Hi everyone, it’s stormguard798, and we’re back with another edition of the Weather Report. Now, it’s been a hot moment since I’ve participated in the Misplay Ladder, (has it only been 3 months?) having been caught up in prep for Eternal Opens, but with a lull in organized play until the end of July, it seemed like the perfect time to try and extract some prize merch from the Misplay. I am a sucker for…stuff.
Now, onto the special format for this month’s Misplay Ladder: everyone was tasked with putting together an Expedition decklist that cost 15k Shiftstone or less. If you hadn’t made Masters the previous season and needed to work your way back up to Gold 3, no problem, play whatever deck you wanted to reach Gold 3. But from then on, you had to play your budget deck and would try to make it to Masters. You could swap decks around as many times as you’d like, but had to stay within the 15k Shiftstone limit. There were 2 separate prizes to be won: getting to Masters in the fastest time and getting to Masters with the fewest games. Now, I didn’t end up winning either prize, but I still had a great time participating, and I hope the various flavour of aggro decks that I, and the rest of the participants, came up with will prove helpful to newer players, or just anyone hamstrung by shiftstone. 🙂
(Also, yes, it is possible to build combo and control decks on a budget, but powerful finishers and complicated combo cards tend to be at least rares, if not legendary, which means it wasn’t nearly as viable as aggro in competing with non-budget options.)
Hooru Soldiers:
Decklist:
https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/lBVKroKBy_g/the-misplay-ladder-june-hooru-soldiers
(To be clear: I did not consult the Misplay Budget Decks article before putting this list together; deedub and WW are both fantastic deck builders, but I wanted to see what I could do before seeking external help. And honestly? I kind of like what I came up with, at least Soldiers wise.)
Alrighty, so when tasked with building a budget deck, I went for the incredibly low-hanging fruit. It was pretty much touching the ground Genetor Dovid I is a promo, which means shiftstone-wise, they don’t even cost as much as a rare, and the card is so powerful that it sees play in many Hooru Kira list – in Throne – simply as a 4/4 for 2. So, of course, I set to build a Hooru Soldiers list and coast to victory on top of Dovid’s broad shoulders.
For the budget build, to fill in the missing rares and legendaries, I decided to put together a small-amplify package with Shock Troops, Maveloft Elite, Hardiness and Martial Efficiency. Whilst these cards have quite a low floor, given my general game plan of trying to clobber my opponent to death ASAP, I believed it appropriate to go for more aggressively slanted units alongside combat tricks rather than have a stronger late-game with more powerful but slower Soldiers. From what I’ve surmised from everyone else who participated in the Misplay Ladder, people had – by far and away – the most success with aggro decks. Trying to mow down your opponent before they can play their expensive, good cards seems pretty good to me. Similarly, I opted for a few copies of Seasoned Drillmaster for curve purposes, but also to facilitate the ‘get them dead ASAP’ plan, with the temporary stat boost helpful in pushing through damage.
As I mentioned in my set review previously, Velise is an absolute house of a card, especially for a deck looking to curve out 2-3-4 like mine. Hooru Soldiers in particular tends to have overstated units with all its 4/4s, so adding on evasion to them is extremely potent. (Side note: getting your units to have at least 4 health was very important, particularly back when most Feln decks were still running Cover From the Storm.) One card that significantly improved following the June 8/9 patch was Manacles – now that Elding was mostly out of the picture in Expedition, there weren’t too many answers to unstun your units at least in the main deck, and if you could stick the Greek God of Stunning, that’s a pretty massive tempo swing. There is, of course, plenty of counterplay nowadays, mostly out of the market – from Lay Siege to Xumuc Whisper to Kaleb’s Choice – but sometimes with budget decks, you’re just hoping to cheese your opponent a little and get a pinch lucky. 😛
For my last rare slot, I opted for the full playset of Argo’s Technique over the singleton Argo Ironthorn. I definitely understand the rationale behind wanting to include the Argo since it’s included in the pre-constructed deck, but Technique is such a good card, my goodness. I maybe could have put that Shiftstone elsewhere and perhaps run something like Obstructive Flicker for some maindeck negation spells, but the versatility of Technique is amazing – and is incredibly cheap to boot. This card proved particularly necessary following the rise of Feln in the Expedition meta and weaving our way through their wide array of removal spells and sweepers.
I ended up going 21-11 with the deck through Gold into Diamond – I often mulliganed quite aggressively for Dovid, and unless they have an answer pretty much immediately, the card did a lot of work in carrying me to victory. There were also many times I opted to go T1 Shock Troops into T2 Amplified Hardiness just to get that 4/4 attacking early. The biggest problem I ran into was the Soldier mirrors– getting hit by a Manacles was devastating, and I couldn’t include any effective counterplay against it on a budget. It’s still definitely a solid choice on a budget – just be prepared to get blown out very often.
Fully blinged out Hooru Soldiers:
https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/m1xYKKrc0Lw/soldier-on-my-friend
So if you’re intent on sticking just to Hooru for the upgrade, my teammates AlexandrosGray and AsheAcer piloted Hooru Soldiers to T8 finishes at TNE Summer Challenge #2. You get Daru Lee, which gives you a little more late-game scaling; Tarra, a fantastic card who buffs your units, makes counterplay awkward, and complements Velise very well; the Argo Ironthorns, of course, for breaking those board stalls; and Lay Siege for the mirror. Try stunning me now. You also have a market, should you wish, although some builds opt for the simple Invasive Species/factionless market instead. The option to just steamroll through your opponent is still definitely there, but it’s certainly less all in than the budget build and is more capable of coming back from behind or breaking through board stalls.
Tradition Soldiers:
https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/kkg8vTxOZ3o/adulting-soldiers-no-memes
However, if you’re looking to play the full suite of sweet Soldiers, above is [TIL] johnkkez’s list from the most recent Expedition TNE challenge, which I believe is a deck that they have been tuning since the Spring Season. For a budget build, I did not go Tradition for 2 reasons: 1. The power base can be quite taxing on the shiftstone for a budget build, and 2. All the good pay-offs for being in Time as well are rares or legendaries. But with budget no longer a consideration, Tradition Soldiers is the version you’ll see more often on ladder – and could actually be cheaper than the Hooru version due to the omission of Daru Lees in some iterations. You do sacrifice a little consistency being a 3F Aggro deck, but there’s definitely a worthwhile power level payoff.
Hifos is a ridiculously powerful card, and is incredibly flexible to boot. Teryius is also very powerful, particularly given the rise of Feln Control – having been on the receiving end of Teryius, that Aegis is quite annoying and the unit is difficult to contest on-board thanks to Valor. These, to me, are the biggest reasons to be Tradition over Hooru as these are both ridiculous threats. Having an on-‘tribe’ Grafter is nice, and admittedly, charging Argos are terrifying, but isn’t a good enough reason alone to be in Tradition. Overall I think the deck is a fantastic mix of aggression and disruption, and if you plan to be playing any Expedition in the near future, whatever you end up packing, you should certainly have a gameplan to combat Tradition Soldiers.
Skycrag Aggro:
Decklist:
https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/DiPMRiB1mas/the-misplay-ladder-june-skycrag-aggro
Around the middle of June, a spicy new promo got released in the form of Gemblazer Cannon, a fantastic card to play in conjunction with any Berserk unit. In addition, we just finished up a Throne Open which highlighted the strength of D’Angolo Houndmaster and Prowling Amaruq, so I wondered if we could slap together a Skycrag Aggro list much like what we put together for Throne. (Shameless plug for my latest tournament report: check that out!) As it turns out, those good cards are still very good, regardless of format, so I ended up switching to Skycrag for the rest of my run.
The build above is 99% WW’s build, which he posted in the Misplay Discord; I imagine he’ll be writing about it shortly, so I’m mostly going to talk about my initial build. I started with Barricade Basher, but 1 game in, I realized that the card is awful. In a meta dominated by Permafrost and Defile, you 2-for-1 yourself incredibly often. I also initially included 4 of Velise in the deck, anticipating that, as the aggressive deck, you’d often be able to trigger Velise. However, our units need a lot more help than most of the Soldiers units do stats-wise, which means the Overwhelm on units ended up being underwhelming. On top of that, Velise was a 4 drop with a double Primal influence requirement, which means it was often very hard to cast her since this build is even lower to the ground than Soldiers. Sometimes you need to slay the sacred cows, other times you need to slay the sacred bears, and as much as I love Velise as a card, this was not the right place for it.
After playing WW’s version of the deck with Rage Grafter, I really appreciated the ability to ‘steal’ some wins from more generically powerful decks with the combination of Berserk, evasion and Gemblazer Cannon as opposed to the market-less version I was initially playing. Having a market I think is debatable even on a budget – you still need whatever market access you play to support your primary gameplan, which is why Shorthopper markets are currently so popular. On a budget, you can afford to play 1-of powerful rares in the market, but with market access being as expensive as it is and most budget decks leaning aggressive, it’s still quite the pricey to pay. That being said, Berserk fits perfectly with what we’re trying to do, and I’m super glad WW was able to see it for my benefit. :PP
I was unsure about Ticking Grenadin in the list initially, but after playing the deck, with the way games play out, the ‘Torch’ that the Grenadin provides to the face usually translates to more damage dealt throughout the game than Raging Jackal considering how quickly the games go. Side note: Autotreading your own Ticking Grenadin is a **very** nice trick. Throughout my run, I only played out a Cyber Hound once – it’s mostly there as an extra piece of cardboard to manipulate with the market/Autotread, but it does its purpose well enough since we have plenty of cheap Grenadins in the deck. Blitz Stone is the card that I was most surprisingly impressed by – by far; it’s a strong Limited card, but being able to trigger ‘tandem attacking’ (A WW trademarked term) out of nowhere with Blitz Stone/Gleaming Grenadin is a lot of damage out of nowhere.
The original list had 1 Invasive Species main to cost exactly 15,000 Shiftstone, but I opted to go for a suite of commons and uncommons instead since I felt that would provide a little more consistent value, going for 2 Runes, maindeck Gloves, and Kaleb’s Choice in the market. Even without Dovid to find them, the tempo of removing a key blocker with Chill can still come in fairly handy in the right spot when we’re flooding out a little. Manacles and board wipes are naturally very potent against our deck, which is why I felt having access to Kaleb’s Choice in the market was crucial. My massive unit isn’t stunned anymore. :} I have been incredibly impressed by Gloves as a card in this deck: this build can empty out its hand rather quickly, so the fate is more often than not a delayed draw trigger. While it is less immediately impactful than a card like Scythe Slash, as a weapon, it provides a more consistent source of damage. As was the philosophy with the TJL Skycrag Aggro deck, weapons allow you to go tall for ‘tandem attacking’ rather than go wide, and the same concept applies here.
I went 35-16 with the Skycrag Aggro deck through Diamond into Masters – I did not expect this deck to perform this well at all, but I guess whacking people really hard very quickly and catching them off guard when they play greedily or stumble works is incredibly effective. Side note: For some reason, aggro gets a really bad rap for being ‘easy to play’, and I’ve definitely gotten some salty messages from opponents after clocking them for 20+ damage in the air with a Berserk Shorthopper. Though it feels as if some games you just lose to aggro opponents completely running you over, more often than not, you get close but are stalled out before being able to finish them off, and there’s a lot of nuance and strategy to be able to eke out those last few points of damage. I consider aggro decks some of the hardest decks to play well in general because of how many decision points you have starting from Turn 1.
Fully blinged-out Skycrag Aggro:
https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/LdTxD2WgddE/vroom-vroom-classic-but-in-expedition
For the budgetless version, as per WW’s suggestion, we have the 3 Invasive Species alongside the 1 in the market for a little more resilience to when they get wiped. (If your opponent spends a Permafrost on this, you’re probably doing just fine.) We’re replacing the Blitz Stones with Flash Fries from campaigns – it’s the best available 2 cost removal spell, although admittedly, Charge is pretty nice. With a lower Grenadin count now and just not being a fantastic card in general, we’re ditching the Cyber Hounds for 1 of my pet cards – Sanity Scorcher. I just think the Double Damage scales really well with the weapons and/or Berserk, and that Mindfire is a massive tempo swing if you can fire that off, particularly if the meta continues to remain as midrange soup. (You did this, spiffirific. You did this. XD) As we’ve seen from Amphitheatre, Mindfire is a really strong card to play when you’re ahead. The Scorcher also scales nicely into the late-game for when you get a little flooded.
At this point, you’re probably screaming at me because I’m missing one of the sacred pillars of the format: The Crafty Lad. I’ve tried the Occultist in a handful of games, but the influence requirement proved to be rather tricky to pull off in an Expedition Aggro deck, and was only helpful if you managed to give it flying, which was tricky to pull off in this deck. It does give you a little sustain against some of the midrange decks, but frankly, if you’ve gotten to that point in the game, things are not looking good for you. 😛 All in all, the upgrades for this deck aren’t particularly expensive at all; if you substituted the Flash Fries for Vicious Overgrowths or just kept the Blitz Stone, it’s just a handful of rares with no campaign cards, and as we’ve demonstrated, still slaps like an absolute truck.
If you’re looking for a Skycrag Aggro deck that looks a little different, aReNGee managed to make Top 8 with a Skycrag Aggro Tandem list, looking to go a little further up the curve with much more removal, Hidden Crusader and Velise. It certainly performed fine for them in the tournament, but I think going for a slower approach isn’t as effective into the Menace Midrange Soup decks or the Tradition Soldiers decks I’ve been seeing a lot of (I’m sure we’ll see the stats when The Misplay makes their latest meta report.) since the unit removal isn’t nearly as effective against them. There also appears to be some kind of Soldier subtheme, but not any pay-offs for having Soldier synergy, unlike in the Honor variants. As such, I prefer the more all-in, low-to-the-ground variant to get under these midrange decks, at least for now.
Final thoughts:
As the age-old adage goes, you can make it to Masters with literally any deck, and whilst this isn’t just any deck, I think the results of this competition demonstrated that there are certainly many interesting archetypes that one could put together on a budget – and do reasonably well with. As someone who’s been playing the game since Omens of the Past (Set 2), budget considerations haven’t been a concern for me for a while. It was a really interesting exercise to once again put myself in the shoes of a newer player, and as is yet another adage, restriction breeds creativity, and I’m pleasantly surprised by what everyone came up with.
Plus, with every single game mattering, I was forced to actually play well for a change on ladder instead of simultaneously eating snacks and watching streams while doing so. The abject horror. As it turns out, I can play well on occasion if I try – who’d have thought? Congrats to deedub for taking home fastest time, and to WW for taking home fewest games. Thank you to the Misplay for running a great competition, and I’m super excited to see what they come up with next. The win is still very far out of my reach, but I will do my best to make them ship my prize across the globe and get into arguments with the postal service in that process. Someday, Storm. Someday. 😛
If you would like to hear more of my semi-reasoned opinions elsewhere, you can find me over on Twitter @stormguard798, or lurking in the TEJ, The Misplay or FE Discords. And now that I’ve shown my face and voice all over the internet, I will also happily accept compliments on how awesome I am just in general. Until next time. 😉
Careful Considerations - Ramblings of an Aspiring Azorius Lawmage 