Stormguard and IlyaK’s Weather Report – Eternal Open: Revelations (Throne)

Hi everyone, it’s stormguard798, and welcome to another edition of the Weather Report. Prior to the Open, we were all pretty sure that we were in for Eternal Open: Feln Discard, but with 2 sets of patches hitting us in the weeks leading up to the event bringing with them some well-needed widespread changes, the meta had been completely shaken up and looked wide open heading into the Open. Judging from the various meta reports on Day 1 and in the Top 64 courtesy of the Misplay (check that out over here!), that certainly looked to be the case. Joining me to break down this brand new meta and go over the tournament is prominent community member: IlyaK. 

Well, I don’t think there’s much to say about me that hasn’t already been said. I like Throne, albeit when it’s more interactive. With the latest Open and the meta restored to a healthier place, (that being said, there’s still much work left to do–82% of decks in the Open contained primal, and I don’t foresee that changing in the near future), I think the patch did wonders; I just wish it wasn’t so close to the Open.

SG’s Decklist: 

Even Feln: 

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/l0ofpsmAgik/plagiarising-myself

So as I imagine most of your readers know, I am a member of Team Eternal Journey, and for the other 3 Opens so far this season, that is who I had been testing with. However, for this Open, I had the opportunity to test with some of my Eternal friends in the most awesome crossover collaboration of all time: The Justice League. (And yes, we are way cooler than the Avengers. Like, by a lot.) 

Having only been active in the community after getting picked up by TEJ, I hadn’t had the opportunity ‘shop-talk’ much with members of different existing teams. This collaboration, besides being an absolute blast by getting to spend more time with great friends, accrued me plenty of experience and knowledge with which to revitalize TEJ’s testing process down the line. 

(Heroes of The Justice League: 10/10 would test with all of you again. You were all delightful.) 

Since I have the opportunity to talk about it and have it segue beautifully: being on a formal ‘team’ does give you an advantage in so much as you have people to playtest against you and provide fresh sets of eyes on any ideas you have. That being said, that’s not something you can only achieve by being on a team. I got my start playing competitive events because I reached out to now-teammate goaychanhong about a list he posted on Eternal Warcry. We got to talking, found a rapport, and ended up working together for the next ECQ. Actively seeking out playtesting opportunities is helpful, but show that you’re a great person to work with, and the opportunities will come to you.

Okay, massive spiel aside: onto the actual tournament. After we got hit with a massive patch hammer for the 2nd time in less than a week, the metagame on ladder was pretty darn wide-open. As Ilya pointed out, 3 days really isn’t a lot of time to do much Open prep, so we expected a lot of people to simply fall back on what they are comfortable with. Having been some of the most popular decks prior to Revelations, Hooru Kira and Menace Trove seemed like a good place to start. About 2 games in, I realise I couldn’t practice either of those archetypes in time to a point where I would be happy with my own play for the Open.

Then, AlexFiero stumbled into now-teammate LeoThePluerodon on ladder on Skycrag Aggro, and after making some adjustments to the list, found that we really liked our build. It felt really strong into the various greedy midrange piles that everyone appeared to be playing, and both of us went on a tear with our team’s version on ladder. 

Friday evening, hours before the event began, the meta on ladder had drastically shifted. We’re now facing a lot of aggro mirrors and control decks, which was a complete shift from what we experienced the day before. Having been unable to find a way to really give us an advantage in the mirror besides lucking out with Autotreads, we were unsure if this is what we wanted to bring. 

Saturday morning, I wake up, the event is already in full swing, and I’m just not feeling great about the Skycrag Aggro deck despite having practiced various lines with it for the better part of 2 days. With reports of lots and lots of aggro in the open meta, I elected to dust off a comfort pick that I felt would be solid into a more aggro-leaning metagame – Even Feln. [Editor’s note: Wow you are BORING, Storm. That’s your fallback pick?] It’s got plenty of lifesteal and regen units, a ton of spot removal, and being an Even deck, a late-game and negation spells to tussle with the control decks if need be. I think that Odd Feln with the Know/Krull package and Obstructive Flicker could certainly have some legs as well, but sticking to an Even deck certainly made the deckbuilding much more straightforward. 😛 

I tested with Mail to make some adjustments to the deck given all the nerfs it had been hit with, and ultimately settled on the decklist above to bring to the Open. The age-old adage remains: if you’re ever hit with time constraints, stick to what you’re comfortable with, and honestly? For a deck we slapped together hours before I started my run – not bad. I was the only person on Even Feln on my team: even though I didn’t end up making Day 2 with the deck, there were a lot of incredibly tense and close games that didn’t end up quite breaking in my favor, and I felt it was a surprisingly reasonable choice to bring. 

Individual Card Discussion: 

(Okay, so we’ve already been through a lot of discussion with regards to the individual card choices with TheBoxer in a previous Weather Report – shameless plug to go and check THAT out – so I’ll try to avoid repeating myself too much. We did sort of revert back to the meta of that tournament, weirdly enough, so there’s certainly a lot of parallels to be drawn, but I do think there’s still enough to talk about.) 

The removal: Annihilate/Defile

Besides the aggro decks we were expecting to see a lot of, we were also expecting to see a fairly reasonable amount of Hooru Kira and Elysian Jarrall – just plenty of unit-based decks all around. Whilst the previous iteration of Even Feln was more judicious in their cheap removal spells, with the loss of both Huntress and Icaria from the deck, it just made sense to include the full suite of spot removal. We are, of course, an Even deck, which means it’s often favourable for us to trade 1-for-1. And with all these expected haymakers – Kira and Jarrall are obviously fantastic, but Amaruq and Houndmaster get out of hand pretty quickly too – it just seemed like a reasonable choice to have. 

The 2 drops: Acantha/Damara

With the rise of numerous decks playing Transpose and Cobalt Waystone for Face Aegis, alongside a minority of backbreaking Market cards such as Shrine or Champion of Cunning, Damara hasn’t been as potent as before, but it’s still certainly a solid card, either as a surprise blocker against aggro or as a way to threaten sites, which this deck can admittedly struggle with. Meanwhile, Acantha isn’t really much of a 2-drop – you really want to get to 6S before dropping her – but she’s still an incredible haymaker much like most of the Ascending cycle. (R.I.P Clodagh.) And now, we have space to run 4 Acanthas AND the 2 Damaras! Yay! 

One other card that I had tried was Blackhall Warleader – it’s a solid, cheap Shadow unit, so it seemed at least worth a shot. As I perhaps should have been able to anticipate, since we’re not looking to attack very often at least in the early game, the Warleader functioned as a Bold Adventurer in most situations, so I just ended up plundering them away or discarding them very frequently. Another option was Fenris Nightshade, but the life loss from the card draw was too much of a cost for a defensive deck. 

Nectar of Unlife/Pale Rider’s Timepiece

Many post-patch iterations of Even Feln (and I’m talking about April’s patch, btw) packed Pale Rider’s Timepiece in the main as a substitute for Icaria, First Reaper (rest in pepperoni) as your top-end haymaker. Obviously, the Timepiece rather paled in comparison – it did function as pretty powerful top-end removal, but you needed to have a unit out, and wasn’t as fantastic against control. At the same time, I was trying to find a 5th market card that I liked next to Edict, ChaCu, Menace and Designs. I toyed between a bunch of options from Reappropriator to Battle at the Gates to The Speaking Circle, but as you can surmise from the last time we had this conversation, they all panned out as expected.

I ended up settling on Nectar of Unlife as single-target removal that can buyback haymakers like Rindra or ChaCu later as my final market slot. Then Watchwolf pointed out that it would make more sense to have the Nectar maindeck as cheap removal that scales in the late-game, and stick the Timepiece in the market as a powerful yet situational weapon. I tried it, loved it, and rolled with it. Although I don’t often use the amplify ability on Nectar of Unlife, I do think having the option to do so when you topdeck the card with 8 power available is certainly worth the upside over say, an extra point of damage from Vicious Overgrowth. 

Boom, Snookie Pookie (yes, The Misplay, it’s what we all call them now)

I ended up crafting my Booms for this deck since I definitely wanted to try them out and put my best foot forward, and I’m honestly pretty impressed. The 3-5 body means that it gets in pretty cleanly in the early game and is generally hard for aggro to deal with profitably outside of Permafrost. The advantage Boom accrues can get out of hand pretty quickly, particularly if you can keep the board clean with all your removal. The option to transform something in their market on your ‘off-turn’ is also very nice – that Sling isn’t going to protect your spells anymore. 😛 It doesn’t do anything particularly exciting, but it’s an incredibly solid role-player, and it definitely justifies its place in the list.

Cover From the Storm

In the past, generating a board by discarding Felrauks with either your Grenahen or Honor of Claws would really help shore up your aggro matchup. Since that’s no longer an option, clearly their board instead sounds pretty good to me. Although in theory your units will often get caught in the crossfire, in practice, your aggressive opponent already spent removal on them one way or another, which means it still heavily favours you. Although it’s an advantage that’s minimised with open decklists, I’ve been shocked by how many people overplay their hand into an Even deck thinking there are no sweepers – well…surprise! I only ended up running 2 to split with Honor of Claws, but in hindsight, running the full 4-of just makes sense as something you’d like to have early and consistently. 

Velise, Bear Rider

I was mostly just excited to play Velise because I think she’s a very good card – the original intention was for her to act as a maindeck finisher that would help push through damage with Acanthas and Rindras whilst providing some card filtering. My head was filled with vision of 7-8 Lifesteal Overwhelm Rindras, but in reality, we’re made to play defensively very often, and a 4-4 for 4 just wasn’t cutting it. It was sweet in theory, but we didn’t have a dominating board presence often enough. 

Tamarys, Earthshaker 

We were discussing the Waxing/Waning Moon variant of the Even Feln deck in conjunction with this version when putting the list together, and I figured, hey, Tamarys seems like a fine card against aggro decks in general and gives us something to do off-curve; why not? Whilst it was fine against Skycrag Aggro, Mono Time and some Kira boards in the early turns, most of the time it just felt very underwhelming without the ability to use another part of the card – the deadly damage in Moon decks or the 6 health in Sling. This is why I don’t think I’d continue to play the card in future iterations. The without-flying clause is a lot more restrictive than you might expect, and playing her as a 4/6 flier for 6 just feels awful. 

Eremot’s Designs

I agree that against the best of aggro draws, a market sweeper is probably going to be too slow, but then you’d need to have maindeck sweepers which you are comfortable running. For me, Eremot’s Designs isn’t quite versatile enough of a sweeper to warrant maindeck inclusion. That being said, it still does a solid job of clearing up board of the likes of Kira or Shrine decks, both of which I expected to see in some capacity – just because it doesn’t deal with the fastest draws doesn’t mean it can’t be useful later on, and there have been multiple situations where having access to a market sweeper has saved me. 

Now the question then becomes: why don’t you play Fall to Ruin? That is a perfectly legal unconditional sweeper. I think at 6, it’s just a little bit too pricey, and since we’re a deck that will have decent board presence in the mid-game, unlike in decks such as AAC. I do think that it feels too conditional, particularly since I don’t anticipate us consistently getting the ‘12+ units’ clause for the wipe to only be 1-sided. I am a little unsure about this call, however, so it might be worth tinkering with. 

Post-tournament decklist: 

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/VQZUGkJ1bkM/repeated-self-plagiarising

So here I’ve cut the Velices and Tamaryses I wasn’t a massive fan of, and added another Dazzle, Damara and 2 more copies of Cover From the Storm. Since we have more maindeck sweepers now, that should mean we take Eremot’s Designs from the market very infrequently, and so I’ve replaced that with an unconditional removal spell in In Cold Blood – that is a meta call for Kira decks being very popular in the time to come, but I could see swapping that out with the likes of Feeding Time, a wild Mandevilla, or even the Fall to Ruin as I mentioned previously. In terms of the 2 drops, I could also see myself playing some Strategizes or Beseech the Thrones just to smooth out our early turns as opposed to the additional copies of Damara and Dazzle: no fate cards is rough, but I’m sure we’ll make do. An Ice Bolt or 2 as a modal removal/ramp spell might not be remiss either. 

Decks left in the testing room voice chat: 

Skycrag Aggro: 

Decklist: 

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/XfMyl1lY83E/vroom-vroom-classic

SG: As I mentioned, this was the other consideration for me other than Even Feln for the Open, and the deck certainly packs a solid punch. The biggest difference between this iteration and the more popular variants is the inclusion of weapons as per Watchwolf’s suggestion to support the ‘tandem’ strategy of attacking with 2 units that Amaruq and Houndmaster want. Other than the Grenadin Drone for the fabled T1 Drone into T2 Amaruq nut draw, the selection of 1 drops are selected to support this strategy – Oni Ronin gives Warcry buffs to swing in with big units, and the Aegis on Snowcrust Yeti makes it more desirable to slap weapons on them. 

I do think that the deck has a solid gameplan on the draw and in the mirror: Milos we found to be really weak on the draw in any aggro mirror – a 3/3 for 3 is not passable. Sear also seemed incredibly inefficient at dealing with opposing aggressive threats – The removal suite of Salvo/Torch/Permafrost felt more than enough. That being said, the mirror often came down to who was able to find and stick their Autotreads more often – it’s got great synergy with Houndmaster, and is great at mowing down all the X/1s that you see in the mirror. We couldn’t find a way to really combat that without compromising too much of the deck, so ultimately I ended up picking a different deck to hopefully give me better odds. The deck is still incredibly powerful – AlexandrosGray piloted it beautfiully and snagged a Community Point in the TNE/WSG charity event – but I don’t think it was the right call for the meta we expected. 

Now, in terms of Yetis, despite not picking up much from the newest set save Obstructive Flicker, the deck will always be a reasonable choice to play – the fluffy bois still slap really hard. However, as my Day 1 opponents will tell you, the deck seriously underperforms if you can’t find an ‘anthem’ effect, or if the only 1 you have gets yeeted from you. While I like to think that I’m a reasonable pilot of the archetype, even if I did make Day 2 with it, it didn’t feel like a deck that could take down the Open since with Open decklists, your opponent will have a much better idea of what exactly what hands and cards they can keep to easily dismantle your gameplan.  

Ilya: Now comes in two variants–the fluffy (but still painful) yeti variant, and the red houndmaster variant. So, which furballs do you like more? Blue yetis, or red doggos? Either way, if you were a fan of Nickelodeon Guts and want to try your hand at the AGGRO CRAG, you’ve got options.

Instinct Amphitheatre Combo (a.k.a. Crossbows): 

Decklist: 

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/PO4cA-ua5bU/aggrotheatre-alexfiero

Ilya: I took this deck without any reps on it and completely washed out. Nope, never ever again. In any case, I think the jury’s still out on this deck. If the pieces fall into place and it gets going, it can look amazing. On the other hand, between juggling influence in 3 factions (and double influence in a single faction) while needing to remain up-tempo, there’s a LOT that can (and did, in my case and zdch’s) go wrong here. That said, TBC definitely had some success with this deck, so there’s definitely something to be said here. In terms of “deck tech”, I think most of this list is already going to be fairly stock–Grenadin drone to trigger Amaruq, Houndmaster, Autotread, Initiate, Amphitheatre, Blazing salvo, and Torch are all pretty stock. As far as my team’s Grenadin/Throne Room package, I suppose one would have to inquire to Grgapm about this one, but between the pings, Rage Grafter’s berserk attack, and Grubbot drawing cards, this package may have a chance to do fantastic things if it gets going.

SG: So contrary to the position that most other teams adopted, we didn’t like having the combo pieces of Spellshaper and Amphitheatre in the maindeck at all – they were conditional, clunky, and felt like it bloated our 3 cost-slot far too much. AlexFiero came up with the amazing innovation to drop the Salvo market, play East Annex Smuggler as a reasonable aggressive unit, and play both combo pieces in the market. This means that you have a much stronger fair plan, but are still capable of combo-killing if need be. Though it’s an advantage that’s lost in open decklists, on ladder and on Day 1 of the Open, forcing your opponent to play around the combo can be a great way of gaining yourself ‘false tempo’ where your opponent has to hold up answers for the combo kill, and having a stronger ‘fair’ game plan means you can capitalise on that tempo more effectively. 

We also opted not to include the Equivocates everyone else was playing, which we felt was the right call: it does provide some tempo advantage, but you already have the 4 Pauses, and is just another Primal card. Primal we felt was the least crucial of the 3 factions to have, and so we wanted to minimise the number of main-deck Primal cards we played. Fast speed is nice to disrupt the unit-based combo decks like this and Talir Combo, but I’d always play Permafrost in such an archetype before even considering Equivocate. Yes, Equivocate doesn’t go into every Elysian deck, contrary to popular belief. AlexFiero ended up piloting the exact list that we put together for the Open to a Top 4 finish at the most recent TNE. 

My biggest problem with our list in hindsight is the Teacher of Humility – it’s an incredibly solid aggressive Time card, but that double-Time is incredibly difficult to play on T2, and requires us to severely warp our powerbase around it. I really liked the Powercell Innovation from The Barbarian Camp – it’s a solid 2/2 unit that draws you a card that you can use to get on the board faster or merely exchange into the market. Setting up the deck so that you only require a single influence of each faction seemed like a great call.

In terms of the list that CSB ended up bringing, I have a lot of reservation as to how good it actually is – you don’t have the Sodi’s Spellshaper anywhere in the deck, so you’re relying on a transformed Tormented Crown to combo off, which, if anyone has read the set review, I’m not a fan of. (Shameless plug for the set review.) [Editor’s note: Wow you are shamelessly plugging a lot of things today. -_-] I think it’s fine to have as a back-up option in case you don’t have access to Spellshaper, but the set-up cost of the card is quite high. 3 turns in a close game is a very long time. Grubbot is a solid option to accrue some late-game staying power in the aggressive mirrors, but Autotread being a Sentinel really hurts that plan. My other problem with the deck is the double Primal requirement for Throne Room – to me, this is still an aggro deck with a back-up combo plan, which is why the double Primal for what is one of your supporting factions seems really strange to me. 

For the same reason, I would not run Mother of Skies in the deck unless I was expecting a lot of aggro – it’s a very potent defensive card; 4 health will do that – but doesn’t pressure well at all, which feels like what these Instinct decks are trying to do. The CSB list feels a little disjointed as to whether it’s going for the Throne Room strategy or the Amphitheatre Combo strategy, which is why I don’t think it performed that well – the Top 64 performance by Grgapm feels more of a testament to his immense skill as a player rather than the quality of the deck. 

Argenport Midrange:

Ilya: Still nonexistent because Shadow can’t play a fair game for dear life, and Justice is similarly bad without Kira shenanigans. Unnerf Backbreaker and *maybe* this is a faction pair again? I have my sincere doubts, however. I also took OldRich’s Even AP list at the top of ladder and promptly went 1-6. It was a great meta call for slaughtering 1 and 2 drops, but if you don’t run into someone spamming them, your success is questionable. If you run into a control deck? Have fun with a hand full of bricked removal.

SG: OldRich managed to pilot an Argenport Midrange deck to the Finals of the most recent TNE, though I am skeptical of that particular build. I do however think the archetype still has some legs, and was 1 of the options we considered to combat the aggro-heavy meta: it has plenty of spot removal, Know Thy Enemy as a sweeper, and 6-cost and 8-cost Svetya to take over the late-game. Being Even does give you a little bit of extra staying power, but also limits you to a Broker or Grafter market, which I think pales a lot to the Hidden Road Smuggler one. Ultimately, we weren’t able to get the deck to a point where we’d be comfortable in the control matchups – without 8-cost Svetya, that match-up is a nightmare. Them having cheap negation spells for our massive Know Thy Enemies isn’t fantastic either. The Seditis we tried out helped a bit, but weren’t quite good enough, which is why we weren’t comfortable bringing the list to the Open. 

Menace Trove: 

Ilya: Mail showed us that this deck is FAR from dead. Krull smuggle-juggle with Kindling Carver, Trove playing Broken Contract/Sellsword for free (I mean it says it right there), Shrine, and Burglar are still going to blow people up. However, I do think it lost a little bit of a step, as Mail cut Whispering Wind, of all cards, in favor of copies of Shadowlands guide, Gustrider, and Jotun Hurler! Is this optimal? I’d love to hear Doc’s opinion on things. [Editor’s note: You know what to do, Doc28. :}] That said, I was trying an FPS Troveless variant the night before with Mother of Skies, Midnight Gale, Krull, and the usual fire package. It was feeling awkward the night before, and then TheBoxer brought up a shiftstoned.com/epc power chart and I could see it was just a disaster. FPPSS by turn 3 is a tall ask without Chants, though I still very much believe that Midnight Gale is super slept-on. Just don’t know the proper shell for it yet.

SG: Mail had been fine-tuning the deck since set release, so you know he knows what’s up. The biggest reason for dropping Wind for Hurler is that we expected to see a lot of Skycrag Aggro, and it ultimately made more sense to have Grenahen/Hurler as opposed to the Whispering Wind package. Whispering Wind into Krull into Merchant is a fantastic nut-draw, but feels very underwhelming if you’re not in a position to attack. Since we are running Hurler, it also made sense to swap to Primal Merchants since without WW/Krull shenanigans, you’re less likely to be Krull juggling – the Howling Peak Smuggler supported Snowballs and Display better, and also enabled us to run disruption out of the market for the occasional control decks. 

Crafty Occultist was a pretty big hit for the deck, and its removal from the list was also one of the reasons that Whispering Wind was underperforming – there were now less effective options to bring back in the early game. Mail had opted to jump back to Shadowlands Guide, which had been present in previous iterations of the Trove deck. Whilst it was weaker in the early game, it’s much more versatile in the late-game, particularly with the addition of Gustrider to filter away unplayable Know’ed cards. 

Our expected meta is also why he opted for the 4 Defile as opposed to the 2/2 split we’ve seen previously with Defile and Devour – being able to guarantee removing a Kira Ascending or a Wump, Party Starter off their board was extremely crucial for the matchups we expected to face. I think in a different meta you could argue otherwise. I really did try playing the deck, but kept horribly misplaying with it, so I decided not to bring it to the Open – this build has even more decision points than the previously established versions, but if you’re willing to put in the time to practise it, it does some serious work, as Mail has more than amply demonstrated. 

Skycrag Sling:

Ilya: If the aggro crag is a bit too intense for your taste, feel free to put on your best pizza chef impression and sling some cheese. Good deck is still, of course, good, even after its nerfs, which barely affected things IMO. Nevertheless, while its good draws can be fantastic, its not so good draws can have you drawing Hailstorm with a Bold Adventurer, or several copies of Belax without his enabler. With Throne moving away from summon spam shenanigans, I wonder if the Belax package can now be improved upon.

SG: Sling got hit reasonably hard in the 1st set of patch notes – it meant that serving up a squadron of chump blockers was a more viable option – but it was still an incredibly solid choice against most-midrange decks. Removal and card draw on a relic was still pretty good. Whilst the Suppressor/Belax package was potent when it came together, since the Suppressor part of the card felt less relevant against the decks we expected to see, it wasn’t as worthwhile to include, and as Ilya pointed out, pretty awkward if it didn’t come together. The fact that the Sling itself could now be transformed meant that we also expected to see a reasonable amount of counterplay in the form of Vision of Austerity from Kira and Evolving Olzial from Elysian, which made sticking the relic more difficult.

There are definitely still powerful tools that the deck can adopt – being a deck that’s still able to play the Crafty Lad is fantastic, and Obstructive Flicker is a fantastic modal tool, but the deck still felt overly reliant on having its signature relic in play. Obstructive Flicker meaning Impound wasn’t as clean of a play against Face Aegis, but there were still plenty of avenues to get rid of the relic. The removal of Overwhelm from 2 key units meant that the fair beat-down plan when that wasn’t an option felt a lot worse, and the counterplay available meant the deck just felt horribly inconsistent, at least for me. 

Combrei Relics: 

Ilya: This deck would be much better in a slower meta. When there’s a bunch of Fire aggro of various flavors jamming you, and Hooru Kira spamming aegis everywhere, this is just not a deck I want to be playing. If you want to be on Combrei, explore various aggro options, or even consider the Kira/Alessi variant that made it to day 2. However, that list, IMO, is not properly built–12 market access cards are just too much due to their low impact otherwise.

SG: I’m certainly inclined to agree with Ilya here, particularly in regards to it being not a fantastic meta choice – 4 sweepers seems a little risky for a control deck, and the build that parmele brought to the Top 16 doesn’t even pack the likes of Saber-Tooth Prideleader. I think that it was a fantastic choice to combat the Menace Trove meta from a while back, Equalize being a crucial card in that match-up, but the deck feels a little underwhelming right now.

Since it’s been brought up, there were Combrei disruption decklists present in swathes as a not-really effective countermeasure to the Discard deck – yes, I would like to draw 2 cards off of my Gustrider – but appeared to have faded away following that deck’s excision from the format with the 2nd patch. I think the Combrei Kira list could certainly have some legs – Alessi continues to remain a powerful card that can snowball incredibly easily, and to me, the Crescendo pairs really nicely with the Pearl Abbey Smuggler. I just don’t see the appeal of playing the Combrei variant over Hooru Kira. 

Hooru Kira: 

Decklist: 

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/0CjzGw-7IRY/honorary-soldier-kira

SG: The version that our team brought substituted the Envoys for Iron Priestess as an additional 2-drop that you wouldn’t mind playing out early, that was a hit for Dovid and that wouldn’t be too embarrassing at the expense of the longevity that Envoy provides. The deck was still a little soft to aggressive starts however, and we didn’t stumble upon the Stormhalt Knife tech that Phoenix ended up packing in their market. meverz and RobotJellyfish, the more confident Kira pilots on our team ended up bringing the more Soldier heavy version to the Open, though I deferred due to my inexperience with the deck. I do find it amusing how the Lord Steyer’s Tower nerf didn’t really hurt the deck too much – it just grabbed Velise, being a very potent aggressive-leaning 4 drop, and just kept moving on.

Ilya: Both the winner and the finalist of the open. An oldie but goodie that continues to roll with almost any metagame so long as there isn’t a massive combo presence. And with Reanimator being somewhat sidelined at the moment, Kira is once again near or at the top of the food chain because as it turns out, 1JJPP give your unit an aegis, draw a card, and you get an aegis is kind of good. And then there’s Intrusion…

Overall, if you’re going to be going into the midrange 1-for-1 slogfest, you better have a plan for Kira and her top-of-the-line protection spells unless you want to get buried in 2.5-for-1s that cost 1. That said, given that the next Throne Open is who knows how many months away, we’ll probably have a new set before then, so things might really shake up before then. But if you plan on participating in TNE Throne tourneys, well, Kira seems to be among the easy choices for a first-order-optimal deck to bring to any competition assuming you can pilot it competently.

Elysian Jarrall: 

Ilya: Another fantastic deck, but one that’s become much more painful to play in the wake of the cylix nerfs. That said, it always feels like there are so many possible lines to take, and most likely, you’re not taking the correct one. I don’t think there’s much to say about this archetype that hasn’t already been said, except for the fact that between Sling’s nerf to not protect itself against transformation and Mandatory Retirement being a card means that this archetype now has maindeckable answers to Sling, which is very, very cool indeed.

SG: This was certainly another deck that we expected to see decent representation on Day 2 with after the 2nd wave of nerfs – the changes to Sling meant that the matchup was now actually manageable, and Jarrall, Conjurer and W&M continue to remain ridiculously powerful cards. This was another case of no-one on our team being comfortable enough to pilot the deck compared to others who’ve been on the archetype for ages, but it’ll be interesting to see what is the best build that emerges. For instance: what the best negation spell split is, whether Mandatory Retirement should be in the main or market, and of course what exactly the market should be composed of. Plenty of options to explore that I expect much more competent pilots than I will be trying out. 

Purpose Reanimator: 

SG: As a result of the nerfs, there were 2 ways people went about Reanimating huge things. 1. Stick to the Vara/Azindel plan, and accept that getting a Vara and Azindel for 4 power is still pretty gosh darn good. 2. Diverge to the 8Scourge plan. As opposed to the Vara/Azindel/Black Sky Harbinger wombo-combo of before, you look to reanimate a bunch of big threats with passives that make it difficult for opponents to deal with. Of course, the downside of only reanimating 1 unit is that an aggressive deck can just go wide and ignore the spell-dampening aspect of the units. Permafrost doesn’t work against Valiant Guardian, but is still an incredibly clean answer to Scourge. 

Even prior to both sets of patches, I wasn’t terribly sold on Reanimator as being a Tier 1 deck – as with every other deck, it has extremely powerful draws, but the consistency of being able to flip the pieces into the yard that you needed to wasn’t fantastic. After the nerfs with the loss of Elding and Grenahen, this just exacerbated the problem even further.

Ilya: Between Autotread’s sudden surge in popularity (RIP Darkwater vines), Azindel’s nerf, Obstructive flicker being a very, very good card to play, and the loss of Elding for free 4/4s early game, Reanimator is once again back on the sidelines. There may be some merit to try and go for a Severin chain by reserving a dual power, but that seems mediocre in many instances compared to Azindel just running away with the game on Helicis, which can also bring an aggro plan to a standstill.

Even Feln Moon: 

Decklist: 

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/GAU4nec_1SU/why-do-you-keep-mooning-me

SG: Of course, I ended up playing just normal Even Feln, but another option that I considered was the Moon variant of Feln – if you want to thoroughly dumpster unit-based decks, particularly ones that are light on relic interaction, now this is certainly the way to go. Whilst it was probably a solid option against fairer midrange, the higher curve of the deck meant that I was still dying horribly to fast aggro draws, and the deck feels incredibly underwhelming if you can’t stick a Moon – much like Sling of the Chi, it’s a deck that really only ticks with its signature relic out. 

We felt that adding a 3rd faction for Touch of Battle was extraneous since you already have plenty of great options in just Feln alone. The deck had a reasonable control matchup since the Moon does provide some card advantage. Being unable to regulate which phase your Moon is in was the biggest knock to the deck – rarely do you have the power to drop a Moon and a unit in the same turn. The deck had some good draws and match-ups, but felt more gimmicky than good. 

Ilya: Waxing/Waning Moon is the new relic on the block to do busted things with, and unlike Sling of the chi, if you have some dorks out already, it suddenly turns them into deadly blockers to defend yourself with for playing a 4-cost do-nothing relic. I think the Knowledge variant, if the influence base can be figured out, is the superior variant, since you don’t just want to lose games because someone decided to run maindeck relic hate, or even so much as an Impound in the market. But in any case, for those that remember the Even Deadly Elysian lists of old, [Editor’s note: Of old? There’s a Proving Ground that says otherwise.] this is more of the same. Give deadly to cards that hit multiple enemies, then fieldwipe the opponent until they’re out of resources;. Meanwhile, control decks just lose to multiple Yetipults going off eventually at 9 power. The jury’s out on how good this deck actually is, but ultimately, the idea is similar to Sling–play units that kill enemies on summon, draw a bunch of cards, and win by default.

Time-based Midrange: 

SG: Prior to the second round of patch notes, Mono T was one of the options we were considering to fight the Feln Discard deluge in Throne – the Feln deck doesn’t have a lot of interactive pieces, and barring a truly bonkers draw, a Turn 3 Worldbearer Behemoth is still incredibly difficult for them to contend with. Jump cut to after the patch, and we found that with the rise of more interactive decks such as Elysian, various control decks and so forth, that barring a Valiant Guardian, we really weren’t happy with the set-up cost dropping a big unit early only for it to be cheaply removed. 

We tried some builds where we deferred to a fairer game plan with less 1 or 2 cost power dorks and more midrange threats like Sandstorm Titan and Pesky Seedling, but it just felt a little bit too fair compared to what everyone else was doing. Sling decks still bonk Midrange pretty hard. One other thing to note is that with the resurgence of Kira decks, and by proxy, Valkyrie Enforcer, it’s really difficult to justify Ixtol in the deck since it’s so cleanly answered; however, that also means that any ‘combo finish’ with Talir and Kairos is harder to pull off since you’re missing a certain density of well-statted units. Tocas is a great card, Valiant Guardian is a great card, but I don’t think that this archetype as a whole is incredibly well positioned right now. 

Ilya: Ramp to Valiant Guardian, because apparently, a semi-Scourge of Frosthome that has massive upside on attacking (very much unlike Scourge of Frosthome) is supposed to be a fun card (cue eyeroll). The part about this card packing protection against its own counterplay really rubs me the wrong way in light of Shadow Icaria’s nerf, and having your opponent flip a second one when they’re on death’s door to seal the game is a very frustrating experience to lose to. That said, the rest of the deck is…just kind of unchanged for the past X sets since Kairos came out. So ultimately, the question is: how scared are you of a fair 8-drop in throne, even one as ridiculous as Valiant Guardian? The correct answer seems to be: not very.

Final thoughts: 

Although Hooru Kira may have been the winning deck at both the Open and the most recent TNE, and I do concede that it’s a very strong deck and definitely an archetype that every deck should be prepared for, the deck is beatable, and shouldn’t be too oppressive in the meta to come. There are plenty of powerful options, and I believe the Throne metagame is in a healthy and balanced place right now.

If you’d like to find IlyaK to get more of his thoughts, you can find him over on Twitter @QuantStratTradR or on Reddit, probably posting a funny meme at u/IlyaK1986.  Additionally, find him in just about every single Eternal-related discord channel, and don’t hesitate to PM him for an opinion when he isn’t freely providing them.

As for me, you can hit me up on Twitter @stormguard798 or lurking in the FE, TEJ or The Misplay Discords. May your topdecks be fantastic: until next time. 😉 

P.S. The fundraiser campaign in support of the Samaritans of Singapore is still ongoing for the month of June; check out the details here!