spells, it’s much harder to generate Stormdancers multiple turns in a row, if you’re even able to make 1 at all. There were multiple spots that I couldn’t draw into the spells I needed, which is why I don’t think it’s worthwhile to include.

Accelerated Evolution:

This is the market card I’m the most unsure about – I’ve waffled from 1 copy in the main to the full 4 in the main to the market throughout testing. As I believe the only Echo/Fate card that we can run, it’s great at providing virtual card advantage since we can always convert each half into power if need be through Plunder if need be, though with it being a multifaction card, getting the influence you require isn’t as reliable. The problem with it main is that it isn’t an extremely powerful early game effect. With Snowballs from my bae Hurler ❤ and Troves from Xo, with the other fate cards you can get effects that are helpful in the early game. An augmentation spell that requires you to have units out? Not so much.

As such, I decided to relegate it to the market because it is quite the potent finisher with the likes of Jarrall, the Party Pair or any of the Time fatties, being able to Leap off the ground and close things out in the air but was rarely something that I wanted in the early game.

The Speaking Circle:

I’ll just briefly reiterate myself: expensive, clunky sites are not where you want to be in Throne right now, and The Speaking Circle, in particular, has the potential to be terrible with the Throne card pool. The Queen of Glass is a fantastic card. Most decks will kill you before your Agenda is done if you just spent 6 power doing nothing. Easy pass.

Gameplay!

So, I put together this deck to target some specific archetypes – now it’s time to put my money (or I guess incredibly mediocre expertise) where my mouth (or in this case, the article series) is, and see how the deck performs. Ladder being ladder, I wasn’t able to get all the archetypes I was hunting for, but I think we have a reasonable cross-section of decks to look at. There were also a lot of games that felt incredibly one-sided – either I got horribly power-screwed/flooded, or my opponent did, and whilst there are still things to be learnt from those games, I didn’t think they’d be nearly as interesting to write up.

Another thing to note: I was playing all these games in Diamond 3 at the time (look, I’m lazy to grind ranks, ok? It’s definitely not because I’m a terrible player and heavily struggle to do so. :P). Honestly, that’s probably around the best spot to record matches since you’ve got a lot of strong players, but the decks you see are still fairly meta – at least for me, once I hit Masters in a given season, I let my inner brewing chaos out and just bring the truly weirdest decks possible.

VS Combrei Relics:

One of the boogey-people of the format, it’s not necessarily an option for everyone to climb with due to the high Shiftstone cost, but as we’ve seen from the TNEs, a very potent option to destroy the field of tournaments with. Without Face Aegis, the most important card for me in this match-up is going to be Dazzle, and as tempting as it might be to fire this off against an SRS, I’m really looking to save this for an Alarming Findings or an Equalize which will wreck my main axis of advantage – card draw. Hence, you need to be careful in playing around the creature sweepers and never committing too much to the board. This deck also runs Saber-Tooth Prideleader, so that’s certainly something to keep in mind for combat.

My 1^st 7 on the draw consisted of a Jarrall, a Crest, a Banner, an Insignia, a Cylix, a Touch of Battle, or a Downpour. Against a more unit-based deck, this would be a perfectly reasonable keep. I am honestly not sure why I ended up putting this hand back – call it a sixth sense, but I didn’t have a good feeling against them. In a vacuum, it was probably a mistake to ship it. My 2^nd 7 has a Sigil, a Cylix, a Golem, a Grafter, an Equivocate, a Dazzle and an Overgrowth. Overall, this hand is looking much more balanced, and certainly better than any 6 I would go down to. I certainly need some power off of this Golem, but I think I’ll get there.

They open with a Combrei Painting, and I am very, very happy that I did not keep that 1^st 7. XD I draw a Primal Sigil and play my depleted Cylix – since I don’t have anything to do on 3, I’d much rather hold the Sigil here so that I still have undepleted power on 4 depending on my draw – with 2 Sigils, I’m very off from getting the Trove off Cylix, which is why I’m fine with this line. They play a Combrei Painting and drop a Pillar of Progress – an expected start out of that deck, to be honest. I draw Strategize and drop the most frequent play out of an Even deck – Turn 2 Golem, picking up a Primal Sigil and a Downpour. Well, at least I can put that Downpour away with Strategize? They start their turn with an Enter the Monastery before playing the Sigil they drew from it for turn. They then follow up with an Amber Lock before shipping it back. Now that’s Equalize influence, so I’ve got to be careful.

I draw a Prideleader – which would be great for when I find a 2^nd Time influence – and poke in for 1 with the Golem before using the Strategize to draw a Symbol and Jarrall before putting away the Downpour as I had expected to do. Whilst it’d be nice to pressure them, the odds that I play this Grafter and it lives are so low that I’d much rather save it for when I can play and activate it in the same turn for a huge chonker. Against this deck, they don’t have hand attack outside Builder’s Decree to take the large charging threat, so I can play a little riskier in that regard. Not drawing another Time source isn’t great, however. They plop down a Speaking Circle and get Into the Furnace, Rainfall Accord and Slow as their Agenda – not great for them. They Into the Furnace my Golem before passing. On my turn, I pick up a Petition, snap off the Overgrowth on the Site before playing the Petition for a Crest of Wisdom. That was pretty poor sequencing from my part – what I should have done is used the Petition to grab an Insignia first before dropping the Overgrowth, but unfortunately, I got a little trigger-happy. Oops.

On their turn, they start with another Enter the Monastery and follow up with a Diana before playing a Combrei Insignia. Well I know 1 of the 4 cards they have in hand is a Sigil, though that doesn’t tell me too much. I draw another Prideleader for turn – yay – play my Crest and leaving a Primal Symbol on top. Whilst it is depleted power, next turn I’ll still be able to play and activate my Grafter next turn, so I’ll still be able to make use of all my power even though it’s an odd number. I decide to pass without doing anything in case they do have an Ageworn Vestige, although what I should have done is just gone with a Jarrall and held up Dazzle. The odds of them electing to go for a Vestige with a Diana out are low, and for any other relic, I can probably blow it up with my Prideleader the next turn if need be. Even if they do have a Defiance for the Jarrall, I’ll still have at least gotten my attack trigger.

On their turn, they play a 2^nd Amber Lock followed by a Perilous Research – now that Alarming Findings is certainly worth holding up Dazzle for. They then play the Sigil we knew they had before and get in with the Diana for 2. Not much of a threat now, and if it does become an issue down the line, those stats don’t matter in the face of an Equivocate. They pass, and at the end of turn, I drop a Prideleader to remove an Amber Lock – not what I wanted to hit, but spending a whole turn cycle doing nothing is probably worse. On my turn, I attack in with Prideleader for 3, drop a Symbol and Jarrall, and ship it back, holding up the Dazzle for the incoming Alarming Findings. There is the temptation to just go Grafter into activation, but if they’re able to drop the Findings, then I won’t be able to get through on the ground with my charge unit anyways. They play a Time Sigil and go for the Findings as predicted, and I counter it as I should – I’m pretty happy with the composition of my hand at this juncture, so I elect not to Plunder anything. Following that, they pass it back.

On my turn, I draw an Equivocate and attack with both units and Berserk the Jarrall – they might have a Defiance in hand, but if they don’t, I’d rather get the double attack trigger now than wait for their board wipe. I draw and discard a W&M, but unfortunately the Jarrall gets hit by a Defiance, and their Diana blocks the Prideleader. Ah well. A worthwhile risk. I then simply pass, planning on playing a Prideleader and an Equivocate. In this position, I think an argument could be made for going for the Grafter + Activation post-combat: you miss out on getting in with the Grafter, but the worst-case scenario is that they play some kind of board wipe, but with the board clear I get to smash in with a massive beater next turn. They’re currently at 10 power, which means there’s no way they’ll be able to activate the ultimate on the Diana next turn, which means I don’t need to hold up Equivocate at this point. An interesting decision for sure.

They play a Perilous Research, and I misunderstand the timing restrictions, so I unfortunately don’t get to ambush in my Prideleader to deny them a card. Oops. They then pass, and I proceed to do nothing – they didn’t play another power, so I can wait on blowing them out with Diana. On my turn, I draw a Banner, and play and activate the Grafter, putting away the Banner I just drew to grab a Gnash, Desert Prince as an alternate method of dealing with the Diana. My other consideration there was Grodov’s Stranger since my hand is incredibly card-light right now, but Gnash is certainly going to force a board wipe out of them if they have 1 as well. I then pass it right on back. They play another Speaking Circle – joy – and find an Enter the Monastery, A Nahid’s Choice and a Cull the Deck, which seems far better than their previous selection. They go with the Choice, and only can only take 1 of my Equivocates, which isn’t the worst. They play a Justice Sigil and pass; at the end of turn I use my remaining Equivocate to clear the way for taking down that Site – if they had deployed another unit, I would be hesitant to fire it off there since it doesn’t guarantee I can take down the site, but here they need to have a Defiance, and since they already spent 1, the odds they have another are lower.

On my turn, I drop the Gnash, send their Diana away and all-out attack – I am definitely overextending into a board wipe right now, but since I don’t have any way to play around that, I just need to get that Speaking Circle off the board – it’s not the end of the world if they do get a Queen of Glass, but these Agenda items are actually good for a change, and I don’t want them to get any more value. They have a Prideleader – oops, and I thought I said I wouldn’t forget about it – so they eat my Grafter, bounce with my Prideleader, and surprisingly just let their Site go. Interesting – that probably means that they have another Circle in hand. XDD On their turn, they start by cracking back for 6 before deploying an Ageworn Vestige, wiping the board and hitting me down to 11. Huh. Given that they let the Site go, I guess they must have just drawn that. They follow up with an Auric Lookout post-combat and pass. On my turn, I pick up a Torrential Downpour and pass. They play a Pillar of Progress and get in with the Lookout – I manage to blow them out with a Prideleader, destroying the Vestige and eating the Lookout for free. Yay! They crack an Amber Lock and pass.

I draw a Jarrall and kick things off by attacking in with Prideleader, only to bounce off theirs after they deployed one. Wow, we are both really forgetting about each other’s Prideleaders this game. I play a Jarrall followed by the Torrential Downpour just to get the poke in and scout a Helio to the top. Yes please – I really need some cards. I am getting to the point where my life total is a little low, so I definitely don’t want the Prideleader to get in, which is why I deployed the Jarrall, even if it is vulnerable to another relic weapon. They play a depleted Seat of Progress and Builder’s Decree my empty hand for a pair of 13/13s – hindsight is 20/20 I guess with that Downpour, though I really should have seen something like this coming. Firing it now to force me to topdeck some answers doesn’t seem the worst. I draw the Helio, and play it, picking up a Prideleader, a Golem, and 3 power. I’m not going to lie, was really hoping for some interaction there, but ah well. I can’t get lucky all the time. XD

I play the Crest and Scout a Touch of Battle to the top – perhaps I can just get rid of their big units by giving mine Deadly, no Downpour needed. I then play the Golem to pick up both that and the Speed Grafter.

On their turn, they play a Crest of Progress into an Equalize, which completely wipes out my just restocked hand, and that spells the end for me. I chump for a turn, but realise there’s nothing that I can draw to get me out of that situation and scoop it up. There were spots particularly involving Grafter that I felt I could have played better in, but they were just able to ramp really early without fear of us pressuring them, and had the time to draw into those ridiculous haymakers and set-up that amazing Equalize. I was certainly on the backfoot for the majority of the game, though from experience I don’t think it was as bad of a match-up as I made it seem – they just got off to a great start and dropped haymaker after haymaker. 😛

VS Hooru Kira:

Arguably the strongest deck in the format at a point time, the deck has fallen from its former glory and has struggled due to its distinct lack of interaction for the numerous threats in the format, but still certainly packs a punch for those unprepared for it – once it gets going, the deck can generate an improbable amount of value. The Touch of Battle/Downpour combo isn’t as potent against this deck thanks to Silverblade Intrusion, but reading what protection spells and playing around them appropriately is the key to winning this match-up.

My 1^st 7 on the play has a Banner, Insignia, Cylix, a Golem, a Downpour, a Touch of Battle and a Helio. The hand isn’t great against Kira but passable, and maybe I can bait them to using a trick in response to a Golem, who knows? Besides, it has a Golem on Turn 2 on the play, which is always great. I kick things off with a depleted Banner and pass; they play a Justice Symbol and ship it back. I draw a Banner, play an Insignia and my Golem to pick a Dazzle and another Downpour. Not exactly the best draws against Hooru Kira, but we’ll make do. On their turn, they play a Crest of Order and pass – it probably means they have some kind of targeted spell to protect their 2 drop, though I’m not sure which. On my turn, I draw an Overgrowth, get in for 1 and ship it back. They play an Icaria and immediately exhaust it with an Etchings, which is fine by me. From my experience playing the deck, your market is typically Ruffian, Bring 2 Justice, Korovyat Palace, Pristine Light, and a flex slot of Vanquisher’s Blade, Builder’s Decree, Omen of Austerity or Crownwatch Standard. I could see them taking Standard if they needed the power or Palace as a late-game threat, but none of the other options are great against us.

At the end of their turn, I play a Touch of Battle on my Golem to empower one of my Downpours – even if they silence the Golem it’s not the worst, and they probably don’t have any way to take my empowered Downpour, which I’m down with. On my turn, I draw Tamarys, play an online Cylix, use my normal Downpour to take out the Icaria while shields are down, put my 2^nd Tamarys to the bottom of my deck, and cash in my Trove before poking in for 1. Mediocre beats! They play a Symbol and play an online Icaria with a conspicuous 1 power up. I draw a Banner for the turn and immediately snap off an Overgrowth on the Icaria – what I should have done is play my power first. That would mean I didn’t have 6 cards in hand, so if they did have Silverblade Intrusion, I wouldn’t be completely wrecked by it. Oops. They did have a Bubble Shield to save the Icaria, which is nice for them, but certainly wasn’t the blowout that Intrusion would have been. Phew. I then play a Banner and pass – I should have just gotten in with my Deadly Golem since I can’t block, and they’re very unlikely to trade for it.

On their turn, they have a Lord Steyer’s Tower and play a Steyer’s Beckoning before getting for 4. Boo! On my turn, I draw a Strategize go for the empowered Torrential Downpour – unless they topdecked an Intrusion exactly this turn, they would have absolutely used it last turn on the Icaria, so I’m putting them on not having it. They do have a Pause but it’s not Intrusion, and I clear the board before putting a Crest on top. I then play a Banner before finishing off the Steyer’s Tower with a Golem attack. I play a Strategize post-combat and draw 2 Crests, electing to keep them both and putting away the Dazzle, which isn’t great into all their 1 cost spells and Endurance units.

On their turn, they play a Hojan before passing. On mine, I draw a Cylix and Shift a Tamarys to force the spell out of their hand – it’s a Levitate, which was what was most likely given that they didn’t save their Icaria previously. I then Scout with my Crest, putting a Sigil to the bottom before attacking with my Golem – in hindsight, since I know they probably don’t have an Intrusion, it’d make far more sense to just hold it back on blocks this turn since Hojan’s Lifesteal swing would be pretty big. On their turn, they play out a 2^nd Hojan and attack in for 2. Interesting…I wonder what they could have in hand if it isn’t power.

On mine, I draw Jarrall, and start by playing an Elysian Cylix before dropping Helio, picking up Petition, Dazzle, a Sigil, and another Helio. Not a bad haul at all. I then spend the Petition to grab a Cylix. There is an argument for running out Jarrall here or holding up Dazzle in the event of Palace, but I suspect they have a poor market choice and probably an Enforcer in hand. In their position, after getting their Site blown out, if I had it I’d probably want to just go for the Palace on the Hojan last turn and hope I don’t have Equivocate – they’re far enough behind that they just can’t afford to play around everything. That’s why I probably think they don’t have Palace, and may have taken Pristine Light or Bring to Justice on accident. This is also why I don’t want to run out a Jarrall without getting at least some damage off of it since the odds of them having a silence effect are so high. On their turn, they play a Justice Sigil and just concede. The scoop was probably a little premature, but I was so far ahead at this point that they probably just wanted to cut their losses and move on.

VS Even Feln:

Another scourge of formats past, don’t count the deck out just because it’s been hit by a pair of nerfs – as has been demonstrated by Tyler and AromaNova in recent Throne TNEs, the combination of disruption and value is quite a potent one, and the deck has certainly adapted to accommodate those nerfs. They certainly have a stronger early game then we do thanks to all the interactive pieces, but hopefully we can hit a Helio or 2 to negate all their Discard and win the late-game value train. All our relic disruption and massive chonkers are certainly not the best against a Feln deck, but let’s see how this goes!

I keep an opening 7 on the draw of 2 Strategize, an Equivocate, a Dazzle, an Overgrowth, a Symbol and an Insignia. It’s a very slow hand, but I think that bar a hyper-aggressive draw, I should hopefully be able to draw into…something? I’m not sure. They play a depleted Feln Banner and pass; I draw an Equivocate, play the Symbol and do the same. They play an undepleted Seat of Cunning and drop a Vine Grafter – the Regen is incredibly annoying to deal with, and I certainly don’t want to let them have another Regen unit. So on my turn, I draw a Primal Sigil and am more than happy to just immediately Equivocate it. It’s a little dicey to use card-negative spells against a deck like Even Feln, but unsurprisingly, Vine Grafter is just really good. On their turn, they play a Soaring Guard – heh – before playing a Crest and shipping it back.

I draw a Prideleader and kick my turn off by Strategizing, drawing another Prideleader and a Wump and Mizo before putting away a Prideleader – it’s not great in this match-up, particularly if I can’t play it. They get in with the Soaring Guard and follow up with a Royal Decree, which is real bad news. It’s definitely a solid card against an Even deck if Onslaught is online. I don’t even have any Time Sigils to fetch with my newly acquired Seek Power, which knocked out my Wump and Mizos. They play a Primal Sigil post-combat, and follow up with a Grenahen, drawing an unknown but not discarding any Felrauks. Phew. On my turn, I draw and play a Cylix before shipping it back – I’m mostly looking to ambush the Hen with my Prideleader, but in case they go for a Honor of Claws, negating that wouldn’t be the worst either. They unfortunately see through my incredibly obvious ruse and only poke in for 1 with the Guard before following up with a Vara post-combat and a depleted Feln Painting. Undeterred, I ambush in my Prideleader at the end of their turn. On my turn, I draw an Even-Handed Golem – joy – and I start by Strategizing, picking up a Crest and a Touch of Battle, and putting away my 1/1 for 2. Now I just need to find a Torrential Downpour…I play a Crest, keep the Helio on top, and pass it back over, with a wide assortment of fast spells for me to choose from.

They kick off their turn by attacking with the Vara and the Guard – I decide to go with the Touch of Battle on my Prideleader and granting Deadly to Vicious Overgrowth before blocking the Vara. Thinking about it, I don’t think I can afford to go card-negative again with another Equivocate, particularly since I’m not going to be able to play the Helio next turn, and there’s a huge chance that it gets taken away before I can through hand attack, so for me, it was either holding up Dazzle for Honor of Claws, or taking out the Vara. In hindsight, I could have probably taken this Vara hit for 5 since I’m still at quite a high life total, and just given my Prideleader deadly at the end of their turn if need be in order to hold up Dazzle. The Prideleader and Vara trade, and post-combat, they play a pair of Whispering Winds.

I start my turn by grabbing a Primal Sigil with my Seek Power…and accidentally click past my turn. Oops. XDD They Ambush in a Damara at the end of their turn, and I am pretty much forced to Equivocate that since I cannot deal with any of my own big units out of my market at present. Oh the irony. They attack me with everything for 4, and pitch a Feln Vow and Dark Wisp. They then play an Exploit, which I counter with my Dazzle – I need that Helio to stay in this game. On my turn, I draw another 1/1 for 2, and play my Sigil followed by a Helio for 3 cards, picking up a Banner, an Insignia and a third 1/1 for 2. Yikes, that was a pretty bad draw. XDD They once again attack with everything, pitching a Felrauk and a Vine Grafter and picking up a Krull, which is then used to buy-back the Vine Grafter. Gross. I elect to pitch a 1/1 for 2, discarding over 2 Touch of Battles, before blocking a Whispering Wind. Post-combat, they activate the Vine Grafter, presumably for Champion of Cunning which is great on their wide-board.

On my turn, I draw and play a Cylix, play the Trove, and use the Vicious Overgrowth I just topdecked to take out the Whispering Wind. That card is just way too much value. On their turn, they naturally draw into a Krull which they use to buyback Whispering Wind before attacking with Felrauk and Grenahen – I opt to block the Felrauk. Post-combat, they drop a Champion of Cunning and have enough influence for both modes – I draw power and scoop it up. Definitely got a little unlucky there having drawn 3 Golems after the Royal Decree as well as that Helio draw, but I also made some pretty egregious punts, so all’s fair in ladder and war. The Royal Decree did work against me, but I still stand by the fact that Royal Decree isn’t great for Elysian; they have more Regen/evasive units on 2, which makes it easier to get in a clean attack without losing the unit in their process. This match-up wasn’t particularly Even (heh), but the match-up is much more balanced than this game might demonstrate.

Final thoughts:

Whilst just in terms of raw power level Even Elysian certainly isn’t Tier 1, the archetype can certainly pack a punch and compete with a lot of decks that form the meta right now. One thing I really like about the deck is all the different tools and options that you have available to combat whatever’s good in the meta, and while I believe the deck is fairly intuitive to play, a lot of the decision points come with the deckbuilding and picking the right tools to fight whatever you wish. Whilst most of the decision made for this deck will be moot in about 24 hours, I hope that it’s at least guided your thought process on the things to consider when tackling a meta. As of the time of writing, I haven’t seen anything particularly powerful for the Even Elysian archetype, although there are plenty of cards still to be revealed.

Would you have made different deckbuilding choices for this fading meta? Let me know over on Twitter @stormguard798, or you can find me lurking frequently in The Misplay, FE, and TEJ discords. Until next time, and happy brewing with Revelations! 😉