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Piloting Diaries #1 – TNE Summer Challenge #12

As someone unbelievably fed up with present Expedition and the midrange slog that it has devolved into, I’ve decided to leave all the testing to my teammates (sorry not sorry :P) and instead focus on a little self improvement.

A while ago, [TIL] camomilk and [FE] Sunyveil started the piloting club in the Friends of Eternal server. You would post a gameplay video of yours and allow others to critique it. For starters, OBS hates me. Plus, for anyone who has ever spectated me, you know that my gameplay is truly embarrassing. I instead thought it’d be better to look at how good players play through the TNE VODs. Though this is mostly for my personal consumption, I figured I’d share it, and have the internet fight me on many things. That never goes wrong…right?

Here is the link to the playlist to the event: (Courtesy of Telemokos)

(I elected not to review every single round because…I didn’t want to. Duh. I picked some matchups that I thought could be interesting/I hadn’t seen before and took a look.)

Round 4: AsheAcer v AlexFiero

I’ve decided to kick things off with 2 decks and 2 players I know pretty well, just to make things easier for me. I think the matchup could go either way: this version of Argenport doesn’t have Defiance nor Annihilate, which could make removing Stonescar’s early threats a little bit trickier. On the other hand, Stonescar will be priced into running into a Harsh Rule before the Varas and Rolants get set-up, so a well-timed sweeper could really make all the difference.

Game 1:

0:45 – I don’t think you run out ChaCha here on AA’s part, and instead go with Cen Wastes Smuggler, probably for Choice. If they play Rolant on 4, great, you kill it. If they KTE or single-target removal, you’re still in pretty good shape. If you knew you could hit undepleted power next turn, and thus go Smuggler into Edict while buffing ChaCha, I think it’d be a different store since you’re guaranteed to clear their blocker. If you’re unsure if you can buff the ChaCha, however, then the Smuggler with Decay is actually likely to be a better attacker.

1:38 – Given the power troubles, I don’t think there’s much AA could have done here besides a ‘make them have it’ situation with the board wipe.

1:51 – I think I would have shot 2 Reapers. Right now, you’re in a pretty bad spot; probably the best way for you to win is chain Highwaymen and push through as such. You can’t take advantage of the Trove as much right now because you’re power strapped and AP just has a much stronger late-game than you. I sort of see the reasoning behind going Jekk, Jekk, pray for Torch, but considering that your odds of drawing a big charging unit are better than your odds of picking up a Torch, I think I’d try to clear the blockers.

I also think pitching Edict is rather strange. If they drop a Sediti now, how on earth do you plan on answering that? I would have pitched 2nd Jekk.

2:21 – Yeah, the market options for AF here are pretty tragic to deal with SS. I do think there’s an argument for taking Orene here though, since you’re clearly planning on playing Massive Greatsword next turn anyhow, though it might be a little risky if you die to burn.

2:36 – Wow. Okay, I guess I just eat my words. I do think Greatsword in a moment is going to render that moot, however.

3:00 – I think it’s a mistake to go for the bigger Jekk here, because you’re dead to double Torch. It’s not as if the 4/5 Jekk has a better way of getting through the deadly Reapers, and all your spot removal treats them for all intentions the same.

4:24 – Although a little unintuitive at 1st glance, I think this makes sense. Knowing the list, only Annihilate is an option to get rid of the Mandevilla, and even if there’s a Buhton waiting in hand, at best it kills the Reaper and trades with Mandevilla, gaining the life. Given the potential for a Smuggler into Menace kill from this position, considering all the Troves AF has cashed in, I believe they have correctly identified bolstering their lifetotal is more important than taking Highwayman off the board.

4:39 – Ha.

5:17 – Yep. Between the TWO Heirlooms and the Research Lab with no way to remove this Mandevilla in sight, that’s a very fair scoop. AP doesn’t play enough spells to be knocked out by Menace from that range.

Game 2:

8:09 – ABSOLUTELY NOT. AA cannot keep that hand, even on the play I think. The risk of not ever finding a threat is way too high. Even if you do, you’re up against AP. Odds of them finding a removal spell for said threat, at least the initial one, are very high. Ashe is being a buffoon. (Still love you though Ashe. <3)

8:49 – I think there’s an argument to be for taking the Sinister Rumors here; after all, with the Rumors, they can just buyback whatever you made them discard. At least here you’re taking away that option. Besides, you have a removal spell in hand, so you’re at least capable of answering 1 threat.

9:02 – Ditto here. Alchemist is in the unique position of being small enough to be plucked off by Highwayman if you draw it, and you have 4 of them. It’s annoying, but I still think you take Rumors.

9:29 – I sort of understand why you’d want to clear the Enforcer with Annihilate so that your charge units can come barrelling through, but given the likes of Sediti and Mandevilla which you will really struggle to deal with without Annihilate, coupled with the fact you have the Torch in hand, I think on balance of probabilities, you’re more likely to draw into a unit where you should have just saved the Torch for Enforcer instead. (Including Jekk, since you have a Sigil in hand, and can pick up the double damage clause.)

10:17 – I agree with Harsh Rule here. I think if I were AF in this seat, and I saw AA fire an Annihilate on an Enforcer, I would read them as having another Annihilate in hand, which means my Sediti is unlikely to serve as an effective blocker.

(Subsequently, you’re forced to just ‘make them have it’ since the alternatives are atrocious, which I think is fine.)

11:29 – I think I understand AA’s reasoning for wanting to save the Open Contract for Rolant, since at this point, it’s quite possible for AF to go Rolant + removal spell, which would make life very difficult for AA. I think the problem with that is they’ll still get the Reaper out of it since Open Contract is slow, so that might not be worth playing around.

11:32 – I think AF should have spent Rumors either to take out Skullbreaker or buyback Vara – either way, I don’t think it’s worth representing Defile for the Skullbreaker. I think taking out Skullbreaker here is correct, though I think both above lines are defensible – waiting to get extra mileage out of your KTEs seems a little greedy, however.

12:40 – Buying back the Vara now makes more sense, since you know AA has nothing in hand to disrupt, and 1 hit with this souped-up Vara should pretty much be GG on Stonescar’s part.

Round 5: duocat v OldRich

Ok, so now we get to 2 decks I’m pretty unfamiliar with, although given how long they’ve been popular for, I really should. Honestly, it feels like it will boil down to how many Bubble Shields OldRich can find. That card is completely devastating in this matchup.

Game 1:

0:27 – A pretty slow hand out of both sides, although slightly better from DC’s side given the 2 Crests. OldRich really needs to rip an earlier play in the next 2 turns to start applying pressure.

1:24 – I’m very surprised Duocat played the Amber Lock there and holding up Defiance as opposed to the Ancestral Oasis. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to avoid walking into an Etchings into Vision from OldRich’s side, but given the types of threats the Kira deck can have, an Icaria that has already expended her ultimate wouldn’t be what I’m looking to take out with my Defiance. Besides, even if OldRich had the Etchings, there’s a decent chance he’d want to save it for the likes of Gemstone or Ageworn Vestige. On the other hand, since you missed your power drop here, you really need the extra power from Oasis next turn so that you can keep developing.

1:57 – Huh. Playing the Velise there is very interesting to me, given you had no way of triggering her ability next turn. I get not wanting to expose your Kira to say, an SRS, but the odds of that are so minimal. Given that you can see that they’re strapped on power, I definitely see a case for playing Kira, Etchings and going for either Palace or Vision here. (more likely Palace.)

2:59 – I like that play from OldRich a lot, being very cognisant that Duocat is strapped for power – which the Combrei Relics deck is very dependent on – and cutting that out from under him. My contention here is that I’d put away Valkyrie Enforcer instead of the Sigil. You have a Kira on board, you have a Kira in hand – you’re going to be drawing a lot of cards, so you want to make sure A. You have the power to use it, and B. You can get to 8J and start really doing some damage.

4:00 – Again, I feel like OldRich is overvaluing the Valkyrie Enforcers here, pitching the Huntress instead of a 2nd Enforcer. Enforcer is really only effective against the Dianas in the matchup – in other instances, they go too wide or too big. Playing the 2nd Kira is fine, but I think keeping the Huntress to plunder away the other Enforcer could be a reasonable line. Particularly with a Velise already on board, you’re going to start doing some damage very quickly if you can get the Kira buffs up and running.

5:34 – This is going to sound bananas, but hear me out. Play Kira instead of Steyer’s Eyes, and Valkyrie Enforcer. I absolutely concede that you won’t be able to hold up protection, and if Duocat Equalizes you, you’re in a pretty bad spot. I don’t think you can afford to play around that. If Duocat suspected you had Bubble Shield, you would have clearly played it the previous turn, so unless that was your draw for the turn, you clearly don’t. I get wanting to protect your Kira, but given Duocat’s removal for it is Defiance/Ageworn Vestige, I think lining up a lot of damage next turn between Steyer’s Eyes and marketing for Trickshot Ruffian seems very viable. On top of that, you’re plopping the buff on a unit with Revenge, which might prove problematic for a deck like Combrei Relics to deal with. The risk of them having another SRS is certainly there, but unlikely enough that you don’t have to justify playing so safely.

(Look, I think it’s easy to say in hindsight, oh look they had Equalize, boohoo, clearly you shouldn’t have run out a Kira, but given that you had enough power and the Steyer’s Eyes as a way to trigger Kira and get some pretty big damage in, I think it’s stranger to not acknowledge that.)

6:36 – I think I would play Diana here over the 2nd Perilous Research – you’ve already played 1 copy, so if you hit an Amber Lock or Pillar of Progress, you’d be able to play that. Barring another Valkyrie Enforcer, you’ll also be able to block. Given that you currently control 1 relic and don’t have any more in hand, I’d be skeptical on the weight placed on the value of these Alarming Findings, particularly given you already have 1 in hand. Playing the 2nd Research just puts you even further behind.

The counterargument here is that it makes your subsequent Equalizes potentially worse, and Kira as a deck is notorious for packing not enough removal maindeck, so even Silenced your Diana will likely stick around. You can also take an extra card out of their hand with Equalize if you hit power, which, now that they’re running on fumes, is also nice.

6:54 – Wholeheartedly agree with the line here, and not running out your other Kiras, since you can drop Palace, and follow that up with an Aegis protected Kira.

7:28 – I think OldRich punted here by not running out Palace, presumably playing Wisdom, before dropping Kira and Painting (or another depleted power should they draw 1.) Duocat has already played 2 Equalizes, so the odds that they go after your hand are minimal. Having Aegis on Kira to block SRS or Defiance is more important than the single card for Withstand. I think the consideration would be different if OldRich had a unit to buff with the Kira attack next turn since Sack the City could really close things out against duocat.

Game 2:

10:55 – I am uncertain as to whether this hand is too slow against Kira, particularly with no ramp elements. I do think that between the Crest and Diana, duocat should have fewer power issues than last-game, but I would consider firing off a Builder’s Decree on Turn 2 without amplifying just to slow them down a notch. Seems like a fine keep from OldRich’s side.

11:38 – I understand the rationale for ditching Justice Etchings here, but given you have a Kira in hand, I think there’s also a reasonable argument for keeping it, and pitching Velise instead. Both Vision and Palace can be quite powerful in this matchup, and while Velise is good, it’s also very contingent on Duocat not having a SRS on Turn 5.

12:29 – Even if duocat thinks that OldRich pitched market access because he has more in hand, I do still think it’s correct to play the Builder’s Decree here and amplify once. Even if they have a Bubble Shield in response, you still get the 5/5. Them going Etchings into B2J/Pristine Light isn’t the worst thing since they won’t have it down the line. Plus, with the Seat, you can still play Speaking Circle the next turn, and if they can’t remove the Sentinel, then you have a bonus blocker.

12:50 – I think that’s a very questionable attack from OldRich – to avoid losing your Kira, you’re forced into playing Intrusion, which means duocat knows you have no protection for any of your units. If they had a SRS, it would be absolutely devastating.

On top of that, as sacrilegious as it sounds, I think I pitch my THIRD Kira here. Getting to that 6J is pretty crucial, and after this attack, you’re left with the single Levitate, so you’re going to need to get pretty lucky to chain enough spells for all 3 Kiras.

13:25 – Oof, that is a pretty terrible agenda from Speaking Circle. I would be pretty tempted to fire off the Enter the Monastery here, instead of the Silence on the Kira. Here’s why: your Speaking Circle is toast anyway, given your agenda. No 2 ways about it. You also have a 2nd one in hand, so it’s not the most awful thing if your 1st one goes down. You also know they probably don’t have Bubble Shield in hand, otherwise OldRich would be more hesitant to go shields down. Consequently, I think you want to set yourself up to clear the board with Equalise the next turn, and accrue resources this turn.

14:39 – This feels like a misclick? Shen-Ra Speaks is the only way Duocat has to silence Icaria, and Hooru Kira doesn’t run ways to recur units from the void anyway. The 4/3 Endurance flier just seems better than the 2/2 flier in all regards.

15:11 – I would potentially hold the Kira in hand so that it can naturally trigger Aegis, particularly since you don’t have Intrusion in hand. Next turn, you might have enough power to drop both Palace and Kira in the same turn, which will be quite strong. That being said, I also understand OldRich’s line: if you can pick up 8J next turn, those are going to be some massive units coming Duocat’s way.

15:51 – I’m unsure if dropping Palace here and going for Withstand right off the bat here is correct. I think your primary goal here is to find your 8th Justice influence because it turns both of your Kiras online. To that effect, I think it would be correct to Levitate first to see more cards. If you can’t find power there, then you can Plunder a Justice card with Huntress to find power. If you do, then you can drop the Palace and swing in with massive Kiras.

I think OldRich got lucky finding the Hooru Painting here. If he hadn’t, then he wouldn’t have had good attacks, giving Duocat some much needed breathing room. (Granted, finding at least 1 power is pretty likely, but you never know.)\

Finals: r3as0n v gozuuu

I think that r3as0n is favoured in this matchup for 1 simple reason: gozuuu has no maindeck Annihilates, which is your most efficient answer to the huge monsters that Xenan plans on churning out. The 2 of maindeck Pristine Light can be quite tricky for r3as0n to play around, but most games their units are just going to outclass gozuuu’s 1 for 1.

Game 1:

0:41 – The fabled sort of T1 Sinister Rumors on its 3rd mode. In open decklists, I think the move is far more defensible, given that Might is really the only way that Xenan has of gaining card advantage. I would never do such a thing against a non-combo deck, but I see the appeal.

0:58 – This is how you know gozuuu is a Tier 1 player – I surmise a lot of people wouldn’t want to trade 1 for 1 here with a sweeper. Your deck is much better at dealing with cheap things than expensive ones, so you want to delay r3as0n from dropping their big threats as much as possible.

1:08 – I think I would be tempted to play Merchant here, finding Xenan Temple or Burden. If they play a threat you need to deal with, then you can just play your market card on a later turn. There is also no removal that deals with Merchant, but no Tocas, in gozuuu’s deck. This way, you open yourself to the possibility of dropping a difficult to deal with threat next turn.

2:01 – While I think that it’s unlikely that gozuuu will be able to clear both units, I would put away the Etchings instead of the Crest to guarantee that I can play Burden next turn.

2:33 – Again, I think r3as0n is playing maybe a little bit too greedily. I would put away the Merchant with the Time Etchings. Knowing that gozuuu has no way of dealing with the Burden, it means that you can always rely on Burden to convert your extra power into cards. This means I would always be inclined to keep hitting my power drops here.

Game 2:

5:35 – I am shocked that gozuuu kept this hand because you have a lot of reactive elements. As we saw the last game, once r3as0n is able to drop Burden, you’re in a really bad spot. You also have no way of dealing with bigger threats in hand. I think the hand is fine to keep say, against someone random on ladder, but given the known threat I think you have to mulligan for something better.

6:47 – This Exploit decision is kind of tricky. I think it definitely falls between the Merchant and the Stranger. Stranger is more powerful and you don’t have a way to deal with it right now, but it’s also a lot of turns away, and you might draw into something by then. I think taking the Merchant would be correct here, because of the Time Etchings. Even if you silence with Enforcer, it’s still a Time unit you can use in conjunction with Etchings to pull Gnash. By taking Merchant, you’re also making it harder for them to play the Etchings and Stranger.

(Not that we’d have known, but WOW that panned out poorly when r3as0n rips another Grodov’s Stranger off the top.)

7:11 – Impressive read that gozuuu has Valkyrie Enforcer. I’m not going to lie, I would have absolutely run my Merchant into the Valk. >.<

8:01 – Well, that’s game. gozuuu has not been able to apply any pressure this game, and their draw has turned out horribly against the bigger units.

…

That’s it for this Diary Entry. Do you disagree with my rather dubious lines? Probably. If so, @ me in General chat so that we can all learn together. When you’re ready to articulate my questionable play, find me lurking in The Misplay, Friends of Eternal or Team Eternal Journey Discords. Until next time. 😉

Friends of Eternal:

The Misplay:

Eternal Journey:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/g9WY143JX08/storms-unhealthy-obsession-with-furries-and-balls

Storm and AlexFiero’s Weather Report – Eternal Open: Hour of Glass (Throne)

Disclaimer: This piece of content is rated M, for mature audiences, and is DSFWP. (Dubiously safe for work, probably.) Do not proceed if you’re uncomfortable with such content.

Hi all, it’s AlexFiero here, and welcome to the latest Weather Report. (sorry Storm, I’m stealing your intro. :P) You might know me for being the second most handsome member of Team Eternal Journey (“TEJ”), after Jedi of course. Others may know me from my runs in the Tuesday Night Eternal tournaments, or a few good performances in the early Eternal Opens (“Open”) of the year. Others of you may have no idea who I am, so just know that I’m Stormguard’s teammate and play far too many bad control decks. [SG: ‘Bad’ control decks might be a little critical. Shall we say…of dubious origin? :PPP]

First of all, you’re the 3rd most handsome member of TEJ – at best. Everyone simps for Johnholio. Secondly, you could never steal my thunder – I am literally the Storm. In any case, we’re back! After the biggest set of balance changes that I’ve encountered in Eternal, the format has been well and truly shaken up. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that we were all eagerly anticipating what would shake out of this Open. After a week of relentless testing, TEJ had, well, an answer.

STORMGUARD’S DECK:

Decklist:

As 1 of the few Tier 1 decks from the previous patch that didn’t get touched, Elysian Jarrall (“Ely”) seemed like an obvious starting point. Prior to the patch, I had spent about a month practicing it on ladder, learning the lines, the ins and outs of the deck in case I ever wanted to play it for a tournament. When the patch came around, I tried out a deluge of different options before deciding that nothing felt quite as good in my hands as Ely, so that’s what I went with. Granted, from the rest of my team alone, I should have suspected Stonescar would be pretty popular. (We’ll get to that in a hot 2nd) Though that’s a rough matchup for Ely, especially without market Permafrost, I didn’t want to overpredict anything, and felt Ely would be good in a still volatile metagame.

AF: I would have considered Elysian a good choice going into the ECQ. With no cards impacted by the patch, it seemed like the ideal starting point to attack the format and is likely what I would have taken if I had more practice with the deck. A strong tempo gameplan backed up by cheap but powerful threats in Master Conjurer, Jarral and Wump is very effective into a slow, value-focused metagame. Unfortunately, that is not what we ended up with at the ECQ, so I think I made the right choice not bringing Elysian (even if I didn’t do any better with what I did end up taking).

The list itself is incredibly stock, so I’ll just be briefly going over where the list may differ:

4 Obstructive Flicker – Going into this, I expected to see a fair number of Argenport Midrange and Even Xenan decks. These decks will be packing Eremot’s Designs and Know Thy Enemy, which are pretty good against my Party Pairs. Besides these cheaper, more conditional sweepers, Flicker is also very effective against any unconditional sweepers out of Combrei Relics or Garden Control. Being 1 cost, it’s very cheap and easy to hold up, so I felt the deck certainly warranted the full playset.
The Derry Cathain/Twilight Hunt package – I unfortunately don’t remember who I blatantly stole the idea from on ladder, but it was interesting as a cheap spell for a little more interaction in the deck. Wump is also a Dinosaur, so it, like Derry, benefits from the Hunt buff. However, apart from Wump, the deck doesn’t have a lot of well-statted units. While trying the card out, it just kept underperforming for me. Derry also provides a wee bit of disruption, but I don’t want to pay power for my units to be good. Gross. How gauche is that?
Kehanya, Skilled Caster – A recent addition from the latest campaign, I think Kehanya could be quite powerful in the ‘right’ metagame of Skycrag Aggro and Hooru Kira. Silence your Houndmasters or Kiras, bop your Tower, and so forth. That being said, it really doesn’t do too much in any other matchup – it pops Face Aegis (“Faegis”) at most. Hence I was comfortable leaving it on the sidelines this tournament.
Accelerated Evolution (“AE”) – Look, Storm likes flying bears. He just does. In any case, this is probably 1 of my favourite finishers, and I do like having access to it somewhere in the deck. It is unfortunately mediocre in the early-game, and with 8 market access, it might not quite do enough to warrant a market slot. The card nevertheless closes the game out in short order in many spots. Flying Party Pairs!
Only 2 Learned Imitators/main deck Mirror Image – I expect a LOT of people to contest me on this point. I think Imitator is a fine card, particularly in Keelo decks with Triumphant Stranger. I think using the card in a fairer way is rather mediocre. It’s really a card that you want when you’re already ahead in the late-game. For instance, when there are already 4 Snowballs, or if you already have 6P influence. Consequently, it feels like a win-more card. If I’m looking for a win-more card, then I think Mirror Image makes more sense – yes, you need to have something on board to copy, but if you’re unable to protect your on-board threat through your assortment of cheap spells, then you’re already in a terrible spot. 4 Learned Imitators was a bit too much. Drawing multiple copies in the early game is tragically awkward, but 2 felt like a good middle ground.
No Sling, yes Olzial – Olzial was a staple of the Elysian market back when Sling or Shrine was a concern, just to very quickly knock out the troublesome relic before cleaning up the Soldier with a Snowball or Flicker. Nowadays, aforementioned relics are less of a concern, but it still stands alone pretty well as an individual threat. Not to say that knocking out a relic or site with this doesn’t happen anymore – bye, Speaking Circle – but Olzial being a 5/3 Regen Flier is still quite a pain to deal with.

I ended up going 13-15 with the deck in the Open, which is pretty tragic considering I had 2 byes. Despite that, having played it on ladder since the Open, the deck still continues to perform very well for me despite the aberrant Open performance across quite a few players that I respect a lot. (Including myself, of course. I respect me a great deal.) I have since swapped out the market AE for Permafrost, shoved a single copy of AE in the maindeck, and dropped a Mandatory Retirement. Granted, some hands will just fold to disruption, but what else is Exploit for but to punish greedy keeps and keep us honest? 😛

My personal theory is this – as decks keep trying to get more and more midrangey to go over the top of Base-Shadow Stonescar with the likes of Xenan Mid or Combrei Relics, it opens up an opportunity for tempo-oriented decks to snag a win from underneath them. As we saw in the Summer Invitational, JNL’s Skycraggro deck was able to accomplish just that.

Despite that, I don’t think that Skycraggro is necessarily unbeatable or overpowered – indeed, there are many ways to clear out a legion of X/1s in Throne. I believe JNL simply made a very potent meta call for that particular tournament. But with these balances and checks that every deck has for each other coupled with the recent debatably necessary nerfs, I think that Throne looks to be in a very good place moving forward.

ALEXFIERO’S DECK:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/S_c5wmwshlk/4-faction-control

When the balance patch happened, all my dreams of memeing my opponents with Turbofog went out the window. [SG: And we thank the DWD Overlords for preserving AlexFiero’s – and people in Day 1’s – sanity.] However, when I took a closer look at the patch notes, I realised that Garden of Omens had not received a nerf, but rather a change – and it so happened to make Kira and Elysian, two matchups that had traditionally been difficult for control decks, significantly better. No longer would you have to live in fear of Bubble Shields, or Dazzles, or Obstructive Flickers ruining your plans. And so, while the rest of my team decided to work on Stonescar Aggro, I set about trying to find the best Garden deck I could (along with help from SG himself).

The first version we went to was a traditional Honor list, but we found that with Transpose being nuked from orbit, we didn’t have a reliable way to get Face Aegis when we needed it – particularly with so many decks running Silverblade Menace. Of course, we could have run Just Desserts as an answer to the dreaded control-killer, but we weren’t convinced at the time that it was enough. Looking back, it would have been just as clean at answering Menace as what I ended up on, but we moved on to looking at other control lists first.

Goaychanhong (GCH) built an Instinct list with Cirso’s Choice as a way to get Aegis at fast speed and that was what we tested next, but it lacked ways to close the game. Without Stormhalt Knife like the Honor variant, it was much harder to turn the corner, even if surviving was easier with cards like Saber-Tooth Prideleader.

I took one look at the deck (okay, that’s a lie, I took about 5 minutes thinking about it) and asked, as a joke, “what if we put Xulta Arcanum in there?”. Cut to about 15 minutes later when I’ve built this monstrous four faction pile with both Garden of Omens and Xulta Arcanum. This change did fix the previous issue of closing the game in time, however it led to a new and more thorny problem – how on earth were we supposed to build the powerbase? Obviously you have to play 4 Petition, but then what about the influence requirements? We needed double Primal on 3 for Hailstorm, Justice on 1 for Defiance, along with double Fire on 5 for Garden of Omens or double Justice for Harsh Rule. And that’s just three of the factions – we also needed Time on 3 for Cirso’s Choice. I spent a long time on this powerbase and I like to think I got it as close to perfect as I could. 26 power was necessary to just make sure that we had the influence we needed – and being a control deck that wanted to hit power every turn meant that we were happy to play the extra. The one mistake I think I made when building it was not considering the fact that we could never have 3 undepleted power on turn 3 – if I had thought about that I would likely have cut one Primal source for something else.

I know this is a lot of talk about how I arrived at my deck choice, but I think it’s worth analysing given how off the wall the list I settled on was. There were a lot of layers to the process, without even going into the choice to play/leave out Jotun Hurlers and Saber-Tooth Prideleaders in the final build. While the deck itself looks ridiculous, when I first took it to ladder, I had a frankly absurd winrate with it – I think I went 9-2 in my first 11 games, with seven wins being against Sylscar, the bogeyman of the format. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that well in the ECQ, but I’ll get to that later.

SG: Couple of reasons why I didn’t end up playing the deck. 1. The lines were very difficult for me. It’s a deck all about accruing incredibly small advantages, advancing ahead inch by inch. As a player with an unsurprising lack of foresight, I find it very difficult to anticipate moves far into the future. It’s why I’ve never won a game of chess. 2. I have to play 26 games with this deck, and I’d like to get my games done within a reasonable time-frame. I’m clearly not a masochist like AF is.

[AF: Come on, Storm, I’m clearly a sadist – they’re trapped in there with me, not the other way round.]

Card Choices:

Obviously this is a deck too full of card choices to go in depth on all of them, so I’ll pick those I feel are the most important.

3 Cirso’s Choice, 0 Just Desserts: When I first built this deck, I started on a 2-2 split of these answers to Silverblade Menace. In testing, however, Just Desserts seriously underperformed, especially with the 8 early interactive spells we were playing. With that being the case, I started going up Cirso’s Choice and never really looked back. Both modes are relevant against aggressive decks (6 life is a lot more than it sounds like) and Faegis is widely relevant especially without any other way of getting it. Honesty, I could see going up to the full set of Choice in the future.
2 Turn To Seed, 2 Equivocate: At some point I realised that although Sling had been nerfed, I really had no clean answer to Rost. Given that Garden of Omens can cleanly answer Sling through Faegis now, I felt that transforming the big snowy monster was the best course of action. This ended up not really being relevant, but I think the two copies of Turn to Seed proved their worth. I’m less sold on Equivocate.
Only 3 Arcanum: Arcanum is a powerful card and you want to see it basically every game. However, it’s very possible to get Arcanum flooded with the full playset in the deck, so I cut back to 3 copies. I think that’s correct.
Only 3 Wisdom of the Elders: Most of the time I wouldn’t leave home without the full playset of Wisdom of the Elders. However in this deck it is significantly less appealing, for a couple of reasons – firstly, double Primal early can still be difficult; and secondly, with a powerbase full of Cylices, it is very easy to gain card advantage in the late game anyway. Since I’m playing the extra power, I like 3 Wisdom.
Full sets of Torch and Defiance: This deck is greedy enough to go over almost anything. I won games where my opponent played two Speaking Circles before I hit my 5th power. However, it is susceptible to aggro, so the full 8 pieces of cheap interaction is necessary – especially since it’s impossible to play a sweeper on turn 3.
0 copies of Dazzle: Dazzle is a good card, definitely. But with access to Display of Instinct, it starts to look a little flat. Not being able to negate Etchings or Dark Returns feels pretty bad, and you just can’t negate a turn 2 Exploit in the list. In the end I decided that Display provided flexibility in the ways I valued more.

Now let’s get on to the ECQ. I had a fantastic record with the deck leading up to it, so where did it all go wrong?

There are certain benefits to being in a team. You can take a deck off ladder and be fairly confident that those you work with will be able to put it through the wringer; and if it comes out the other side you’re doing pretty well. However, this comes with one major downside if you’re truly trying to keep the list secret: you miss innovations in other decks on ladder.

I took the list off ladder after the first day of testing, and in doing so missed a very important development in the SylScar deck that took the tournament by storm [SG: You mean in overwhelming fashion. Otherwise it gets too confusing. Also, I take full responsibility for this bit.] – market Krull over previous ‘Dark Return’ effects. Krull is much harder for this deck to interact with, while being able to be used multiple times. This took the matchup from heavily favourable (I lost to it once in testing) to unfavoured in the tournament (I beat it once in the ECQ). This is a lesson in why it is important to not get complacent in testing – it would have been very easy for me to either select a different deck or spend more time preparing to beat this new threat, however I prepared as though the meta was going to be the same in the ECQ as it was almost a week earlier.

Learn from my mistakes and don’t prepare against a static metagame.

SG: Yerp, as AF mentioned, Krull being a unit as opposed to reanimation through a spell makes it very difficult for this to interact with since Display isn’t an option, and you don’t have void hate in this deck. Since we’re not pressuring their life total in any meaningful way, a competent player will easily see the line of simply ‘Krull-juggling’ to knock us out while we’re helplessly floundering.

OTHER DECKS:

Stonescar Aggro:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/S7JoMj4yqpU/goaychanhongs-decklist-top-32

AF: Aggressive Stonescar is a list that many of our teammates ended up on, and it served them well over the course of the tournament. It was probably my second choice going in. The buff to Vicious Highwayman really breathed new life into the deck, although in the end it may have been overshadowed by other Stonescar lists. Everyone tells me that Blackhall Warleader is the best two-drop in the deck, but I think I would have maxed out on Fenris Nightshade first, as it gives us a way to generate additional cards in slower, slightly grindier games.

Having said that, I did tend to play the deck a little slower than most people on my team (probably the control player in me talking). I found that going a little bigger (with extra four-drops) already gave me an advantage in the mirror, and because of that I wanted two-drops which were better suited to winning me the control matchups. In a more aggressive leaning version of the list, like what the rest of my team brought, I can see Warleader being a more consistent two-drop.

SG: Choo choo! I mean, we have 3 people on the team notorious (pun intended) for playing SS Aggro; I’d be very surprised if no one ended up packing it. We ended up packing the full playset of Highwaymen main deck and only 3 Jekk, which I’m not convinced is necessarily correct. Highwayman is obviously great against aggro, and can pick off Kira/Syl. However, in other matchups, Highwayman needs to do more than just break Faegis to be worthwhile. Although Jekk varied very greatly in terms of impact, it’s still an incredibly powerful card, and we probably should have played the full playset.

On the 2-drop issue: I was 1 of the people who told AF that Blackhall Warleader was the best 2-drop for 1 simple reason – it has 3 health. Get 1 attack in, and it’s out of Hailstorm range. That’s it. It means it can be effective both on the play and on the draw, particularly against Skycraggro. For the remaining cards, our team was torn between Fenris, Skullbreaker and Midchief Salus. Fenris helps draw cards, and while the damage can add up quickly, we are usually the aggressor in most matchups, and have some life to spare. Back in the old days when noobs like me could win TNE Challenges, you’ll see Fenris put in a lot of work for me there. Skullbreaker was good in that it was a mini-Champion of Chaos that can slog through bigger units, but without many Warcry units/weapons, it was difficult to buff. Salus’ Quickdraw was nice to push damage – though we had no tricks – and provided a late-game power sink. We ultimately ended up on Fenris and Skullbreaker as our supporting 2 drops, though that might have been wrong.

One thing I do want to bring up is our team’s choice of Shakedown as a card, which we felt would be very, very good. It takes Equalise/ramp spells out of Combrei, ChaChas in the mirror, and Kira/Wump/other haymaker units out of the Kira decks and Elysian. Also Golems, but we weren’t too worried about that matchup. Yes, it misses all the 4 cost relics, but people definitely weren’t playing around Shakedown at all, and got appropriately wrecked by it a lot. Don’t sleep on this card.

If the Shadow-based Stonescar decks continue to be popular, Fire-based Stonescar may struggle a little. After all, the deck that goes just a little bigger is usually favoured in the matchup. But if the format ever undergoes massive changes again…slamming people’s faces really hard is never too bad of an idea.

Post-Open decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/yZjr7tqij8c/stonescar-post-open

*Note: I came up with this BEFORE Cen Wastes Smuggler got hit with a balance change. Feel free to fiddle around with the various market options to see what works best.

Moom:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/-Ba6JnhdzUo/moom

AF: Stormguard almost convinced me to play this in the Tuesday Night Eternal tournament the morning of the ECQ, but ultimately I felt that the deck was too anaemic when it couldn’t find Waxing Moon – the units you play are relatively bad at actually killing your opponent (excepting Midnight Gale, of course), and you don’t generate enough value to challenge more midrange-y decks if you can’t get the deadly turns. It is an interesting deck concept, however, and probably worth exploring more.

Something that might stand out in the deck is the singleton Tempting Offer in the powerbase of the deck. This was my concept (though I may have been influenced by teammate LeoThePleurodon’s use of it in a Xenan Strangers deck we looked at) and I’m very proud of it. The basic theory is that the first copy is effectively free if you add the Seat over another Sigil, and it gives you a way to mess with your opponent’s Even Handed Golems without spending a card slot on it. It doesn’t always happen, but every now and then it will come up and it almost never hurts you otherwise. It’s not much, but you should try to squeak out every tiny edge that you possibly can when building a deck.

SG: The deck originated from TBC’s Mail, who wanted to make a fun, silly deck. Usually, it’s up to me to ruin said deck by naming it ‘X Midrange’ in TNE tournaments – allegedly. And the palindromic ‘Moom’ seemed like a good idea for a deck name at the time. The deck initially included Jarrall, but that felt like perhaps a few too many conflicting ideas jammed into 1 list. So we cut that down. Unlike the Sling deck which similarly relies on a key relic, the units that the Moom deck plays are unfortunately a little…lackluster. The rise of Xenan at that time packing Send An Agent, Prideleader and Banish also proved to be a giant pain in the butt. So we scrapped that idea during Open testing and pivoted to something different.

Jump-cut to after the Open, where a number of Even Feln Moon decks did…OK, but nothing particularly spectacular. The obvious problem is the fact that it’s an Even deck, and the payoff for being an Even deck just…isn’t there right now. You might high-roll with Golems on occasion and chain them into a deluge of cards, but the times when your curve completely destroys you, I suspect, are going to come up more often. Plus, between Tempting Offer, Open Contract, Royal Decree, etc., the Golem is honestly not that hard to disrupt. Some people like their 1/1s for 2. I don’t.

So after taking a short, simple look at the terrible pile of cards, I replaced the underperforming units with more card draw and removal, and what would you know? The deck doesn’t feel terrible. There’s still a couple of kinks to be worked out – what do you want as your 4 drop: Vara or Rindra? Do you want some number of Dazzles, or is Flicker enough? But following the LOA Sling-esque strategy of essentially being Primal Control leaning on Moon as a source of card draw and removal, the deck is quite potent. With many other decks dialing back on relic removal and slowly devolving into greedy midrange piles, it’s the perfect opportunity for Moon decks to sneak in and decimate them. Much like Sling, since the Relic draws you cards, the payoff for being an Even deck really isn’t there. At all. (As an aside, you’re in Primal. You really shouldn’t be lacking card draw.) Although I was a little concerned about the aggro matchup without Mother of Skies, as it turns out, being able to play cards on curve is good. Helps you fall behind a little less. Who’d have thought?

Post-Open decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/SSjkFv-Rxis/feln-moon-but-with-a-functional-curve

*Note: Stonescar Heavy-Shadow going down in popularity is rather awkward since that was probably 1 of our better match-ups. No matter. I’m sure we’ll still pummel all the greedy midrange decks, especially those that are skimping on relic removal. Our aggro matchup is pretty good too – even without Moon, we’re still pretty effective at clearing out X/1s.

PATCH NOTES (THE QUICK THOUGHTS):

SG:

-I love the Moldermuck and Ambitious Mandevilla nerf. Shadow Midrange has had its time in the sun for quite a while in Expedition. I do expect that less Shadow heavy Midrange will still play a pivotal role in the format, from Sandstorm Titan to Quinn, but hopefully we get something different.

UPDATE: I’m immediately back to hating Expedition in the span of about 10 hours. We’ve gone from greedy midrange with Davia and Might, to greedy midrange with Azindel and Might, to greedy midrange with Heart of the Vault and Howling Peak. I feel a lot of the homogeneity in the format could be solved with Vanquish. While some enjoy ‘Battlecruiser’ Eternal, I do not, and I’ll leave Expedition in the strong, supple hands of AlexFiero to figure out.

-I love the Ankle Cutter buff. Now it doesn’t die to Snowball, which is a key consideration for any Fire 2 drop without Charge.

-The Coveted Gemstone nerf feels like it hits Expedition far harder than it does Throne since there are less market access options in Expedition. That being said, Combrei Relics can still capably win without either card, so I presume the deck will just keep chugging on.

-The Tasbu and Cen Wastes Smuggler nerf probably spell the end of Stonescar Heavy-Shadow unfortunately, at least as a Tier 1 archetype The deck wasn’t oppressive meta-game wise from my experience, but DWD definitely knows better.

AF:

In general, I like these balance changes. The new cards added to Expedition to prepare for the Open seem both impactful and not relevant to existing archetypes. The nerfs to Mandevilla and Moldermuck reflect the power level of Xenan, and the buffs are all worthwhile. However, the nerfs targeted towards Combrei Relics and Sylscar seem… unnecessary to me. None of them appear particularly impactful (except possibly Smuggler) and neither deck was oppressive in the metagame. I suppose Tasbu dies in combat a bit more now? And it’s slightly harder for Combrelics to fill the board with bugs? But I could be wrong. It’s also possible that the relatively minor changes allow other decks to interact more meaningfully without significantly weakening either deck, and that’s what I’m personally hoping for.

AlexFiero has a Twitch channel which he never uses because he forgot a password. On the other hand, you can find me over at Twitter @stormguard798 or lurking in The Misplay, Friends of Eternal or the Team Eternal Journey Discords. I would love to hear all your comments about how my Eternal Warcry deck names are far better than AlexFiero’s. Until next time. 😉

Friends of Eternal:

The Misplay:

Eternal Journey:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/A9kQAjYvyCg/day-0-skycrag-tandem-aggro

Craft or Dust – Hour of Glass

Hello again internet, it’s stormguard798, and with the Hour of Glass campaign dropping, you know what THAT means. It’s time for another Craft or Dust set review, where we take a look at all of the new cards that just dropped. Now, with a couple days’ worth of brewing under my belt, I have some very strong opinions with regards to all the cards. Not that I needed to play with all of them to form an opinion. I’ve also changed the format of the set review a little to organize the information more helpfully. Now let’s man-handle these cards.

League Explorer –

Expedition: When I first saw this card, it just seemed like another innocuous little Fire 2 drop. Boy was I wrong. In the Skycrag Tandem decks, it’s a charge unit capable of triggering tandem effects from out of nowhere – and the heaps of damage that come with it. That deck also has an incredibly low curve, which means it’s pretty easy to dump out your hand to trigger the Depth Charges – I have thrown many an Explorer to their death just to pick up another Charge to bonk my opponent’s avatar. In other decks, it’s of course an Explorer, which means it synergizes well with what some of the Sentinels decks have got going on; making relics on-demand to synergize with the likes of Vulk or Rocketblaster is just another way to give that deck a pinch of extra reach. The interaction between this and Promenade Patrol is also terrifying. I expect League Explorer to form a huge part of the Expedition metagame, and all decks should be prepared to fight it.
Throne: You’d think that Throne would have a significantly higher power ceiling and more powerful units alongside it, but when you look at the quality of 2 drops available for Fire Aggro decks…League Explorer is definitely at the top of that list, especially combined with Houndmaster and Amaruq as in Expedition. The variants of Fire-based aggro aren’t as populous in Throne as compared to Expedition, but I still expect to see this card pack quite a punch there.

Awakened Arsonist –

Expedition: I have enjoyed playing this card in exactly 1 deck: Stonescar Moon. Stealth units are plentiful enough in the format that you can afford to play some mind-games with your opponent, and the Deadly from Moon not only disincentivizes blocks, allowing you to poke through for cards, but also gives you additional options with its entomb ability. We’ve seen inklings of Moon decks pop up from time to time in Expedition, and I think this could be another pretty powerful tool in that deck.

Throne: On the other hand, I can’t see this making waves in Throne. There are significantly fewer Stealth units, particularly those that don’t have an ultimate at the beginning of the turn, so it’ll be obvious as to what the unit is. The removal is incredibly plentiful, which is why suiting things up with Flying or massive Weapons is much more of a liability. On top of that, those decks tend to lean fairly aggressive, and while getting additional cards is nice, the statline on the Arsonist is pretty atrocious for a 3 drop, considering the rest of your Fire 3-drop options. (Hot. Mug. Of. Milos.) There could be some bizarre interaction that I’m missing, but it just seems like way too much work for not enough pay-off.

Test of Mettle –

Throne & Expedition: I’m just going to combine the 2 formats here and simply outright say that I don’t think this card is playable. You can get away with 4 cost do-nothing relics in some Control decks because you can keep the board pretty clear so you can take a turn off. The pay-off for this relic is that it deals 10 damage to your opponent: an aggressive effect. While the payoff is pretty powerful, it can be easily blocked by Face Aegis, and even if it isn’t, there’s still a decent chance that it just does…nothing. Your opponent can simply play cards, which is something that they will absolutely do, which means you could very easily waste a whole turn doing nothing. The pay-off isn’t there for all the things that could go wrong with this card, which unfortunately means I don’t think there’s a world where I can include it.

Repel Darkness –

Expedition: Let’s break this down mode by mode. I’m not a fan of non-factionless ways of finding power since it only helps you find double, not single, influence, but it’s an OK option to have. The invulnerable mode is neat to have, but without any kind of stat boost the effect is rather niche. The void-hate effect is also really helpful considering A Life for a Life and Davia are both still in the format, but I’m not sure how necessary that will be considering the mere existence of Steyer’s Eyes. (more on that in a bit.) It is nice to have the option, however, in Time non-Justice decks. Overall, while all 3 modes have the potential to be pretty powerful in the right spots, they’re all so narrow that I can’t imagine playing this in the maindeck. You could take it out of the market if you’re expecting a void-based strategy from your opponent, but even then, it’s such a narrow application that I don’t expect it in huge swathes.

Throne: On the other hand, I expect this to be pretty powerful in exactly 1 niche application – Yeti Combo. For those unfamiliar with the combo, it’s in 3 pieces: Belligerent Yeti, Stained Honor and a way to stop your Yeti from dying. With all 3 combo pieces on board, you infinitely twist your Yeti to ping your opponent to death, 1 damage at a time. Like with Autotread Combo, make sure your Smart Autopass is off. The deck used to incorporate Curtain Call into the list, but with its cost increase to 3, the build was no longer all-Even and fell apart. Now, without a fair game plan and many other proactive decks competing with it, I’m unsure if the strategy is even remotely viable, but it’ll be amusing to see how it pans out.

Lucent Guide –

Expedition: It is a stealth unit, and there is a semi-viable Stealth deck in Expedition. Double Time is a little rough, but the deck might play Frontline Healer as well, so who knows. Deven with the synergy, I still don’t know if the card is playable; Waystone Elemental is a similarly statted unit that saw close to 0 constructed play. While having the option for an activated ability is nice as a power sink, it costs 7 and doesn’t really impact the board – Lumen Defense sees zero play for a reason. It might be fine as some Stealth deck top-end, though I imagine the rest of the 5-cost options (Entratius, Azindel, etc.) will probably outshine it.

Throne: If it’s likely to be underwhelming in Expedition, it’s certainly not going to be playable in Throne. A 5 cost card that does nothing upon entering the battlefield, and that is easily taken out? Easy pass.

Waystone Core –

Expedition: I have tried this card in Elysian, in Xenan, in Combrei, and in some dubious looking 3F builds. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to piece together a build that works consistently well. To be clear, I think that it’s a powerful effect that works particularly well with the likes of amplify cards or Sketches. Unfortunately, it’s still a 5 cost do-nothing relic, even if it is at fast speed, and even with some pretty potent spot removal in the format, the lack of strong board wipes without stretching your powerbase quite a fair bit (either 3F or Triple Shadow) or sufficient things to do while holding up the fast relic was problematic. The payoff for sticking the relic is there, but considering the amount of time it takes to actually have an impact compared to everything else you could be doing at 5-cost, it just doesn’t seem particularly worthwhile.

Throne: On the other hand, Throne certainly has some more controlling tools from Defiance to Saber-Tooth Prideleader to help manage the board early on top of being options to play at fast speed, but even then, I’m not sure if a 5-cost do-nothing relic is effective against the tempo Elysian/Kira decks who will prey on that in a heartbeat. Still: with cards like Perilous Research and Equalize to take advantage of the card draw and ramp in the form of a relic, there might be something there.

Steyer’s Eyes –

Expedition: The versatility on this card is absolutely incredible; just know that you’ve got 2 modes on this card that you will end up using frequently and that when you do use the 3^rd mode, it’s going to be hilarious backbreaking for your opponents. Unlike some of the modal cards we’ve seen, you’re happy with all the modes, and you’ll use each mode often enough for it to qualify as one. It flies, which means it’s great for being both aggressive and defensive, and discards as well, enabling Discard synergies with cards like Iron Priestess. Though not often appearing, the ability to generate a relic on command means it synergises well with Clear The Way and Vulk. It’s wild. Expect to see way too much of this card in every Justice deck imaginable in Expedition.

Throne: Unlike in Expedition, Throne does have some unitless control decks, so I wouldn’t expect Steyer’s Eyes to slot in with the same level of ubiquity as it does in Expedition, but it’s still a ridiculously powerful card. I certainly expect to see it in aggro/tempo decks in swathes, and probably a good chunk of midrange decks as well.

Auren Condemnation –

Expedition: There certainly exists some form of Justice Control deck, particularly with the likes of Final Confrontation, so I could see Condemnation slotting into some of those decks. However, it does have some reasonable competition with Smite and Just Desserts for the fast-speed removal spot. If we extend that to other removal options, it also competes with the likes of Manacles. My biggest concern that the card is entirely reactive, and I’m not sure if there’s a slow enough deck in Expedition to warrant such a card; the armor boost is great for survivability against aggro even if you don’t have any armor synergy, thus justifying the extra cost. Right now, I’m unsure if there’s a deck that can support Condemnation, but if there is, then this card will be a solid roleplayer there.

Throne: With Throne, you have a much larger array of removal options with Defiance, Vanquish, some other cards I’m surely forgetting, and so forth, so I do think you’d want some armor-based synergy to include it. The problem with that is that Armory typically requires more proactive removal to clear the way for their massive relic weapons to attack, which means it probably doesn’t want a purely defensive spell like this one. Having said that, I’ve never played Armory before, so I’ll leave it to the experts to let me know what I’m doing wrong. 🙂

Jada, Peacekeeper –

Expedition: It’s got 5 health, so even if its strength does get debuffed, most units won’t be able to push through this unit without a trick of some kind. And if they don’t have anything that gets in the way, then you’re attacking for 4 with a 3-cost unit. That sounds pretty worthwhile to me. I think a lot of people are getting hung up on the fact that your opponent gets the choice to either ramp you or let it through, and that it’s bad to offer them that choice. That is true. However, we’ve got some pretty strong power sinks in the format – Builder’s Decree or Daru Lee, anyone? – and you certainly have the tools in decks like Soldiers to deny them the choice altogether. Remember, if your opponent’s units have been hit by the Greek God of Stunning, then they can’t block. 😛 It’s unlikely to fit into the 3 faction decks due to its double Justice influence requirement and the general inability of those decks to run a lot of Justice Sigils, but it’s been popping up in all the 2F decks to great effect.

Throne: In Throne, where you’ve got a wide-enough card pool where you can’t classify most decks in the format into some variant of midrange, I do think you can only include it in a deck that has a more proactive way to use the power or the Justice influence, for instance, a KTE deck or some variant or Kira. It’ll be a lot less ubiquitous in Throne, but you’ll still see the card pop up reasonably often, even if the Soldier unit type is less relevant.

Dazzling Revelation –

Expedition: I’m not a fan of this card in current Expedition for 1 glaring reason – Lay Siege. Due to the popularity of Permafrost and Manacles, most decks have started ways to counter ones units from being stunned, from Lay Siege to Xumuc Whisper. This also means that players will likely be using these cards proactively as well to completely nullify Dazzling Revelation. While I think the card does have some potential considering how aggressive leaning most of the decks are, the meta is really hostile towards Revelation at present, so we might need to wait a couple of months for it to be good.

Throne: Well, I suppose that’s another potential tool for Turbofog – it doesn’t get around Endurance, which means it whiffs on a bunch of Kira units and Sandstorm Titan, but it does stop Yetis and Skycrag Aggro pretty dead in their tracks in the early game – or at least until you find your board wipe. This probably shoos in over Telekinetic Shackles, but I’ll leave it to AlexFiero to figure that one out. I could perhaps also see a few copies of it in more general Primal Control decks to buy you a little bit of time, but since the card is card-disadvantage, you need to have plenty of card advantage or board wipes to recoup.

Iron Ursa –

Expedition: Skycrag Aggro was an extremely strong archetype before this new campaign dropped, and Iron Ursa could fit there, disrupting any board wipes and packing Overwhelm. Crucially, unlike cards like Daring Gryffyn or Daring Pioneer, Iron Ursa doesn’t need to sacrifice itself to negate the spell. It does have some form of evasion, but with its reckless ability, you have to time the card exactly right, which might be tricky to pull off. Even if the unit is intrigued, when it doesn’t reveal itself at the beginning of your turn, it’ll be fairly obvious as to what it is, and your opponent can line up blocks accordingly. I think the opportunity to blow out a board wipe will certainly be there, but whilst you remember the 1 time it panned out perfectly, the many times where playing it was awful might end up being lost on you.

Throne: While Throne might have more cheap spells with which to proc the ultimate from Iron Ursa – from the bevvy of Kira spells to Snowballs, making it easier to disable if you can see it coming – the board wipes and haymaker spells are stronger. Countering a Hailstorm or an Honor of Claws could be pretty devastating. On top of that, Throne is arguable a faster format, giving your opponent less opportunity to play around the card. That being said, there aren’t many playable Stealth units in Throne, so this is going to stick out like a sore thumb in aggressive leaning Primal decks, but I’m excited to see how it plays out.

Ulixa, Unspoken Terror –

Expedition: I love Davia, but oftentimes the mirror devolves into whoever drops Davia first, and being a 6/6 Aegis, it’s rather tricky to remove once it’s on the board. Fortunately, many players haven’t quite adopted employing Eilyn’s Favor to protect their beautiful faces, and with Transpose not in Expedition, nullifying their Davia before it even hits the board is very nice. Nice Cyber Hyena you’ve got there, and knocking out Fall to Ruin from their hand so it doesn’t sweep up your board is a bonus. The ping effect isn’t terribly efficient without Waxing Moon out on the board but does give you a pinch of extra reach to close out the game – or stop you from losing to a Stonehammer once you think you’ve stabilised. I’m very proud to say I have managed to slowly ping a DRuin opponent to death from 40+ health before. 🙂

Throne: If it’s a Primal Midrange unit that doesn’t trigger Sling, then it’s probably not going to see much play. Ulixa’s one Throne application is probably Feln Moon, where we can use it like a Blitrok to just mow down our opponent’s board with Moon out. Whether it beats out actual Blitrok remains to be soon: with Throne being a much leaner format, I doubt people will be playing many 6+ cost cards main deck, so the summon effect isn’t particularly useful.

Sinister Rumors –

Expedition: First of all, this card realistically has 2 modes. In case you haven’t heard it enough already: you shouldn’t be playing the spell discard mode unless you’re confident it’ll do something, for instance, reduce the density of a combo piece, or minimize their outs by taking a board wipe. Otherwise, it’s just card disadvantage. Contrary to the belief of people in the DWD Discord whom I definitely will not name for any reason, it’s not that good. (We’ve also had to sadly disown 1 of our teammates for their continued stance on this card. Rest in pepperoni.) Sinister Rumors is really not that powerful of a card; it’s a worse Suffocate or a worse Dark Return. To me, the Dark Return mode is the mode that you’ll most likely be using given the current state of Expedition – most cheap units have already gotten plenty of value by the time they’re exhausted, and those that don’t you are unlikely to hit. i.e. Houndmaster. I think it’s a versatile card that will see play in some Shadow Midrange decks, but it’s a role-player rather than a format definer.

Throne: First of all, I don’t think Shadow Midrange is particularly good in Throne, which is part of why I can’t see this card being played at all. Combo isn’t really a concern there either, so it’s not as if the discard mode will getting much mileage. The other reason is that you have far better removal/recursive options that while don’t have the same flexibility, are much more efficient. From Last Chance to Annihilate, you’ve got plenty of better options where I think you can probably shave this.

Mimicry Vine –

Expedition: A lot of Stealth cards have pretty powerful ultimates that trigger at the start of your time, so Mimicry Vine seemed like a great option to double-down on those powerful effects, whilst still being mediocre if it does get revealed. When I have this in play as my Azindel gets to ultimate…now that is quite the intense rush. Unfortunately, as to be expected with the majority of Stealth units, a lot of interactions with it are currently bugged, from not triggering on certain Summons to letting your opponent copy their ultimate instead. It can also be argued that it is a bit of a win-more card and you need a fair bit of help to support it, but the potential to do some ridiculous things is certainly there. Once all the kinks of this card’s interactions are fixed, I’m sure we’ll see plenty more of it.

Throne: **repeat spiel about how Shadow Midrange isn’t really an archetype in Throne, at least non-Even iterations.** You do have access to much more polarising summon and ultimate effects, however, in Throne – imagine doubling up on an Helio summon – but being a 3/3 that does nothing until then is quite the liability.

Inevitable Corruption –

Expedition and Throne: I think the card is atrocious. It’s an extremely expensive slow spell that doesn’t affect the board in any way, and most of the time, by the time it drops, you’re not going to hit much. It is a pretty conditional spell, so I think you’d pack it out of the market at most. You could go Exploit T4 into this on T5 to have a better grasp of their hand and therefore which mode to pick, but that seems like a rather unlikely set-up. In Expedition, you maybe traded 1 for 1 with their Davia instead of pressuring and killing them – assuming no Obstructive Flicker is there to interrupt your plans. In Throne, any decks that this might have a meaningful effect against are chock full with Face Aegis and cheap negation spells. At least Toll of Warfare also hits cards from their market and deck. There are just so many things that could go wrong playing this card that I believe the best bet is to just not play it at all.

Varbuk, Hand of Anarchy –

Expedition: Dovid. Azindel. That’s already plenty enough reason to be running Varbuk in most decks. Even if you don’t have a target to kill, a 4/3 Charge Valor is a lot of damage slamming out of complete nowhere, with Valor making it rather tricky to contest in combat. My biggest problem with the card is double Fire and Justice influence – that influence requirement is tricky to pull off consistently in decks other than Rakano. Even in Rakano, the curve of the deck is so low that some games I don’t even reach 4 power to play the Hand. When I get blown out by the Hand, it destroys me pretty badly, but it does feel you do need to get some mileage out of the summon for it to be consistently worthwhile

Throne: I’m very glad that we get more tools to deal with Sling; I always feel like that deck is way too populous on ladder. However, once again, I do feel that we need to get mileage out of that summon ability for the card to be good; Charge is certainly nice coupled with some extremely fast decks, but with Torch being fairly ubiquitous in the format, I do feel the card is probably better relegated to the market.

Hexdriver –

Expedition: So you need 2 things to make this work – plenty of spells, and a pretty clear board from your opponent. Just because it’s Expedition doesn’t mean that this relic weapon isn’t going to die to a single Swing. That typically means that you need to be able to keep the board clear with your spells, which is just not happening in any capacity. There’s a reason why everyone is flocking to Permafrost and Manacles as removal in this format. As such, I just don’t see Hexdriver being much more than a Reinforced Baton in most spots, which is definitely not constructed playable.

Throne: On the other hand, we do have a greater assortment of removal spells in Throne that are capable of killing things, but considering how removal in general doesn’t necessarily line up great with the Kira and Elysian decks, I do still think that you’re going to have a lot of trouble keeping the board clear for Hexdriver. Relying too heavily on spells against these decks is never a winning proposition. The payoff for doing so also isn’t really there – if it’s not there for the likes of Kalis, it probably isn’t great for us either.

Kehanya, Skilled Caster –

Expedition: Endurance is nice to get around the slew of stunning effects, and 4 health is pretty solid for dodging most removal. Really, the mode that you’re trying to get the most mileage out of is the silence mode, and with cards like Houndmaster and League Explorer, there is an assortment of various characters to hit. There is also the possibility of hitting an Amphitheatre in those Praxis Aggro shells. However, there remains the problem of what shell this fits into. There isn’t really a strong enough Elysian midrange shell right now – and believe me, I have tried. Having access to Mandatory Retirement is nice, but there aren’t any good top-end haymakers in Elysian, which means it’s hard to find a reason to not be in Feln instead. If you end up dipping into 3F, then you just end up having better anti-aggro options at 3. The potential for the card to be a multipurpose anti-aggro hoser is certainly there; I just have no idea which deck this fits into.

Throne: Here, you also have the option to hit Thudrock’s Masterwork as well, and you once again have the option to just be a general nuisance towards aggro decks. In addition, you also have a couple additional options to hose down haymaker 2 drops without summon effects, such as the Ascending Cycle or W&M. However, you have plenty more powerful 3 drops that, while may not hose Aggro as hard, are overall much more versatile and powerful. Master Conjurer, Tocas, and so forth. I think it could be a fine tool if you’re planning on targeting a specific meta, but I probably wouldn’t sleeve it up to play on ladder.

Azindel, Mastermind –

Expedition: I’m still torn if this card is good or not. On the 1 hand, if you’re able to hit some powerful haymakers off of it, perhaps a Davia or a D’Angolo Might, the game is pretty much over on the spot; even if you don’t high-roll, a 8/8 Lifesteal will swing a race in your favour in a jiffy. However, the Azindel is pretty obvious – and pretty easy to counter. Particularly in Expedition, considering the popularity of Permafrost and Manacles as removal, your 5 drops really need to have a relevant Summon effect – or Endurance. While I have seen the card adopted in quite a few Xenan shells, I’ve not been a massive fan of that build since the deck is really rather underwhelming if your Azindel Ultimate gets interrupted. High ceiling but low floor, but given how high the ceiling goes, it still might be worth including.

Throne: On the one hand being multifaction with 4 health is a solid boon in Throne, and Permafrost is less populous. On the other hand, it’s still a 5 cost unit without a summon effect in Throne, and compared to other fantastic options like Worldbearer Behemoth or Moonstone Vanguard, I don’t think the potential to high-roll incredibly well beats out the better stats and more consistent snowballing that the other cards have to offer.

Final Confrontation –

Expedition: We’ve seen a more unit-oriented build of Control in Expedition, so I think Final Confrontation has a place in JPx Control. Your top-end haymaker in Davia is strong enough to contest most boards especially if your opponent only has 1 unit left, so if you’re able to drop this on 5 and buy it back on 7, you should be in pretty good shape. Granted, depending on what the unit they keep is, it could be pretty problematic, particularly if it has Endurance like a massive Vulk, Autoforge or a Valiant Guardian, but for the most part, you should have enough assorted spot removal that such situations should arise fairly often. Granted, I do think you should still be running a couple of non-Davia units to take advantage of you playing this on Turn 5 – Jada, Peacekeeper or a chonky Sentinel off of Builder’s Decree come to mind.
Throne: Unfortunately, the removal is cheaper, the creatures are better, and there’s more Endurance/recursive units in Throne. Oh, I need to sacrifice these Rosts? Sure thing, they’re coming right back. Against the more aggressive decks, I think that letting them keep a buffed up unit is probably too dangerous – granted, that unit is probably an 8/2 Amaruq as in Expedition, but I expect your life total will be significantly lower by Turn 5. I haven’t seen a Hooru ‘plop all your attachments onto me’ strategy in Throne in quite a while, but this could be reasonable in the market of a deck with the likes of Aniyah, Arctic Sheriff or Kosul Battlemage.

Waystone Alignment –

Expedition and Throne: There are a lot of problems with this card. 1. It triggers at the beginning of your turn, which means your opponent has an entire turn cycle with which to deal with it. Send an Agent is still pretty ubiquitous. 2. It’s a symmetrical effect, and since it hits units, relics and sites, it’s probably still going to affect you pretty badly. 3. That is an expensive amplify cost, and it only hits U/R/S of a single cost, not all of it and under. This means it’s rarely going to get rid of many things. You might get a cute 1-time amazing blowout, but most of the time, you’re not going to be able to align the cost of the Waystones well enough with what your opponent is doing – and what you’re doing. I can’t imagine wanting to run this card.

(Sort of) BONUS:

So instead of plopping down my set review immediately, I spent the 1^st 3 days of set release down the rabbit hole endless playing various hastily put together decks. It got so bad that I went into team meetings murmuring ‘Undercover Operative…’ over and over again, so all my friends hosted an intervention and threw me in the swimming pool. In any case, here are a few of the least awful decks that I came up with in the dark times that should hopefully be a solid reflection of what you might end up seeing in the upcoming Expedition Open. (And hopefully make things easier for the upcoming Misplay Meta. Possibly. I haven’t check the public decklists on EWC in aeons.) They’re still in pretty rough shape – I’m not just going to hand all the answers to you – but I think they’re reasonable starting points if you have no idea what you’re doing. Enjoy!

Skycrag Tandem Aggro:

The archetype that I used for my Masters climb this month is still incredibly potent and powerful, and the addition of a charge unit with plenty of upside leans into the tandem attacking a little more. The fact that the deck can also empty out its hand incredibly quickly helps too. I’ve swapped out the all-in Berserk package for a more consistent, slightly bigger Tandem package instead, though it’s certainly possible that the former is correct.

Rakano Aggro:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/WK3TyZNPuIY/day-0-rakano-relic-aggro

League Explorer and Steyer’s Eyes are perhaps objectively the 2 strongest cards in the set, so jamming the 2 of them into a deck together just seems like a good idea. Both cards generate relics, so we have also have some light relic synergy and payoffs with Phoenix Stone and Rocketblaster.

Hooru Soldiers:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/ZifjwSF0UcQ/day-0-hooru-soldiers

Look, I like my fruit the way they are; incredibly low hanging. Jada is an incredibly powerful card and a Soldier, so this is where it slots in. You’ve got the Argo at 5 and the Amplify of Daru to take advantage of the ramp, as well as the Hooru Heirloom in a pinch. As it turns out, Dovid is still an incredibly powerful card to build around. Of note: I do think Tradition Soldiers is still incredibly viable, but double Justice influence on a 3 drop is a little difficult on the powerbase, so that deck mostly looks the same.

Stonescar Moon:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/siNMHGqtgGM/day-0-stonescar-moon

Applechips’ Menace Moon deck was a hit for a few moments after they made the Finals of a TNE with the deck, and though it didn’t quite pan out in the face of all the Davia decks, perhaps the addition of League Explorer and Awakened Arsonist might be the shove over the edge to make it fantastic. There are also Menace versions, running the likes of the Whispering Wind/Krull package, Grenahen and Prowling Amaruq, trading some early-game consistency for a massive punch of sustain and late-game power.

Xenan Midrange:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/UbvCkPovcOU/day-0-xenan-midrange

You’ve got your pick of power dorks in Expedition, some Xenan Midrange deck can’t be too far away. I must say, flipping a Might off of a Turn 3 Azindel once it ultimates is truly a wonderful feeling. Other than your ramp to 5 plan, you’ve also got a handful of cheap interaction and some early-game disruption so that you don’t fall too far behind while getting set up. My biggest problem with the deck is the lack of counterplay in the mirror: with your only realistic answer being Express Route either in the main or market, it does feel like it boils down to who’s on the play just a bit too much.

Feln Midrange:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/-OxsIVtBVAs/day-0-feln-midrange

All the powerful Feln Cards with none of the Davia: Feln Control with Davia is still very powerful, but with the massive uptick of aggro with Steyer’s Eyes and League Explorer, waiting until 7 power might be a touch too slow. You’ve still got plenty of cheap interaction with Frost, Defile and Rumours from the Control deck, but are switching out the card draw for well-statted units instead. My biggest concern for the deck is definitely counterplay against Manacles – it could be worthwhile looking at Devour main deck to counter that.

Creation Clear the Way:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/-1hnheuOz_I/day-0-creation-clear-the-way

So this might be more of a stretch than some of the other decks, but League Explorer and Steyer’s Eyes both make relics, so why not use them in a deck that cares all about making relics? We might not always be able to drop a Goldplate Goliath on Turn 3, but a pair of 3/6 Endurance units is still really problematic for fire-based aggro decks to deal with in general. I’ve included a more fair gameplan of Vulk and Sanitiser in case we can’t drop an expensive Sentinel early, but it might be correct to bring the Pisto main instead and be more all-in for the ‘combo’.

(I may or may not update the EWC descriptions later, but right now, EWC is being a little testy for me and keeps 404’ing. Remind me if I don’t?)

Do you entirely agree with my opinions? Or do you think that I’m spouting complete nonsense? Chances are that we’re all largely incorrect – what’s a new campaign for besides wildly incorrect hot takes? I probably won’t be very responsive since I’ll be busy testing decks for the Open, but following that, hit me up on Twitter @stormguard798, or find me lurking in the FE, TEJ or Misplay Discords. Thank you very much to the team over at the Eternal Wiki for getting all the cards up very quickly. Until next time. 😉

Friends of Eternal:

The Misplay:

Eternal Journey:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/9USoyj3KTxU/the-proving-ground-destruction-theatre-combo

The Proving Ground – Destruction Theatre Combo

Hi everyone, it’s stormguard798, and we’re back with another instalment of The Proving Ground. Now, those familiar with the results of the most recent Throne Open, you might be aware of a super sweet Instinct Amphitheatre deck, largely pioneered by the members of The Barbarian Camp (TBC). For those unfamiliar with the combo, it has 3 components:

–Autotread: You can discard 1 card and spend 1 power to deal 1 damage to your opponent.

–Malaga Amphitheatre: Whenever one of your units deals damage to your opponent, you replenish power based on your site’s health, which will be at least 1 power.

-Someway to draw cards whenever your Autotread deals damage, be it a weapon like Warhorn or Spellshaper, or a relic like Tormented Crown.

Once you get all 3 combo pieces on the board, whatever resources you spent to ping your opponent with the Autotread would be immediately replenished, so in theory, you could repeat this loop an infinite number of times. (Or in the case of Crown/Spellshaper, as many cards as you have in your deck.) While going for a combo kill was possible, instead of going all-in much like other combo decks of the past, TBC’s build leveraged the strength of Autotread and Amphitheatre as powerful, aggressively slanted cards, putting together an Instinct aggro list that could combo off in your face if you let things drag out for too long. Colloquially, the deck is known as ‘Crossbows’ since the Scorpion Traps look like crossbows. Having never managed to infiltrate with Amaran Stinger in my life, I am unable to confirm this fact.

At this point, you’re probably wondering, why exactly are you telling us this ridiculously long-winded story solely comprised of information I could figure out simply by looking on Eternal Warcry? Good question. Well, a few weeks ago, Austin Aru’reTheIncomprehensible (henceforth referred to as AATI) proposed a Destruction variant of the list in the FE server, substituting the card-draw element of the Instinct deck with Reconnaissance. Although it was a slow-spell whose effect only lasted for 1 turn on top of requiring you to decimate the spell, it was 1 cost cheaper, and it’s not going to matter if you have 1 less power the next turn when you’ve won. On top of that, you also have access to 8 paintings that overlap in Fire, which is fantastic since, as with a lot of other aggressive-leaning decks, we’ll be base-fire. That’ll hopefully make the influence more consistent.

Now, while I think the concept has some merit to it, I think that making simple substitutions for all the lost Primal cards isn’t the way to go. By doing that, you’re losing out a lot on what Shadow can offer you as a faction. IMHO, the best way to go about this is see if the strategy is actually viable is to start from scratch. If you’ve caught the last 2 episodes of the FECast/Weather Report, you might remember 2 concepts that we’ve talked about: the uWu deckbuilding approach, and the Testing Diary. Now, while it’s was nice to talk about those concepts, I think it’d be helpful to put the theory into practice – which is exactly what we’re going to do today.

Now, what I end up writing here is more detailed and explanatory than what I might put in the team private channels – my teammates are all extremely competent players and have worked with me long enough that I don’t necessarily need to articulate my thoughts as explicitly as I do here. That being said, for a wider audience, elaborating on my thoughts will hopefully lead to a more comprehensive understanding – and the inevitable reasoned contesting.

Individual Card Discussion:

So to start with, I’m building this deck with 2 considerations in mind:
-I want it to be a fairly aggressively deck, with the primary gameplan of just murdering my opponent, and a secondary gameplan of the combo finish.

-I wanted to include Autotread, Amphitheatre and Reconnaissance in the deck in some capacity, being the combo pieces, but I’m unsure if I want them in the maindeck or in the market.

Autotread is just a really strong card in general – it’s fantastic in the aggro mirrors and it helps push damage through Regen units. That means I was comfortable including it in the maindeck as a 4 of.

Now here is where it gets a little bit trickier. I had previously disliked Amphitheatre in the main of the Instinct version: with Pause and Equivocate, the deck felt a little more defensive, so TJL felt it better to include Theatre/Spellshaper in the market since they are cards that are much better at pushing an advantage rather than coming back from behind. Having said that, given that we wanted to be as aggressive as possible, and if you can stay ahead, Amphitheatre has the potential of being a really powerful card – I think there is a way of building the deck to better support that strategy, so for now, I’m including the Amphitheatre main.

That being said, I don’t think I can necessarily say that of Reconnaissance. The ceiling on Amphitheatre is reasonably high; I’d argue that isn’t the case for Reconnaissance. It’s a slow-speed spell that leaves you vulnerable to being blown out, and the decimate ability isn’t particularly helpful outside of combo turns since the cards you draw are unlikely to synergize with your strategy, at least in Constructed. Spellshaper has a higher floor, being a weapon that draws you cards with optional interaction attached that worked well with the Aegis Amaruq. Since I believe that the applications for Recon are minimal for non-combo situations, I decided to include it in the market and not the main deck.

Next up, I thought of the various components to make this deck work. I’m looking for:

-Cheap units that help facilitate getting on the board early.

-Cheap interaction to clear out problematic elements, but that would also allow me to keep committing to the board.

-Having a few ways to play the long-game so that I could still eke the last points of damage through even if I stumbled a little early.

-Having a gameplan if I’m on the draw, or having ways to accrue an advantage if I’m at parity.

Units:

D’Angolo Houndmaster – The card is very good. With both Autotread and Amphitheatre in our deck, we can empty out our hand quite quickly, which means we can often get Hounds for very cheap – or possibly even free. In the late-game, it can spit out additional attackers that can make it difficult for the opponent to contest if they only have spot removal: even if they spend it on the Houndmaster, you still probably got an undercosted 4/4 out of the deal. If you play the card early, with the combination of Quickdraw and Valor, it’ll be hard for your opponent to contest the card through combat, particularly if I ended up running fast-speed interaction. If I’m at parity with someone, most of the time, people will have to spend an actual card to deal with the Hellhound, so you’re able to get at least a 2-for-1; if not, then Houndmaster will run away with the game in a jiffy, generating a low-cost 4/4 every turn. Unfortunately, the card is really poor on the draw as it requires attacking to function at all, but I do think the overall power level of the card makes up for the times I have to play it when I’m behind – having played some test games, I certainly stand by that statement.

Auralian Supplier – Another example of a card that is extremely poor when you’re behind, but is pretty powerful if you’re at parity or ahead. It refills your hand with (hopefully) gas once you start struggling to push damage against a more defensive deck; it just provides additional cards in aggro mirrors, which are often about ekeing out incremental advantage. Even if you only draw 1 card off the Supplier, a 3 cost 2/2 that replaces itself isn’t too shabby. Most of the time, even if you are behind, you won’t be behind in both aspects of the draw clause. (if you are, and somehow your opponent has more cards AND more units than you…why haven’t you conceded yet? XD) If I’m ahead and get to pick up both cards, I have accrued a massive advantage over my opponent – most of my cards will be fairly low cost and easy to play from my hand, and chaining Suppliers into each other is a pretty effective way to run away with the game. There have been times where I’ve drawn this and it’s been atrocious, but most of the time, the card is at least a 2-for-1, and I’m perfectly happy with that.

Borderlands Lookout – This is a card that struck me as an incredibly strange omission from a lot of aggressive time-based lists. Unless you’re running into Worlds competitor imestr8 and their incredibly innovative Factionless deck a lot on ladder (Cast Iron Furnace still haunts my dreams), Borderlands Lookout usually ends up being a 2/3 for 1. Even as a vanilla unit, that’s a pretty strong expected floor. 3 health also means that it’s also reasonable as a defensive unit on the draw against other aggressive decks – sometimes they’ll spend a Torch on it and move on, but it means they don’t have that removal spell for your more threatening units. Yes, it’s a 1 drop and has a relatively low impact later in the game – that’s because it’s a 1 drop. It’s a 1 drop that performs well both aggressively and defensively, which fulfil my criteria perfectly. It got buffed for a reason.

Grenadin Drone – I think the Grenadin Drone is the best Fire 1 drop in a vacuum, Amaruq or not. Here’s my reasoning: on offense, if you drop this early, you can get in with both units for 2 damage, just as any other 2 attack 1 drop would. On defense, you can block 2 X/1s, as opposed to just 1; you can also eat a snowball and still be left with something. Yes, your Drones cannot attack through opposing X/1s. I fail to see how this is a problem in the current metagame, barring Wump&Mizo. (To be fair, not being able to attack through a W&M is the least of your problems against that card if you don’t have removal.) To me, the various assorted 2/1s are generally terrible if you’re ever on the draw in the mirror. Whilst Kazuo/Pyroknight have some late-game applicability, if you ever reach a point where you’re activating them…you’re probably not in great shape anyway. I am more than open to opposing arguments, however.

Nahid’s Faithful – This is probably 1 of 2 cards that I will get the most raised eyebrows about. The deck doesn’t have any sacrifice synergies, nor payoffs for it being a Cultist. However, let me put it this way: this is a 1 cost 2/2 Lifesteal, which you can sacrifice your stunned or already expended unit to accrue value with. Sounds pretty cheap to me! Yes, it isn’t a 1 drop in that you’ll ever want to play it on T1, but it’s still a lot of stats for cheap, and you might play this with another 1 cost unit on T2 anyhow. In addition, it’s also quite strong in the aggro mirror, even on the draw: Lifesteal can help swing a game in your favour in the aggro mirror, and if it makes sense for you to sacrifice a unit to it, a 4/4 Lifesteal is a giant pain to deal with. Kira decks are mostly playing Dovid as a multifaction 4/4 for 2 power – with a downside – because of how little removal can affect it. The same reasoning applies in this case, albeit with perhaps a pinch more work. Though not a major contributing factor, the interaction between Nahid’s Faithful and Grenadin Drone is very nice. I once went T1 Drone into T2 double Faithful; my opponent scooped on the spot.

Blackhall Warleader – I don’t remember who initially added Blackhall Warleader to Stonescar, but whomever did: thanks. Although it doesn’t snowball quite as hard as Amaruq can, 3 toughness means it can’t be eaten by Salvo, which is helpful in the aggro mirror. A Bold Adventurer on defense isn’t terribly exciting, but serviceable, and ideally that’s not a situation we’re often in. We have 34 units, which means our unit count is fairly comparable to that of Stonescar lists whom also run Blackhall Warleader. Though the buffs to your units aren’t as impactful as with ChaCha or Jekk, it’s still some nice extra value to have for when the Warleader is removed. It’s unfortunate that the unit is a massive removal magnet and doesn’t provide any summon value, but given how hard it can run away with the game, I believe its inclusion is warranted.

Skullbreaker – This unit feels like it fails on multiple different axes – when you’re playing defensively, it’s an Argenport Soldier, which is pretty awful across most matchups. Being multifaction is minor upside considering how much Annihilate/Send an Agent have fallen off the face of the meta. It also has no relevant summon effect. The rest of our current units also don’t have a great way of augmenting the unit in any way, which is unfortunate, since the battle skills scale really well with bonus stats. That being said, it does do 1 thing very well, which is eke those last few points of damage over the line when things are starting to get stalled out – it forces your opponent to put multiple units in front of it to avoid damage, which, in a faction combination with not much evasion, is something we’re lacking a little. In the 1^st few test games, it’s never been particularly fantastic, but maybe we just need the right situation for it to shine. Definitely a card I’m keeping my eye on.

Powercell – Since you only have 1 other Sentinel in the deck, most often than not, it’s a 2/2 Decay that gives you a card, which is…fine. Decay is a solid battle skill both offensively and defensively, and having an additional card to manipulate is certainly helpful. My reasoning for not including the card is simple: it doesn’t facilitate our primary gameplan. In TBC’s Instinct version, you have all 3 combo pieces main, and whilst you still have a reasonable aggressive gameplan, you can lean harder into the combo gameplan since you have the card draw piece both main and market. That means there are times where you can spit out all 3 combo pieces in 1 turn with Power Burst providing the additional power to do so.

That’s not something that really happens with this configuration of the build. Since you’re dipping into your market, your opponent is likely to know something is up, and therefore will appropriately play around it. In the Expedition version of the deck, you run Strategize, so you have more ways of manipulating the extra card. But here? Your options are pitching it to Autotread or using it as market fodder. Since our curve is even lower than that of the original list, you’re rarely using the Power Burst, for, well, an extra burst of power. As a result, I don’t think Powercell is a good inclusion for our primary strategy, and hence I did not include it.

Shadowlands Guide – I was looking for a card to just tie the deck together, and Shadowlands Guide seemed to fit the build really well. Although this isn’t Menace Trove, we’ve still got 2 very strong 1 drops to bring back in Faithful and Autotread. I’m not including the full 4 of because the card is a little awkward in the early game and in multiples, but it seems like a solid roleplayer, buying back that Autotread you’ve invested so many cards into. It helps rebuild your board pretty effectively after a wipe, and while 3/1 isn’t an amazing set of stats in the face of Snowballs, it still pressures well often enough.

Non-units:

Open Contract – If you’re a deck that can capitalise on the tempo advantage gained by Open Contract like Stonescar Aggro, then the card is very, very good. Yes, removal can be dead in certain matchups, what a shocker. But this removal spell is unbelievably efficient, and should you be using this effectively, your opponents won’t be able to gain much advantage, if any, from the cost reduction. Being as cheap as it is, you are often also to commit to the board whilst playing this removal spell in the same turn. Being slow speed is unfortunate, but it’s already pretty fantastic. One of Shadow’s specialties is having far too much removal, and Open Contract certainly falls into that category. Even if you’re behind and can’t necessarily take full advantage of the tempo, trading a 1 drop removal spell for a 3 or 4 cost unit seems pretty power-efficient to me.

Torch – It’s Torch. Even at slow speed, it’s fantastic, cheap removal and burn. It’s a good card both from behind and while ahead, and the option to go to your opponent’s face when you’re getting stalled out. When used as removal, you’re often trading up in power. It’s an aggressive Fire-based deck, which means as a rule of thumb, you need a pretty good reason not to run Torch.

Pause for Reflection – The card is a solid tempo spell. You can either shove a blocker out of the way, save your unit from targeted removal or a board wipe, or just delay a problematic relic for a turn. If Shrine decks become popular on ladder again, then this might come in handy for disrupting them. Since we don’t have access to Amaruq in this build, which Pause synergizes particularly well with, I’ve elected not to include it in this particular build – the tempo advantage is nice, but returning the unit to hand pales in comparison to killing it most of the time. It also isn’t fantastic if we’re behind – saving a key unit is strong, but compared to the likes of Elysian Spells, we have fewer incredibly high impactful cheap units. I could see leaning the other way depending on the meta/how I find the build, however.

Send An Agent/Defile – Fast speed is nice. However, it’s still a 2 cost reactive spell, which means you’re rarely in a position to pass holding this up since it means you won’t be able to develop your board if they pass without playing anything threatening. The biggest advantage of all these 1 cost spells is that you can play them and another unit in the same turn; the odds of you doing so with these 2 cost spells are much slimmer. Sear might be a consideration since you might be able to burn your opponent’s face in some spots, but it functions terribly as removal. I didn’t like Equivocate in the Instinct list for similar reasons. They are still powerful enough to possibly warrant market inclusion, but overall I just feel that they are incongruous to our primary game plan and overall quite conditional.

The Market:

Since I’m playing Reconnaissance in the market, my options for market access are one of the Shadow Merchants or Blazing Salvo. Out of the Shadow Merchants, I believe Cen Wastes Smuggler as a 3/2 Decay is the most aggressively slanted, and therefore the best option. On the one hand, Blazing Salvo being fast speed gives opponents less opportunity to respond to the combo and can also be conditional removal. On the other hand, Cen Wastes Smuggler is probably the stronger card and gives us a much more varied market. I elected to go with a Blazing Salvo market just to keep the deck as lean as possible, even if I’m unlikely to get much mileage out of the spell itself. I could definitely see going for a Cen Wastes market being correct, however, particularly if Amphitheatre market ends up being correct.

For the market in general, I’m obviously disregarding the requirement of the card necessarily having to be good while ahead, solid behind, and so forth. It’s a market card; it’s supposed to be powerful in the right situation but very conditional.

(We’re playing Recon in the market, so we shan’t be going over that again.)

Dissociate – People never see this card coming for some reason. It is kind of a terrible pseudo-negation spell since they still get the card back, but 3 additional power is quite a steep cost, and that probably buys you enough time to hopefully kill your opponent. It also had some additional utility in returning relics like a Shrine or Sling, which, being such crucial pieces, can completely dismantle their game if executed well. In open decklists, it’ll probably be less powerful since it’s straightforward to play around, but I’ve pulled off some amazing blowouts in the few test games so far.

Sear – I considered Sear maindeck as well for some extra reach, but given I decided to go for a Salvo market, Sear market made a little more sense. It can go face and it can go at sites if they become problematic. I did consider other means such as pump spells, for instance Scythe Slash/Rampage in case Face Aegis becomes a problem with the likes of Sling decks, but we’ll see how the meta evolves going forward to make a decision.

Send An Agent – We mentioned it above, and between this and Defile, I think this is the stronger late-game removal spell since it isn’t restricted by cost, with the upside of hitting relics like Grodov’s Burden (Honestly, I don’t remember any monofaction relics that people play nowadays). It’s a fairly reactive spell, but still does its job incredibly efficiently.

Edict of Shavka – I am a little hesitant to include a 3^rd removal spell since I overall have an incredibly reactive market, but right now in Throne, I consider Hooru Kira and Elysian Spells to be some of the strongest decks in the metagame right now, which means Edict of Shavka is a very effective removal spell against those archetypes; being unable to be negated or blocked by Aegis is a delightful cherry on top. Being blocked by Silverblade Intrusion is rather unfortunate, but it’s still a great removal spell from what I’m expecting.

Exploit – This is a consideration to take out combo pieces from opponents’ hands or possibly a board wipe. But with combo having been aggressively wiped out, and Exploit being a pinch too expensive and slow speed as well, there just never felt like a good time to pull the card. Having to Salvo 1 of our units in the matchups we’re targeting with this card doesn’t feel great either.

(As an aside: if I were to try a Cen Wastes Smuggler market, my 1^st instinct would be to go: Edict of Makkar/Sabotage/Reconnaissance/Send an Agent/Bandit Queen. Having double Fire for Bandit Queen is reasonably likely given that’s where our Paintings overlap and that we’re still base Fire, whereas double Shadow for cards like Silverblade Menace are much less likely.)

Things to try out:

The 1 drop debacle – Do we want Borderlands Lookout?

I’ve elaborated plenty on why I think Grenadin Drone works really well; however, there have been other considerations for the 2^nd slot over Borderlands Lookout. Alluring Qirin is a good way to hamper opposing spell-based decks, for instance Kira and Elysian, particularly if we swap on over to a Cen Wastes market so that the symmetrical spell-dampening effects doesn’t affect us as much. Another consideration to hamper Kira and Elysian is Entrancer: silencing those cheap, haymaker units before they even hit the board. For both of these cards, however, their stats are a lot weaker than that of Borderlands lookout – even with evasion, they’re likely going to equate to less damage throughout the game, so it may not be worthwhile to target those specific archetypes.

One other consideration is whether it’s possible to reliably cast these varied 1 drops on T1. Of course, that isn’t possible with Nahid’s Faithful, but concentrating all our 1 drops into 1 faction might lead to a smoother power base.

Potential influence issues – do we want this many Shadow cards/do we want to play double Fire cards?

One thing of note is that we have significantly more Shadow cards by percentage in this Destruction Build compared to the Instinct build – while I do think our influence is better overall due to the presence of 8 Paintings, getting 3 factions of power can still be tricky for an aggro deck. It might therefore make more sense to trim back the number of Shadow cards we have and opt to play a Praxis-heavy deck splashing for the combo instead. Another thing to consider is whether it’s feasible to pull off double Fire influence in the main deck: off the top of my head, the only cheap unit we might consider that would require double Fire influence would be Midchief Salus, which is…fine, but probably not significantly better than any of our 2 drops to warrant straining our power base like that. Again, thanks to 8 Paintings overlapping in Fire, double Fire is much more realistic than the likes of double Time in the Instinct version for the likes of Teacher of Humility. As a result, paying close attention to what influence you manage to get each game and how the powerbase functions as a whole will give you a better understanding of the options you might have when tuning the deck.

Is the combo even worth it?

Whilst it is technically possible to pull off the combo in only Praxis, Warhorn isn’t a playable card in Constructed at 4. Granted, Recon isn’t a particularly playable card in Constructed either, but being half the cost and in the market, it’s easier to pull off. The concern is, of course, if it’s even worthwhile. There is a much higher cost for going 3 factions as opposed to 2 factions for aggressive decks than more midrange/controlling ones, and while the combo kill is nice, it might not be worth sacrificing the consistency you need as an aggressive deck. Praxis and Stonescar Aggro are both incredibly solid decks, and considering it’s rare that you’re able to pull off the combo kill since you only have the 1 recon, take into consideration any struggles you might have with your power base against any games you sneak a win with the combo.

Decklist:

Final thoughts:

Putting together the deck is only about half the battle when it comes to brewing; all these ideas might make sense in theory, but they might pan out very different in theory. That’s why even after we post ‘Testing Diary’ entries and people have tried out the deck, it’s very important to consistently feedback to each other about what felt good, what didn’t, and what you can do to change it. If you’re looking for a strong, innovative deck to bring to a tournament, don’t ever expect it to get handed to you on a silver platter. 😛 The decklist above is a work in progress, and it at least gave my teammates an interesting starting point with which to develop; I wonder if it’ll be the case for any of you? :thinkingface: With the Hour of Glass campaign dropping shortly, I’d also be interested to see if there are any cards with which to help the deck shine.

I also hope that this gave everyone a better idea with regards to the 2 concepts we had discussed in the Weather Reports, and give you a stronger foundation with which to implement it yourself, should you wish. As per usual, if you would like to contest or poke holes in my arguments, you can find me over on Twitter @stormguard798, or lurking in the FE, TEJ or The Misplay Discords. Until next time. 😉

P.S. I realise I keep telling you to find me at the aforementioned Discords, but you might not know where to get the invites – fear not! Here they are! Everyone is incredibly chill, and may you have a good time there too!

Friends of Eternal:

The Misplay:

Eternal Journey: