Craft or Dust – Revelations

Hi, it’s stormguard798, and welcome to the Craft or Dust for the new Eternal Set: Revelations. Now, the only time we did this previously, it got a little weird. What can I say, I like shipping. In any case, here’s how we’re going to do things this time round: I’ll assign each card (or cycle of cards) a verdict – Hold, Craft or Dust. Of course, don’t just read the verdict – it’s absolutely worthwhile to read how I came to that conclusion. I think. >.<

  • Hold means that I think the card certainly has some potential and has a couple of more niche archetypes that it could fit into, but at the same time it’s not be going to be format defining or a major player, so just hold onto the copies you’ve got. 
  • Craft means I think the card is very good and expect it to be fairly meta-warping, either in Expedition or Throne. If you want to be building competitive, Tier 1 decks in these formats, you’ll be well-served with a playset of these. 
  • Dust means that I don’t think the card is particularly good at all. It might fight into some incredibly niche archetypes or might be a strong card in Limited, but at least in Constructed, it’s too slow or is too conditional to be any good. 

*Disclaimer: That being said, please craft and dust responsibly. Don’t make any decisions you might regret down the line. Also, who knows, there might be some very powerful combos involving some terribly niche cards; these are just my first impressions. 😛 I’m unfortunately not the supreme overseer of all Eternal, otherwise I’d be way better at this game. 

(Thank you very much to the team over at Eternal Warcry for uploading all these card images in a timely manner. ‘Tis very helpful. :DDD)

(This is also not an exhaustive list – just cards that I thought would be worthwhile to mention. If anyone would like my thoughts on any other card, I’m more than happy to share those too. :})

Sketches – Hold

Similar to the Runes at common, instead of providing one-of spells, you can instead pick up some relics that you can use repeatedly on turns to come. Unlike the Heirlooms, however, you need to pay a steep Amplify cost to pick up the relic and pay even more power for what is usually an overcosted effect. The cost of including these cards is relatively low – after all, you just need to play Sigils – which is why I can certainly see these popping up in Expedition decks, but realistically I can’t see people not having anything better to do with their power in what appears to be a relatively proactive format. After all, Vines, Wind and Elding are all legal in Expedition. (More on that in a bit.) 

As such, I think this may be one of the very few rare power cycles that I’m not crafting immediately. Ideally, the deck should want power sinks and have an effective way of utilising these expensive relics – Temporal Distortion/Abyssal Scrying Relic control comes to mind – but I don’t see these being extremely popular. 

EDIT: It has come to my attention that Research Lab permanently buffs the stats of a unit, much like Unbreakable Tradition. For some reason, I thought that these Sketches would be balanced with each other, and thought it only temporary. I am delighted to be wrong. There are plenty of ways to augment your units in Justice to take advantage of the boosted stats – Fearless Crescendo, anyone? – and by branching out into other factions, you can do some truly terrifying things with the likes of Moldermuck and Purveyor. It’s surprisingly fairly costed for its effect, which tacked onto a power, is ridiculous. Other than that, the Primal and Time Sketches also seem solid, but are certainly far more conditional in the decks they fit into.

Whilst we’re here: let’s also talk about Runes! I think that once again, whilst the costs for the spells the Runes generate are very niche and overcosted, there are decks that will want them. For instance, Mono Fire might want the Fire rune to provide a little extra burn when you’re flooded, or the a Midrange Shadow deck might want Ghostform to break through a board stall. Much like the Sketches, there will be decks that want these – I just think that you do still have to be incredibly selective in which decks want them. 

D’Angolo Houndmaster – Craft

It may look a little anemic, but pumping out cheap 4/4s is no joke. It’s incredibly easy to dump your hand out right now, particularly with all the support from the new Discard outlets, and going extremely aggressive is certainly one way to close out the game against the rest of the field. before they get the opportunity to get set-up. Your opponent can’t play cards if they’re dead. I am a little unsure about how exactly I want to build around this card, balancing dumping out one’s hand against it being profitable to only attack with exactly 2 units, but the potential is certainly there. I expect this to be a shoo-in in Expedition Fire Aggro decks, at least, and possibly even Throne. 

Raging Jackal – Hold

A 2/1 for Valor is an aggressive beat down unit that is difficult to block in the early game. That being said, like all other X/1s, it’s easily plucked off by Autotread. Or Snowball, and doesn’t bring much to the table other than stats, and doesn’t have much of a leg over the slew of other 2/1s available if your opponent wasn’t planning on blocking it anyways. Its one saving grace is that it is a Grenadin, and although there isn’t a ‘lord’ effect available in Expedition, I could certainly see an aggressive Grenadins deck coming together there. I’m not thrilled with the card, but I’m optimistic. 

Recycle – Craft

Oh my Grenadin producing spell child, how I love you so. It sacrifice things and produces a bunch of bodies, which is what you’re looking for Shrine decks. It also converts your Gleaming Grenadin into enough bodies for a 0-cost Tesseract Prime: it’s not going to happen often, but when it does, it’s going to be wicked. You can get value out of your unit or relic at instant speed in response to removal, and with the new Heirloom Cycle, this is a great way to make use of the relic you get out from that. The effect might be a little narrow, but there are going to be plenty of decks that want this card, and I can certainly see this card making a huge splash. 

Rocketblaster – Dust

Paying 1, exhausting the unit and sacrificing a relic requires a lot of different pieces to come together, but being able to lob 3 damage around repeatedly is an incredibly powerful effect. My biggest concern with this card is being able to generate relics incidentally on a consistent enough basis – if you’re spending actual cards out of your hand to pay for this effect, then this becomes significantly worse. The effect certainly has potential – I’m just not sure where to fit it, and the set-up cost is probably too high to justify the effect. 

Hellfire Valkyrie – Hold 

Now I traditionally don’t like big, expensive units that don’t have a relevant summon effect. Having said that, this is Expedition, and the removal is…pitiful, to say the least, particularly for larger units. At least give a bro an Annihilate, c’mon! As a result, with its 4 health, the odds that Hellfire Valkyrie sticks around for a turn or 2 are pretty good, in which case it can dish out some serious damage – as mentioned just previously, tossing out Torches every turn is no joke – the effect even hits Speaking Circles to boot. Being a Valkyrie, it has already seen some play in the Ambition Valkyrie Warp decks in Expedition as some hefty top-end. However, I don’t expect this card to make any waves in Throne at all, which is why I’m hesitant to craft any copies. 

Sanity Scorcher – Craft

First off, I think Stealth as a mechanic is going to lead to some pretty interesting gameplay, and it’s one that rewards good knowledge of the format, which I can always appreciate. In other news, I really like Sanity Scorcher as a card. Double-damage works really well with aggressive Fire strategies – slap some pump spells or a weapon on this bad-boy and you’re good to go, and you’re always able to dump some excess power into its Intrigue. Certainly don’t underestimate the power of a solid Mindfire – that card has won me plenty of games against an opposing Lifesteal blocker. Whilst it doesn’t fit into the lowest-to-the-ground aggro decks, I expect it to show up in a lot of Expedition Fire Aggro decks, and possibly some bigger Fire Midrange decks in Throne. 

Callous Triggerman – Dust

One way I like to consider Stealth Cards is how happy am I if their cover gets blown before it rocks round to your next turn, perhaps through a ping, a sweeper, or some other negative effect, but doesn’t actually finish it off. For instance, even if I don’t get the Mindfire part, a 5-cost Sanity Scorcher simply being a 4/4 Double Damage is fine, if not terribly exciting. On the other hand, a 4/3 Quickdraw is definitely underpar for 5 power – all of the power of this card comes from the reveal. When the Triggerman reveals its ultimate, it’s pretty good – being modal certainly helps in that regard – but at the same time, I don’t know of any deck that particularly wants this, and the effect is just raw value that I don’t see as being as particularly broken. I don’t think it’ll end up seeing a lot of play nor be particularly good – pluckable by a Flash Fry is not a good look. 

Open Way Supplier – Dust 

Giving a huge chonker killer is nice. Giving it to your 1/1 dork is decidedly not. Besides, there are plenty other options for power dorks that giving killer to a random unit just isn’t enough upside – in Throne, there are plenty of more versatile options, and in Expedition, I can’t imagine playing this over Logistics Expert. There might be some decks that you want 8 power dorks, but those don’t tend to be the decks with particularly potent units to give Killer to – I’m thinking typically go-wide ‘Token’ strategies in those cases. If you’re an incredible lucksack like myself, I could see considering it, but expect to be disappointed most of the time. 

Thunderfist Striker – Dust

To kick things off, it’s a just a 2/2 Valor, which isn’t really exciting, but after you’ve got the first combat trick to push it through, it then just starts fuelling itself. The question then becomes if this card is worth that upside of being a 4/4 Valor with set-up – it’s not as if the card snowballs uncontrollably unlike something like a W&M. A 4/4 Valor is a solid unit, but with no other evasion, it’s still not a ridiculous threat. The card definitely needs support to consistently work, and I just don’t think that the payoff is quite there for you to put in the effort to make it good. 

Frontline Healer – Craft

A slimmed down Lumen Defender, it’s a reasonable deadly blocker that also gains you back some life after taking some damage. It’s exactly the kind of Time Midrange card that I’d want to shore up my aggro matchups, and although I’m not terribly concerned about aggro in the Throne meta at the moment and even less concerned about Time Midrange, I could certainly see it slotting in following some meta changes, and if a Time Midrange deck emerges – think Ayur – then I think this slots in nicely. It’s never going to be particularly splashy or powerful, but it’s always going to be a solid roleplayer. 

Dashing Scoundrel – Dust

I am not impressed by this card at all. The charge battle skill and ‘attacking units’ ability lean towards it being aggressive, but the stat line on this as a 3 cost 2/2 is just so poor. Giving all your 1/1s deadly is nice, but in those types of decks, it’s much more about pushing damage through anthem-esque effects like Obelisk. Giving Deadly is fine defensively, but with the clause being attacking units, isn’t great for the strategy that a bunch of Deadly units really support. I just can’t see this card fitting into any deck. 

Kanya, Ironthorn Envoy – Dust

Now that is an incredibly pricey activated ability. Powerful, but incredibly pricey. Her whole set-up wants you to go as wide as possible, though I’m not sure how many other outlets you’ll have to pour your power into. Now, if you’re not on a particularly go-wide plan, then this is essentially a 4/4 that will ramp you 1, maybe 2 power in most situations, which is fine, but not terribly excited especially compared to other options since it doesn’t do anything else. Even if the power does come in undepleted, that’s only helpful if you can take advantage of the power that turn – since in most cases you’re probably only picking up a single Sigil, that’s not fantastic because you’ll rarely be able to spend that power on.  The deckbuilding cost isn’t particularly high – I mean, it just requires you to play units and attack with them – I just can’t imagine any deck wanting this. 

The Last Carnosaur – Hold

Even if it gets revealed, a 6/5 for 5 is still a decently large body. If it doesn’t, the floor on the card is already a 6/5 killer, which is fantastic; being able to give your whole team killer is a truly ridiculous effect. If you’ve ever played with Striking Snake Formation, the card completely stomps people. That being said, we once again harken back to the fact I simply don’t think Time Midrange is in a fantastic place right now – it’s a little too fair in a world of doing unfair things. Carnosaur is still a powerful card, and if there’s a card that would exist to be the glue to hold together a deck with a bunch of chonkers, it’s this card. I don’t know where it fits, but I’m ready to be surprised. 

Supply Lines – Dust

First things first, I don’t think this is a card you can play in Throne, period, thanks to the existence of Send An Agent. Expensive Mono-Faction relics are generally a massive liability, especially those that don’t have a summon effect or have an immediate board impact. In terms of Expedition, I could see it fit into some kind of go-wide shell with ‘token’ makers, but those decks again typically don’t reach 6 power very easily, and if they do, they’re certainly not going to invest so much of it into a potentially do nothing relic. If you try and play this in a more-midrangey strategy as a ‘fair’ card, then it’s just too slow. The effect is certainly splashy – I just don’t think it’ll be consistently powerful enough. 

Valiant Guardian – Hold

Let me just be very clear – I don’t ever plan on fair-casting this card. I will make a copy of it with NPI or bring the OG back onto the board with A Life for A Life, but this is quite a steep cost to pay retail for. That being said, whilst its spells tax isn’t as hard as a Scourge of Frosthome per se, it’s still going to be a giant pain to remove, and is a strong beater and advantage engine to boot, making it a perfect target to cheat into play. I don’t think this is powerful enoughright now to replace the build-a-board in the form of Vara/Azindel, but being a Sentinel could also allow it to be brought back with Stirring Sands. It’s a little narrow, but there’s no denying it’s an incredibly powerful effect. Now to see just  how to play it. 

Reset The Day – Dust

Wrath of Caiphus this is not – at least that card can be exchanged for power early game, and even then it doesn’t see a lot of play. It doesn’t even dump the cards into your void to cheat out. I can see maybe wanting a copy of this in the 4F Ruin decks as an extra Draw 7 spell, but even then it’s so clunky and conditional. I can’t imagine wanting to play this card outside of that. 

Awakening – Hold

Don’t think about what cards it plays for you. Just think of it as a 1 power Discard outlet that enables you to Discard a card and that gives you 2 units to fiddle around with Elding, Devour, and all those other great sacrifice outlets. That’s it. It might not be fantastic in Limited because you don’t have the way to enable the shenanigans you want to, but in Constructed, I think you certainly have the support. I expect this to be a major roleplayer in Discard Aggro as well as Reanimator decks since it dumps the card you want in your void whilst giving you the units for A Life for a Life. Of course it doesn’t quite have the same powerful level as some of the other cards, and it still only fits in a few specific archetypes, but I suspect you’ll see more of it than you were expecting. 

Iron Priestess – Hold

Another solid roleplayer, it gives you another card to discard upon Discarding her, which is always nice. Also, you haven’t lived until you’ve given this card a Purveyor buff and swung in before plopping the weapon onto something else. I could also see the card come up in other contexts particularly in aggressive decks with ways to make use of the weapon she produces. That being said, I haven’t been particularly impressed by the Justice Discard decks at least in the early stages of the format – I might be missing something, but in terms of power and consistency, they just pale to the Feln version. Henceforth, I do think that if there is a version of a Justice Discard deck, this card will definitely slot in there – whether one exists and is good is an entirely different question. 

Custom Munitions – Hold 

Similarly to Iron Priestess, this is a repeatable Discard outlet that provides a substantial buff to any unit to really push damage – flying Shoaldredgers anyone? You can run out of cards to pitch to this pretty quickly, but that shouldn’t be a huge issue if you’re planning on closing out the game against your opponents. There is a little tension between Warcry and wanting to discard cards from your deck, but that’s a minor issue. All this being said, this card runs into the same issues as Iron Priestess where I’m just not sure if the deck this card supports is necessarily that good. We’ll see. 

Kako, the Bodyguard – Hold

I think a 3 drop with lifesteal that can grow out of control is a pretty potent threat, on top of having an ability to neutralise attackers for a turn. Unfortunately, if Kako does get revealed immediately, 3 power for a 2/2 Lifesteal is rather underwhelming, especially given the other assortment of Midrange threats available – having what is supposed to be a defensive threat be able to be plucked off by a Salvo isn’t great. Also, a large majority of the other Stealth units reveal themselves at the beginning of their turn, so if you see one just sticking around, the odds that it’s a Kako are rather high. The potential for the card is certainly there, I’m just not sure if it’ll be far too easy to play around or too slow for the pace of this format.

Manacles – Hold 

Yet another card with a lot of potential, taking out 2 units and making it even more difficult to play fair midrange decks. Poor Midrange. :} It’s also more relic-based removal, which is relevant for the decks that care about that. It is a pretty big blowout if your opponents have a way to remove the Mancles mid-combat and blow you out, but the tempo swing that this provides is incredible that is worth the risk in certain builds. Unfortunately, with Eldings dominating both formats at present, it is incredibly easy to sacrifice one of the Manacled units and free up the other, which means Mancles hasn’t been particularly effective in my experience at holding anything down for long. I could see it be more popular once the inevitable nerf to Elding hits, however. 

Experimental Forcefield – Dust

I can already imagine all the meme decks that this card will spawn, and while I think they’re going to fun to play, the clause of ‘wtihout flying’ is going to really hold back this card – there are plenty of flying threats. Since the Elding decks also tend to go wide, you might be hit with a harder power tax than you might imagine. It’s probably a solid option once you’re able to protect the relic with Face Aegis, but it’s a very precarious tightrope to balance – one removal spell and you’re just…dead. It’s certainly a fun card to play around with, and some decks will have absolutely no way to deal with it, but the breadth of answers with which to deal with this and blow you out are just too high. 

Greatblade – Dust

This feels like it’s a very powerful haymaker in Limited, but I can’t imagine running this card in Constructed – the odds that you’ll be able to get the bonus clause on the Greatblade for the smorgasbord of effects it provides is rather low, and other than that, it’s just a fancy Raildriver. Challenge By Law is a great effect, but can be rather conditional, which is why at most I stuck it in the market in previous metagames. Dropping a 5 cost Weapon on a unit in Constructed just seems like the best opportunity to get blown out. 

Ky, Awakened Master – Hold

I think Ky is a really solid Justice Midrange unit that has a very low deck-building cost – it simply requires you to play units. It has a relevant summon effect for the cards in your hand – it is possible that you end up with no units left in hand by the time you drop this, but you can play around that with your known information – and it could give a pretty substantial buff to the rest of your deck once you drop your skill-augmented unit. It’s not quite the ‘I’ll take over the game if you don’t deal with me’ of 6-cost Svetya, but it does provide a solid amount of upfront value. It’s probably not making massive waves in Throne – when has Justice midrange ever been a thing in THAT format – but it could certainly have some potential in Expedition. As with Hellfire Valkyrie, the odds you can stick an expensive threat are pretty good. 

Guardian Angel – Dust

This reminds me very much of a card in Magic: The Gathering that was in all the intro decks for about a gajillion years – Aegis Angel. It’s a great Limited card – I mean, it’s a massive flier, of course it is – but saw zero play in Constructed. I believe that’s what we’re also going to get with Guardian Angel. Tacking on Endurance is a fantastic bonus, and the summon effect is not negligible, but again, they simply remove the expensive monofaction threat before moving on with their lives, and unfortunately, it doesn’t leave behind value once it’s gone. This card is going to destroy games of Limited, but is too expensive to consider for Constructed. 

Bottled Insight – Craft

Don’t be fooled by this innocuous little common – there is no effect in the game at present that replace itself with such efficiency, and is a crucial card to dig for combo pieces for the decks that want it. The discard from the amplify also helps provide an outlet for various card strategies – Exhibit A: Elding. It’s certainly not going to fit in all Primal decks, but the decks that want it know that they do, and it’s going to be quite the potent card there. 

Cyber Skimmer – Craft

It may just be a 1/1 for 1, but it’s a fantastic card. It’s a great early attacker, and later in the game when the body is underwhelming, you can convert it for more cards and more dorks! It’s a Grenadin so it slots into Grenadin synergies, it’s a flier for the Majestic Skies decks, and its evasive nature slots into the Throne Room/Tormented Crown decks very nicely. It’ll be a fantastic roleplayer in a lot of aggressive Primal decks, and if cheap aggro becomes popular again (Turn 2 4/4s RIP Aggro) I could certainly see this card playing a huge part in the meta. 

Obstructive Flicker – Hold

The so-called ‘strictly’ better Swift Refusal, it’s an obvious replacement there for any deck with sufficient Primal in order to support it. The 1 damage to each attacking creature is incredibly conditional – I’ve never seen Warning Jolt played – but the 1 time you play it to blowout low-to-the-ground aggro, you’ll be glad to have it. And your opponent will probably be flipping the table. Since both modes of the effect are fairly conditional, I can’t see playing this card maindeck, only market, but I can certainly see it slotting into a lot of markets moving forward

Tormented Crown – Dust

The most recent example of a person trying to do cute things with this card is Systiem in the most recent Expedition TNE with a sweet Jennev Autotread Combo list, and the deck has destroyed me on ladder a couple of times. Despite getting my butt handed to me, I still believe all the parts of it just feel a little too fragile – the relic just sits there doing nothing until you’ve gotten in all your hits, and the combo is incredibly easy to disrupt as we’ve seen. There are definitely comparisons between this card and The Throne Room – the difference is that it’s much easier for your opponent to remove the Crown, and then all your hard work is for naught. The card is a spicy build-around – just not something I believe is consistent enough to ever be competitive. 

Hidden Crusader – Hold 

A card is nice, and a 2/2 is also nice. However, I’m not sure how you’re supposed to get this card revealed since the underwhelming ⅔ body means that it won’t be able to connect particularly well, so I feel that most of the onus will be on the opponent to reveal Hidden Crusader, and a la the Kako situation, I expect that the Crusader will be fairly obvious, and therefore straightforward to play around. That being said, it’s still providing a solid amount of value either way – I’m just not sure what deck it fits into. The obvious-at-first-glance home for it is Soldiers, but I don’t think Soldiers wants such a reactive 3 drop, even if the value is great. Let’s see where this goes. 

Jufi, Sprite Seer – Hold

In a world where it’s very easy to pick up extra cards, Jufi is going to grow out of hand very quickly. I’m not a massive fan of the Intrigue ability since it just scatters random cards throughout your deck, so I’m mostly just ignoring that ability. Unfortunately, Jufi has no inherent evasion, which means even if they get some ridiculous stats, your opponent can just chump them for days. As such, I do think the raw power is certainly there – raw stats are still raw stats – but the card definitely needs some help to really make it shine. 

Velise, Bear Rider – Craft

This card is fantastic. It’s a Soldier, which is a relevant unit type. In aggressive archetypes, the 2-3-Velise curve provides some additional damage on top of being able to filter away excess power. In decks that care about Discard, it provides a Discard outlet, and also provides Overwhelm to those cheap, aggressively statted units that the deck can generate in a jiffy – Overwhelm Shoaldredger or Purveyor buffed-unit anyone? This card isn’t broken in the same way as others are in the set, but it provides a consistency that a lot of decks are looking for, and even though not everyone is playing this card yet, frankly they should. It’s great. 

Davia, Azurebreaker – Craft

Unlike our previous entry, Davia is begging to be broken. Snapped in half. What have you. The obvious haymaker is to stuff this in a deck with Aid of the Hoorus, Discard them, and then watch your opponent weep. Another route is to go the copying route a la Mirror Image/End of Hostilities to simply flood your board with far too many Davias and then simply whack your opponent to death the next turn. There might be some kind of sweet combo involving Davia that I haven’t unearthed yet, but I’m down to figure it out. It’s a little pricey at 7 power, but the effect and board impact it can have is ridiculous, and I’m expecting to see at least some number of Davia decks down the line. 

Relicfeaster – Dust 

It spits out a bonus big beater, which is nice for a card that you are forced to overcommit into in order to be good, but the fact that it nor the Slime has any inherent evasion once again raises the chump blocking issue. When you sacrifice all your Amber Locks to this and your opponent proceeds to Permafrost it, you are going to be very sad. The power is certainly there for a card that only costs 2 power, but I think it’s just requires too high of a set-up cost to be worthwhile and the pay-off isn’t quite where I want it to be. 

Twisted Farmer – Dust

I’m not sure what this card is exactly trying to do. You have the option of making a bunch of sacrifice fodder, but since they all die at the end of turn, the odds that you have the power to also do the sacrificing in the same turn isn’t particularly likely. The Ambush on the card also allows you to flood your board with a bunch of surprise blockers, which is cute, but still isn’t particularly power efficient, and the ⅓ doesn’t do much by itself. It’s sort of cute, and it’ll certainly catch me and I imagine some other people off-guard, I just don’t believe the effect is that powerful nor worthwhile to build around. 

Waxing Moon – Hold

The most recent iteration of this archetype was piloted by colacoma in the Throne TNE in its Menacing version, but what you’re trying to do is get a relic out like Vara’s Sanctum that grants Deadly to your units, and then mow down your opponent’s board with a pinging effect like Blitrok or Yetipult. Obviously, this strategy isn’t great if your opponent doesn’t have units for you to mow down, which is where the card draw side of Waning Moon comes into play. My biggest problem with the card is that you won’t ever get to control which side of the moon you want, which means I suspect you’ll often run into situations where you’ll wind up with the wrong mode at the wrong time. Not requiring you to only have 1 unit to have it online and costing 2 power cheaper certainly helps though. It could also be a solid roleplayer in more defensive Shadow Midrange decks, particularly in Expedition where Moldermuck is delightfully popular, but I probably wouldn’t want the 4-of in those types of decks – could still see it as a market option, however. 

Subversion Slug – Hold

The odds of this just sitting there and doing nothing are pretty high – if you ever want to start cracking in with this, then it’ll reveal itself, and a vanilla 6/4 is just sad. However, at 5 cost, there are plenty of powerful cards with strong reveal abilities at that cost, particularly in Constructed, which means your opponent might be hard-pressed to remove it, in which case there’ll be a delightful blowout. If you’ve ever played Corrupt against an opponent, the feeling is quite sublime. The card does unfortunately get significantly worse in open decklists, but I imagine you’ll be able to catch people off-guard often enough. The question then becomes if the fact that it’s a clunky midrange unit that doesn’t have a relevant summon effect makes it worthwhile to craft. I think not for now, but I could see picking it up later down the line. 

Elding of the Final Hour – Craft

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or a pile of work for the past week or so, this card has been literally all over the place in both formats, and is comfortably sitting in Tier 1 in both formats, and rightly so. It does require a bit of set-up, preferring you to play cheap units and being able to discard it, but the payoff is certainly there – being able to turn a 1/1 dork into a 4/4 with a relevant battle skill is quite the upgrade. And if it ever is allowed to stick on board to start converting all of your ‘tokens’ into reasonable beaters, the game will be over in a jiffy. Krull was certainly powerful, and whilst I do think this requires a little more set-up, the fact that over the course of a game it’s much easier to play this card just for face-value means that I think it’s probably even more broken. (Doc, don’t hurt me. Please.) If you’re a Shadow deck, there’s really no reason not to be running this right now. Craft your playset now and be confident that you’ll use them – a lot. 

Fall to Ruin – Hold

The board wipe mode is a little pricey at 6 power, and Triple Shadow influence is also kind of difficult to hit particularly in a 3+ Faction deck. That being said, it’s still an unconditional wipe in Expedition, which means it probably sees at least some play out of the market, if not maindeck. On the other hand, if you are able to get the 12+ unit clause online in decks like Discard or Reanimator, then oh boy is your opponent about to be in for quite the ride. A one-sided board wipe is nothing to scoff at, and if you’ve seen how quickly people can still get Kato online despite the nerf, then you just know that target won’t be too far out of reach. I do think that it’ll end up in much more markets than maindecks, which means you really only need to pick up the 1 copy, but it still remains an unbelievably potent option to have. 

Searing Strike – Dust

As part of one of the first few cards that were spoiled from the set, there was a lot of hype on the card initially. I’m delighted to be proven right as the card has barely seen any play. Firstly, the fact that this can only hit units really restricts it as removal. It’s also multifaction, which means it’s very narrow in the decks it fits into. Finally, it’s only worthwhile to play over the assortment of 2 cost Fire damage spells if you have a good way to take advantage of the power you generate in the same turn, which requires you to have a lot of things come together. All in all, the card is just too conditional in too many spots that I don’t think it’s worthwhile to play at all in Constructed. 

Malaga Amphitheater – Hold

My initial thought was playing this in some kind of Praxis Aggro or Tokens list to push damage and enable you to dump your hand. Then the combo list with this, Autotread and the Tormented Crown emerged from the depths of brewing, and that seems like a much more fun way to use this. Compared to Crown, I do like that there is a fair use to this card, which means that overall I think it’ll probably see a pinch more play, though honestly I’m probably just a sucker for Diogo. Side note: I really like the direction DWD has taken with these new sites – they seem much more fun, balanced and nuanced as opposed to just an easy shoo-in to every deck that can play them. 

Marshal Izia – Dust

I just want it noted that your 6 drop can be taken out by a Blazing Salvo, and potentially negatively affecting your board even more once it’s taken out. It’s multifaction, which helps, but the 2/2 body is just far too small. 

Blueprints – Craft

I expect these to be making a huge splash, particularly in Expedition thanks to the overall lack of fixing in that format. Seek Power has always been great, and possibly getting some additional value on top of hitting consistent power drops in a 2 faction deck is fantastic. Even if you don’t have a good way to take advantage of the relic, just having an outlet to dump your power into late game for some value is still fantastic. There will always be 2F decks, which means these are probably a safe craft no matter what. 

Sanguine Reaper – Dust 

I have seen this card in Valkyries deck particularly in the past Expedition TNE, and I’m honestly not terribly impressed. You’ve got a whole bevy of battle skills, but the key thing to note here is that it still has 3 health, which means it’s very cleanly taken out by Flash Fry. Or Vicious Overgrowth. And so forth. In additional, most of the relic weapons from Silver Slicer to Heavy Artillery get taken out by the Sanguine Reaper ping, which means that you’re leaning very heavily on Watchwing Support to trigger the clause on this. On top of that, it’s a symmetrical effect, so you might be giving cards to your opponent as well. Do you know what makes relics super easily in this format? Blueprints! In conclusion, this card just flops on so many fronts that it probably isn’t worth including, at least in Valkyries. Prior to the set release, I remember there being talk of trying to put together a ‘Suicide’ SS deck with ways to take advantage of the fact that you’re damaging yourself, but that also seems incredibly niche at best. 

Ring of Glamour – Dust 

In the early days of things, I have seen some Elysian Stealth decks floating around, primarily with this as your pay-off. The obvious issue with the deck is that you’re typically forced to play cards incredibly off-curve, much like the Even decks, with all the Stealth units being on 3 and 5. The difference, of course, with the Even decks is that the immediate payoff of drawing 2 cards is there, and you have access to the entire suite of Even cards throughout Eternal’s history, which contains a lot of powerful options. Here, with Stealth being a new mechanic that’s only supported in Revelations, you really don’t have many options to choose from. Drawing a card whenever you play the majority of your units is an incredibly powerful effect – I just don’t think that the archetype this supports will be anything more than a meme. 

Gavel’s Insight – Hold

A combat trick that can also double as relic removal when you need to get rid of something problematic? Color me impressed. This trick might finally be the push to get Combrei Aggro decks back into the spotlight. I have seen quite a few Combrei ‘hatebear’ style decks chock full of creatures that limit what you and your opponent can do to combat all the Discard and Reanimation nonsense happening at present, but the deck still certainly has some spots where playing a fair game doesn’t line up very well against all the unfair nonsense. I haven’t seen it played in any other decks, and being a multifaction card, I’d be tempted to hold off on crafting the card for now since it’s still fairly niche. 

Mandatory Retirement  – Dust

This card is missing a super important word – fast. Part of the reason something like Formbend still barely sees any play is because you’re still giving them a unit to play with – granted, a 2/1 will be less impactful in the vast majority of cases compared to the X/X that Formbend spits out in more spots, but it’s still a unit that can be sacrificed and manipulated. And with one of the most problematic relics of the Throne format packing a ‘No Transform’ clause, this really isn’t that potent in getting rid of that. (If you too have been traumatised by Sling, call 1-800-IMPOUND.) If it was at least fast speed, then you have the opportunity to get particularly tricksy in combat and blow out your opponent that way, but without that, there are just plenty better options for interacting with opposing threats. 

Aymar, Dark Summoner – Craft

Anyone remember when this was still called Avara, and there were plenty of jokes to be had with their name? No? In any case, whilst the dream of a Vara-themed deck might be one step further away, this card is absolutely no joke. If you haven’t seen the various Twitch clips yet of people comboing off on Turn 3 yet, you should. Because it’s hilarious. And unbelievably potent. This card was not designed with fair things in mind, and I have already seen multiple builds that use this card to just draw and dump out your entire deck. The meta is still converging on what the best build of that deck is, but a combo deck with this card is certainly going to be right there moving forward. 

Collapse – Hold

I really like this card – I don’t expect it to have quite the ubiquity of something like Send An Agent (R.I.P Send An Agent) since Discarding a card can be a real cost for decks that aren’t built around it or prepared to take advantage of the ‘cost’, but the versatility of the removal itself is certainly there. On top of that, in decks where you’re actively looking to discard things into your void, the card is fantastic. It is multifaction and it does have a pretty steep deckbuilding cost – actively 2-for-1-ing yourself in a build that isn’t prepared for it is no joke, which is why I don’t expect to see it everywhere, but the card is extremely potent. 

Side rant: There have been a lot of Feln Discard decks floating around in the Throne meta lately, and I feel one of the biggest issues with that deck is its general complete inability to interact with any hate pieces or threats whatsoever – Send a Message, but is hardly targeted interaction. As the format progresses and more and more people start to pack appropriate interaction for Feln Discard, I could certainly see those decks pivot to perhaps a Purpose build, if only so you don’t horribly die to a Grand Suppressor or what not. There are some ridiculously powerful things that you can do in Throne right now, which is why it’s even more important to be packing appropriate interaction. :DDD 

A Life for A Life – Craft

The traditional weakness of a deck like Reanimator, at least in Throne, is that it sometimes takes a little while to get going – all your early plays are spent fueling the void, and you might never get to Turn 5 to play Grasping at Shadows because you’ve been run over. Speeding that clock up a turn and having A Life for A Life costing only 4 power is huge – most of the time, you’re using creature-based self-discard like Darkwater Vines or Sporefolk to fuel your void, so you often have at least 1 piece of fodder that you’re able to sacrifice – and get back once you’ve built back your board with Vara and Azindel. Reanimator decks are going to play a huge part in both formats, and the efficiency of this card is exactly why. 

General Draft Format Observations:

Ok, so just to be clear: I am a very inexperienced Limited player and I’m certainly expecting a lot of these hypotheses to be wrong. That being said, after listening to Watchwolf92 talk about the way he approached Limited and Constructed formats in his interview, I’m super excited to try out his approach in making theories about the Limited format before even playing a game. Let’s do this! 

  • Hidden units at 5 will lead to stalled-out board states a la Morph in Magic The Gathering, out of trepidation for a potentially bad attack. There’s also a lot of defensive buffing tricks that have been added to the draft packs, for instance Divebomb, Gruanform, and so forth. They also lean on the more expensive side compared to the tricks available in Empire of Glass. All these defensive tricks inform me that combat tricks aren’t often going to be used to push damage.
  • This is further cemented by the fact that there’s a lot of units that are geared towards blocking that have been added into the Draft Packs: Archive Curator, Campfire Watchman, Illumination Wisp, etc. all scream to me I’m trying to play as defensively as possible.
  • Once again, the key berth to breaking through seems to be 4 health, so as expected, Basher is still going to be great, and the various 0/6s should do a great job at blocking things.
  • The Discard for value that a lot of cards have to support a major theme of the set will lead to less flooding in the late-game, which also means more power-heavy decks. The general lack of Plunder in the format probably means that people should be running more raw power in their decks. Runes and Heirlooms also give you ways of dumping your power in the late-game. The Monuments as an incentive for going late in the game further support this.
  • The larger amplify costs on cards also indicate that more games are going to go long, thus allowing for greater decision points with various amplify cards.
  • Despite that, you still need to commit to the board early. A lot of units have the clause ‘ attack with exactly 2 units’, which means the tempo of 2 drop, 3 drop could lead to you being run over quickly if not careful. There are also plenty of common 2 drop Valor units, which means people will be getting on the board quickly – this will lead to a lot of trading damage early. Though there isn’t much cheap removal in Revelations – we have Rule the Skies and not much else at common – so it’s super important to pick up removal in the Draft Packs – and there’s plenty of it.
  • Every faction is packing some solid finishers from mass-buffs in Behold the Truth (Time) or direct damage in Lava Burst (Fire) or just units going bananas with Distilled Rage (Primal) so pay very close attention to your life total to avoid dying from a comfortable position.
  • Well-Laid Trap is going to destroy people. Namely me.
  • Aggressive fliers are going to once again be at a premium just to break through these board stalls, which is why there are plenty of ways to disrupt these evasive units through Silence effects alongside flier-specific interactions.
  • The fixing is significantly worse in this format, losing out on the Tokens, and with only the non-Painting faction pairs picking up Banners in addition to Seats. Hence, I expect most decks to stick to 2 factions, particularly to utilize Blueprints more effectively.

Now, I’m going to go watch some Limited streams and see just how horrendously wrong all these hypotheses are. 😛 

Disagree with my assessments of all these cards? Is there any card that I missed that you’d like my opinion on? Hit me up on Twitter @stormguard798, find me lurking in the FE, TEJ or The Misplay Discords, or simply reply to this post on Reddit – I always have reply notifications on. 😛 Until next time, and happy brewing! 😉

The Proving Ground – Even Elysian

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

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

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

Decklist:

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

Main deck:

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

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

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

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

Strategize:

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

Dazzle:

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

Petition:

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

Saber-Tooth Prideleader:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Helio, the Skywinder V Honor of Claws:

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

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

Vicious Overgrowth:

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

Sky Serpent:

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

Derry Cathain:

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

Desert Alchemist:

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

Royal Decree:

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

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

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

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

Market:

Speed Grafter VS Rage Grafter:

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

Impound:

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

Grodov’s Stranger VS Glimpse Another Age:

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

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

Swirl the Sands VS Gnash, Desert Prince:

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

Sodi’s Spellshaper:

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

Master Conjurer:

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

Accelerated Evolution:

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

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

The Speaking Circle:

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

Gameplay!

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

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

VS Combrei Relics:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VS Hooru Kira:

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

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

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

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

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

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

VS Even Feln:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Final thoughts:

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

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

Storms’ Weather Report – Eternal Open: Stormbreak (Expedition)

Hi everyone, it’s stormguard798, and welcome to the latest Weather Report. I don’t know about all of you, but the Expedition metagame had been an absolute maelstrom prior to the Expedition Open, shifting from one popular archetype to another, which made it incredibly amusing to prepare against. The addition of mini-set Stormbreak breathed life into pre-existing archetypes, and by that, I mean flooded the metagame with Feln and Menace based decks, just like in Throne. TEJ still had a great, albeit struggle-filled, time testing for the tournament, and the Open metagame ended up being appropriately diverse, leaving it nicely mixed up going into the draft pack changes (which honestly, didn’t end up doing too much to the format as a whole, which is a shame). Joining me in today’s Weather Report is the person I’m most often mistaken for and fellow Weather Council member, Stormblessed. 

Hello y’all, it’s your favorite storm-related username here, Stormblessed (clearly the shade starts here). (SG: Bring it ON.) Some of you might have heard of me from my Top 4 performance at Worlds last year, or heard from me directly on FECast. It is quite a bit after the Expedition Open has ended, but I’m still pleased to be discussing the decklists therein through my invitation onto the Weather Report by the very generous Stormguard. I’d describe the current Expedition meta, especially pre-Open, as consisting of about seven Tier 1 decks, all with relatively comparable power levels. 

This hypothesis is further supported by the Meta Report that the Misplay published for the Expedition Open, where no archetype, barring the Clone FPS Krull deck, over or underperformed. Every deck has a number of good solid matchups, while also suffering from one/two heinous ones and you just have to accept that. The other main feature of the format is that it’s warped and defined by two or three ends of the spectrum. That is to say, Rainbow Sling decks, Overloader Machinations Combo decks, and perhaps aggro decks in the vein of Hooru Soldiers and Mono Fire really do define the scope of what can go into each deck.

Stormguard’s deck: 

Let’s be honest, after missing out on playing with those cards last Open, I was itching to digitally sleeve up some Grenahens and Crafty Occultists this tournament – both of them are incredibly powerful cards, and I certainly think playing both of them in some capacity is probably the way to go. #JustPlayTheGoodCards. I was torn between this and Overloader combo on which broken cards to pair with my bird and my boi, but ultimately landed on Sling. Whilst I had a fair amount of practice playing the combo deck, I felt the lines with Sling were a little more straightforward. 26 games is a lot to stay focused on, and as a person that tends to get burnt out very quickly, I elected to go with Rainbow Sling so that my brain isn’t completely fried, even though I do think Overloader is better at weathering its weaker matchups. As with the previous Open where the Menace Trove decks were an option, knowing yourself and what is physically possible for you to handle is also kind of important when picking a deck for Day 1. 

[Editor’s note: You ended up on the same deck as the TRS folks again. Interesting. SG: Look, my Honey Milk Man and I have a simp-simpee relationship that transcends most forms of human communication. You wouldn’t understand.]

Credit to my teammate, AlexFiero, for coming up with our team’s initial iteration of 4F Sling, and to the Eternal Power calculator on Shifstoned.com for helping me out with the powerbase. >.< [Side note: if anyone would like to point me in the direction of a powerbase crafting article, I would greatly appreciate it. My powerbases are…something.] Going into this tournament, I was expecting the most popular decks to be Mono F, Sling, and Combo as being what I saw on ladder, so when building this deck, I definitely needed to have some kind of gameplan against them. Hooru Soldiers was fairly popular the previous week but the previously popular builds got fairly aggressively stonewalled by the more creature-oriented builds of Overloader Combo, so we didn’t expect to see it in huge numbers. We also expected to see smatterings of Mandrakes and JSx-based midrange. Unfortunately, with the nature of Sling being a more value-oriented, grindy deck, I think our combo-based matchup is just pretty poor no matter what we do. However, for Mono F, barring a quick Suppressor into Belax, I do think we should be able to stifle most of their aggressiveness and take over; the same applies to quick starts out of Soldiers – it’s hard to beat a double Dovid, but we should beat most reasonable draws. On the other hand, I feel quite good about the majority of our midrange and control matchups since Sling provides a fairly insurmountable volume of value, and with only Impound being a clean answer to our Sling, it’ll be rather tricky for most decks to get off the board. 

There were quite a number of different builds of Rainbow Sling, so I wanted to discuss some card choices that I landed on, and how wrong I was in some cases. [Editor’s note: Hindsight might be 20/20, but Stormguard is just blind the majority of the time. Or just has a tendency to hyperfixate on things that don’t work. SG:…what am I supposed to say to that?]

Darkwater Vines/Shoaldredger: 

Okay, let’s get the big one out of the way. I wasn’t confident enough in the powerbase to run multiple threats with double influence requirements – almost everyone else ended up running Slimespitter Slug, but I didn’t think that it was something you wanted 4 of at 6-cost, nor was it single influence. Hence, I kept the Darkwater Vines/Shoaldredger Package from the original Menace Sling list so that I had 16 Sling-able units maindeck. Darkwater Vines was also quite helpful as a cheap Regen blocker back when Soldiers was still popular. 


That being said, the biggest issue was consistency. When you had Vines, you were able to get the Shoaldredgers cheaper quite quickly. When you didn’t, you weren’t able to fuel the Shoaldredgers easily enough with just Grenahen and Occultist, so they ended up rotting in your hand just a pinch too much. The more Vow heavy powerbase that everyone else was correctly running definitely helped enable the Vines more frequently, though it still isn’t terribly consistent. Even though they were powerful turns in the late-game where I could deploy multiple sling threats one after another, it didn’t make up for the fact there were just times that I couldn’t play my Shoaldredgers at all and just get completely run over. In a deck that ultimately is about consistently enacting a gameplan over and over again, it doesn’t quite cut it, but we didn’t come up with anything we liked better. 

One other thing to consider is that Darkwater Vines being a symmetrical effect might also end up helping your opponent. After it got hit with an influence requirement, Krull may have been confined to Shadow decks, but with KWTHE and Whispering Wind both being Expedition legal, that’s certainly a strategy that we suspected quite a few people would be employing. The last thing you really want is to enabling their strategy as well, which is another knock against Vines/Shoaldredger as a strategy. 

SB: For this deck I don’t think the Shoaldredger + Darkwater Vines paring isn’t quite good enough or synergizes enough. There’s just not enough ways to discard to consistently trigger Vines early enough (only 3! Crafty Lads!) and not quite enough ways to reliably make Shoaldredger cost 4 or less before the late game. 5 Cost Shoaldredger is just a sad Alhed, who is already a sort of do nothing on play card. I did try out a variety of Sling decks and while I did move off of them entirely, the version with these three cards (including Hourglass) was my least favorite.

One thing to note: earlier iterations had Rosebloom Mandrake as an additional Sling unit with Overwhelm as well, which is always nice. However… A. You have so little control over what ends up in your opponent’s void apart from Darkwater Vines discarding things, and therefore there wasn’t really any way to enable the Rosebloom Mandrake becoming cheaper. B. The spike in cost reduction was a huge factor. You’re content with playing Shoaldredger for 5 or 6 power sometimes, but the berth between 8 and 2 just introduced even more inconsistency in getting your Sling threats out. 

Arcanum Hourglass: 

Another fantastic payoff if you plan on self-discarding a fair amount. In a deck with plenty of card draw, if you can get even a few power cards into your void, you’ll be slamming multiple Sling-able units in a turn and be off to the races. The problem, however, arises when things don’t quite come together. You simply aren’t discarding a large enough volume of cards to even guarantee a single power card in your void on a regular basis – Darkwater Vines is good, but without cards like Sporefolk in the deck, it tends to just sight there and do nothing. The TRS and TIL builds have quite a few Vows to put Sigils into the void – I think that should be fine with regards to the dual-influence power situation should there be Trail Makers. However, the reality is that you aren’t running that many Sigils to begin with because you’re a 4.5F deck. In the end, the card just ended up varying so wildly for me and was pretty much dependent on whether I drew Vines or not that I didn’t think it worthwhile to include. 

SB: I think that playing Vines/Dredger and not Hourglass is a mistake. But also that Hourglass is kind of meh. (I am definitely biased against Hourglass in a similar way to being biased against Whispering Wind). Not to say every deck playing Vines/Dredger needs Hourglass (see: Mandrakes), but a deck that wants to be playing expensive cards and also is playing Vines/Dredger doesn’t want Hourglass because there’s not enough self mill or discard… well that might be a sign that the deck also doesn’t want Vines or Dredger.

Trail Maker: 

Oh, my precious influence-fixer. We end up cutting this card from the list because it got caught in the crossfire of Condemn, Salvo and Display of Menace a pinch too often, but that was a rather poor decision in hindsight. It felt bad that your power dork got removed and therefore disrupted your plans down the line, but if you were keeping a hand that relied on a unit living, then frankly that’s your own fault for keeping a sketchy hand. XD There is no shortage of unit removal in this format. Ultimately, even if your Trail Maker ended up trading 1 for 1, that is still quite worthwhile since you already got your influence, which is the part you care about. Definitely regretted not playing this multiple times on Day 1. 

SB: ❤ Trail Maker you’ve been there for me since my Xenan Sites days. ❤

Spiritweaver: 

The topic of a reasonable amount of discourse, I don’t think that it’s fair to compare this to Grenahen because I consider this to fulfil a different role in the deck – Grenahen looks to shore up your early game and make sure that you don’t get rushed by an aggressive draw; Spirtiweaver looks to help definitively close out the game by minimising the reach or any outs that aggressive decks may have. I will admit that they are both in the deck to combat aggressive decks and that Spiritweaver is a bit of a win-more card, but their roles diverge quite a bit. There are spots where it does stone-nothing, but the effect it provides is something I don’t think any other card in the format can quite do. It does become redundant in multiples, which is why I think 2 copies is a nice middle ground, but I think it’s definitely worth inclusion in the Sling lists – it has bailed me out quite a number of times, and works exactly the way you’d want it to with Somiel. 

SB: This is actually a card I like as a 2 of honestly. It’s a bit situational, but it’s decent in a fair amount of situations. Having plunder means you can keep more hands and granting lifesteal means you can recover tempo and stabilize easier post Sling of the Chi. It can be somewhat awkward for the opponent to have in play so if they throw removal at this they aren’t using it on your more important cards. All that being said, it is still a situational 1/3 so I wouldn’t want too many copies of it and 2 copies seems like the perfect amount.

SB does bring up a fair point: you don’t have a lot of tiny units in the deck, and those that are (think Chicken and Crafty Boi) have already expended their summon effect and so it’s less worthwhile to hit those with removal. That means more often than not Spiritweaver is going to be an absolute magnet for cheap removal such as Vicious Overgrowth or Flash Fry. That being said, this card does fill a role that you need – considering how much nothing Sling decks tend to do in the early game, without a cheap sweeper like Hailstorm in Expedition, putting your beautiful life total out of range of a sneaky burn spell or charging flier often saves you from defeat. In a deck like Sling that tends to see a lot of cards, particularly once it gets going, 2-of seems like a fine number where you’ll likely see 1 copy most games. 

Slimespitter Slug: 

The secret piece of tech that quite a number of Sling players ended up bringing to the Open, it’s certainly an interesting option, though I’m not convinced it’s the best one. Admittedly, this deck does occasionally struggle with hordes of tiny fliers since you can typically only remove them 1 at a time: for instance, the bats from Syl or the Reapers from Rolant. It can also help incidentally recover some life in the process, and since you’re guaranteed to kill at least one thing with Sling out, it should be fairly straightforward to get this to 6 health as well for the draw trigger. I think the fact that our team’s list has 3 copies of Display of Menace definitely helped shore up our tiny flier situation quite a fair bit, but it’s certainly worth trying out as another Sling fatty since I’m shaving the Vines/Shoaldredger package. 

SB: The not-so-secret piece of tech you mean! :p. Although it was actually a secret to me and I didn’t expect it so maybe I shouldn’t be talking. [SG: Same, honestly. The card wasn’t even on my radar.]

The removal suite (Send an Agent/Flash Fry/Suffocate/Permafrost): 

I can’t believe it, but there are so many multifaction threats currently running around in the format that Send An Agent, my precious child, simply isn’t good enough to run as a 4 of – granted, it’s still an incredibly versatile removal spell, which is why we’re running 2 copies. [Editor’s note: And yet he still constantly runs the full 4 of Annihilate in Throne.] We considered diversifying our removal suite to better answer an assortment of threats, though we ended up simply running more value cards rather than additional interaction.

Earlier iterations of the deck had Flash Fry, in particular to deal with recursive Mandrakes as well as Grand Suppressor, but seeing an assortment of Soldiers lists perform respectably, this might not be a fantastic choice for the meta moving forward. Similarly, even though Suffocate is equally able of answering Drakes and Suppressor at only half the cost, it’s even more narrow being slow speed. Ultimately, I think Permafrost is probably the cleanest answer for the majority of the aggressive threats that actually pose a problem to us – yes, it doesn’t stop the value of the Merriest Mandrake, the passive of Suppressor or Endurance units like Rolant, but it’s reasonable at shoring up threats like Dovid and Belax that are the most problematic for us in the early game. 

SB: Poor Send an Agent gone from its glory days. I don’t envy you Rainbow Sling builders trying to decide which removal to play in this format, especially considering you are, you know, playing all the factions and have access to all the removal. While I probably would’ve played some number of Suffocate or Flash Fry or Permafrost, I don’t think you are incorrect for eschewing them completely, especially if you predicted a diverse metagame where each option had a significant fraction of decks it’d line up poorly against. 

You say you wanted to run ‘more value cards’ instead, but you only ran 3 copies of my poor Crafty child. Curious. (hehehe) 

Hey! Display of Menace is a pretty good value card. (more on that in a bit) On an aside since we’re on the topic of it, Crafty Occultist is solid in Sling as a way to dig for additional copies, but with no recursion with our own void and therefore no real way to take advantage of the cards that we’re discarding, I don’t think I could justify the full 4 of. Side note: please don’t run Crafty Lad in conjunction with Suppressor in your Skycrag Sling decks in Throne. Or at least, be slightly more aware of it. The number of shame scoops I’ve witnessed from opponents is alarming. 

Negation spells (Tesseract’s Technique/Swift Refusal):

In lieu of some removal, we also considered including a number of negation spells, particularly when we thought that Overloader Combo was going to be a popular match-up. Whilst Swift Refusal negated more what we considered ‘relevant’ spells such as Machinations, Shoal Stirrings and Know Thy Enemy, Tesseract’s Technique was a hit off of Grenahen, and also did a better job at combating spells that our deck in particular was quite susceptible to, such as Display of Menace and Scythe Slash. Ultimately we felt that both options were just too narrow and particularly dead in some of our weakest matchups against aggressive decks, which is why we ended up eschewing both for othermore versatile interactive options.

SB: I agree, playing main deck extremely narrow negate effects would’ve been a very poor choice indeed. I could see maindeck Tesseract’s Technique being good in a different Grenadins list that actually would want to use the +2/+2 mode, but otherwise these narrow negates are strictly Market only in my books.

Exploit: 

Ok, so I’m going to get a lot of angry comments, and SB is probably going to ream me out for this, but I’m not a fan of Exploit in the Sling decks, even though Overloader Combo is one of our weakest matchups. The plunder from Exploit helps you fix your influence, and is very helpful in taking key cards in opposing matchups such as Slings in the mirror or Machinations/Overloader against combo. 

However, the nature of Exploit means that it isn’t as effective against aggressive decks such as Soldiers and Mono F, which are other matchups we struggle with since it’s a card that doesn’t affect the board. If your gameplan revolves around trying to catch up on Turn 5 against decks that can win the game by Turn 4, that’s not where you necessarily want to be. With the combo style of deck tending towards playing Overloader main, a well-timed Exploit is usually less devastating – plus, later on in the game, they often have Condemn/Swift Refusal up to protect their combo. Finally, it is awful to walk your Exploit into an opposing Transpose out of the Sling decks on Turn 2, which we also expected to see quite a number of. I think there’s a case for maybe playing 2 copies since it’s nice to smooth out your draws and snipe a key card from your opponent’s hand occasionally, but the way that decks are being built right now make them more resilient to Exploit, which is why I’m not a massive fan of including the full 4 of regardless. The card seems fine in theory, but in practice, it flopped quite hard for us. 

SB: Huh I didn’t realize you weren’t playing a single copy of Exploit. That’s a crazy deck building choice, but one I can actually respect. Exploit is powerful, but somewhat overrated by the community at large. It’s not bad and it certainly is powerful, but it’s no pre-nerf Maveloft Huntress.  Exploit isn’t some ‘gotcha I win the game on turn 2’ button. It has very real costs in a significant tempo disadvantage. Playing exploit means you spent two power while your opponent spent zero power. If your opponent can still get on board early, you’ve effectively skipped turn two which is not a place you want to be in. 

That being said, it does provide a powerful disruptive element towards your opponent’s initial gameplan for the starting turns of the game. That being said (again), you are already playing Darkwater Vines and you cut one of it’s best enablers? Somewhat baffling. Ultimately to me the card feels like kind of a necessary evil in decks like Rainbow Sling. You don’t want to play it, but you kinda need to. Of course, irregular and out of the box deckbuilding can be important to not get stuck in local minimum traps and Explot could very easily be one of those so I don’t actually want to knock Stormguard here too much. (Unlike Vines/Dredger which I will continue to ‘scorn’ :p)

I mean, I’ve already admitted Vines/Dredger was definitely a mistake. Don’t look at me internet, don’t look at me! >.< 

Display of Menace: 

My other precious child. Menace decks have completely overtaken Expedition, and everyone knows it. We were originally considering Swirl the Sands as some removal for opposing Slings as well as pesky Reappropriators. We quickly found Display of Menace to be a much more versatile card, to absolutely no surprise. Besides removing Slings and making sure opponents can’t get them back, it also helped shore up the go-wide problem this deck sometimes has in dealing with a menagerie of tiny fliers and provides other incidental utility. There’s a reason all the other Menace decks are running 4 of this card – it’s very good, and if I could find space for a 4th copy, I would absolutely play it. 

SB: ❤ Display of Menace. It’s no Crafty Lad to me (who is my previous child), but I love the card. In this metagame is was an all star and is just so fun and skill testing to use everytime. Don’t worry fans of this card, you’ll hear more about it from me later on.

Onoris Roa:

We first saw TRS play this on ladder as a tech card against Overloader Combo and immediately stole it. XD However, we ended up dropping it after some playtesting – it’s a fine roadblock against combo and it’s certainly annoying, but the fact that it doesn’t protect itself makes it much less potent, and it being a market card, you can only have 1 copy. They Condemn and Combust it before simply moving on with their lives – you really need 2 or more copies to really get a good lock on the game against Pyrotech. We ultimately preferred Rain of Frogs as a much more sure way to disrupt their combo, even if it is easier for them to interrupt from their get-go. Besides, playing both is still not a surefire way to defeat them – I’ve definitely had games where I’ve Rained followed by Onoris and still horribly lost to Overloader Combo. XD The card was certainly playtesting with, but my only conclusion was that this card had disappointed me yet again. (Side trivia: I crafted the full playset of this card and Cast Iron Furnace on Day 1 of Empire of Glass releasing. Massive regret.) 

SB: This card can help disrupt Overloader Combo, but for that end its at its best main deck in an agressive time deck. If you can’t apply pressure in addition to having this in play, Overloader decks can still have enough time to generate enough power and draw two Pyrotech Explosions, the first pointed at Roa, the second pointed at your face. Rain of Frogs is a much more reliable way to disrupt the combo. Although if this card had 6 attack or health then it’d be a very solid Market option as it would start playing multiple roles in the deck.

Absolutely. As we’ve seen with a card like Grand Suppressor, it’s great for disrupting a lot of summon-based strategies revolving around Hen, Lad, and cards like Even-Handed Golem in Throne, but it’s not very effective on its own if your deck doesn’t have a way of actually pressuring them before they knock you down with mediocre beats. [insert Telemokos’ emote here] Not to say that Onoris Roa is poorly statted – a 5/4 Overwhelm for 4 is nothing to scoff at, but the rest of the Sling deck isn’t great at supporting that pressuring plan since all our units are expensive and don’t have Overwhelm or other evasion. I do find it very amusing that what was supposed to be a buff to the card by making it cheaper ended up making it possibly worse, since the 4 health means it can be plucked off by a non-amplified Explosion. 

Know Thy Enemy: 

There is some debate as to whether you want the market splash for Know Thy Enemy, and I am firmly in the camp that you should. The card just does so much in shoring up your matchup against Mono F and Soldiers whilst incidentally being quite good against Mandrakes. Being KTE, it is also a fantastic card to get in the late-game when you’re running on fumes to get back into this game – even Sling can run out of gas sometimes. Well worth the splash, and with House Alliance, Trail Maker and Seek Power, it’s less costly than you might imagine. 

SB: It’s kind of crazy on the face of it to play KTE in what is otherwise an ostensibly a 4 faction deck, but there’s enough free fixing here to make it playable. One point that Stormguard doesn’t bring up is the fact that Rainbow Sling plays a Transpose market to protect Sling. And being a Transpose Market means it has to have only 4 cost cards, which similar to Salvo or Condemn markets, you might find difficult to find enough different situational cards without too much overlap. KTE allows the deck/market to have a very unique effect that fits the market restrictions. If for some reason the deck was running a regular Merchant instead of Transpose, I imagine KTE might face the cutting room floor (or maybe not, it is still powerful even then).

That is certainly a fair point. If I were running, say a Jennev Merchant perhaps, then I could see running, say, a Storm Spiral, as my market sweeper option. However, with the Transpose market, KTE really is your only option, and I certainly believe that it’s so important to have a sweeper for go-wide decks that Sling decks can really struggle to deal with even after you’ve got your engine running. 

Post-tournament Decklist: 

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/DsbYx4FLYoU/updated-rainbow-sling

So post-tournament, I’ve removed the Discard package in Shoaldredger and Darkwater Vines, slotted back in the Trail Makers, and filled out the last 4 slots with 2 Permafrost and 2 Slimespitter Slug. I then adjusted the powerbase accordingly. I’m not sure if this configuration of cards still works with Grenahen and having sufficient hits for it, but that’s something that shall be deciphered with more testing.

One thing to note: I am well aware that Sling decks in previous Expeditions used to run Calibrate as an option for digging for your Sling. I’ve seen some relic-based 4F Sling decks even prior to this balance patch, so they’re certainly a viable option – 8/8s from Waystone Gate, anyone? However, I don’t think that you can just shoo-in Calibrate over say, Seek Power in this version of the deck and expect it to work, like a lot of people did in Expeditions past. -_- With 29 hits, you have an approximately ~5.5% chance of missing, assuming you’re playing a Calibrate T1 on the play. Considering that your fail case is literally doing nothing, that’s not an acceptable fail chance. I’d look to have 35+ hits for Calibrate at the very least, which means at least an additional 6 relics or power. I don’t think I could find space for that in my build above, which is why I won’t be making such an exchange, but a more relic-based build of Rainbow Sling might end up being stronger in the new Expedition and better able to take advantage of the spicy new cards in the format. Who knows. :DDD 

Stormblessed’s deck: 

Just like Stormguard I also missed out on playing the Crafty Lad/MY CRAFTY CHILD and Grenahen last tournament after I took Kira to a top 8 finish. I obviously don’t regret my choice there, but I do love my poor crafty child. That being said, I almost didn’t take crafty again, which would have definitely been a top 10 anime betrayal. (SG: Agreed, given how often you talk about them. I think there’s definitely a case for it being in the Top 5 if that happened.) I was looking at basically every single tier 1 deck to decide what I should play in the Open. Basically any deck in Expedition barring Hooru Control and Combrei was on my list of options leading up to the event.

I ended up making a last second, “day of” audible away from Mandrakes and onto Align the Tesseract, or Tessa for short. Note: Tessa is an elder god, and also just a lovely working girl trying to make it in a man’s world, and a robot. I had a great, albeit tiring time (especially during day 1) playing this rather unique style for a control deck, and managed to get mgallop to also do a last second ‘day of’ audible onto the exact same 80 card list as well. Both of us managed to perform very well in the tournament. I accomplished a top 16 finish, already locking up my slot for the last chance invitational tourney, but mgallop stole the proverbial Tessa show by achieving a very good top 2 finish eventually succumbing in the finals to a Machinations Combo deck.

But let’s back up a bit to tell the Tessa story a little bit more. It starts, perhaps unsurprisingly on a Discord voice call. However, it surprisingly wasn’t a voice call with my teammates, but rather was on the Friends of Eternal discord server instead. Sunyveil had been streaming there consistently before the Open and I was working with him to fine-tune various versions of the Machinations Combo decks (you can see both of our fingerprints all over the few versions of Mach Combo that made it to the top 64). Also on the call was a certain Tempest Dragon King, who was talking up various forms of his Align the Tesseract deck. [SG: Weather Council HYPE! Side note, if you can make it, these random voice calls on the FE server are a great place to watch truly great players hash out lists. There’s no set timing for these, but they are delightful.] 

I’ll admit I was very skeptical at first, especially after I saw some of the earlier drafts of the deck he posted. Specifically it was filled to the brim with wayyyy too many 2 and 3 ofs, at least in my opinion. As an example, one of the earlier drafts had only 3 copies of Assembly Line, which, while not being a Grenahen hit, remains one of the best cards in the deck and certainly something I wouldn’t want to go below 4 copies. But we’ll get there eventually.

So the question is, if TDK’s Tessa deck looked heinously bad to me, how did I ever end up on the deck? Well, the obvious answer is that a bunch of the 2 and 3 ofs were converted into 0 and 4 ofs. But what really happened is that someone on Eternal Warcry asked TDK for a Throne version of his Expedition deck. TDK built this alternate version and then took it to a Tuesday Night Eternal Top 8 finish, going 4-1 across the Swiss matches. The deck was a proven winner! Or at the very least had proven potential for greatness. I noticed that his Throne list, aside from the Powerbase, was only six cards away from being Expedition legal. If there’s one thing that people could know about me from my Worlds’ performance, it’s that I like taking my Expedition decks into Throne and vice versa. [SG: I mean, in your defense, it was a pretty good meta choice for countering what you expected in a very limited field. It worked, so who cares. XD]

I recommended TDK make his Expedition version more like his Throne version, which, as I’ve stated was a Proven Winner. And it was from this updated list that I ended up using with a number of minor, albeit significant changes.

Cards I want to Talk About (esp in comparison to the TDK list):

(SG’s disclaimer: I haven’t played All Hail Queen Tessa previously; I discussed it with SRFS in a previous Expedition article on the best way to build a Menace Grenadins-based deck [wow, shameless plug], but have not tried it out myself. Hence, my perspective will entirely that of an outside looking in.) 

The Number of Tessas and Align the Tesseract/Realign the Stars:

Unlike the other card choices, I’ll let SG start things off for this one to give me an opportunity to respond to points about some of the most fundamental card choices.

SG: Your entire deck revolves around Tessas. You can play a reasonable fair-game particularly with Grenahen and Occultist, but that certainly feels a little underwhelming. As a result, I don’t think you should ever be running any less than the full 4 copies of Tessa because it’s the strongest thing your deck can do pretty much at any point in time. 

SG: Now, here is where my inexperience with the deck may cause my opinion to diverge quite a bit. As with in Overloader combo, Machinations and Pyrotech Explosion are such key pieces that I can’t imagine running less than 4 of Realign to fetch up those key pieces. Similarly, considering how important Tessa Summoning is to the deck, I would want my 5th to 8th copies, even if they do cost 3 power more, and if you don’t need them, you have a couple of other options to find, or just pitch it to Crafty. Realign as a 3 cost ‘tutor’ effect is incredibly clunky, but the power level of the cards you’re finding is certainly there. 

Tessa as a deck is named after its namesake card Tesseract Prime, the unit created from Align the Tesseract, a card that is thematically and mechanically linked to Realign the Stars. In mgallop’s and my version of the deck we  were playing a 4/1 split of Tessa/Realign while TDK was playing a 3/2 split. And there’s a lot to unpack here about the split itself, the number of copies and the amount of Realign the Stars.

Let’s start with total number of Tessas. Effectively there are 5 Tessas in both lists which while I simply didn’t change the number of copies when modifying TDK’s list is because I ultimately agreed with the reasoning. I’m going to predict the future here and predict that Stormguard thinks running 4 Realigns is correct. There are two main reasons for why running less total copies of Tessa is correct. 

Number One: You can absolutely get Tessa flooded. While having multiple Tessas in hand can make you resilient to Exploit, it is far more often a liability where you can’t execute any game plan because you don’t have enough tokens or damage based spells to truly capitalize on having a greater chance to deploy Tessa. Counterintuitively, more Tessas ends up making the deck clunkier and more inconsistent.

Number Two: The deck doesn’t need 8 full copies of Tessa because, unlike Machinations Combo, it is *not* a combo deck. It isn’t. It is a control deck with a big splashy finisher. While you eventually want to draw the ‘combo’ you don’t need to draw it early and you don’t need to draw it ASAP. You can take your time to control the board or even go for some mediocre beatdown with Crafty Occultist.

The fundamental difference between this deck and Mach Combo ultimately mean the downsides for having 8 copies of Tessa are not worth it. Ergo, having 5 copies is enough.

Briefly let’s discuss the 4/1 vs 3/2 split. Stormguard is right here that we do want enough Tessas. While it is the control finisher and doesn’t need to come down earlier, it can and will sometimes come down earlier. And it’s great if it does. To that end, facilitating the best possible draws (ie: extremely early Tessas) for the deck is crucially important. And to do that, you’d want to max out your Align the Tesseracts before adding in any copies of Realign the Stars. It’s possible you still want 2 or more Realign the Stars, but I can’t imagine doing so before playing the full playset of Tessa herself.

Perhaps an even more foundational and all important point is that Realign the Stars is bad. It’s just really bad. It’s slow and awkward and clunky. At face value as Stormguard says it puts a 3 cost tax on any card you grab with it. That’s bigger than you might think. ‘15’ cost Align the Tesseract is significantly worse than a ‘12’ cost one. Especially when one can cost 0, but the other always costs at least 3. You also have to spend earlier turns and power setting up the board state initially to even play Tessa out, which exacerbates the additional 3 cost even more. (This is a significant difference to Realigning for Hardiness or Machinations, which don’t require the extra board investment to play out).

As a useful exercise let’s compare it to Dragon Forge. Unfortunately, it compares super unfavorably in key aspects. The most obvious is that Dragon Forge only puts a 2 cost tax and can actually help ‘cheat’ out cards earlier. And 2 < 3 afterall. I’d go so far as to say 2 <<< 3. As a further example within this example, take the card Xumuc Coercion. Currently it costs 3 and might end up being an interesting card in some specific combo oriented decks. And that’s a respectable place for a card in constructed. Certainly better than most cards. But if DWD ever buffed it a second time to cost 2, I think it might possible end up as the single best card in the game.

Equally as importantly as just the sheer cost of the card is the class of cards one can get over the other. Grabbing Weapons and Dragons and making them cheaper gives you cards that are effective for their cost. However, that is contrasted with Amplify cards, cards which traditionally are somewhat overcosted, especially when you utilize the Amplify mode. This isn’t a knock against Amplify as a mechanic or how it is balanced, mind you. Just that cards with Amplify 2 or 3 gain increased flexibility for increased cost. Paying an extra 2 Tax for a big Dragon or Weapon (i.e.: Pale Rider’s Timepiece) is going to be far more impactful than grabbing any old Amplify card (ie: Razorblades). The flexibility and power of Amplify comes at a literal cost. It just ends up being very, very slow to actually play Realign the Stars and then to use the card you get from it.

It’s also worth taking a look at how much play Dragon Forge saw. It saw play in roughly a dozen decks in early 2020, almost never as a 4 of, and only thrice did the deck it was in ever top 8 or better. Then take this card that only saw a small amount of play and make it significantly worse. That’s Realign the Stars.

Finally, be aware and remember that I’m comparing “fair” usage of Realign the Stars and Dragon Forge as tutor effects. I’ve already discussed why the “unfair” uses in Tessa aren’t necessary or make the deck consistently stronger. Some of this obviously won’t apply to Machinations Combo.

[SG: That’s a very good point. When you frame the archetype as a ‘control deck with a finisher’ rather than a ‘combo deck with a beatdown back-up plan’ then running fewer ‘copies’ of it in the deck, so to speak, make much more sense. I also didn’t take into enough consideration the high set-up cost of Align – you certainly want at least 1, but additional copies once you already have Tessa out fall off in power level very quickly.]

Conflagrate vs Flash Fry vs Vicious Overgrowth

The removal suite in a Tessa deck is super interesting because of the sheer amount of different options to choose from. Today we’ll be discussing 3 options for the two drop, deal three damage slot: Conflagrate, Flash Fry, and Vicious Overgrowth. I ended up picking a 3 of Flash Fry; meanwhile TDK went with a 3 of Conflagrate and GeorgeA went with a 3/1 split on Flash Fry to Conflagrate. So let’s discuss the various permutations.

First, let’s compare Vicious Overgrowth to Conflagrate. Considering the uselessness of putting random Primal cards in the market (especially in a Condemn market), it is simply a 2 cost Overwhelm Deal 3 at slow speed. Conflagrate is a 2 cost Deal 3 at fast speed with an incredibly expensive rider that basically will never come up. (We’ll get to this later but if I was having trouble playing my Scraptanks out, imagine how unlikely it’d be to use the amplify on Conflagrate). The key point here to recognize is that Tessa is ultimately a control deck. It wants to and will win the long game given enough time. 

What that means is that the Overwhelm aspect on Vicious Overgrowth is ultimately irrelevant (aside from perhaps popping Aegis but that deck already has a lot of ways to do that). In a control deck, the fast nature of Conflagrate puts it over the top of Vicious Overgrowth. If this was an aggressive Grenadins list I might expect the choice of removal to be reversed (although I have no experience with that deck so I can’t say for certain). SG: I agree with that assessment. The fact that Vicious Overgrowth can go face as well as hit sites is not irrelevant, but you don’t need that kind of reach with burn if you’re a control deck – you’re playing it as removal far more often. 

That leaves Conflagrate and Flash Fry as the remaining two options. And of those, I think Flash Fry is far and away the best option. Ultimately, the choice is relatively minor. But Flash Fry is significantly better than Conflagrate and it’s important to understand why. As stated above, you’ll basically never actually Amplify Conflagrate. If you are Amplifying it on a regular basis then I expect you are playing the deck incorrectly. That means the only incentive for playing Conflagrate is for Realign the Stars (and the very rare situations you want to pay 7 for a double split torch) vs Flash Fry punching through Regen and bestowing Voidbound on the unlucky unit.

When I type it out like that it already sounds obvious to me, but I’ll explain further.

Once again, Realign the Stars is bad. It’s a necessary evil (especially in Mach Combo), but it’s still bad. I won’t go into it again, but all the things I said previously apply here just as much towards Conflagrate here as well. 5 Cost Deal 3 Damage to an Enemy Unit is an absolutely miserable joke rate of an effect that will lose you the game if you have to play it. If it’s your best play, you are behind on board or tempo and it’s so inefficient that doing so will just continue to let the opponent gain advantage over you. The upside of having Amplify is not only not useful, but will actually lose you the game if you try to take advantage of it.

On the flip side, punching through Regen and granting Voidbound are real, tangible, great upsides. It turns Mandrakes from a great matchup into an even better one because it takes out Vine Grafters before they can go to the market, stops recursion from Shoal Stirrings or Eremot’s Machinations, and stops Krull shenanigans. Beyond that it helps with a variety of other matchups as well. Sentinels can be a difficult deck to beat, especially with Vulk coming back over and over again with massive Overwhelm damage that can’t be chumped. One Flash Fry deals with it forever whereas Conflagrate only makes Vulk stronger once it’s recurred. Any matchup with Krulls or Whispering Winds or Regen is better served by a hugely significant margin by choosing Flash Fry over Conflagrate.

Ultimately, ultimately, ultimately, the final truest answer to me for why someone would choose to play Conflagrate over Flash Fry is that it feels cute and fancy and will let you feel clever with Realign the Stars. Putting it in the deck is ‘fancy deck building syndrome’ and will lead to to ‘fancy play syndrome’ where trying to be clever ends up putting you into bad situations. And even if you end up never grabbing Conflagrate with Realign the Stars, you are wasting very precious brain energy contemplating that line in a deck that requires a lot of thought.

SG: I’ve seen some lists run Conflagrate as a removal spell that can be fetched up with Realign if necessary, but in your particular build that doesn’t seem fantastic since you only have the 1 Realign. 

SB Counter note: Even if you are playing 3 or more Realign the Stars, Conflagrate is really bad compared to Flash Fry. Similarly, I think Vicious Overgrowth could be another interesting option if we expected Sites to be an issue, but Overloader Combo and Sling just go over the top of the grindy Midrange decks packing those too easily. As a result, I think the 3 Flash Fries make the most sense in your build. 

Display of Menace

10 outta 10. This should come as no surprise to anyone playing Expedition recently and might not have even been worth mentioning, but I wanted to give a quick shoutout to one of the best cards in the deck. Display of Menace has proven itself good in basically every archetype, but this A+ card is at its absolute best in this deck, with every mode pulling its weight in gold.

Obviously having access to relic removal can be very, very important, whether it is versus Combrei Relics or any Sling of the Chi deck. Having the flexibility here adds a powerful dimension to an already powerful card.

Its most commonly played mode has to be the “Sacrifice a unit to draw 2 of the top 4 cards” mode. In a deck that wants both card advantage and card selection, backed up with an abundance of sacrifice fodder, this mode ends up being one of the most skill-testing parts of the card and also the most powerful.

Finally the ping an opponent’s entire board for 1 is also at its most sublime here. As stated above and below, there are an abnormal amount of x/1s in this Expedition format, so its base card isn’t terrible. On top of that, this card plays 4x Downdark Scrounger and 1x Gren. That means you can stick bonus Spell Damage on this card turning it into a more potentboard clear. Finally, with Tessa out you get to give your opponent’s board -1/-1 (or more) while drawing two cards!

Just an absolute heater of a card in an already fire deck.

SG: Is there even any doubt as to what my thoughts are? Heck, I’m running this card in Sling! It’s such a versatile card right now where you’ll use each mode of it often enough, and particularly in a deck that can generate this much fodder the card draw mode, it’s got to be a shoo-in. I’m not sure how we slept on this card for so long, to be honest. Easy 4-of, no more questions, we move on. 

Razorblades

This card is definitely an odd nugget. It’s both terrible and important to have? Honestly, I’m still unsure about how I feel about this card. Importantly, it’s easy to discard (with either Crafty or Hen) which makes it easy to have access to when it is at its best (ie: when you have a Downdark Scrounger and can get it back). I dunno about this card at all, but felt it was probably still better to have the card than not and left Razorblades in the deck as a solitary 1 of compared to TDK’s 2 of.

SG: This card felt really, really bad unless you have Downdark Scrounger on the board to support it when I’ve played it in Menace decks previously. As such, I think it’s a fine 1 of tutor target with Realign if you have the on-board presence to support it, but I’m certainly not looking forward to playing this for face-value. As SB pointed out, it is still a spell to pitch with Grenahen to be bought back when necessary, but that situation still feels rather narrow. 

Gren, Iron Martyr

Gren was absolutely fantastic! Surprisingly so in fact! 

Side story: I ended up winning a wild game with Gren where my Rainbow Sling opponent played two Somiels in a row and almost stabilized except for the fact that Gren allowed me to go Condemn, Vara’s Favor, Vara’s Favor, Char for an 8 damage burst for lethal out of nowhere. That was Gren at its finest, but it was a solid roleplayer throughout. If I could’ve actually tested the deck versus, you know, audibling at the last second without a single ladder game, I would’ve tested more Grens and probably ended up at 2 or 3 methinks.

SG: Even after the buff, Gren still feels incredibly underpowered for what it does. A 3 cost 1/1, even one that can block, is not a serviceable unit, and though drawing a card is nice, the other 2 abilities on Gren are just so disjointed, one wanting board presence and the other wanting spells in hand. Maybe it’s enough to warrant a 1-of as a 3 cost Dark Wisp with a relevant unit type, but it still seems very underwhelming. I am a little bit surprised to hear how well it performed for SB, and there’s a good chance that I’m just not playing the little dude correctly. 

Scraptank

My Hot Take: Scraptank is bad and past its prime (link to Tesseract Prime here plox). But seriously, it kind of stunk. I streamed my swiss games to the TBC discord to watch (again, while I was deafened and muted, in case I haven’t said this earlier) and they saw so many, many games where Scraptank sat in my hand clunky and unplayed (because I had better things to do) or unplayable (because I only had 4 power or just played a painting as my fifth powercard). Oftentimes it ended up playing as if it was a 5 cost Assembly Line and that’s just not quite good enough.

Honestly, while there were a few games Scraptank shined, they were few and far between and it felt more like a liability most of the time than anything. It felt like its best purpose was just to be discarded to Crafty Occultist. If I could make changes to the deck, the biggest one I’d make would be to go down two Scraptanks to a single copy and replace them with a singleton copy of Nectar of Unlife (for a good singleton situational effect) and a secondary copy of Gren (who ended up being surprisingly good).

SG: Outside of Tessa herself, this is probably the best card in order to pressure Combo’s life total. It can definitely get out of hand pretty quickly, but the fact it can simply be answered by a Permafrost means I can get behind only running 3 copies. At 5 cost, it is also quite awkward to draw multiple copies. I wholeheartedly agree with SB on the perspective that it’s not nearly as effective at getting bodies on the board as you’d want to for a Tessa deck, and that you are very, very liable to being blown out by removal since without any way to sacrifice units for value immediately, a 3/3 is liable to be removed by any number of things. Given that you don’t have a tremendous number of ways to incidentally sacrifice the Grenadins for value, it also does seem harder to grow the Scraptank into a massive threat. 

Vara’s Favor 

I love, love, love Vara’s Favor. I played 4 of it back in Xenan Sites and I’ll play as many of it as I can whenever I can. Specifically here, the demands of the powerbase meant there were only 3 Shadow Sigils which meant that only 2 V-Favor’s fit (due to my small numbers deckbuilding rule of N-1 for N sigils). Sadly I couldn’t squeeze any more copies of the card into this list over TDK’s.

SG: It’s a hit off of Grenahen, and can be used to break Face Aegis to clear the way for Displays to hit Sling, and of course, fill up your hand with the help of Tessa. Your deck doesn’t appear to be particularly skewed Shadow, so I think it’s fine to just have a couple of copies so that you don’t end up with no Shadow Sigils to fetch. 

Condemn and the Market

This was one of the biggest innovations TDK made to the Tessa list and it was an absolute banger of a change. This change really helped the deck run on time. Especially in this specific Expedition metagame where there was an actual preponderance of x/1 Units as well as units that you wouldn’t mind combining this with other removal to give an important opposing Unit Voidbound. This is definitely one place where TDK was 100% on the money and given how difficult making a good market can be, more credit to him here. To wit: all cards were grabbed a significant portion of the time and were important to have access to.

First off, the negation spell split was crucial and definitely could not be trimmed down. Yes, it takes up two market slots, but having the option to negate any spell is vital. Additionally, Tesseract’s Technique does have other useful modes (even if they were used very sparingly).On top of that, Tesseract’s Technique also combines with Tessa herself swimmingly because when you negate a spell with it, it’ll deal 1 damage to the opponent, triggering Tessa further drawing you two cards.

Second, the removal split. One piece of small removal and one piece of hard removal allowed the deck to clear any unit. And importantly, Char also allows the deck to “combo off”: If you have Align the Tesseract and Condemn as your only damage spell, you get to guarantee at least 4 cards drawn from your deck with Condemn + Char. Considering how easy it is to have random 1/1 Grenadins in play with this deck, having Combust as a safety valve is exceptionally powerful.

Finally the most important card in the market: Seek Power. I would cut any of the other above 4 cards before I’d cut Seek Power. Having Seek Power in the market turned many non-games into actual games that I ended up winning. Yes, it can be painful in the moment to have to 2 for 1 yourself if you can’t get Condemn value, but going down a single card is better than being unable to outright play the game at all. Considering the deck has good ways to get back card advantage later, it’s not quite as bad as it looks although it’ll never feel good. It was often the first card pulled out of the market and the most important one.

SG: I think for the Tessa decks, Condemn is a fairly clear market access option since it is a cheap damage spell that can go face if there are no good targets. Since it’s able to pluck off the likes of Stonehammer or Overloader, I think Condemn is perfectly serviceable as removal in a pinch. In terms of the market access, Swift Refusal, Technique and Combust all seem very standard to me – the 2 negation spells to protect the Tessa summoning, and Combust as a catch-all removal with plenty of fodder. Since you’re opting not to run Seek Power main, having it in the market also makes sense. Char as the last slot is very interesting to me – my initial hypothesis is that it’s to be used in conjunction with Condemn to take out Suppressor, or perhaps to take out a Tower. I hadn’t considered its use in conjunction with Tessa, which highlights my complete lack of experience with the deck more than anything else. I think in a more general metagame, I’d look towards broader removal like Edict of Makkar or a different effect entirely like Kaleb’s Intervention or Ruin, but being able to seize the Opportunity to draw a lot of cards seems great to start the Tessa Enginge as well. I think that having a damage-based spell effect to simply draw 2 more cards off is nice to have, but am unsure if that’s a little bit win-more. 

Cyber Combustion 

Cyber Combustion being maindeck instead of market actually was gas and while at first other people were a little skeptical, even mgallop eventually agreed. There’s a couple pieces of important information that makes Cyber Combustion correct maindeck over markett. The biggest is that you get to run a Condemn market over Salvo market, which I’ve elaborated on above so I won’t belabor the point further. The other is that market Cyber Combustion in many ways isn’t that good. One main benefit to board clears is the card advantage they offer. Well, if you are spending two cards on your board clear it’s inherently harder to actually get any amount of good card advantage when you clear their board. Additionally, it’s hard to truly utilize all the damage from Salvo + Combustion. If the opponent only has x/3s or worse in play then you are wasting the two damage from Salvo. And finally considering Tessa’s status as a control deck, the two damage from Salvo can really add up. The main risk you face with it maindeck is that it will be dead in some matchups, but that is mitigated with it being only a 3 of as well as the amount of sheer card selection the deck offers (i.e.: with markets and Crafties and Grenahens and Displays and etc).

SG: I was previously reticent to include this maindeck or even Salvo market in previous lists just because it lined up so poorly against a lot of the popular decks at the time, in particular Tradition Soldiers with all its 4 health units. I think as the aggro decks have shifted to Hooru Soldiers and Mono F, this is certainly a more viable option, although I do wonder how effective these will be in sweeping the board of opposing Menace lists. Having said that, there are some spots that only a board clear will save you, and if this Menace Krull list starts to build in popularity, I can certainly see Combustion be quite back-breaking against them. 

Cyber Hound 

I think playing Cyber Hound fall into ‘fancy play syndrome’ or rather, ‘fancy deckbuilding syndrome’. TDK’s list ended up running two copies and I think it was just getting too cute and TDK should’ve just maxed out on his better cards (ie: running 4 Crafty Occultist before playing any copies of Cyber Hound). It’s incredibly underwhelming at any point you don’t trigger its fate. And even if you do trigger it’s fate is it even better than Crafty? I felt even stronger about this choice after watching TDK get in some practice games the night before versus his round 1 opponent. I don’t remember, but I think it might’ve been versus Stormguard actually in the practice but it has been a while. [SG: It was me. SB had the opportunity to watch me misplay Tradition Soldiers over and over again. …that’s not a deck I have a lot of practice with, OK? XD]

Either way, I was watching from the opponent’s perspective and I could see everytime TDK drew Cyberhound and then just never played it because it’s just underwhelming. And unlike, perhaps say Overloader combo, Tessa doesn’t require a critical mass of cards in hand so the pure card advantage over Crafty Occultitst isn’t as good as the card selection and quality (ex: having Flying and/or creating a special grenadin friend) Crafty Occultist offers. For what it’s worth, even if there was space in the deck, which there isn’t, I still wouldn’t end up playing any copies of this card. I’d just play better cards.

SG: I saw some earlier versions of the deck running the card merely as a way to ‘fate’ an extra card for some card advantage, particularly with Occultist, but it’s very underwhelming if you don’t have a unit in play to trigger it. Having played against TDK’s version with Cyber Hound, I certainly agree with the assessment that it felt quite underwhelming.

Decks left on the testing room voice chat channel: 

Overloader Combo: 

As I mentioned previously, this was my other consideration for bringing to this tournament but I ultimately dropped it because the lines were giving too much of a headache. I’m not sure if Sunyveil was the pioneer of the change, but he at least was the first instance that I saw of people shifting over to a more unit-based version of the combo with Grenahen, Occultist, and Savior of the Meek alongside more of a sacrifice package as opposed to more of the spell-based verison of the deck, which is the iteration I was considering playing. I was initially hesitant playing the Overloaders main and the Hardiness market with only 4 market access but subsequently found it more resistant to disruption.

Though having double Primal influence was rather rough on the powerbase, our team found Dazzle to be the stronger interactive spell over Exploit, particularly when it came to protecting the combo. It counters that Rain of Frogs very nicely. :} We also weren’t a massive fan of the builds packing Scrapfind Skimmer – it’s certainly a nice additional threat for your fair game-plan, but it felt a little too incongruous with your primary strategy. It doesn’t even give you the card! Even though the deck ended up winning the tournament, I think many will soon find it quite difficult to play without putting in a lot of work practicing or theorycrafting the deck. Hence, I expect its ladder metagame percentage to remain fairly low. 

Menace Discard/Krull: 

When you read the words ‘Discard’ on both Grenahen and Occultist, you know that there’s some void shenanigans to be had. We tried out an assortment of various builds, some with Vines and Shoaldredger, some with Know and Krull, and some with Purveyor and Moldermuck, but nothing quite pieced together the way we wanted it. What really solidified the deck was the Syls out of the ET/CSB super-team conglomerate, which I am so mad that we didn’t think of. This deck is supposed to be my jam! In any case, Menace is probably the most powerful tri-faction combination in Expedition right now, and this deck utilises the busted value cards from Stormbreak the best alongside all the other ridiculously powerful cards from sets past. With some interesting options being added to Expedition – Blackhall Warleader anyone? – its unique mix of disruption, aggressiveness and late-game value definitely could vault it to being Tier 1. However, as mentioned by the creators of the most successful iteration of this archetype themselves, juggling units in and out of the market and void takes a lot of practice to do well, so I don’t expect this to be massively popular on ladder either. 

Mono F: 

The spicy meatball that broke to the forefront of the meta when people realises what you could do with Suppressor and Belax, and was the missing piece to really capitalise on Suppressor being extremely effective against popular Summon-based units. Personally, I think it’s very important to always have such an aggressive deck in the metagameto keep the greedier ones in check, and adding Belax as a promo is what made this deck viable. I prefer the version with a Salvo market and Belax in the market – Belax isn’t really something that I want out without a Suppressor since the opportunity to get blown out after sacrificing a good chunk of your board is far too high. There was certainly a lot more midrange decks than I had been expecting in the Open meta that I had expected, so it’d be interesting to see how Mono F fares against them moving forward, but quite a number of people still managed to get themselves to Day 2 with the archetype, including 2 of my teammates. Turns out clocking people for 16 flying damage, if not more, on Turn 4 is very good. 😛 

Hooru Soldiers: 

There was a point about a week and a half before the Open that Hooru Soldiers was clearly the best thing to do in Expedition. It had completely overtaken the ladder, it was dominating the TNE, and Dovids were just everywhere. Then people suddenly remembered the existence of Grenahen and Crafty Occultist, and how good they are at gumming up the ground, and everyone cooled on all the Soldiers. When people started trying to go over the top of all these grindy Menace value decks, Hooru Soldiers somehow slid back in as a way to get under those decks. 

You’ve got very aggressive, cost-efficient units backed up by cheap disruption, and Argo as top end to close out the game. You’ve gotta respect the Dovids. I understand the Tradition version wanting to splash Time primarily for Hifos and market access, but influence is definitely an issue there, and considering you just need to whack them as quickly as possible, 2F felt like the more linear choice. The Dazzles were a last minute addition to our team’s iteration, but the additional disruption and interaction has been crucial for ekeing those last few points of damage, or buying yourself that one turn against combo – forcing them to wait even a turn to play around the negation spell can often be enough for you to close out the game. It certainly felt very powerful in testing, and though I didn’t end up bringing it since I had fewer reps with the deck than with either Sling or Combo, 2 of my teammates brought the deck to Day 2 to some solid results. 

Knowledge Mandrakes: 

This was definitely a deck that we saw a lot of on the ladder in the days prior to the tournament, and the addition of Grenahen and the Know/Krull package definitely gave the deck some additional staying power and burst. Sometimes Mandrakes just does Mandrakes things and whacks you for a gajillion damage after the cascade of ultimate triggers. Whilst there’s some uber powerful starts out of Mandrakes, I felt that Sling just beat most average draws out of Mandrakes. I saw some iterations that packed additional interaction such as main deck Reappropriator and negation spells to combat Combo and Sling, but it ended up diluting their primary gameplan too much. The deck just felt like it was doing things too fairly, and more often than not, all the broken things that everyone else was doing just went over the top of it. Side note: considering that Mandrakes has taken multiple nerfs, it’s shocking the overwhelming value that the deck can still generate on occasion. Definitely don’t count the deck out – I’ve definitely taken far too many greedy lines against Mandrakes only for them to clock me dead from 20+ life in a single turn. 

Vision Midrange: 

As my teammates know, it takes a lot to peel me away from Argenport Midrange lists. Rolant is probably my very first simpee in Eternal. 

[Editor: I’m just going to insert this here. 

Credit to TEJ for the obvious joke.]

However, the grindy value game plan of the Vision Midrange builds just felt too slow to effectively counteract the current versions of Overloader Combo, and just couldn’t outgrind most iterations of the Sling deck since they were particularly lacking in relic removal. Playing Sling, I was ecstatic whenever I faced this on Day 1 – I don’t believe I dropped a game against any JSx Midrange deck. Since I expected those decks to be some of the most popular options on Day 1, I, unfortunately, had to abandon my simpee for this tournament. I might go back if the metagame becomes less hostile to it, but as it turns out, when you can play more broken and powerful cards for a cheaper influence requirement, you go do that. XD 

Balance Changes: Our thoughts! 

(SG: Look, they’re very late, but do you think that’s going to ever stop me? Fat chance.) 

Though the balance changes are mostly targeted towards Draft, there are a couple of spicy additions to the Draft packs that are certainly worth taking a gander at. 

  • Kaleb’s Intervention gives the non-Time Condemn markets such as that of Overloader Combo a way to answer Sling. You probably don’t need it, but it’s nice to have that option. 
  • Blackhall Warleader in the format is going to be a pretty solid inclusion in the aggressive Shadow decks – if you’ve played against that card in Throne, it snowballs so quickly when unanswered. However, since it does take a while to get going, it may be a pinch too slow in the face of combo. The stats remain when you buy it back with Krull, which is always nice. In a similar vein, Lethrai Target Caller is another decent option for decks that are reliably able to get double Shadow influence on Turn 2. You’ve got the Menace Krull deck as well as a Stonescar Heavy-S list that made some waves, so these are both solid options for the 2 drop slot. 
  • It might be a pinch too slow, but Zuberi offers the Mono F some additional ways of making ridiculously high strength units to Overwhelm with. Natural Overwhelm on Siege Train is nice, but I could definitely see this having some potential in that 4 drop slot. Double Damage Belaxes, anyone? 
  • Calibrate and Cryptic Master might finally be the push that the relic decks need to be viable in the format – particularly with the recent buffs to Cryptic Master. I’m not yet quite sure how I’d balance the aggression and value relic cards that we have access to, but there’s certainly plenty of powerful synergies to be had. 
  • My children are finally here! Back when I first started playing Eternal casually way back when, the first Legendaries I crafted was a set of Crown of Possibilities. The 2nd was a set of Breeze Dancer. (Look, SG likes chaos. Lots of it.) With these, I might finally be able to piece back together my nostalgic 2017 Chalice Crown deck – whether it’s any good is a different question. 
  • In a similar vein, my first Expedition deck back when the format was first introduced was an Elysian Midrange deck just playing all the good Elysian card, and Amaran Armadillo did WORK. Nowadays, I’m most excited to jam this in my Chalice lists to ready my buffed up units right after I Chalice them. 😉 

Final thoughts: 

    With the new set Revelations dropping in less than a week, I’m super excited to see what fun new decks arise in Expedition. I, for one, am excited to see Sling rotate out of the format. The card is very powerful and very difficult to interact with (part of why I chose to play it in the Open, heh), which means it’s probably too strong for the Expedition format. There’s still plenty of powerful cards from the new set, (hello Davia – what spicy spells will they let you buyback?), and I’ve already got my brewing fingers all ready to go. 

    A side note: I’m financially solvent enough that I don’t need to earn money from subs or Patreon or what have you by writing these articles. All I need is my keyboard and my laptop, so there’s not much I can do to upgrade my set-up anyways. That being said, everyone who has agreed to collaborate with me thus far –  SRFS, TheBoxer and Stormblessed – have agreed to do so completely out of goodwill and wanting to impart their wisdom and insight to the community. So. If you appreciated their insight on anything and wish to support them and all the other content they make, please do so. Literally all of them are affiliated to a podcast, so that’s certainly an option. If you’re not comfortable getting in touch with them directly and wish to support their content through me, please also let me know. That probably also increases the odds that they’ll rock-up to the articles again, so there’s that. ^-^ 


        Did you whole-heartedly agree with what Stormblessed is saying and want to just diss me on the side in the process? Are there any cards from Revelations that you’re just chomping at the bit to brew around? You can find both of us lurking in the FE Discord, where you’ll also be able to catch the latest episodes of Stormblessed on the FE Cast. You can also find me over on Twitter @stormguard798, or lurking around The Misplay and TEJ Discords as well. Until next time. 😉

Storm’s Weather Report – Eternal Open: Stormbreak (Draft) OR: How I finally got out of Bronze in Draft

Hi internet, it’s stormguard798 here, and I’m back here with another Weather Report following last weekend’s Open. Now, as you may have figured out from the previous articles, tournament reports and whatnot, my primary focus on this platform is on Constructed. However, my teammates led a crash course in drafting over the past 2 weeks to prepare Team Eternal Journey (TEJ) for the Draft Open, and today, I’m here to share what I’ve learned, before leading everyone through a draft. Admittedly, the packs that were featured throughout the Open were rather strange, particularly compared towhat you’d see on ladder, but I managed to make Day 2. So… hopefully I know what I’m talking about. Maybe? We’ll see. You can be your own judges of that. 😛 

I would just like to be very clear that I am the furthest possible thing from a polished Limited Player, in fact, as you can determine from the title, the past month is the very 1st time I’ve made it to Masters in Draft. However, I’d like to think I’m at least a mediocre Eternal player, and as someone who understands how Eternal functions mechanically, I can hopefully help provide some insight and well-reasoned opinions about the Draft Format. 

General Observations: 

  • Well-statted units for cheap is the name of the game. 

    The most commonly cited example of this is, of course, the Barricade Basher themself, but there are plenty of other examples. Shock Troops and Maveloft Elite with any amplify card. Ravenous Thornbeast with some fodder. Shoaldredger with a Darkwater Vines. If you don’t have a gameplan to deal with these early aggressive units, either with your own massive chonkers or backed up by plenty of early interaction, you are going to lose a heck of a lot of games. To back-up all these cheap units, you have plenty of combat tricks from Scythe Slash to Finest Hour to Teleport, all of which I would pretty happily play in most decks. These are all available at common, which will punish greedier or slower draws even more, not to mention all the Standards that we have at uncommon. In this sense, this might be why Primal may struggle to be your Primary faction in most decks. (Hey? Hey? No?) Time can outscale most of these units down the curve, but Primal doesn’t, and other than Maveloft Elite, can’t really contest these aggressively stated units by itself. Stunning them to take them out is a reasonable temporary measure until you can get your engine going, but is at most a band-aid. 

  • Cheap deadly units are at a premium. 

On the other hand, do you know what answers a bunch of cheap, well-statted units very well? Deadly units! It doesn’t matter how big your thing is, you ain’t getting past my deadly units. I think it’s fairly obvious that Coretap Maximiser is quite a strong Time common, particularly with all the relic support, but if I see a late Direfang Spider or a Razorbot, I’m certainly taking that as a signal that Shadow might be open. Along that line, I think most Time decks are happy to play 1 Cobra Gear – Deadly is such a pivotal battle skill right now, and the fact it provides a recurrable attachment for the likes of Restorative Process is just a bonus. 

  • Sidestreet Monitor is a premium Justice common

With all the aggressively costed ground units, the board tends to get clogged up – a lot. Hence, cheap fliers are definitely much more potent in this format because they’re so important for getting through those last points of damage and breaking through ground stalls – and these happen quite a fair bit. I’m shocked to admit it, but I have played Unmoored Valkyrie before and have it be…acceptable. That’s why I consider Sidestreet Monitor to be quite a good card – it’s a 2 strength flier with Regen, which means it can often trade for another flier. On top of that, the passive ability allows you to get in for damage but still hold back on defence if need be – a handful of relics shouldn’t be too hard to come by. 

Tagging onto this, I think that Oni Hybrid and Consuming Greed are both perfectly playable even without adequate support. Granted, it’s not particularly difficult to come up with support for these cards – there are plenty of weapons and relics across the board – but I’ll certainly take my 1st copies of these even without that if I’m interested in playing these factions. In a similar vein, Acantha’s Outrider is a card I’d rather have a bit more support for since the berth between 3 and 6 is quite large, but I’m generally still fine drafting at least my 1st copy, even speculatively. I also often want an expensive flier in my market such as Hookblade Infuser and Valkyrie Arcanist that would be clunky against an aggressive draw, but would be very helpful in closing out the game – an unsupported Outrider would probably also fall into this category. 

  • Scrap Hound is surprisingly playable. 

Ok, so as with most Limited formats, the majority of 0 and 1 drops are fairly unplayable. I’m not looking to play a Helpful Doorbot ever, for any reason. That being said, there are a couple of exceptions. Unmoored Valkyrie as I’ve mentioned before is a serviceable flier, particularly if you have a decent array of weapons, as well as the Deadly units. The buff to Scrap Hound from a while back is actually quite potent in this format because a 6/6 is quite difficult for most things to get through – it Stonewalls a Basher as well as units further up the curve like Powerbreach Sentinel. If you’re in Fire already, there are a few incidental ways to make Grenadins with cards like Corrosive Dagger or Scrapmetal Fury that I could certainly see playing a Scrap Hound even if sacrificing isn’t your main theme. 

Now, I want to put out there my thoughts on this since I saw the meme on Twitter. I think Little Seed is clearly the pick over Sparking Vermin if you’re just in a generic Primal deck looking for its 27th card – here’s why. The argument that Little Seed is poor as a topdeck doesn’t really hold water, cause frankly, neither is Sparking Vermin. It’s an aggressively slanted card. I also think Sparking Vermin requires more set up to be good – unless you can find some way to augment it, most opponents are probably fine just letting it go through indefinitely, so you need to find some way to sacrifice it for value, which means you’re probably limited to Feln. On the other hand, you just let Little Seed sit there, and it eventually becomes a threat – a 5/7 Overwhelm is something an opponent has to tangibly deal with, even if the card rarely gets to that state. Granted, I don’t want to be playing either of these cards in my Primal deck, but when the going gets tough…

  • I pick fixing over most filler cards in the Eternal Draft Packs. 

In general, the Empire of Glass packs have the more powerful cards compared to the Draft Packs. Of course, there are plenty of bombs in both packs, but on average, the common power level in the EoG packs is higher. Not to say there aren’t powerful commons in the Draft packs – I love me a good Stik – but in general, I’m probably going to pick up strong fixing options over mediocre filler for my decks. Of course there are limits to this (as you will see below), but I do value fixing quite highly. This isn’t necessarily an option where you’re particularly strapped for playables, (as you will again see below XD) but in general, I think it’s reasonable to draft some fixing that you might not need now, but could come in handy down the line. From the aforementioned Stik to Horn of Plenty to Nectar of Unlife, there are plenty of powerful splashable cards at both the common and uncommon rarity level. This is a format where you aren’t strapped for playables, and I’d rather be able to play all of my most powerful cards. On top of that, the 2 fixing units in the draft packs, Strategist and Bannerman, also have a relevant unit type, so early on, if I’m still speculating on what I’m doing, I take these as highly as I do Seek Power. 

  • Soup decks are fine but generally unnecessary 

That being said, even though there is generally ample fixing in the Draft Packs between Seek, the Tokens and the Seats, I tend not to go into a 4+ faction deck unless my draft has gone particularly south. As I said, the power level of the format is generally high enough that you don’t need to dip into too many factions, and the downside of spreading yourself too wide is that you’re more liable to be run over by the aggressive decks or be stuck with influence issues. As a result, most of my draft decks are 2F with an occasional light splash for a couple truly powerful cards.  

One other thing to note is that I would generally not play Etchings as a market access option. The likelihood of one seeing Etchings has been boosted but the odds of finding Symbols to support them has also been decreased. Therefore, in most balanced 2F decks, your ability to hit 4 influence of a single faction is quite low. On top of that, the format is slanted fairly aggressively, and although there are still some ‘token’ units, exhausting a unit for your market access comes at a much steeper cost. Of course, if your deck is close to mono-faction and merely having a splash of a 2nd, getting the influence online for Etchings is much easier, and therefore it’d be much more appropriate to play them here. However, with the odds of finding appropriate payoffs for doing so being fairly low, in the majority of cases I would not recommend running Etchings. Finding another Sigil of a faction you already have is not a playable card. 

  • High synergy decks, like Hooru Soldiers/Amplify, come together less often. 

Look, you can be like my 1 ladder opponent who played a Call to Allies with SIX Maveloft Elites out (yes, I’m still salty, even now – who handed them that deck?), but in general, I’ve found that you’re much more likely to speculate on cards in Pack 1 that might not end up in your deck, just to try and stay as open as possible in the early going of things. Of course, you might find your lane very quickly, stick to it, and have it pan out, but because a lot of the enablers and payoffs come in the EoG packs, you might be tempted to pass some of them up in favour of a card with a higher floor. I love a Maveloft Quartermaster, but I’m probably picking a Rage Grafter over it early since I’m more likely to end up playing Grafter. Conversely, I would also be more likely to speculate on some powerful enablers early such as Hardiness if I think there might still be a chance I end up pivoting to that archetype but not end up with them in my Final deck. 

  • Often conditional removal spells like Blackout the Skies and Ruinous Burst are surprisingly playable. 

Right now, as more and more decks are playing mediocre fliers to break through the ground-based board stall, and as such, you’ll often be able to find at least 1 target, if not more for your Blackout the Skies since running sufficient fliers is something all decks, regardless of faction, need to be doing. In a similar vein, it’s also not uncommon to be running main deck Wind Channelers – just be sure to avoid your own fliers in the process. Another trend with these fliers is that they tend to have very low health, which is why a card like Ruinous Blast comes in so handy – imagine picking off an Oni Hybrid and Consuming Greed with just a single card. It’s certainly not quite an Autotread, but particularly in situations with open pools such as the Day 2 of the Draft Open, maindecking this card based on what units they have, or perhaps if you’re just short on playables, doesn’t seem like too bad of a call at all. 

  • Most decks don’t want more than 1 Send to Market nowadays. 

The only nerf to hit the Draft format, Send to Market’s ubiquity as a removal spell got it slapped with an additional power cost. Right now, I see the card as fairly comparable to Cut Ties – putting it back into the market is stronger than putting the unit in your void since it’s easier to pull things out from your void and there are more pay-offs for units being in your void, but Send to Market is probably less splashable since it requires double Justice influence. Right now, I’d play a copy of Send in the majority of my Justice decks bar the hyper-aggressive ones, but I’d need a very defensive deck to justify running more than 1 copy. Going from 5 to 6 is a pretty steep cost increase in Limited, since that adds ~2 more turns before you can play it, and being stranded with multiple copies in hand is disastrous. It’s still a fantastic catch-all removal spell, but the days of playing 5 copies of Send in 1 deck are over. 

Draft! 

So in a desperate attempt to put my money (or lack thereof, lol) where my mouth is, I will be walking you through a draft and analysing what I’d pick at each juncture to put into practice the points above that I had just discussed. 

P1P1: 

Alright, so I’m immediately dismissing the rare – Overmax Wand is, for all intents and purposes, a Glorified Raildriver that goes into Primal markets. Granted, Raildriver is certainly a playable card, but not one I’m looking to pick this highly. Stakeout has certainly gotten better following its buff, but I’m still looking for some big units to support it, which means it’s probably not going in all of my time decks. Similarly, whilst I think Xumuc Coercion is much more playable now at 3, I’m still looking to be a sacrifice-focused Shadow deck if I wanted to play it, and not just any deck. On the other hand, Watchwing Support is a very powerful card – as with Stakeout and Coercion, you definitely need to build around the relic for it to be its most potent, but since the set-up cost is simply playing attachments, I think it’ll be a lot easier to build around, and much more powerful to boot. For those unfamiliar with it, Support gets out of hand real quick. Covenant Peacekeeper and Replicated Sellsword are both solid commons, but they don’t even come close to the power level of Watchwing Support, which is what I’m taking here. 

P1P2: 

And immediately things get very interesting. We have Malaga Munitions, which works absolutely fantastically with our Watchwing Support by providing us 3 attachments – it’s not something I’d usually pick this highly, though I could certainly be swayed by the synergy. Coveted Gemstone and Beacon of War are both powerful attachments as well, though I feel they’re a little more conditional and narrow. My other consideration out of this pack is the Darkwater Vines – it’s a 1-cost unit I’d most certainly play, and the Regen helps to stifle a lot of aggressive draws. The only other Justice Card, Steyer’s Beckoning, is a solid card that I’d be fine with running, but I feel is a cut below the rest of my options, and one that I’m not looking to take so highly. Though I wouldn’t often take it this highly, I’ve been pretty impressed by Munitions in this format and it just works so well with Support that I feel compelled to take it here. Down for being wrong, however. 

P1P3: 

You’ve got a Barricade Basher – need I say more? Granted, a rare/legendary and an uncommon are missing from this pack, which doesn’t give me a lot to go on, but Basher is one of the premier commons of the set. You’ve got a Blackout the Skies as well, which I could certainly see playing, though I wouldn’t pick it this highly, and a trio of Time cards in the Maximiser, Chanter and Arrival, with Maximiser probably being the best of the bunch. Rakano is such a strong faction pair, however, and given the factions of my earlier picks, I think it’s got to be the Basher here. Hopefully we can make this work. :fingerscrossed: 

P1P4: 

My eyes are immediately drawn to the Send the Reserves – it’s probably up there amongst the strongest Time commons, at least in a vacuum, and given how we saw how Time might have been open in the previous pack, I definitely see an argument for taking it here. I get a 2nd crack at Beacon should I want it, but it feels weaker than a couple of common options. Otherwise, my options for staying on the Rakano train are a Peacekeeper and a Send to Market, and I’m leaning towards Peacekeeper. The Stun is fantastic for pushing through damage with well-statted but not necessarily evasive units, which is what my first 3 picks all attempt to generate. Send to Market is solid removal, but since I’m gravitating towards a build that might not even get to 6 power, Peacekeeper is the option for me. Perhaps I should have pivoted and taken the Send – we’ll see how that pays off in the next few packs. 

P1P5: 

Nothing really playable in Rakano, unfortunately. I could take the Hooru Painting to hedge a little, but since I plan on getting some fixing later on, I don’t think I need to take it this early when there are more powerful options. Sludge-Blade is a solid card that would certainly work well with Watchwing Support should I decide to pivot in the Argenport Direction, but Maveloft Elite and Hardiness are both a ridiculous payoff and enabler for the amplify archetype respectively. I haven’t seen a signal Primal is Open earlier, but to be fair, a lot of the strong Primal commons arrive in the Draft Pack. I decide to hedge with a Maveloft Elite here and see whether Hooru might be open down the line. 

P1P6: 

Okay, okay, now I’m just…confused, let’s be perfectly honest here. For me, the choice is between Daring Swordmaster and the Covenant Peacekeeper here – if I do end up in the Hooru Amplify deck, the Swordmaster has a much higher ceiling, but I’m probably not playing it maindeck, at least, if I’m sticking to Rakano and the Elite was a one-time thing. Peacekeeper certainly has a lower ceiling, but also a higher floor in terms of power level. I think at this point in the draft, whilst I can’t ignore my curve entirely, I don’t think my curve should be a massive concern yet since I still have the chance to smooth things out. I decide to play it safe and take the Peacekeeper here, but I wouldn’t fault you for going the other way. 

P1P7: 

Wow do I immediately regret taking the 2nd Peacekeeper. Razorbot is certainly a solid common, and having seen a Medibot Station – a fine common – in both this pack and the previous pack tells me that Shadow might be open as well. Scythe Slash is also a fine trick particularly in conjunction with Bashers should I want to go that route. But oh my good gosh, there is a Quartermaster in the pack, and boy do I love drawing cards. Seriously. If anyone knows me, it’s that I love drawing cards far, far too much. I think with the signals I’ve been receiving in previous packs, Quartermaster is a glaring red siren that an archetype might be open, so I’m taking the Quartermaster here and hoping for the best. 

P1P8: 

Nothing terrible exciting in this pack, unfortunately, though we have a bunch of commons, one in each faction, which is rather amusing. Right now, I still have no idea which direction I’m leaning, Hooru or Rakano, so I’m a little hesitant to take the Bloodboil Executioner here. Medibot Station is also a fine card, but having passed 2 in the opposite direction, that ship might have sailed. I end up taking Steyer’s Beckoning as the card that I feel will most likely end up in my final deck since I’m deepest in Justice right now, but with my picks so spread out, anything could happen. 

P1P9: 

…well then. A host of solid cards in this pack, and frankly nothing I’d be too dissatisfied with playing. I don’t think I need a 2nd Steyer’s Beckoning since I just took one – the rate isn’t that fantastic. I could certainly hedge in the direction of Argenport, which would probably be best for my Watchwing Support, and frankly, having seen 3 Medibot Stations, perhaps that’s what I should have been doing all along. Emulator, on the other hand, is a factionless card, which means it slots in any deck, though as I mentioned previously, I’m not strapped for playables. I opt to take the Sludge Blade here since I do think it’s less replaceable of an effect than Emulator, though perhaps down the line when I don’t have any 2 drops I might be kicking myself. 

P1P10: 

With this pick I’m mostly thinking about my market. I don’t want to have to run any of these cards at all – I don’t think your draft trainwrecks often enough to have to play those cards, so I take the Snipe, since it could go into any Grafter market. 

P1P11: 

Ok, so just to be crystal-clear: I’m not a fan of Exotic Purchase. I’ve seen some fun stuff that you can do between this and Abyssal Scrying, but realistically that’s not something that I expect to come together very often. You need to be incredibly defensive of a deck to pull that off, and unless you pick up a lot of cheap removal, that just doesn’t happen. On the other hand, a FOURTH Medibot Station is certainly a sign – the card works really well with Watchwing Support, and I’ve seen some additional signs that Shadow might be open as well. So it’s certainly worth speculating on here. 

P1P12: 

So here is some more interesting food for thought – a last-pick Pesky Wirechewer. Granted, it’s not a fantastic card, but between this and the 4 Medibot Stations, that tells me that the Stonescar Sacrifice archetype might be open. In the next pack, I’m definitely going to keep my eyes peeled for any Combusts or Ravenous Thornbeasts to see if it’s worth hedging in that direction. I certainly don’t think Wirechewer is an unplayable card, but it’s not as strong of a signal as say the Quartermaster or Elite. 

Coming out of this Pack 1, I’m honestly about where I’d usually be: I’ve got a general mish-mash of good cards, and am not entirely sure what faction pair or archetype I’m in right now. Not going to lie, really could have used a Gravity Glove. Or 2. That card is delightful glue holding everything together. Having said that, this just leaves me open to an assortment of options come the next few packs, so I’m excited to see what I can open. 

P2P1: 

There are a couple of solid options: Grisly Contest is great if I’m thinking the sacrifice archetype is open, and Biting Winds is a fantastic splashable removal spell. That being said, Valkyrie Wings is a very powerful Limited card. Remember when I mentioned flying units being incredibly important to breaking board stalls? Well, now tack Aegis onto that to make that flying threat much more difficult to deal with. It’s not quite the status of a bomb since it does cost 6 power and requires you to have some board presence, but from my experience playing it’s still a ridiculous card. So we’re taking it here. 

P2P2: 

Perhaps I just enjoy reliving my days of combining Withering Witch with Plague, but even today in more modern Limited, Plague does a great job of clearing up your opponent’s board and cleaning up all those pesky 1 health fliers. Other considerations for me would be the Token of Tradition for some fixing or Devour to hedge into that Sacrifice archetype. Wretched Raven is also a solid common that has had its appearance decrease, but as a multifaction card, I’m less likely to take it here. Plague in my opinion is just a tier stronger than the rest of these options, which is why I’m taking it here.

P2P3: 

Ok, we could spend time chit-chatting, but the pick for me here is Triumphant Return, and it’s not remotely close. Even if I don’t end up being a base-shadow deck, it’s certainly a card that I would also look to splash – getting extra, souped-up copies of your most powerful units is delightful. Next. 

P2P4:

Unlike the last pick, this is a little more of a headscratcher. For me, the most powerful card in a vacuum is that Powerbreach Sentinel (or, as TEJ likes to call it, the Breach Boi.) However, Time is the only faction that we don’t have a card in, so I’m a little hesitant to take that. Other considerations here are fixing in the form of the Token, some solid fodder in the form of Prickly Grenadin should I still be leaning towards Shadow Sacrifice, or the Rabblerouser as a filler Justice card. I do enjoy taking fixing aggressively, but I’m definitely leaning towards Argenport as being open right now, so I’m a little bit torn. I end up picking the Rabblerouser, but I could easily see taking the Token as well. 

P2P5: 

Now THAT is an incredibly late Stonescar Maul, which makes me wonder if I should have taken the Token in the previous pack. It’s an incredibly powerful relic weapon, particularly if I can pick up some ways to recur it, but being double Fire, it isn’t particularly splashable. On the other hand, there’s a Lethrai Lobotomy, which I definitely do need to pick up a few more Medibot stations to make work (heh) but is quite a potent removal spell. Loyal Watchwing is unsurprisingly solid with Watchwing Support, but if it’s not buffed, the statline is incredibly anemic, so it’s not in consideration for me. I do not want to be running this card. Going through my previous picks, Fire hasn’t been particularly open – Chemical Rounds and Temple Raider are solid but not a particularly strong signal –  so I’m electing to stick to my guns and taking this Lobotomy. 

Here, I’ve elected to remove the Primal cards from my decklist for now – it certainly seemed like a strong signal at the time, but we really haven’t seemed any good Primal cards apart from the Pack 1 Biting Winds, which isn’t a signal at all. 

P2P6: 

(I missed this image – bully for me, I’m easily distracted. The options were: Cabal Rogue, Feral Mandrake, Mass Entomancy, Shatter, Grenamender, Rambot, and Valkyrie Arcanist) 

I don’t like Cabal Rogue at all: Unblockable is a very good battle skill for breaking board stalls, but 7 power is a lot, and 1 health is incredibly fragile. It’s so easy to drop this unit and get immediately blown out. For me, the clear pick is Valkyrie Arcanist – it’s a reasonably statted flier, and although I’d prefer to play this out of the market, it’s a fine unit to run main if need be. 

P2P7: 

And we’re back on track with the images. XD I’ve already got 1 6-drop Justice flier, so I’m not particularly interested in the Purgeleader. The Auric Bully is a serviceable 2 drop, and for curve reasons, I could certainly see taking it here, though with only the Valkyrie Wings to put on it thus far, it’s not particularly exciting. As such, I decide to hedge with the Seat of Progress – if I stumble upon a Horn of Plenty, I certainly want to be able to play it. (Future Storm: looking back, I definitely regret doing this: I ended up being super unit light, and with so few units at this point, I probably should have taken the unit.) 

P2P8: 

Now that’s a pretty strong signal. You do have to be quite heavy Shadow to pull it off, but we’ve definitely seen the possibility that Shadow might be open, and Lethrai Target-Caller is quite the powerful 2 drop. Rosebloom Mandrake and Humbug Nest are also both fine cards, but we’re so far off from playing either one of those. 

P2P9: 

And this is why I’m the team luck-sack on TEJ – don’t forget to aggressively shake me before tournaments for better topdecks. Seek Power is fantastic fixing, and there’s definitely been where I’ve even taken it as highly as Pick 1. That’s also quite a late Warpainter considering it’s fine filler, which is certainly important to take note of, though I haven’t seen any Fire cards since the Maul. Don’t think I could ever pass a Seek here, however. 

P2P10: 

Clunky 6 cost removal that isn’t even unconditional isn’t what I’m looking for in any deck, let’s be honest, but it could be a fine Market card, and I don’t think I’m the right deck to be playing either of the other cards: Calibrate doesn’t work particularly well as a splash, and my units aren’t big enough to be able to take effective advantage of the Natural Order.

P2P11: 

Not much here – I’m just taking the Time Etchings for the Shiftstone since I don’t plan to be playing either of these. 

P2P12: 

I get passed a last pick Ruin, which makes sense – it can be a powerful market card, but you’re not exactly chomping at the bit to pick it up.

At the end of Pack 2, I’m definitely looking to be in Argenport barring some ridiculous cards. To fill out the deck, I’m definitely looking for a few more attachments for my Watchwing Support, a less conditional removal spell or 2, and a couple more low curve units. It’s certainly not quite there yet, but I think I read the signals well enough that we could have a solid deck on our hands here by the end of the draft. .

P3P1: 

Yikes, this is not a pack I’m looking to open at all. Pretty much nothing good in my factions, and only some fringe playables otherwise. Power level wise, Scorpion, Breach Boi and Instinct all get a nod from me, but they’re so far out of what we’re doing. All the Shadow Cards are incredibly mediocre – I could see taking a Club for the market, but the odds that we get to 8 power any game are so low that I wouldn’t want to risk taking it here without any market access. It’s a little bit safe, but given the quality of the rest of the pack, I end up taking some fixing instead in the form of Token of Creation. 

P3P2: 

Ok, so now we’re talking. Warlock’s Brew is solid, cheap fast-speed removal, and the Bannerman is solid fixing. Power-level wise, the only thing comparable is the Desert Alchemist, but we’re a bit far away from that. I did say I was looking for a little more removal, but less Brew and more Contest, and given that we do need some 2 drop units, I’m inclined to take the Bannerman here. 

P3P3: 

Alright, we’ve got some options. Auric Official is a solid unit, as it Auric Bully in our deck – nothing terribly exciting, but they’re fine to fill out our curve. The other thing I’m considering is the Curator’s Spear – not terribly exciting since we don’t have that many other relics (I’m sorry, Medibot Stations! I’m sorry!) but fine to trigger our Support. For me, it’s between 1 of the 2 units here, and I like taking the Auric Bully for curve purposes. 

At this point, the ship has probably sailed on trying to play Stonescar, so I’m relegating the Fire Cards to the side. Depending on how the final build goes, I might still end up splashing Basher (I mean, it’s a good card. :P) but we’ll see. 

P3P4: 

It’s at this point I’m thinking, yeah I probably made the correct choice and read the signals well cause we have a number of options. We have 2 solid 2 drops in our factions in the Minotaur Grunt and Lethrai Target Caller, we have a Valkyrie Denouncer, which is a fantastic flier, and we have a Consuming Greed, which could certainly use a little help in getting there but would be great if we find another relic or 2. Why couldn’t these cards be a little more spread out? uWu Unfortunately, in Argenport I expect most of the relic support to come in Packs 1 and 4, and I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to find down the line considering I don’t quite have it yet. I did just pick up 2 2 drops, so I’m feeling slightly better about our whole curve situations. Taking into account what is probably the safest pick here, I elect to take the Denouncer. I would not fault anyone for going in a myriad of different ways, however. 

P3P5: 

I mean, that is an exceptionally late Biting Winds and Clan Standard, and if the Arbalest weren’t in the pack, I’d definitely consider picking up the Winds to splash – we have a Seek and a Bannerman, and could possibly find more down the line. However, Arbalest is a solid relic weapon, I think it works well with what I’ve got going on, and I’m happy to pick it up here over the Spear.

P3P6: 

So this is the first pack since the opening where we’ve come up with literal zilch – not even any fixing for us to take here. I take a Torrent of Filth for the market since it could be nice to mow down some cheap fliers in some spots, but with no revenge or spell synergy, I’m certainly not excited to play it in any capacity.

P3P7:

Fortunately, we’re back to having some options again. Unmoored Valkyrie could be nice, but as I mentioned previously, we don’t really have any weapons to put on it at present to really take advantage of the Renown. Prickly Grenadin is a solid card in the right archetype: I just don’t think it’s this one. It’s an attachment, it’s sort of cheap removal, and it’s better than Curator’s Spear in most spots, so I don’t feel awful taking the Talon in this position. We are a little unit light heading towards the end of the pack, so that’s certainly something to keep in mind.

P3P8: 

Who dislikes Stonescar Maul this much!? It’s honestly a solid card, and it’s kind of unfortunate that I can’t splash it. That being said, there’s nothing I really want to splash here – I don’t think Violent Gust is worth the splash – so I’m taking the Maul for the Stone. 

P3P9: 

**sigh** And it was going so well too. Not really, but let me be deluded in thinking that. I certainly don’t want another Torrent of Filth here, so I’m begrudgingly taking the Purgeleader, though I’m not particularly thrilled about it. 

P3P10: 

Again, not a unit I’m particularly excited to take since it has no synergy with what I’m doing, but I’ll take a Bouldergate Guard and hope to not have to play it. XDD 

P3P11: 

Nothing terribly exciting here either nor any particularly strong signals to read; I’m just taking Cartographer and moving on.

P3P12:

Huh. Ok, so that’s definitely not a card I expected to get last pick. I mean, I’ve preached on and on about how important fliers are in the format, and a 3 strength flier for 4 as a Valkyrie to boot is certainly nothing to scoff at. Not something I’m excited to play, but it would be fine in a pinch. Like I am now. 

Okay, so unfortunately, that’s definitely not how I was hoping that pack was going to go – we got some solid early picks, but nothing terribly exciting, and the packs quickly dried up across the board. We got passed a lot of Violent Gusts, and whilst Wind Channeler is fine, I don’t necessarily take that as a signal that Primal was Open and we missed it – certainly there was the pack with both the Clan Standard and Biting Winds, but I didn’t see anything else that would particularly draw me to Primal like a Frostkin or Stik. Am I incorrect in reading these signals? Probably, but let me know. We need to get really lucky in this last pack for things to come together, but maybe it will.

P4P1:

Woohoo! Let’s just be very clear: there are a lot of solid options in this pack. We don’t have a Darkwater Vines yet, but a Shoaldredger is still fine even without that just as a big, beefy unit. Fluctuate Reality is also a solid splash if we had picked up that Biting Winds. Bastion Gatekeeper is also a solid 2 drop that we could definitely use. But my goodness, Deathwing is one of the top uncommons of the set, and it fits perfectly in our faction pairing. There is no way I’m not immediately snapping this up.

P4P2: 

YASS. I mean, a Send to Market is pretty good, but I’m going to be incredibly hard-pressed to pass up a Silver Slicer – the card is fantastic, and I do think I have a high enough density of Valkyries to pull off the Valkyrie-Warp side of things. With more Relic Weapons now, I’m certainly also looking to pick a Drifting Drone later on, but this is too hard to pass up.

P4P3: 

Anyone who says the pick isn’t Efficiency…we can’t be friends anymore. I’m sorry. Moving on.

P4P4: 

Here, it’s a very straightforward Razorbot for me. I’m not looking to splash at this point so I don’t think I can take the Painting, and being conscious of my unit count, it just seems like the right call.

P4P5: 

Here, I have an interesting toss-up with a 2nd Crack at an Overcharger should I want it, a 2nd Steyer’s Beckoning, or a Hookblade Infuser. Without market access, my ability to get the fate trigger is negligible at best, and with 2 other 6 cost fliers, that’s really not what I’m looking to pick up. The Overcharger would be solid particularly with Deathwing and Support, but for the sake of my unit count and Valkyrie-Warp synergies, taking the Beckoning here seems like the best choice.

P4P6: 

Oh my god, seeing such a late Fluctuate Reality hurts my soul. The pain, the pain. On a serious note, as wild as it may be for me to pass yet another Send to Market (man this is wild), when I take a step back and look at the units I’m actually interested in playing, my unit count is not looking so hot, so I feel like I’m obliged to take the 3rd Peacekeeper here. Sorry Send. Punished for taking the Seat over the Auric Bully I guess. 😛 

P4P7: 

Huh. I guess Primal was open somehow, and I missed the memo? That’s a late Fluctuate followed by a late Overgrowth. Feel free to look back at my picks and tell me where I went wrong. In any case, seeing such a late Misstep is a gift, and I’m most certainly snapping that up.

P4P8: 

I mean…the Send for the Reserves though. uWu Here however, I’m just taking the Raildriver and moving on with my life. Might even end up making the final cut, we shall see.

P4P9: 

Nothing much here either, unfortunately. Once again, I’m taking the factionless card in the Snipe, but since I already have 1 copy, I doubt I’m playing it.

P4P10:

Gross. I’m taking the Stormhalt Warden on principle since it’s a unit, but I’m most certainly not playing it over my other options.

P4P11: 

Well here’s our chance to take the Hookblade Infuser we passed on earlier. Still unsure if I’d like to play it over Arcanist or Purgeleader.

P4P12: 

Lol.

Deck construction: 

The deck ultimately didn’t end up being particularly difficult to put together because I didn’t have a lot of options in terms of what I could cut. :sweatsmile: 13 true units is a little low, but hopefully with the Steyer’s Beckonings and the Medibot Station that number can be shored up a bit. I don’t think it’s quite trainwreck territory, but given that I’m playing quite a few cards I’d rather not, it’s certainly quite close. Could I have taken some Medibot Stations more aggressively to solidify my position in Argenport? Should I have been a different faction pair altogether? Let me know. 

[At the time of writing, I have not played any games with this deck yet. Hopefully I don’t go 0-3?]

Final thoughts + where to go to improve more! 

I’m not going to lie, Constructed is still definitely much more my cup of tea, but with 2 more Draft Opens to go, I might have to keep my card-picking fingers well-oiled and ready to go. Who knows, I might even be able to make it to Masters in Draft again. O.o Now wouldn’t that be a hoot and a half? 

If you’re looking to improve your knowledge of this format before Revelations comes out, here are some other resources for you to check out: 

Eternal Journey Podcast: Episodes 106 and 107. 

Farming Eternal Podcast: Episodes 93 and 94. 


I would once again like to thank my awesome TEJ teammates for preparing all of us for this Open: could not have done it without you guys. :DDD If you want to chat more about my questionable opinions, you can always find me on Twitter @stormguard798, or lurking in the FE, TEJ and The Misplay discords. May you always get passed Martial Efficiencies; until next time. 😉

(Also, I swear the Expedition Weather Report is in the works – just be patient. It’s going to be good. XD)

Stormguard and TheBoxer’s Weather Report – Eternal Open: Stormbreak (Throne) Deck Tech – Even Feln

Hi everyone! It’s stormguard798, and I’m back with another deck tech following Eternal Open: Stormbreak – Throne, the first Organized Play event of the season. With a Worlds invitation on the line, Team Eternal Journey (TEJ), much like everyone else, had prepared extremely diligently to storm this tournament – pun intended. Joining me today is Worlds 2020 Top 8 competitor, an amazing technical player, and all-around awesome person: TheBoxer.

Hey folks, I’m TheBoxer. This is my first article in a long, long time. When Stormguard asked me to contribute I was very excited. If you don’t know me, I’m a sacrifice deck aficionado, a math major, and a swimmer.

(Yes, we do follow Eternal news and realise this article is being released the day after the balance patch completely destroyed Even Feln as a deck. Having said that, we both believe that examining the deckbuilding processes and individual card choices from both teams would be beneficial beyond solely the Even Feln archetype. We hope you still enjoy it. :}) 

Tournament Prep:

SG: 

So before we talk about the deck itself, I just wanted to briefly go over what it was like preparing for the Open. We first stumbled upon the Even Feln deck when we saw various members of TBC and TRS play in on ladder (thanks guys!), attempted to reverse-engineer it, and found the strategy to be quite potent – as did many other people, evidently, when it rocketed up in popularity on ladder. Once the mini-set Stormbreak was released, a couple of us branched out to try other strategies, but ultimately couldn’t piece anything together that felt consistently as strong.

The group testing was concentrated in the time following Stormbreak’s release, and although we tried to mostly get together for at least some period of time each time, this was rather difficult as a result of our team being scattered across the world. Most of the testing ended up being done in pairs or groups of 3, with our findings being posted in the text channels for the next group to work with. In those group sessions, we were all spectating 1 person piloting the deck that we wanted to try against a teammate on a designated archetype, with everyone else spectating and chiming in. Since there normally weren’t very many of us and it was more focused on the various lines the deck we were testing could take as opposed to the technical play from both players, everyone watched from the brewer’s side of the game. In between tournament prep, however, divvying yourselves up and watching both sides of the match is fantastic fun and great for improving your game. 

TB: 

TRS was one of the two teams that started out with the original list from LightsOutAce and Isomorphic before Stormbreak was fully spoiled. After a handful of games I loved the deck – and I wasn’t alone. We played it on ladder for a few days but once we realized many of us likely would play it in the Open, we took it off ladder (except for players who felt they couldn’t get enough practice in otherwise). We did a fair amount of tuning before Stormbreak was released in the hope that the meta wouldn’t significantly change. However, the addition of Grenahen just secured our decision to play Feln. 

Most of our testing was done in a group with some people watching each side of the matchup. We sometimes split into separate voice channels if there were enough of us in a given session. The matchups we tested most were the mirror and Feln v Kira. There were also times we just talked for a while while staring at the deckbuilder interface talking over specific card choices.

First Draft Decklists: 

TEJ: 

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/ODT1esAZ7IY/tejs-even-feln-first-draft

This is the first draft decklist that my teammates, iplongno and johnholio, put together. As you can see, nothing really changed in the maindeck whatsoever: it was performing well for us, and all that was left was tuning the markets. 

TRS:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/DQwlMC0RjcQ/first-draft-trs-even-feln

This is the first draft LOA posted in our team chat. (Notice the very depleted power base.)

Card and deck discussion (Main deck):

The 2 drop-debate – Acantha Ascending VS Damara, Deft Saboteur

SG: 

In our team’s build with 4 Forbidden Research and 4 Shadow Symbol, it is quite straightforward to power out 6S or even 8S very quickly. It’s been a very strong card in general for us, taking advantage of opposing removal-light draws and dominating the game in a hurry. Although it’s weak to silence effects such as Valkyrie Enforcer out of Hooru Kira as well as the general cadre of fliers out of the deck, but it’s a strong way to close out the game against opposing Even Feln decks or the version of Menace Sacrifice not packing any Mother of Skies.

Damara wasn’t on our radar at all as a consideration, but it seems like a very potent card particularly in the mirror – Champion of Cunning is such a powerful card, particularly in the mirror, and being able to snipe other powerful market cards such as Korovyat Palace out of Hooru Kira or Shrine to Karvet out of the Menace decks. I quite like your choice of running only 2, since it does fall off quite quickly in multiples. It also makes much more sense with your choice of Varas to pop Face Aegis so that you aren’t just spending a hefty 5 power to do so. 

TB:

Acantha may not be on the same power level as Jarrall and Kira but she’s no slouch. In the first few builds with 4 Symbol and 4 Research Acantha overperformed. After 1 attack she’s a two-for-one. And even if your opponent does have removal, she only cost you 2 power to play. However, when we cut down on ways to accelerate Shadow influence she becomes less exciting. In our final list we only had 0 Research and 1 Symbol! This was not enough Shadow influence to get to 8S reliably, so we ended upshaving a few copies of Acantha.

Damara is one of my favorite cards in Eternal. Against aggro she can be used to kill many units that cost 3 or less when they attack; against midrange or control she can kill sites and give you a two-for-one that hurts the effectiveness of their merchants. However, she does experience diminishing returns (5 is a lot even in slow matchups), so I don’t like playing more than 2. She was specifically added when wanting to improve the mirror (which revolves around market Champion of Cunning).

The interaction suite – Dazzle/Exploit/Annihilate/Defile/Stealth Strike

SG: 

Dazzle is admittedly extremely awkward against Hooru Kira decks, but blocking an Honor of Claws out of Even Feln or a Display of Menace out of the various Menace decks is a crucial tempo swing . You don’t end up using the ‘Stun’ mode on Dazzle as often, but taking a Shadow Icaria out of combat for a turn is very helpful in winning a tight race. Ultimately, I was getting enough mileage out of both modes to warrant the 4-of. Going card-negative, as TheBoxer pointed out, is a surefire way to fall behind if you use too many of them, but in a deck that has so many ways to get 2 or 3-for-1s, I think you can afford to go down a couple of cards. 

I got completely destroyed by Yetis twice in Day 1, hence I understand the reluctance to play 4 of Exploits. However, as has been already pointed out by plenty of people, the rest of the metagame is tending towards being slower and more grindy, hence I think 4 of Exploit right now is a shoo-in. There are so many key hay-maker cards from Rost, the Walking Glacier and Sling of the Chi to Praxis Trove for the Menace decks to Lord Steyer’s Tower in Hooru Kira. As a result, there are plenty of juicy, powerful cards for you to nab with Exploit. And of course, nothing feels better than taking the Regen-buffed Champion of Cunning out of their hand in the mirror. 

There has been a large influx of multifaction units into the format with Grenahen and Crafty Occultist, but I feel like not running any copies of Annihilate is just asking to be destroyed by ridiculously large threats. Exhibit A: Icaria, First Reaper. Exhibit B: Rota, Steyer’s Adjutant. (In testing, we felt that Xenan variants had a particularly poor matchup into an assortment of Even Feln builds, so we weren’t terribly worried about big Time fatties.) That being said, Defile has proven itself to be a very versatile card, snatching away units to prevent them from being Know/Krull’ed back. In order to strike the balance between the 2, my team elected to go with a 3/3 split – in a deck such as Even Feln that tends to see a lot of cards, you can get away with not having 4 of a possibly clunky removal spell. 

We included 2 copies of Stealth Strike as some direct-damage for sites and as catch-all removal for any big threats. 6S is fairly straightforward for the deck to get, which means Stealth Strike is almost always powered-up. However, 4 cost, even with Revenge, felt clunky and underpowered at times since in this meta-game you were rarely trading up in power when dealing with threats. It was also rather tricky to leave up if you didn’t have exactly Forbidden Research. Therefore, I would probably drop the Stealth Strikes for something different moving forward. 

TB:

Dazzle is your best card in many of your worst matchups (e.g. Clear the Way or Reanimator). It can stun stuff in other matchups but I’m a loyal adherent of card game theory. I don’t like going down a card unless situations are very dire. I want my cards to trade one-for-one or better in almost every game. The first Dazzle in a bad matchup can be plundered by Huntress or Exploit, but the second one can be easily stranded. This is how I arrived on 2 copies.

Exploit is another card that helps in your bad matchups but unlike Dazzle it’s easier to play (2S vs 2PP). It combines well with Felrauk and Rindra to strip your opponent of resources. I don’t love spending 2 to make someone discard a card in an even deck but this deck uses Exploit better than most other decks I’ve seen it played in.

Defile is great if you’re worried about Dovid and Wump&Mizo but relatively bad in the mirror. Annihilate conversely is better in the mirror but worse against Kira and Elysian. Annihilate is also good against many of the units in Xenan. We went with a 3-3 split but if we were forced to add a seventh removal spell it would be the fourth Defile as bigger units it misses can be blocked or killed with Icara.

Stealth Strike was briefly mentioned by Noverb but we dismissed it when we realized we couldn’t market it. We never considered it in the maindeck. It’s a powerful card that works well with Grenahen but 4 up front just feels like too much when many of the scary threats cost 2. 

The 4-drop debacle – Rindra, Infiltrator V Vara, Vengeance Seeker 

SG: 

Going into the tournament, we did not feel that 4 cost-Vara was a particularly good card – there is just so much fast-speed removal that catches it off-guard, which means it often doesn’t end up doing anything. The knocking off of Aegis is nice against Sling and Kira as well as clearing the way for the rest of your discard to go through, but I don’t think the effect is powerful enough to warrant inclusion on that alone. I do think from the Damara to the Reappropriator, the selection of Vara in order to support the rest of those cards in TRS’ build does make sense. 

On the other hand, Rindra is a multifaction 4 cost unit, which is surprisingly hard to kill given that Yetis is the only ‘popular’ deck that happens to be running Torch at present. At worst, you’ve at least gotten a card out of their hand, and at best, the lifesteal can stabilise you in a jiffy. My personal opinion is that you can’t lean so far into trying to beat a specific deck that you bring an objectively worse 4 drop: yes, it sucks when they kick off the Felrauk chain by discarding it, but I somehow ended up facing more Yetis than Even Feln on Day 1. You can have an expected metagame, but at least in terms of trying to get to Day 2, I don’t believe it advisable to lean too far over into predicting a certain archetype. 

TB: 

Vara is not a powerful card. I was close to registering 4 Rindra but ultimately went with the variant Jez2718 and NotoriousGHP came up with 4 Varas. They were confident that Vara was good against Kira and Sling. Although I didn’t agree from experience, I trusted them. (they were also both halfway to day 2 at the time and claimed to like it in the Open meta) Knocking off aegis is powerful when Kira, Elysian, and Sling all have ways to gain aegis. In a meta with less Primal, I think Vara wouldn’t have been right but she felt like she had a pseudo-summon effect that saved me a card by popping aegis.

Rindra is a two-for-one that stabilizes, what’s not to love? With so many duals available playing Rindra on curve wasn’t difficult. I ended up with 2 copies of Rindra in my deck. Enough that I had access to it, but not so many that I was forced to play it on 4 in the mirror because of a lack of better options. Because of Golem you see 2 ofs a lot more often.

The draw spells – Honor of Claws, Forbidden Research and how many of them do you even need? 

SG: 

In our testing, we found Forbidden Research to be a more versatile card selection spell: whilst you do have to discard 1 more card, you can do so at fast speed, which means you can hold up removal and negation spells, and you also get some bonus Shadow influence, which helps for getting the influence on Acanthas mid-combat. Plus, it’s always nice to ambush your opponent with 2 Felrauks mid-combat, even if they aren’t fantastic blockers. However, the card doesn’t actually provide any card advantage, only card selection, which means that we are still supplementing the 4 cost spell suite with 2 Honor of Claws so in the case we don’t get terribly lucky with Felrauk draws, we don’t fall too far behind in raw cards and inevitability. 

TB: 

I loved the late-game inevitability of having eight draw spells, but it simply was too bad into fast decks and being forced to walk into Dazzle wasn’t great. For a while we had 4 Honor and 2 Research but Research was cut to make room for Grenahen. Because of how last-minute this change was, it’s one of the parts of the deck I’m least confident on. I think having less than 6 draw spells hurt the long game power of the deck. My topdecks felt worse in the version I played in the Open.

Extra Shadow influence can be powerful but I can’t pass up extra cards. Improving the power level of some of the cards in my deck is not worth giving up that card for. I like that Research is fast but after cutting down on Dazzles, that mattered less. Once we cut down on Acanthas and cut the At Any Cost in the market, there was really no debate as to which draw spell was better.

Grenahen – Yay or nay? 

SG: 

I am frankly not a fan of Grenahen as an inclusion in either list. You don’t have damage dealing spells maindeck (barring the 2 Stealth Strikes in the TEJ version) and you don’t have any way of recurring cards from your void. Granted, with 34 hits, the odds that you miss are only around 12% (the parameters I used was a Turn 2 Grenahen on the play with no units in hand) but when you miss, a 1/3 lifesteal is very underpowered. You can hope to get a little lucky with Felrauks and pick up additional value that way, but you have plenty of other ways to discard the Felrauks if need be. 

All in all, we’ve found Grenahen to be extremely underwhelming in the Even Feln deck, and as a result elected not to include it in our deck. It is possible that our judgment was clouded by how it overperformed in other lists such as the various iterations of Menace Shrine, but I don’t think that Even Feln is the best shell, nor a good shell, for Grenahen. 

TB: 

Grenahen is Golems five through eight. On aggregate it’s the card I’m second most happy to have in an opening hand. It establishes a presence on the board to block or imbue while digging for Golems and other units. I don’t love the failcase but in many matchups the body does matter. We did the math on how often you hit a free Felrauk and it’s shockingly high, around one in nine Hens! Not that this would sell me on the card alone, but  it’s certainly an added bonus

One piece of tech I appreciated (but did not think of) is running Vara’s Favor to allow Hen to find power. This deck is semi-greedy on power count because of how much plunder and card draw it has, so even adding a single Favor would up your odds of power significantly.

The power base – do you need 4 Shadow Symbols? 

SG: 

I entirely understand wanting to play 20 duals in order to get both sides of the influence buff for Champion of Cunning as expeditiously as possible, and honestly that’s probably a better idea. Granted, we liked being able to rush influence for both Acantha and At Any Cost, but that’s mostly gravy, and not devastatingly crucial. On the other hand, making sure you have the Flying and Aegis on the Champion is so important for racing decks like Sling. I do think TRS’ call was better for this tournament given the expected meta and Champion being so crucial in the mirror.

TB: 

If you’re running 4 Acantha and market At Any Cost, 4 Symbol becomes a lot more appealing. But if you cut down on those, cutting down on Symbol is easy. I still like the one of Symbol because you’ll never experience diminishing returns while also seeing it fairly often with so much card draw. We played 20 duals primarily to facilitate Felrauk (although Champion was another factor). We did the math on how many undepleted sources were needed for turn 2 and looked at where the curve flattened out (at what point adding more gave us less in return). This happened around 11-13. Ultimately we played a deck 12 undepleted sources of power for turn 2 which explains the 4 Shadow Sigil and the 1 Primal Sigil.

Card discussion (Market): 

Eremot’s Designs/Malediction/Blightmoth 

SG: 

I do think that some form of sweeper should be present in the market – a deck that’s all about grinding out value from your cards can really pull far ahead with a solid 3 for 1. Whilst they are most helpful against aggressive decks, a well-timed sweeper against a deck like Hooru Kira in the mid/late game will still completely destroy them. The question, of course, became which sweeper to pack. We immediately eliminated Blightmoth as an option – if you’re able to cleanly drop a Grafter and spend your Turn 3 accessing the market against the Yetis deck, then you’re probably already in great shape that game. 

We initially had Eremot’s Designs in the market, but eventually shaved it for the Malediction, which I do regret. We thought the Malediction would be more versatile against the Menace Trove match-ups with all its 3 drops as well as the Even Feln mirror since it can snag poorly played Rindras or an unbuffed Vara. However, as anyone who’s played the Trove/Shrine matchup knows, you can oftentimes clear their board and still have them kill you the next turn without breaking a sweat. I also ended up running into a shocking number of Mother of Skies decks, which Malediction unfortunately doesn’t quite deal with. In addition, Designs being half the cost of Malediction is quite important when you’re being rushed down in certain matchups. 

TB: 

I believe it’s important to think about what circumstances will lead to grabbing a certain card from the market and evaluating options conditioned on that. A conclusion TRS came to was that most of the time Grafter for a sweeper was too slow against the best aggro draws. And against the slower draws killing your own Grafter was bad because you wanted it, your Golems, and your Hens as blockers. This led us to Blightmoth, which also has value against Menace Trove decks. Some members of TRS argued against including a sweeper altogether. Before the tournament I was on the side of Blightmoth, but looking back I didn’t get it very often and believe it’s not an efficient use of market space. Against aggro the grafter body does enough and against Trove you just want to get Champion to kill them.

At Any Cost/Silverblade Menace

SG: 

Of course, the upside of At Any Cost is that it’s able to direct damage to things other than your opponent’s face – a problematic Lord Steyer’s Tower, perhaps, or a recurring unit. However, the berth between the modes of AAC is incredibly wide. On the other hand, with all the spells that most meta decks are running nowadays, both the floor and ceiling of Silverblade Menace tends to be higher, even if it can only be used as a finisher. Our team selected AAC for its versatility, but I do think it’s questionable as to whether the set-up cost for the card was worthwhile since it’s not the deck’s primary gameplan. 

TB: 

At Any Cost is a far more powerful card than Silverblade Menace. But with only 1 Shadow Symbol we felt we couldn’t support it, although I was somewhat tempted to include it as an expensive Sear to help kill sites (which can be a problem when you don’t draw Icaria). Menace rarely drains for double digits but in some matchups 7 is not an unreasonable expectation. Since Grafter gives Regen, it can sometimes help stabilize against aggro decks by gaining three or four life and blocking in the air.

Reappropriator 

SG: 

Not including this card is probably my biggest regret of the tournament Particularly potent in conjunction with the Aegis-nullifying clause of Vara, this delightful piece of Shadow relic interaction snatches Shrine, Trove and Sling out of their decks, and tacking Regen onto this unit makes it particularly sticky for those opposing archetypes to deal with. Never skimp on the relic interaction. Granted, they often play Shrine on the turn they want to kill you so this doesn’t help there, and there’s always the chance of them immediately removing the Valkyrie, but the tempo loss when they don’t gives you a fighting chance to just kill them by then. 

TB: 

This card looks better on paper than it actually is. I think I grabbed it a grand total of zero times in the top 64. Trove has market Combust with many Smugglers to get back their Shrine and Sling has a smörgåsbord of damage-based removal spells to get back their Sling.

Nullblade

SG: 

I think this is certainly worth some consideration: despite the Krull nerf, Krull/Know is still being played, and Nullblade does a great job at blocking off any recursive units. Whilst Decimating Waylay makes for stronger void hate, Nullblade has another use of simply being removal in the form of a relic weapon. However, there are a number of Menace Shrine variants that do not rely on Trove, and therefore Know/Krull, at all, which means this isn’t as effective at hampering their strategy. That being said, you can never go too wrong with a pinch of void hate in the market. 

TB:

I love a lot of what this card does against the mirror and Reanimator but 4 is too much and I’m never getting it before Champion. We’re past the days of Jawbone Greatsword being a passable market option in fair matchups (as much as this fact saddens me). Against Trove they can just Display of Menace you (which they can find with Grenahen) and make you feel like an idiot for paying 7 while they paid 3.

From Below 

SG: 

I had included this card on the day of the tournament itself as a way of disrupting Hooru Kira and Menace Trove – they might get 1 copy of the spell they wanted, but they won’t be able to dig into any more copies. As additional upside, the Globules it makes will mow down opposing boards in a hurry. However, it is extremely underwhelming when it gets plucked off immediately by a Bring to Justice or Combust. The few games I played with the card it over-performed since it stuck around, but the floor on this card is too low to warrant inclusion. 

TB: 

I see this card in a different way. I mostly ignore the discard effect and focus on the killer oozes it gives you. I think this is a powerful card in unit-based midrange mirrors in Expedition but doesn’t make the cut in Throne. This walks into Icaria in the Feln mirror.

The Speaking Circle/Dizo’s Office 

SG: 

A couple of people like the Speaking Circle in Throne; I am not one of those people. With the entire Throne card pool, your hits off the Speaking Circle are completely atrocious, and it’s too fragile to reliably stick around. As with Dizo’s Office, it’s certainly a powerful haymaker, but it ended up getting too easily plucked off in the mirror by Shadow Icaria, and as a result, didn’t feel it was worth the inclusion – 7 power is a lot. 

TB: 

Basically the exact same reasoning from me. Expensive sites are bad in a meta full of Icaria. If I wanted another big threat in the market I’d play 8 cost Vara or Last Chance (to get back my Champion).

Shrine/Trove discussion: 

SG: 

Storm’s Menace Discard Shrine:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/IoKXJ9lJLYw/storms-menace-discard-shrine

Back in February, I wrote my Misplay tournament report talking about a Feln Purveyor deck that I had nicked, I mean, put together, and when I saw both Grenahen and Crafty Occultist in the new set, I knew that it was sweet, sweet destiny. How I love my value units. 

With the addition of Fire to the deck came some delightful additions – on top of the Occultist, we snagged Kato as another amazing payoff for having a bunch of units in one’s void. If we’re running Kato, then we should most certainly run Carver, sacrificing all the piddly 1/1 units for some additional reach only to recur all of them again later. With the Fire influence came Combust in the market for more versatile removal, Shrine for some ridiculous turns, and Strangle Burglar for a little bit more reach for the deck. With the addition of Shrine, I also felt comfortable including the Know/Krull package for a little extra recursion since we can recoup the life loss. 

I felt comfortable making the simple exchange of Grenahen for Sporefolk and Occultist for Lightning Sprite as a discard enabler and a controlled Discard outlet respectively. Whilst Felrauk has proven themselves to be a very potent card this weekend especially when played for free, it has proven far too difficult to be able to get the requisite influence to play it for free, which is why it got booted out very quickly. In fact, after some testing, I found the same to be true of Maveloft Huntress, even if it is a ridiculously powerful card: double Primal early is just too difficult for this deck, and a huge part of the flexibility and power of Huntress is being able to smooth out your early draws. I do think the strategy certainly has some legs, but there is just so much efficient removal and value-based defensive units right now that leaning towards a more aggressive strategy didn’t quite pan out. 

In fact, that’s also part of the reason why I didn’t try pivot to a Mother of Skies based strategy – whilst I think the card is very powerful and really amplifies the potency of Shrine, being able to rebuild your board so quickly, not being able to go T2 Mother into a T3 multifaction unit consistently really hurt the power of the deck. I also didn’t go down the route of Rat Cage/Reactor Forge and the relics sub-theme, because frankly, after some playtesting, more often than not I ended up killing myself with my own Forge. Besides, with Know/Krull, I felt that there were enough other ways to cheat power that I didn’t also need Forge. 

I definitely underestimated the potency of Trove previously, and having played with it sans Forge, combining it with Know is possibly one of the most ridiculously powerful things that you could do in the format – in fact, a very nice friend passed me a very well-tuned Trove list prior to starting my run should I want to run it. That being said, I didn’t end up playing it because the lines are ridiculously complicated, and I don’t have faith in my own technical ability. A lot of the Discord conversations by players who did end up bringing it revolved around losing games due to misplays rather than deck construction. The deck is ridiculously powerful – just make sure you know how to build and play it. 

TB: 

TRS’ 4F Shrine: 

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/a2QMF6nXmMM/trs-4f-shrine

Grenahen and Crafty Occultist are powerful cards. Trove is the obvious home if you want to play both of them. I knew this deck would be a powerful option but was entirely unsure how to build it. So rather than tell you exactly how to build it (which I still don’t know), I’m going to share some of the questions that made building it hard and deciding not to play it easy.

  • Is Mother of Skies worth playing? She works well with Kato, Grenahen, and Occultist but is tough on the influence. 
  • Which Smugglers are correct? There are reasons to love all three. Feln is great with a Shrine in play, Stonescar is a good blocker, and Skycrag powers up Snowballs and Display but cannot take Krull out of the market. There’s also how each of them restricts what cards can be in the market. You can only play cards in the intersection and the complement of the union with respect to the intersection (e.g. Feln and Stonescar means you can play Shadow cards and Skycrag cards). 
  • Is Whispering Wind worth playing? It’s a powerful threat, but it makes you weaker to removal and means you can’t play Hurler to get with Know When to Hold ‘em. 
  • Is Reactor Forge worth playing? Additional relics after Trove have huge diminishing returns because you do need units to sacrifice after all. Playing Forge leads you down the path of Rat Cage to minimize this problem. 
  • Is Darkwater Vines worth playing? It enables Krull but is not good fodder. 
  • Should you play Torch? If you’re going to play a single removal spell main, then Torch makes some sense because Grenahen can find it. But this makes Trove worse as you don’t know for sure your 1 drop will play Know When to Hold ‘em. 
  • Should you play Defile? My kneejerk reaction was no because of how little room you have for removal and the fact that it isn’t damage based. You have Krull to reanimate things you steal, and Trove will only play Defile if your opponent has a legal target (otherwise it will play Defile). 
  • Should Burglar be main or market? If you play it main, you slow down some of your opening hands but if you play it market your late game gets worse. 
  • What mix of Paintings, Vows, and Banners is correct in the power base? 

If you’re overwhelmed by this paragraph, that was the point. This deck is very complicated and the only thing I knew for sure about it was that I couldn’t find the right build in time, let alone know how to play it at a high level!

Final thoughts: 

TEJ, and by that, I mean iplongno and johnholio, worked really hard preparing for this tournament and testing out a lot of different options for the Even Feln deck whilst I was off in Menace lala-land, which I am extremely thankful for, given how solidly this deck ended up performing for our team. I’m happy that I was able to kick the OP season off with such a strong start, and though I got swiftly destroyed by my previous collaborator, SRFS, in the Top 64, I hope that TEJ as a team can keep this good momentum going. ^-^ Although I must imagine TheBoxer is far, far happier with his result: you’ll be able to continue to laud him with congratulations over at @TheBoxerECG. 

How many of you stan TheBoxer, his reasoned logic and superb gameplay as much as I do? Do you agree with all the nerfs Even Feln got hit with in the latest balance patch? (I know I certainly don’t.) Let me know on Twitter @stormguard798, in the comments section of the Reddit post, or when I’m lurking in the FE, TEJ or The Misplay Discords. Until next time. 😉

Stormguard and SRFS’ Weather Report – Team Not-Tavrod Tournament Report and Deck Tech – Menace Grenadins (Expedition)

Hi everyone, it’s stormguard798, and I’m back here today with another deck tech and tournament report, this time from the Team Not-Tavrod Expedition tournament. As you might know, the balance changes came into effect just before it became time to submit decks for this tournament; as a result, I didn’t have a lot of time to see exactly how the balance changes ended up shaking things out. I elected to take a deck that perhaps wasn’t the best deck in the meta, but that I thought would be fun to experiment with given the recent changes to everyone’s favourite memeadin, Gren, Iron Martyr. I still doubt we’ll end up taking the card seriously now, however. Is the deck particularly well-tuned or good? Absolutely not. Is it a blast to play? Absolutely. So what did I end up tossing in the deck with barely any foresight?

Decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/NKGd7eFP35k/notice-me-senpai-or-is-gren-actually-even-good-shrug

I like my sacrifice decks – a lot. Ergo, I’ve decided to take TheBoxer’s list from a previous Tuesday Night Eternal (TNE) event, making it Menacing to accommodate Gren and some other fun cards, and put together a fairly defensive and value-based Grenadins deck. Besides the balance changes, there have also been a handful of cards added to Expedition since that tournament in this deck, so they’re certainly worth talking about.

Inclusions:

  • Assembly Line – This card is so good, and I’m so glad they’ve added this card to Expedition to make the Grenadins tribe more viable; it gives you plenty of fodder should you want to go the route of snaccrificing shenanigans, but also lets you go wide for that buff on Gren. Auto-include 4 of.
  • Display of Menace – Another extremely powerful 3-drop spell, I thoroughly enjoyed playing  with Display of Menace last time it was in Expedition. The ‘Torrential Downpour’ mode is the one I ended up using the least often, but one that I could see come up in Grenadins mirrors. The sacrifice mode replaces Devour in this iteration of deck – although it does cost 1 power more and doesn’t gain any life, it does allow for some modicum of card selection, which is helpful when you’re digging for a haymaker. Finally, considering all the additional relic support that the latest update to Expedition has injected, I’ve ended up using the relic destruction mode on Display quite a few times – giving the relics voidbound isn’t as relevant now that Ancient Excavator hasn’t been around as much, but it’s still nice to have regardless.
  • Scraptank – It was stronger when everyone was still running main-deck Edict of Makkar, but this is still a massive honker of a unit that can grow to absolutely ridiculous proportions; plus, it comes with 2 bodies with which to snack on for value. Granted, it doesn’t have any evasion, but this deck does still need a way to effectively close out the game, and this is a unit that does so very well.
  • Stonescar Scrapper – I wasn’t around back when the Stonescar Scrapper/The Witching Hour deck was a thing, but the card is still very impressive, stabilising the board well and taking over the game with card advantage once it gets rolling. Not having to exhaust itself for the cards is delightful. Whilst the asymmetrical body is awkward considering the popularity of Smite, it’s too powerful of an engine not to consider running 4 of.
  • Downdark Scrounger – Whilst a part of Empire of Glass and therefore a card that had always been around, it’s been a delightful addition to the deck since we’ve added Primal. Works to buyback permanently buffed spells thanks to Gren and is honestly just a nice curve-filler unit at 2 following the curve changes to the deck. One neat interaction with Scrounger is being able to buyback Display of Menace since it does technically deal damage – though, let’s be honest, I mostly use it for the card advantage.
  • Razorblades – I played a couple copies of this card because once I decided on including Scrounger and Gren, then this would make sense; as expected, it scales delightfully with damage-amplifying effects, and this will stabilise the board in a hurry. However, I found it to be rather mediocre without one of these effects in play: the amplify cost is just terribly inefficient, and if you’re able to start amplifying the damage, then you’re probably just ahead anyway. It seemed really good in theory, but it ended up being a card that didn’t pan out very well.
  • Dark Purveyor – Not going to lie, I almost forgot to include this card, and what a massive shame that would have been (and people probably would have boo’ed me off the internet, seeing as I just very recently gushed about the card). I only found space for 2 copies before submitting my decklist, but after playing it during the tournament, I am kicking myself for not including the full 4 copies. In a deck with 16 damage-dealing spells in the main, the Grenamender ability on this card triggers very frequently, and if allowed to stick on the board for a few turns, stabilises you very quickly. Shocked this card isn’t seeing more play, honestly.

Exclusions:

  • Vicious Overgrowth – Given that I was running 4 of Flash Fry, I didn’t think I also needed the Overgrowth in terms of removal. In hindsight, it’s probably nice to have some direct damage removal for sites, which I was fortunate to not see too many of in the tournament. But given how popular various Jx midrange decks have been on the ladder since the Invitational, it could be worthwhile to have a couple copies just to deal with Tower/Speaking Circle.
  • Moldermuck – The other card that I probably most regret not including. I was a pinch concerned about having 14 cards at the 3-cost slot already, which is why I didn’t include this. However, there were so many spots that I could have used more bodies, and I think that even though this card isn’t a Grenadin, it’s certainly very capable of spitting out a lot of those.
  • Inferno Den – Maybe it was correct to have a couple of copies, but given the speed of the Expedition format, I felt that the 5-cost slot is a little crowded since I do consider Scrapper and Scraptank to be a touch more powerful than the Den. Also, Speaking Circle is everywhere at present, which does make the site more of a liability. Having said that, it is an extremely powerful card to close out the game, which is something this deck occasionally struggles to do.
  • Wyatt’s Junkyard – If I’m not playing any copies of Inferno Den, then I’m definitely not playing any copies of Wyatt’s Junkyard: we don’t have any weapons in the deck to get back with Stash, unfortunately, and the 3 health on the site means that it gets cleanly answered by Vicious Overgrowth, which is quite a big deal.
  • Devour – Multiple people are probably screaming at me at this point, but I think since I’m already locked on running Display of Menace as my Sacrifice card-draw spell with additional utility, then it doesn’t make sense to also include Devour. I still need to find fodder to play both of them, and I just felt that it’d have resulted in too many such effects stranded in my hand. I still have a copy in the market, but since its whole purpose is to help smooth out your early game draws, it hasn’t been as impressive.
  • Align the Tesseract – Ok, so you’re about to hear from someone with a completely and utterly different take than me on Gren + Align The Tesseract (AtT), but in my opinion, I don’t think the 2 fit in the same deck. 😛 Gren only provides 1 body to reduce the cost of the card, and you won’t be able to give the buff to your board since it’ll all be gobbled up. Amplifying the many damage spells you have in hand is a nice after-thought, but if you have a Tesseract Prime, that additional damage is just gravy – those 2 cards are really what you’re looking for. Also, I like my sacrifice value decks, and I do consider an AtT deck to be very different.
  • Sparking Vermin – A ping is nice given the many X/1s in the format, but I don’t think it’s worth warping my powerbase to be able to reliably play this on Turn 1. Besides, its true power is in aggressive Grenadins decks or alongside AtT, which this deck most certainly isn’t.

Market:

  • Blazing Salvo – So following the TNE where TheBoxer Top’4ed, I’d bumped into various iterations of this deck on ladder where people are playing Vine Grafters over the Salvo, which is rather interesting. There’s no denying that Vine Grafter is a very powerful card, and I have definitely fiddled around with Grafter builds even prior to the Gren buff, but at least for the Menace iteration of this deck, I feel that the mere fact that Salvo is a damage-dealing spell means that it synergises well with what the deck has going on. As a result, I feel that Salvo is the better market access for this build. Also, I don’t think Vine Grafter takes as much advantage of the fact that we’re splashing a 3rd faction – I love me some Haunting Screams, but this isn’t quite the deck for it.
  • Edict of Shavka – Slam dunk. Justice is probably the most popular faction in Expedition right now, and on top of that, this is very helpful for dealing with a wide assortment of cards across pretty much every deck. I think it’s a little presumptuous to include this in the main deck, but I’m down to be wrong.
  • Nectar of Unlife – If you’ve read my previous articles, you’ll know that I absolutely adore this card, I mean, adore this card for its versatility. Having said that, I felt that with Primal adding a few more late-game staying power options, I didn’t feel it was necessary to run this in my market. Despite its versatility, it still is a very clunky card. I have missed the ability to recur some massive Scraptanks throughout the tournament, however, so perhaps it does come back in.
  • Kaleb’s Favour – So I initially cut this because I figured running 25 + 6 would be enough, but some occasions it didn’t quite get there. It is so, so important for this deck to hit 5 power on time, which also means that it’s very important to have a way to find more power out of the market. Ergo.
  • Slag – Perhaps a bit overkill considering that we have maindeck relic destruction, but it’s always nice to have more. Plus, I’m using the Kill a Sentinel mode far more often than I thought – as it turns out, people love Moonstone Vanguard as much as I do.
  • Cyber Combustion – Ok, so this is probably the biggest reason, at least on paper, to dip into Primal because having access to what is possibly a 1-sided sweeper is ridiculous. Unfortunately, it hasn’t panned out quite as I imagined primarily due to the lack of Fire-based aggro on ladder, at least from what I’ve seen. Tradition Soldiers has a shocking number of 4 health units, from ultimate Shock Troops to David to Record Keeper that this sweeper just falls short – a lot. If we see a meta shift, I could see shoving the card back in, but for now, I think it’s got to step aside.
  • Rindra’s Choice – First off, I’m not considering Dazzle as our market counterspell because our deck is simply splashing Primal, and I’ve found that in quite a few games we don’t end up with double Primal. Now, Rindra’s Choice is primarily to negate one of my other favourite things to do, Know Thy Enemy, but it’s also very helpful against cards like Rolant, which really shut down the deck. 
  • Kaleb’s Choice – Now, of course, the downside of Rindra’s Choice is that it doesn’t hit Equalize, which is a huge knock against our deck considering we want lots of board presence and lots of cards. (Really wishing Backlash was in this format. uWu) However, I had initially found the card to be just too narrow, even for a market card – there are surprisingly few good mono-faction relic targets, and our deck largely ignores Permafrost, which is why I’ve decided to not include it, even though negating Equalize is super crucial. Might be wrong here, though.

Ok, so as you might imagine due to your capability to interpret the title of this article in some way, shape or fashion, I’m not the only person composing this article. Joining me today is the multi-talented Essarefess (whom I going to refer to as SRFS throughout cause it requires less typing), probably best known in the community for being the assistant TO for the Tuesday Night Eternal (TNE) tournament series, but who is also a phenomenal Eternal player in their own right. Take it away!

…

Decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/mk_bjxGVIj0/i-could-only-afford-one-tessaract

Hi all! For this tournament, I was looking for a fun and enjoyable deck that was a little different than what I was used to in the format. Pracklackin’s list from the Winter TNE#11 with all the damage-spell synergies as well as a tendency to go wide seemed like a great shell to try out Gren with their newfound courage. Since that tournament new cards were added into the format, but due to timing restrictions, I didn’t go through all of them. In hindsight, a card like Assembly Line would be a great fit for the deck, and definitely something that I would update for future ladder play.

I was also a bit shiftstone-poor, so because I only had 1 Align the Tesseract (AtT), I used a Transpose market instead with a market Broker to cheat 4 AtTs into my deck. This is a band-aid solution I would not recommend. The earliest you would be able to play an AtT is turn 5, so you lose the possibility of explosive Turn 3 or 4 AtTs, I would not recommend anybody try this tactic. This slower approach did not pan out for me: although there were a couple of times I had some sweet AtT turns, most of my (few) wins were gathered through beating down with my army of tiny Grenadins. If you have the Shiftstone, get all 4. I filled out the rest of the Transpose market with a handful of other synergistic options: Burn Out for some reach, Dark Purveyor for a strong permanent buff alongside spell-damage synergies, and Replication Cell to take-over the late-game, especially with the Transposes to protect it.

While we only go over one of my games here, I have a few takewaways from playing it in the tournament. Unlike Storm, I was quite impressed Razorblades’ synergy alongside Downdark Scrounger and Gren, particularly since Razorblades how its Amplify is also buffed to multiply its damage and tokens. I was unimpressed by Grubbot: it required you to be ahead on board to really profit from its ability, otherwise it’s just a 2/2 for 3, which is a terrible rate. There was even a point in my match against Cananada that I had to kill my own Grubbot to stop myself from dying to their Dichro’s Ruin.

These decks are both very different takes on what a Grenadin deck could look like moving forward – while Stonescar Scrapper is certainly less explosive than AtT, it’s also more consistently powerful and requires a lower set-up cost. One other route to consider with Gren would be an aggressive go-wide ‘tokens’ style of deck, similar to the Menace decks that were played in Peasant tournaments previously, and use cards like Gren or Beacon of War to pump our units and try to finish games quickly. While a 3-faction power base can be a little precarious, having Common Cause in the format certainly helps and having access to a factionless lord for a go-wide tribe may help alleviate its issues too. Although Soldiers is the tribe that has gotten a lot of the spotlight thus far, with support coming in the recent Draft Pack update and the latest mini-set Stormbreak, there are plenty of interesting directions one could explore with Grenadins.

…

Thank you so much Essarefess for your insight! Now, for a tournament with such a small field, I was pleasantly surprised to encounter 6 completely different archetypes. So below, we do a recap of the gameplay across all 6 matches, and now there is another brain to discuss all the interesting decision points! Two brains are always better than 1…right?

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this in my previous tournament reports, but here are all the tournament decks so that you can refer to them and see how I made my questionable decisions. Also, fair warning in case you didn’t catch it previously: everyone is playing grindy midrange decks, so the matches are a slog to get through and read. I wanted to include the entirety of all the matches since I do think it’s important to have as much context as possible for the gameplay decisions, but let me know what you think. 🙂

https://eternalwarcry.com/tournaments/d/yxCvKEn6c3o/tnt-throwdown-expedition

(Essarefess commentary will be in italics, because I talk more. >.<)

Gameplay!

Match 1: (VS Brionac)

They’re on what seems like a very Standard Kal Mono Primal list (and by that, there’s a lot of not-4-ofs that I don’t entirely understand. XD Love you Kal.) Having said that, I think this boils down to how many Helios they’re able to find – whilst they do have quite a few big units, I do have Combust as a fairly unconditional answer – particularly since it gets under Dazzle – to anything plus the Edict in the market, so as long as they don’t completely overwhelm me in terms of card advantage in the process. Outside of the Prism Golems and perhaps the Torgovs in the late game, I do believe the rest of their threats are fairly manageable.

Game 1:

I mulligan my 1st 7 which contains a Seat of Chaos, a Stonescar Painting, a Scraptank, a Salvo, an Assembly Line, a Razorblades and a Display of Menace; if I could find 1 more power, this hand might be salvageable, but given that I have a free mulligan, this hand has the potential of blowing up spectacularly in my face if I don’t find that power, which is why I ship it. My 2nd 7 contains a Seat of Chaos, a Seat of Cunning, a Painting, a Fire Sigil, a Downdark Scrounger, a Gleaming Grenadin (GG), and a Gren. Better with the early-game drops, which is why I keep this hand, but definitely could use some interaction or a threat. I drop the T1 Grenadin, poke in for 1 and pass; they play a Primal Symbol and pass. I draw power and opt not to play my Scrounger post-combat: if they stumble, it’d be nice to get in for some extra damage, but more likely than not, I expect to either see a Jarrall to block it or a Huntress to clock it, so I’d rather wait to get some value off of it.

They play a Sigil and pass, which leaves me feeling rather silly; on my turn, I draw a Scrapper and poke in before dropping Gren. On their turn, they play a Prism Golem, which is super problematic, especially when I have no interaction in hand; I draw and play a power before passing. At least I have some chump blockers? On their turn, they play a Jennev Merchant and go hunting, most likely for either Rain of Frogs or Vengeful Flight, before attacking in for 5 – I opt not to block at this juncture, but could have probably shoved the GG in front of it – it does fortunately still leave me with 2 bodies for Scrapper. Consider blocking with the Gleaming Grenadin instead – it’ll still leave you with 2 bodies to sacrifice with Scrapper down the line. If you think they grabbed Vengeful Flight, then you won’t be able to block the Prism Golem anyway, so you might as well save the damage while you can. If they grabbed Rain of Frogs, you’d still block since you won’t have a Scrapper to sacrifice them to. Despite thinking about the possibility of Rain, I choose to still not play the Scrapper next turn, instead of wanting to wait until the next turn so that I can play and activate it in the same turn – whilst I understand past me’s caution, considering they only have the 4 Huntresses and the 1 Polymorph to interact with it, I think it would have been a worthwhile calculated risk. In that position, it didn’t make sense for them to grab Fluctuate Reality, so that was not in consideration. Of course, it didn’t end up mattering because they plopped a Vengeful Flight on the Prism Golem, but it’s an interesting decision point nonetheless.  

On my turn I play the Scrapper and snack on my 2 Grenadins, drawing an Assembly Line, Seek Power and Display. Not exactly what I’m looking for against these massive factionless threats. On their turn, they Polymorph my Scrapper – huh, they did have it – and then attack with everything; I elect to double-block the Jennev Merchant to take it down. No Dazzles to ruin combat against my piddly creatures! On my turn, I draw and scoop it up to the massive fliers.

Game 2:

I’m on the draw, and my 1st 7 has 2 Flash Fries, a Display of Menace, a Seek Power, a Stonescar Painting, a Seat of Chaos, and a Seat of Cunning. It’s a pretty solid hand, except for 1 crucial thing: units. There’s none of them. So after some pondering on how greedy I wanted to get, I decide to redraw into a Stonescar Painting, a Primal Sigil, a Fire Sigil, a Flash Fry, a Scrapper, a Razorblades and a GG. Just need to find another Shadow influence and we are all set. They start with a Clan Standard and pass; I plop down a Painting and my GG before poking in for 1. They play a Sigil and ship it right on back; I play my Primal Sigil and get in for 1 again before passing, holding up Flash Fry. They play a Prism Golem – joy – before passing it back; I play Gren and pass, with the full intention of blocking. They play a Jennev Merchant, probably for the same terrifying line as last time – more joy – and attack with the Golem, whom I chump with Gren, which is positively delighted by the Razorblades in my hand. On my turn, I open by Salvo’ing the Prism Golem and pitching the Flash Fry for an Edict of Shavka. Here, I think it makes more sense to send the Gleaming Grenadin to the market rather than the Flash Fry – you know that they’re playing Evolving Olzial, and that’s something your hand isn’t very capable of answering right now without a Flash Fry. You have plenty of units to sacrifice to the Scrapper when it starts going. Besides, it’s already got a buff, so if you find a Scrounger or another Gren, it’s definitely capable of doing some serious damage. Yep, in my head, I was super excited for buffed Razorblades, but I somehow missed the fact that they gave me more dudes in the process as well, so I’d have plenty of fodder for Scrapper as you mentioned. Big punt. 😛 I then use my Razorblades to finish off the Golem before passing.

On their turn, they play a Huntress, imbue the Merchant and use it to Killer my Gleaming Grenadin. Interesting line there from Brionac: I don’t think I’d have expended my Killer attack here given that you know that the deck packs along the lines of Scraptank. Maybe they’re sandbagging an Edict of Linrei to remove those other threats, but the 2/1 GG isn’t particularly relevant. I agree. Of course, I’m not entirely sure of the composition of Brionac’s hand, but spending such a powerful interactive piece on a GG certainly feels underpowered.

On my turn, I draw a Scrounger and proceed to be generally confused by my own sequencing. What I end up doing is attacking for 2, holding a Razorbot back, and playing the Scrounger to buyback Razorblades before passing. You probably should have played out the Gleaming Grenadin pre-combat and gotten in since you don’t have anything to do at fast speed. I absolutely should have. On their turn, they drop a power followed by an Evolving Olzial. I don’t want to say I told you so. 😛 You don’t have to. On my turn, I start by playing the Vara’s Favor to knock off the Regen on Olzial before chump attacking with Scrounger, which they block with Huntress. I then play the super-buffed Razorblades to kill the Olzial. I’m not entirely sure about the Scrounger chump attack here – I understand wanting to get the Olzial off the board, but you’re also down cards and board presence in the process. It might have been better to save the Razorblades for next turn when you have access to the full 6 power and can amplify for even more Razorbots and damage. I understand wanting to save the Edict of Shavka for something like a Jarrall or Torgov, though. Indeed. Granted, this would have all been made a lot easier if I just kept the Flash Fry, but I think it was worthwhile to trade my Scrounger for what is an additional Razorbot and getting the Olzial off the board. I have no fliers in the deck, which means it’ll be quite tricky for me to contest that Olzial, and getting to filter cards is exactly what leads to Helios and massive Torgovs, which is why I thought it important to get off the board immediately. Plus, their shields are down this turn, which means I don’t have to worry about the likes of Swift Refusal or Dazzle ruining my plans. I then play a post-combat GG before passing.

On their turn, they play a power before passing, which is highly suspicious. I start by playing my Scrapper and snacking on a Razorbot and GG before passing. You probably could have gotten in there with all your Razorbots – it’s not as if they have anything at fast speed to blow you out. Right. Oops. >.< On their turn, they play a Primal Etchings and grab a Vengeful Flight targeting their Huntress, spawning a 2nd Huntress before passing. They didn’t end up imbuing anything with the Huntress, which might have been how Flight works mechanically, or perhaps they had just missed it. Unsure. On my turn, I start by playing a Scraptank and snacking on the 2 Grenadins it makes with Scrapper before attacking with all my piddly 1/1s, which they don’t block; definitely should have also attacked with the Scrapper there since it can’t block the fliers anyways. They trade off a Razorbot for their Huntress, which I’m more than fine with. They start by Troving, spending an Edict of Linrei on my Scraptank, and then playing a Huntress to kill my Scrapper.

Fortunately, I have another Scrapper in hand, and we’re right back on track, attacking in for 4 before snacking on the Totemite and the Rustling. I then opt to spend my Combust with a Razorbot to take out the flying Huntress in case they have another Huntress in hand. I can’t remove the Merchant at this juncture anyways, but even if it gets copied, that’s not the worst thing. They play a Helio – joy – and Destiny their Vengeful Flight – even more joy – copying their Merchant and probably go hunting for their Fluctuate Reality in the market. Nope, it’s a Permafrost, which I can sort of see, but I’m just happy I can still use the Scrapper ability even if it’s stunned. They then get in for 4 before passing. I start by snacking on my 2 Razorbots with Scrapper and finding no units, which is problematic – my hand at present consists of an Edict of Shavka, 2 Flash Fries, 2 Display of Menaces, and a Seat of Fury. I then pass here, which is probably a punt. If they had Dazzle for my Display on the Scrapper, that would have been very bad news, so it probably makes more sense to go for the Display on my turn.

On their turn, they play a Helio for even more cards and attack in for 8 before passing. After pondering whether I should instead see if I can topdeck an Assembly Line, I elect to just let the opportunity go. On my turn, having drawn a depleted Seat of Fury, I decide to just go for the Display on the Scrapper, and fortunately, they didn’t have the Dazzle, allowing me to snag a Purveyor and a GG. I did pause for a little bit to check that I didn’t get the math wrong and that it was actually lethal, but I have exactly enough power to play the GG, put the massive Purveyor buff for lethal on it before Flash Frying their only blocker and smacking them for lethal. My opponent thought they had stabilised, but never underestimate the power of Charge in closing out a game, no matter how minute. That was not a line that I had thought of since I hadn’t been paying close attention to the unit count in my void, but that’s certainly something to pay attention to more in the future.

Game 3:

I mulligan my opening hand of a Stonescar Painting, a Fire Sigil, a Gren, a Scrapper, 2 Combusts, and a Salvo; since I’m on the play, only being able to cast a single card in my hand is far too risky. 2nd 7 contains 2 Seats of Fury, a Seat of Chaos, a Seat of Cunning, a GG, a Scrounger and a Display. Is this hand extremely slow if I don’t find a Sigil or way to tutor Sigils? Yes. Do I think on average it’ll be better if I go down to 6? Nope. So I keep it. I play a depleted Seat of Chaos and pass; they play a Primal Sigil and a Primal Etchings – perhaps they have a similar precarious power situation as I? I play a depleted Seat of Fury alongside my GG before poking in for 1 and passing. On their turn, they play a Jarrall and pass, which is rather pesky, but fine. I draw a Seek Power for turn, tutor for a Fire Sigil for turn, and decide not to run out my Scrounger as a 2/2 for 2 because frankly, it’s probably going to die in short order. They play a Huntress, imbuing Jarrall and killing my GG, which tells me that they are definitely strapped for power since I’d imagine they’d rather save that for something juicier.

On my turn, after drawing a Combust and a pinch of pondering, I decide to just play a Seat of Fury and pass; again, it’s nice to save on the 3 damage from blocking, but it would be disastrous if they had a Dazzle for my Display of Menace. On their turn, they open with a Vicious Overgrowth on it – that also works – and I Display in response, taking a Flash Fry and Vara’s Favor, choosing to put to the bottom a Combust and Seat of Chaos. I then take 3 from the Overgrowth and 3 from the Huntress before they play another Etchings without accessing their market and pass. I guess they really want their Olzial or Helio to be deployed on curve? When it gets back to me, I Flash Fry the Jarrall, Favour the Huntress, and play a depleted Painting before passing. They then drop an Olzial as expected – would have loved to save the Flash Fry for that, but I think finishing off the Jarrall there makes sense. Besides, there was always a chance they had Helio instead.

When it comes back to me, I opt to aggressively 2 for 1 myself by playing the Scrounger and Combust to remove the Olzial – not the most efficient play, but given that they are strapped for power on a possible Helio, I don’t want to allow them to dig for power. Exactly: you also had the option of playing the Purveyor alongside the Scrounger, but you’ll just end up Combusting the Olzial with the Scrounger next turn anyway. It’s unfortunate that you’re unable to advance your board at this juncture, but Olzial is such a snowball threat that is crucial to deal with it ASAP. They however do still have a power into a Helio next turn though, so there’s that. On my turn, I draw a Flash Fry and pass; I do have the option of playing Purveyor and going for the Flash Fry right here and now, but I opt not to for 2 reasons: A. Helio isn’t really a threat; I’d much rather use the Flash Fry on a 2nd Evolving Olzial, and given I’m still at 20+ life, I’m not in a terrible rush. B. I’d rather be able to take advantage from both sides of Purveyor given that they are ahead right now. Obviously, I’m not going to hold on out for a bunch of turns, but it seems fine to wait for now. They poke in for 2 and pass, clearly holding up Dazzle, Wisdom, or some combination of both. I draw a Blazing Salvo, and here, I’m willing to give up some Purveyor value from buffing a unit as I Purveyor on an empty board before Salvo’ing, depositing the Shadow Sigil I had grabbed earlier for an Edict of Shavka – I do think there’s also an argument for taking the Devour here, but I took the more conservative line for fear of a Jarrall. Might have needed to take a little risk since I am behind, however. Another line you could consider is just waiting on the Salvo, see what they do, and adjust it accordingly – since the Helio attacking isn’t terribly concerning, and although getting a Grenamender is nice, it isn’t doing much right now. You miss out on a potential extra Grenamender, but in exchange, you have more information with regards to your market selection, which is probably worthwhile.

They have a Vicious Overgrowth for my Purveyor – boo – and they follow-up with another Helio. Now things are looking really bad for me. On my turn, I elect to play the Scraptank and Flash Fry the Helio so that the Grenamender can get in. I don’t think I can pressure them nearly fast enough, however. They use Vicious Overgrowth to kill my Scraptank – oh no! – before playing a Prism Golem and Jennev Merchant; here comes the Vengeful Flight. I draw and play a Painting before passing; as expected, they have a Vengeful Flight and get in with the flying Golem and Merchant. I elect to triple-block the Merchant since they don’t have any available tricks, leaving my Grenamender alive. Since I’m at 13 now, that probably means they have another Vicious Overgrowth in hand. They play a Wisdom of the Elders and Destiny over the Vengeful Flight, but fortunately for us, have no legal targets. I draw a Seek Power, and grab and play a Fire Sigil –futile at this point, but at least make them have it. They don’t have the direct damage spell but do play a Torgov instead, and there’s nothing that saves me at this point.

Match 2: (VS Essarefess)

Now time to get revenge on Prack’s deck for beating me in that 1 TNE. 😛 For real though, I feel much better against an AtT deck that I did last time: I have ways to deal with the Tesseract Prime both main deck and in the market this time, and have a lot more way to remove their incidental units without feeling too awful about it – plus, with the Transpose market, I’ll be able to see the AtT coming for sure. Pity Cyber Combustion doesn’t quite work against them, but it’s a small issue.

Game 1:

I mulligan an opening hand with no Shadow sources – since Shadow is the only faction I need double influence of, that was certainly a no-go, even on the draw. I keep my 2nd 7 of a Fire Sigil, a Primal Sigil, a Seat of Cunning, a Scrounger, an Assembly Line, a Flash Fry, and a Seek Power. An all-round solid hand. They play a Fire Sigil into Seek Power, whereas I go for my Seat into the same, grabbing a Shadow Sigil – whilst I typically am a fan of leaving as many Shadow Sigils in the deck as possible so that my Favors are generally more useful, I don’t have my 2nd Shadow influence in hand at present, ergo. They play a Seat of Cunning and pass; I play a Fire Sigil and pass as well. On their turn, they play a Grubbot, which I’m very happy to Flash Fry before dropping an Assembly Line. They play a GG before passing, and on my turn, I attack with all 3 of my Grenadins and they’re happy to take the trade: post-combat, I use my Scrounger to buy-back a Flash Fry before passing – I wouldn’t be particularly thrilled if I had to spend removal on a Rustling, but we’ll see. At the end of my turn, they Transpose, assuredly hunting for Broker.

They play the Broker as expected followed up by a Feln Painting; on my turn, I attack in with both; as they move to block the Scrounger, I fire-off my powered-up Flash Fry to kill it, and the Grenadin and Rustling trade. Now that I know they have AtT in their deck, I want to do 2 things: try and hold up my Rindra’s Choice where possible, and keep their board as clear as I possibly can, which is why I went for the more conservative line instead of playing out the Scraptank I drew that turn. On their turn they play a Sigil and amplify a Razorblades for 2, spitting out some blockers, which could be annoying for Scraptank, but probably still fine. On my turn, I play the Scraptank and decide to spend the Salvo now, grabbing the Rindra’s Choice – they’re probably very close to being out of gas, so I don’t want them to get back into this by having enough units for the AtT next turn. I think in this position, you don’t have to care about clearing my board since the following turn you could always remove the Tesseract Prime with Rindra’s Choice anyway, and you know that’s not something that I can interact with well. On the other hand, if I have Flash Fry or Vicious Overgrowth, then you could try to use the Salvo to save your Scraptank, which would be more important. You have a bunch of ways to kill those deadly tokens eventually anyway. Huh. Definitely did not think of that line of using Salvo on my own unit. That does make a lot of sense.

They play a Sparking Vermin, which is rather annoying; on my turn, I opt to attack with both Grenadins – they block 1 with Sparking Vermin and Snipe down the other. Although the Razorbot is stonewalling the Scraptank pretty well at present, I know I have plenty of ways down the line to deal with it, so I feel like I can afford to be patient. Plus, I think I’m favoured if this game drags long. They play a Scraptank, which I immediately Flash Fry, and on my turn, I draw and play a 2nd Flash Fry to deal with the Razorbot before getting in – I’ve got to clear their board somehow. They don’t block and I pass. On their turn, they attack me with both Grenadins before attempting to cast AtT, which I negate with Rindra’s Choice. I draw and play a Gren before clocking in for 7 with Scraptank; on their turn, they draw and scoop it up. Not really much to say there – their deck is hurt pretty badly by open decklists, and the lines are fairly straightforward as long as you are playing around AtT appropriately.

Game 2:

I keep an opening hand with 2 Seats of Chaos, a Stonescar Painting, a Seat of Fury, 2 GGs, and a Dark Purveyor. No interaction of any kind, but otherwise a very solid hand, and being on the draw, hopefully we can draw into some fun stuff. SRFS opens with a Feln Painting and Seek Power, whereas I play my SS painting into a GG. Hiya! On their turn, they play an undepleted Seat and pass, whilst I go for my 2nd GG and get in for a whopping 2 damage. More depleted power isn’t fantastic though. On their turn, they play a Grubbot and pass, whilst I draw a Vara’s Favor and play it at their face before playing another Seat and passing. Didn’t want to get too greedy there with Purveyor. I do think I should have probably attacked with 1 GG, however; I doubt they’d expend 2 removal spells on a single GG just to get a Trove.

SRFS plays a Seat and pass, which is rough; on my turn, I draw Razorblades and get in with a GG; they do block, which is fine by me as I use the Razorblades to finish it off. And now there are units in the void for Purveyor. 😛 They play Sparking Vermin, which is terribly annoying for my board; on my turn, I play a pre-combat Scraptank – if all my X/1s are going to die, hopefully it’ll at least buff my Tank in the process. However, they have a Flash Fry to kill it before it gets large. Although I happened to have the answer for it, I still think playing the Tank here was the correct play. Since I’m so far behind as-is, Tank is the best way you have of closing out this game while you’re still ahead. It does make sense for you to force me to have it here, even if it didn’t pan out very well. I absolutely agree. They elect to trade with a Razorbot and shoot down a Rustling, still leaving me with a very healthy 3 1/1s. On their turn, they play a Feln Painting and pass. Yikes.

I draw and play a Seek Power, finding a Fire Sigil before dropping the Purveyor and passing over the buff to the GG and clocking in for 7. They have an end-of-turn Realign for presumably Razorblades, which they fire off on my GG and a Grenadin. Boo. Fortunately, I have a Display of Menace in hand, so come my turn, I clear the board and get in for another 7 whilst popping out a Grenamender. They have a Vicious Overgrowth for the Purveyor, which does keep them alive for now, at least, but they’re still at a very precarious 2, not helped by the fact I drop a Scraptank on the board following combat. They end of turn Realign, draw, and scoop it up.

Match 3: (VS EarthsOverseer)

I have no idea how this match-up is going to pan out, to be honest. On the one hand, I think our removal lines up decently against their threats and them expending removal 1-for-1 on our units is great. On the other hand, we don’t have a good way of interacting with AAC as a win condition, so hopefully we can poke them to death before then. However, if they do manage to discard our key haymakers, we may be very far from killing them in a hurry.

Game 1:

I mulligan my opening hand with a Seat of Chaos, a Fire Sigil, an Assembly Line, a Razorblades, a Blazing Salvo, a Flash Fry and a Scrounger – I think if this had been my 2nd 7, I would probably keep here since it does have some early plays I can make, especially on the draw, but since this is my 1st 7, I think I can do better. My 2nd 7 makes me wish that I had kept the 1st one instead: 2 Seats of Chaos, a Seat of Cunning, 2 Seek Powers, a Combust, and a Blazing Salvo. I don’t think you should have kept that hand – the Seek Powers are nice but your curve tops out at 5 anyway, and you can’t play the Combust without any units. Yes, you’d have rather kept the 1st 7, but this isn’t a functional hand. Looking back on it, I agree – don’t know why I kept such a dubious hand either. But I did, so on with it!

They open with a Clan Standard, and I start with a depleted Seat of Chaos. They play a Primal Sigil and pass; I Seek Power into a Fire Sigil, play my Seat of Cunning, and spend my Seek Power for yet another Fire Sigil. On their turn, they just pass, and I use a Vara’s Favor before passing. Oh dear, that is rough. They draw and pass again, and I play a Seat of Cunning followed by a GG; as they draw and pass for the 3rd turn in a row, I use the Display of Menace at the end of turn – they don’t have Dazzle in their list, so that’s not a point of consideration – I take a Scraptank and a Scrapper over a Salvo and Display to try and get some pressure on the board. On my turn, I play the Scrapper – if they have the Overgrowth, good for them, but if it sticks for even 1 turn, they are in so much trouble. They have the Overgrowth, but not more power. When it comes back to me, I draw a Scrounger and attack for 3 before playing the Scrounger to get back the Display. I think in this position I should have just gone for the Scrapper: they have no good way of answering the card at all, plus it still pressures them decently. As they miss their power drop for the 5th turn, I use Display at the end of Turn to find another one and a Scrounger.

Back on my turn, I attack in for 3 before playing a Vara’s Favor, playing my 2nd Scrounger, and using the Display on the 1st one immediately. I don’t think you needed to Display now: they don’t have negation spells in their deck to worry about, and there’s a decent chance you just burn them out with Scrounger-buffed spells at this point. Just play the Scrapper and start pressuring. True. Definitely not a route that one would usually take with this deck, but they are so far behind at this point that it’s a possibility, particularly since they have no negation spells. I draw a Gren and a GG over a Combust and a Seat – not going to lie, was hoping for something with a little more oomph. After 6 turns, EarthsOverseer finally finds their Shadow source and plays their Exploit and take Scrapper, followed up by a Suffocate on Scrounger. …I’m so going to lose this game despite EO’s draw, aren’t I?

I play a GG and a Gren before poking in for 1 and passing; they play a Shadow Sigil and pass, which is so suspicious. I guess they either have Wisdom or Research? At the end of their turn, I go for a Display of Menace on Gren, drawing another Gren, and taking both Assembly Lines over a Razorblades and a Salvo. At this point, my hand is so stocked with removal that I just need to get bodies out there and kill them. After attacking for 2 with GG, I play out an Assembly Line and Gren. I think you missed an opportunity by not playing the 2nd Assembly Line. Play Gren next turn, then you have the option to Combust it if they play a unit, or shooting it with Salvo if they don’t; either way, you buff a wide board and can probably get in for lethal. They don’t have enough power on their next turn to be concerned with a Jennev Merchant into a Storm Spiral. …damn. That would have been fantastic. People, this entire game has just been a disaster on my end. XD They do go for the end of turn Forbidden Research as expected, pitching a Seat of Cunning and a Shadow Sigil.

On their turn, they play a Seat and spend a Vara’s Favour on the GG before passing, so they probably have Wisdom. I get in for 5 on my turn before playing out the Assembly Line and passing; they play a Wisdom at the end of their turn. They play Speaking Circle and hit Equivocate, Refresh or Fall Short: they opt for Refresh, and I Salvo my Gren in response, prompting a concession from them. I think I very nearly lost that game, somehow. No matter how far ahead you are, always play well. 😛 Hopefully I can redeem myself in this next game?

Game 2:

I keep an opening hand on the play with 2 Stonescar Painting, a Fire Sigil, 2 Assembly Lines, a GG and a Display of Menace – could use a Primal influence, but fantastic otherwise. I open with a Turn 1 GG, and they just have a Clan Standard; on Turn 2, I draw a Gren and just poke in for another 1. Not the most helpful thing here. On their turn, they play a Feln Painting and Exploit, taking my Display of Menace – that makes sense since it’s the most unique effect, but they couldn’t have known I couldn’t play it anyway. :} I draw and play a Fire Sigil before playing out an Assembly Line and getting in for 1; on their turn, they go for another Exploit and take my remaining Assembly Line this time – even my opponent doesn’t think Gren is very good. 😛 I draw a Scrapper I can’t cast at present, so I just get in for 4 before passing. On their turn, they play a Wisdom before a Shadow Symbol and passing; I draw a Seek Power, use it to pick up a Primal Sigil, and then play out my Gren before getting in for 4 again. Fear my tiny army!

On their turn, they use a Vara’s Favor to take out 1 Grenadin before using a Vicious Overgrowth on another. Yikes. On mine, I get in for 3, and after double-checking their list just to be sure of their removal options, I deploy my Scrapper and pass. They play a Speaking Circle and hit Reap, Dark Return and Read the Stars. Oof. I felt that; the Circle giveth and the Circle taketh away. They play the Reap and pass. I take down the Site on my turn, before snacking on the GG and Gren post-combat, finding me a Dark Purveyor, Vara’s Favor and Seek Power. I spend the Seek Power for a Primal Sigil and pass. I decide not to plop down the Purveyor before I can at least get 1 Grenamender of it with the Favor I have in hand in case they do slam the Overgrowth against it, but I can see wanting to be power-efficient instead. On their turn, they have a Razorblades to off both my Grenadins and make 2 Deadly blockers, but when it comes back to me, I topdeck a Scraptank and slam that down, snacking on both Grenadins immediately to put the big boi out of Overgrowth Range, drawing a GG and poking in for 1.

They play a Rindra on their turn, forcing me to pitch a Shadow Sigil, but I’m still in great shape. I play the Vara’s Favor on a Razorbot, playing a GG, snack on both of them drawing a Razorblades and a Display before expending the Razorblades to take out their other Razorbot before attacking in for 11 with Scraptank, which they take. I think that my sequencing that turn was very, very messy. Given that I had decided I was playing the GG and sacrificing it, I should have definitely done that first to see if I needed to play the Vara’s Favor. In this situation, I could have finished off both Razorbots with Display, put the Dark Purveyor buff on the Scraptank, and forced them into chumping with their rindra. But instead, they get a chance to claw back into this. The only reason I could think of for going for Purveyor first is if you plan to sacrifice the Grenamender, but when you’re the aggressor trying to close the door on them, that seems like value you’re probably fine with giving up.

They just play a Sigil and pass, which is rather suspicious; I start by playing a Gren and sacrificing it and a Rustling to my Scrapper, yielding another Purveyor, a Shadow Sigil and a Salvo. I put the Purveyor buff on a Razorbot before Salvoing the Rindra – they respond with a Forbidden Research to save it, pitching 2 power. I swing out with my board, and that’s enough to kill them. Death by a thousand Grenadins. Got a little sloppy at the end, but was helped by them not drawing any threats.

Match 4: (VS Supermaus)

My child! My sweet, precious child! For real though, this build is very similar to my deck from the Invitational with 3 Speaking Circle in place of Reality Warden, which does lower your unit count for KTE but is still a very powerful effect if you can land it in the right spots. If I can somehow stick a Scraptank I might have a chance of taking over the game, but given that I’m a much slower iteration of Grenadins, more likely than not I’m just going to get completely destroyed – KTE will wipe out most of my fodder, and the removal does not line up well at all against any of their threat, forcing me to 2-for-1 myself at most occasions. What can I say? I liked my build of Kerendon. 😛

Game 1:

I ponder over my opening 7 on the play which is a Seat of Chaos, a Fire Sigil, 2 Assembly Lines, a Razorblades, a Gren, and a Seek Power. Against most decks, I think I’d be okay keeping this hand – granted, I do have a lot of 3-cost cards, but I can build out a decent board. However, we’re talking about KTE here: if they have a KTE I am completely screwed because this hand is going to get destroyed. Granted, I could just run it out, cross and pray they don’t have one and try to slowly poke them to death, but that doesn’t seem great. After some pondering, I decide to mulligan. Not sure that was the correct choice. Yeah, I think given how poor the match-up is, your best option might simply be to try and get lucky, hopefully going wide enough with Gren that you can sneak in before they stabilise. The question boils down to whether you think you can draw into a better hand. Let’s see: my 2nd 7 contains a Shadow Sigil, a Stonescar Painting, a Razorblades, a Combust, 2 Scrappers, and a Display. Well, now I regret not keeping the 1st 7 very much. My 6 contains a Seat of Cunning, a Fire Sigil, a Primal Sigil, a Blazing Salvo, Gren, and a Seek Power.

I open by playing the Seat of Cunning and a Seek Power for a Shadow Sigil; they presumably pledge a Moonstone Vanguard on T1 before passing. I play a Fire Sigil and ship it back; they play a Painting and ship it back. I play my Gren and pass; they play a Justice Sigil into an Enter and pass. At least just kill me quickly? Please? 😛 I poke in with Gren for 1, Vara’s Favor their face, play a depleted Painting and pass; they start with a 2nd Enter on their turn, which is terrifying, and follow up with a Siraf. I briefly pondered going for a Blazing Salvo end of turn for Edict, but I think I’m fine just waiting to see what I draw since I won’t be able to do everything at fast speed anyways. Absolutely. Since both Alchemist and Winchest Merchant are now viable targets for Salvo, you don’t want to waste the Salvo unnecessarily. Wait, in case you draw the Combust to deal with it. You also have a Gren on board already, so if you can save the Salvo, it may be buffed a few times to take down a much more respectable target down the line. On my turn, I draw and play a GG before spending a Combust with the Gren here to take out the Siraf before they start activating it next turn. There are just so many threats I need to answer out of them. >.< I attack in for 2 and play my follow-up Gren before passing. They play a Moonstone Vanguard, and on my turn, instead of opting to go for Scrapper and sacrificing both my Grenadins, I elect to go for the Blazing Salvo into Slag to kill the Vanguard before they start accruing value – an awkward Gren buff in this instance by slapping my face for more damage, but what can you do. Here, I decided not to attack first: because of the open decklists, they know at best I can horribly 2 for 1 myself, and frankly I don’t want them gaining the 5 life. They are stuck on Shadow influence at this juncture, but if they do and kill the Scrapper the next turn, then I’m in a really bad spot since Vanguard snowballs really quickly. Also, with the pause from them at Salvo, I can determine that they have an Alchemist in hand. I attack with both units since I’d be fine trading either of them for Alchemist: they elect not to trade and take 3.

On their turn, they open with a Diana into a Painting and a Siraf. Oh dear. I draw and immediately spend a Display on the Gren to try and dig into an answer – I opt for a Scraptank and Scrounger over another Display and a Primal Sigil, and draw a Purveyor off the Gren – I go for Scrounger since I can use it to buyback Salvo, and I know I have an answer in the market instead of trying to dig here. I agree with your line here: while it’s nice to draw the power to hit power drops, it will be at least another 2 turns before you’ll want to play and activate the Scrapper in the same turn anyway, at which point you’re likely to have drawn another power. Drawing the power is safer, but the versatility of Scrounger is hard to pass up. I decide not to play the Scrounger here since I can’t Salvo + Choice this turn regardless, and I’d rather wait and see if I can topdeck a Combust, which would be great; there is an argument for trying to be more power-efficient and just dumping out my hand since I’m not winning by being defensive, but I feel like I need to eke out all the equity I’ve got here.

They play a Speaking Circle and flip a Reap, a Parry and a Twilight Hunt, which isn’t fantastic, but pretty solid against me here: they go for the Reap here to get Shadow influence, which is just delightful. So, on this turn, I’m in a rather tricky predicament: I can’t deal with both the Siraf and the Speaking Circle since I’d need to snack on the GG pre-combat, so instead, I opt to go Seek Power into a Dark Purveyor to buff my GG and get in. Unfortunately, they happened to have the Smite, which frankly I should have seen coming a mile away. Now I have gotten rid of neither threat, which is terrible. Rather than leave the choice to them, I should have just gone for Scrounger -> Salvo -> Choice and hopefully the Speaking Circle magically disappears somehow. I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps I can string together some GGs? If they didn’t have power open for a large assortment of answers which could ruin your day, the line you took would be more defensible, but there are so many ways that could have gone wrong – and it did. Does it feel terrible to spend 3 cards getting rid of a Siraf, and them potentially playing another one on their turn? Absolutely. But following our discussion, I think that Siraf is the more pressing threat. It is both is a threat in itself and protects the other threats you have on board. You probably should just go for the costly line and cross your fingers hoping they don’t have another one. On their turn, they play the Twilight Hunt on the Siraf and activate her, spitting out a Katra, the Devoted, which is fairly middling in terms of threat level, before attacking me with Diana.

As it comes back to me, I have Scrapper, Scraptank, 2 Scroungers and a Seek Power in hand: I decide to go for an all-out attack at the Circle to start with, which is questionable at best. I think once again, I should have gone for the Scrounger first, clear out the Katra, and guarantee that I take down the Speaking Circle, but then I don’t have it for the Siraf. I don’t think there’s any chance I’m winning this game at this point. XD I play the Scrounger post-combat and grab Vara’s Favor to finish off the Katra, which is just compounding the questionable plays. I play Seek Power for a Fire Sigil and pass it right back. They spend the Parry to kill my Scrounger, activate the Siraf for a Sandblast Mage before attacking with Diana and passing it back – I draw and just scoop. Once the Queen of Glass comes out, doubt there’s much else I can do. The play in this game on my part was very…loose, to say the least. Doubt it’d have made a massive amount of difference in the end, but there was always the slim chance Supermaus hit an extraordinarily thick vein of power. >.<

Game 2:

I’m on the draw, and I keep a hand with a Painting, a Seat of Fury, a Primal Sigil, a Shadow Sigil, a Scrounger, a Combust, and a Seek Power. Definitely a rather power-heavy hand to keep on the draw, but granted, I’m feeling a little gun-shy after last game. 😛 They presumably Pledge on Turn 1, and I draw and play a GG like a boss, because who needs good gameplay when you have improbable luck? >.< They play an AP Cylix and pass; I play a Seek Power for a Fire Sigil, poke in, and pass as well. On their turn, they play a Justice Sigil and ship it back; here, I just play my power and attack with GG before passing. I’ve nothing to get back regardless, and playing a 2/2 for 2 seems…awful, to be blunt, particularly since it’ll die in a jiffy. Plus, there’s always the chance of KTE ruining my day. They play a Seat of Progress and pass; I draw and play a Gren, poke in and do the same. At least they aren’t ramping completely out of control this game?

They play a Cylix and drop a Rolant, which I get rid of by Combusting with the Gren the following turn, and pick up a Scrapper. You could consider sacrificing the GG to have 2 bodies in case you draw Scrapper, but that’s too much of a corner case. Although you did draw one, you couldn’t have known that, and I agree that it’s better to dig with Gren. I cash in the Seek Power for a Fire Sigil and crack in for 2; they don’t block, and following that, I play a Scrounger with the hopes of sacrificing it next turn. Unfortunately, they have a KTE – darnit! – and pop out a Vanguard before getting in for 1. I start with a Scraptank and follow up with a Combust, giving up a Grenadin to take out the Vanguard and poke in for 1 with the Rustling. On their turn, they play a Winchest Merchant from From Anguish to take out the Scraptank – good call – before passing. On the bright side, nothing is actively killing me yet, so I might have a shot? I play Scrapper and cash in both my Grenadins for a Display and another Scrapper; at the end of turn, they have a SAA for the Scrapper. Yay for the back-up one.

On their turn, they attack in for 3 before playing a Justice Sigil and passing. Oh my. I start by Vara’s Favoring the Rolant Reaper and just passing – it may have been a little greedy, but I’d like to hold up the Display of Menace for my Scrapper in case they go for removal there, and drawing depleted power, I couldn’t quite play the Scrapper and hold up Display this turn, which is why I decided to just pass. On their turn, they get in for 2 with the Merchant and play a KTE for 8, picking up another Merchant and Diana, and presumably going marketing for a Svetya. (Side gush: this is why I love KTE decks so much. Even when you’re out of gas, you’re really, really not.)

On my turn, I draw and play a Razorblades for 2 before playing my Shadow Sigil, holding up Display. I think there’s a case for playing the power before and amplifying an additional time for 3 Razorbots total if you think they’ve gone for Svetya since you’re not going to be able to play any units you draw with the Display next turn regardless. You can always Display the next turn to dig for removal anyway. Yes, the Razorbots aren’t doing great at blocking all the fliers, but they are fodder to give you more options down the road. Fair point: since I’m assuming that’s what they’ve gotten, I should be doing my best to play around that. They do indeed have the Svetya here, and get in for 4; I miss Displaying at the end of turn. Oops. I draw a Combust, and whilst I could Display to knock off Aegis before Combusting, that seems incredibly inefficient since I’m completely out of gas here, which is why I elect to pass. I also considered saving the Combust for Diana since they’re almost up to that critical 12th power. I understand your perspective of wanting to be as resource-efficient as possible, but you can rarely get away with just spending a bunch of turns doing nothing – you should have Display’ed immediately to try and draw proactive things to do during that turn. They go for an Enter, which makes me immediately regret my choice, and they follow up with a Maeve. Oh boy. At the end of their turn, I remember to Display this time, picking up a Gleaming Grenadin and a Combust over 2 power cards.

I draw a Salvo for the turn play the Gleaming Grenadin and use Combust to take out the Maeve. I then play the Scrapper and spend my Grenadin to draw, hitting another Salvo and Flash Fry. My logic was that I could now block the Svetya and therefore didn’t need to Salvo the Merchant into Edict the Svetya this turn. Plus, I really didn’t want to give up the Combust at this juncture to grab Edict, and hopefully with the Scrapper activations, I can find some more ‘marketable’ cards since I do think I need both the Scrapper and Combust down the road to find a winning line. However, they could easily have any assortment of removal, and I’m already  going to have a lot of trouble dealing with these massive units down the line. I think at this point, considering they’ve already given, what, a +3/+3 buff to everything, giving some extra stats on top of that isn’t going to make a massive difference since they’re already fairly impossible for you to deal with. Svetya giving more buffs is annoying, but you need to look for a way to win rather than a way to not lose, which is why I agree with playing the Scrapper here over the other options. They play an AP Cylix into a Trove, which is disastrous, and attack with both fliers – I Salvo the Merchant and grab Edict from my market, putting away Flash Fry. They then play a 7/8 Siraf, which has me deeply sighing. Why are there so many threats? uWu On my turn, I immediately spend the Edict on Svetya, Salvo the Diana, putting away Combust to grab Rindra’s Choice, kill the Siraf with it, and finish off the Diana before they get a chance to use her ultimate. I cap that off by attacking in for 4 and passing. That was horribly card-inefficient, but maybe I can draw some fodder and start making a comeback.

On their turn, they play a Speaking Circle, forming an agenda with Display of Tradition, Phase Out and Pack Conjuring, spending the Pack Conjuring and Invoking an Umbren Coaxer, which they play. Darn Throne Spells in Expedition games. 😛 I draw a Flash Fry, which does deal with the Coaxer, but they still have an unhindered Circle on board. They Display to silence my void and draw a card before passing; I draw a Seek Power and grab a Fire Sigil, because why not. They play a Siraf and don’t even activate it before passing – nice power move. I draw a Salvo and scoop it up, because I don’t think there’s a situation where I can beat the Queen of Glass with fumes in hand. Turns out Speaking Circle is still a ridiculous card to play at parity.

Match 5: (VS marvin_the_imp)

Whilst they have added an extra faction, I do think the matchup is similar as against Brionac’s deck: how many Helios can they find, and can they pull away with card advantage? Otherwise, I don’t think their interaction lines up particularly well with ours, and although they have some big threats which could become problematic for us, their sweeper does nothing against us, which is delightful, and therefore hopefully we’ll be able to grind them out with value.

Game 1:

I keep an opening hand on the draw with 2 Seats of Chaos, a Fire Sigil, a Seek Power, a Downdark Scrounger, a Display and a Gren. Got some fodder, got my influence, it all seems good in the hood. They play a Symbol and pass; I play a Seat and use the Seek Power to find a Primal Sigil. They play a Fire Symbol, and I opt to go for the Scrounger, merely as a 2/2 for 2. They don’t have an answer for it right now, so if they want to spend their next turn doing that, I think I’m fine with that. Gren is decent fodder, but I’m not sure if I want to do nothing much for 4 turns. Considering the many ways they can remove the Scrounger, I’d rather just go with the Vara’s Favor you drew here. If you didn’t have the Gren to sacrifice, leading with the Scrounger is OK, but you’d rather not use it as sacrifice fodder. I don’t think either of you care about the potential extra 2-4 damage here. Buffing the Vara’s Favor is nice but negligible at this juncture. They play a Primal Sigil and trade a Huntress for the Scrounger, which isn’t great, but manageable. On my turn, I play a Gren and pass; they however have a Kenna to eat it immediately. Boo. I draw a Scrapper and pass, before immediately realising that with the buffs, I could have chained my Flash Fry and Vara’s Favor together to take out the Kenna. Reading the card tells you what it does, surprisingly. They do have an Olzial though, which I take out with the Flash Fry, so I guess it’s not too bad that I didn’t jump the gun.

I draw a regular Flash Fry, and this time chain the spells together to take out the Kenna before playing a Shadow Sigil and passing. They have another Evolving Olzial, but I topdeck another Flash Fry to kill it. Man, I would be simmering right now if I were marvin. I am such a lucksack. XD At least I can’t advance my board whilst removing all these threats. They play a Kenna and pass. I draw a Razorblades and elect to amplify it once at their face, spitting out a pair of Razorbots. Look, I’m learning. If they Kenna them, use removal on them, I’m happy either way. They attack for 4 with Kenna, and play a post-combat Helio to refill their hand. I attack with both Razorbots for 2: they block 1 with the Helio, which I sacrifice in response, and I take 1 Combust and 1 Seek Power over a Shadow Sigil and a 2nd Combust. Post-combat, I Seek Power for a Fire Sigil, play my seat and sacrifice the other Razorbot to the Kenna. Not the best Display, granted, but hopefully, I can unearth more fodder shortly. I elected to keep additional power over my 3rd Combust because I’d rather be able to chain more units into my Scrapper and so forth – Combust is a great card, but sacrificing Scrapper to it is decidedly undesirable, which means there are significant diminishing returns with each copy. As you’ll see in a moment, I did end up finding more fodder, but with the information I had at the time, I do believe my play made sense.

On their turn, they play a depleted Seat followed by a Kenna and Jarrall, which is…delightful. I draw and amplify a Razorblades to kill the Helio, and spend a Combust to clock the Jarrall – given that they are currently at 7P, I think down the line, the Jarrall will be dealing net more damage against me. They whack in for 4 with Kenna, and play a Jennev Merchant followed by a Torgov and passing. Probably a Vengeful Flight here on the Torgov, but I draw a Salvo, so there’s not much I can do about that; I elect to play a Scrapper and pass. It is indeed the Vengeful Flight on Torgov and they get in for 8; they draw and discard a Favor with Torgov. Post-combat, they play a Huntress to kill my Scrapper, and I scoop it up.

Game 2:

I’m on the play, and I mulligan a very awkward first 7 with 2 Fire Sigils, 2 Scrappers, a Gren, a GG, and a Scraptank; my 2nd 7 consists of 2 Paintings, a Seat of Chaos, a Seat of Cunning, a Seek Power, a Combust and a Display. A risky keep a la the previous match, but I do opt to take it instead of going down to 6. I think it’s a mistake to keep this hand: it literally does nothing if you don’t draw a unit, and considering how much removal marvin is packing, it has the potential of still not doing anything even if that was the case. I play a Painting into Seek Power, grabbing a Fire Sigil before passing; they play a Cylix, and I draw a Gren. A unit! Hooray! I however just play the Painting and pass. They go for a Seek Power and play out another Cylix before passing. I play a Seat of Cunning into Gren, and we’re off to the races. They plop down a Jennev Merchant, and I think they’d take Vengeful Flight here, but I’m not confident on that. If they have a way to gain Face Aegis, Replication Cell doesn’t seem like a terrible choice either. I play my Seat and pass, which is a punt since this deck has Dazzles, which will blow me out badly. They attack with the Merchant, I block and sacrifice Gren to Display: I pick up a Purveyor from the Gren, and select a GG and a Scrounger over a 2nd Display and 2nd Scrounger. I decided to go with a Scrounger here so that I had some versatility in what cards I can get back, but I still need some fodder in the form of the GG.

Post-combat, they play a Kenna and pass. On my turn, I draw another Gren – how delightful – play it, play a GG, and sacrifice the Gren to Combust before attacking in for 2. Yikes, that’s a painful Blazing Salvo. 😛 On their turn, they play a Broker and a Fire Symbol before passing – probably dropping in a bunch of Burn Them Alls? I must imagine the other options drop off quickly in multiples. On my turn, I draw a Scrapper, play the Purveyor, passing the buff to the GG before using the Salvo on the Broker and snagging an Edict of Shavka before getting in for 4. With an Assembly Line and a Scrapper in hand now, I feel that I should easily be able to keep the card advantage train rolling. They play a Huntress, imbuing the Merchant to be rid of the Purveyor before following up with a Kenna to kill the Gleaming Grenadin. Well then. I elect to spend the Edict of Shavka now and play a follow-up Assembly Line instead of going for the Scrapper and sacrificing my 2 Grenadins. I mostly don’t want my Scrapper to be eaten by a Huntress, but in reality, since they’ve already spent the Killer attack on Kenna, my Scrapper dying was unlikely, and I shouldn’t have been so scared. XD In this position, since you’re able to get the activation of the Scrapper, it’d be more worthwhile, especially considering they’ve already played a Huntress. You’re not worried about Kenna’s ultimate yet and you should be able to offset some of the flying damage through Scrapper activations. You always have the option of dealing with the Kenna down the line should it become an issue. Ultimately, it’s not posing a threat to you right now.

On their turn, they play an Olzial and pass; I ponder for a moment and play a Scraptank before attacking with just the Rustling. I think you should have attacked with everything here. If they block 1 unit, it puts your Scraptank out of Explosion/Flash Fry/Overgrowth range; if they block 2, it’s out of Burn Them All Range. And if they don’t block, you get in for some free damage – a lot more if they don’t block the single attacker. Yes, you are letting your opponent make the choice, but it’s more of a lose/lose situation for them this way. You’re absolutely right – just attacking with 1 thing doesn’t end up accomplishing much. They play a Wisdom and attack in with the Olzial, drawing and discarding a Jennev Merchant and a Seat – must have something at least pretty decent if you’re pitching Merchant when you could go unearth an Edict for the Scraptank. As it turns out, they had gotten the Edict earlier, and turn my big tank into a Totemite.

I was so tempted to get greedy here, but instead, I take the safer line of Combusting the Olzial with my Totemite, and playing the Scrounger to snack on my Grenamender and buy back my Display. Again, I should have used my Display now, but I’m a bozo. You should have also swung out and just sacrificed the blocked unit. ^^Also that. They play a Huntress, and go for a Killer attack on the Scrounger: I use Display on it in response and take a Scraptank and Flash Fry over a Seek Power and a Seat. That’s not too greedy…right? They play a power and follow up with Olzial. On my turn, I decide to just knock off the Olzial immediately with Flash Fry instead of developing my board, and skip past my combat step. Butterfingers. I am at a healthy enough life total that I’m not terribly worried about Olzial damage at this juncture, but given that they’re pretty much out of gas, I do not want them digging for a Helio. They play a Jennev Merchant, and at this point, I have no idea what’s in their market anymore. They attack with Huntress, I block with a Grenadin, and at the end of their turn, I Salvo the Huntress, putting away Scraptank for a Slag in case they did take Replication Cell. I think the Salvo was a little speculative. The Salvo itself is defensible because it kills the Huntress, but I don’t think you put away the Scraptank – you’re firmly in the driver’s seat right now, and Scraptank is the best way you have of pressuring them. Given that you might end up going on a drawing spree with Scrapper, I think I’d just pass on killing the Huntress here, and just not Salvo yet. Yeah…I proceed to regret that greatly. :sweatsmile:

I play Scrapper, snacking on 2 Grenadins, drawing a Seek Power and a Shadow Sigil; I use the Seek to grab a Primal Sigil and pass. They play a Vengeful Flight on the Jennev Merchant for more market access, and they pass afterwards. I snack on my remaining Grenadins, finding a Scrapper and a GG. Definitely should have played out my 2nd Scrapper here and attacked with my 1st, holding up the Slag. I think you should have played the 2nd Scrapper pre-sacrifice. While the 2 extra life are relatively inconsequential for now, I don’t think there were many cards you could draw that you would rather play this turn anyway. They attack in for 4 and pass; I draw and attempt to play an Assembly Line; there is a pause, yet it resolves. Presumably they drew a Flash Fry then since the Line is certainly worth countering. I snack on 2 Grenadins – I think here I play the 2nd Scrapper out before snacking because the chance of drawing something better to play post-combat is so miniscule. I draw a GG and a Favor, and attack with Scrapper for 4, which they don’t block. I follow-up with my Scrapper post-combat and pass.

They attack for 4 in the air before playing a Replication Cell, sacrificing a flying Merchant before playing another copy. I Slag it immediately on my turn, play both GGs, sacrifice one of them and a Grenadin to a Scrapper, and picking up a Seat and an Assembly Line. I play the Seat and the Assembly Line before sacrificing 2 more Grenadins, picking up a Combust and Assembly Line, at which point marvin elects to concede. I think marvin might have conceded a bit too early here: you were drawing a lot of cards, but your units weren’t applying too much pressure yet. They probably have Burn Them All on top of their deck, so that plus some blocks could knock out those Scrappers. Then some good draws off Helio could really make a difference. That is true, but that Slag was certainly quite the blowout. I think that they do have a couple of outs, but would rather move onto the next game rather than continue this already long, dragged out affair on a small percentage chance; I do think both make sense, though.

Game 3:

I once again keep a very sketchy hand on the play with 2 Displays, a Primal Sigil, a Shadow Sigil, a Stonescar Painting, a Seek Power, and a Scraptank. I should be able to drop Scraptank on Turn 5, but I wonder if not doing anything until then is perhaps a bit too slow, even on the play. I play the Painting and play Seek for a Fire Sigil; they play a Symbol and pass. I play a Seat and ship it right on back; they play a Fire Sigil and do the same. I draw a Scrapper, which is so not helpful given my current glacial hand, and just play power before passing. They play a Seat of Fury and a Merchant – could be anything here, honestly – just depends on the rest of their hand. I draw and play a Seat before passing; I’m regretting my keep right about now. They attack for 2 before playing Broker, presumably for Burn Them All, and pass; I play Power and the Scrapper first because it’s less likely to get killed. If this Scrapper sticks, then I can put the Scraptank out of kill range next turn. It doesn’t make a difference as they have a Huntress, imbuing the Broker to kill my Scrapper and attacking in for 2.

I play a Scraptank on my turn and pass, holding up Salvo; they Wisdom at the end of my turn. They go for an Explosion on my Scraptank, and I decide to just let it go instead of shooting one of my own Grenadins with Salvo. I am putting them on having more removal, and then I’d be down both fodder and the card. What about the flip side? It’s not as if they have a way on board to kill it, so you’re at least getting them to spend another card. If they don’t have it, you’re suddenly in a great spot because they don’t have good damage-based removal against it. I prefer spending the Salvo here. They attack with everything, and I throw a Grenadin under the bus. On my turn, I draw a Seat and attack with the Grenadin before spending the Display, which does get hit by Dazzle – unfortunate, but don’t think I had another option there. I opt to just pass instead of having my Scrounger get hit by a Fry and die for no value. They attack for 8 and play a Helio before passing; I think I need both Display and Scrounger at this juncture, so I opt to just go to my turn to see what I draw first.

I draw a depleted Seat, so I go for the Salvo on the Helio, taking Edict of Shavka, playing my Scrounger and sacrificing it immediately. I would not have gone for the slow speed Display here – yes, it would be awful to have it Dazzled, but the difference between taking 2 extra damage and taking 6 extra damage when you’re so far behind is huge, particularly since there’s not much you could draw that you could be a blocker this turn. I think the block is more important here, and you should have waited on the Display, even if it does get negated. Yeah – sometimes you have to respect the fact that you’re probably dead on board, and can’t afford to play around certain things – you just hope they don’t have them. My Display grabs a Purveyor and Assembly Line over a Favor and a Sigil, and I pass. They play an Eilyn’s Favor, attack for 8, and blast me with a Burn Them All post-combat. Made a mistake keeping such a slow hand, and got absolutely hosed for it. 😛

Match 6: (VS Cananada)

Alrighty, last match, will I be able to break even in my match record? Probably not! I have faced this terrifying creation on the Misplay Ladder before, and it’s a deck that really punishes decks that like to draw a bunch of cards – like me! I do have maindeck relic removal unlike some other decks, and their deck doesn’t really answer a Scraptank particularly well, so hopefully we have an aggressive enough start to just close the door on them.

Game 1:

I keep an opening hand on the play with a Stonescar Painting, a Fire Sigil, a Salvo, a Flash Fry, a Vara’s Favor, a Display of Menace, and an Assembly Line. Not very aggressive, but pretty much an ideal hand sans Primal influence, so I’ve got to keep this. They start with a depleted Cylix, and I play my Painting. They play a Feln Painting, and slam a Turn 2 Dichro’s Ruin against me. Wow. Rude. I play a Vara’s Favor to grab a Shadow Sigil, but the lifegain is immediately negated. They play a 2nd Feln Painting and pass; I play my Sigil and play an Assembly Line. They play a Lethrai Courier and follow up with a 2nd Dichro’s Ruin; I’m staring at the Scrapper in my hand and am just internally weeping. I play a Fire Sigil and Flash Fry the Courierbefore attacking in for 3 and passing; they start by Exploiting my Scrapper away – granted, it still is a pretty decent body even if I don’t plan on activating it much – followed by a Trove and a depleted Seat of Wisdom.

I play a Shadow Sigil, attack in for 3 and pass. They play a Courier, a Lock and an Exploit, and they take Display, which makes sense – I don’t have the influence for it now, but that kill relic mode is looking awfully juicy for when I get to it. I draw and play a Scraptank before attacking in for 3, which they take before I pass. If this Scraptank can stick, it can do some major work in pressuring them. They crack the Amber Lock and play a Permafrost on the Scraptank – oops for not running Kaleb’s Choice. I play a Scrapper and crack in with all 5 Grenadins, which they take. Post-combat, I sacrifice my Grenadin and my frosted Scraptank, taking 2 to grab a Combust and a depleted Seat, the power of which I play. They play a Coveted Gemstone, spend a Trove, and leave a suspicious 2 power up instead of cracking the Gemstone. My Scrapper is about to be hit with SAA, so the question is do I want to go drawing pre-combat: I decide it’s not worthwhile at this point, and go for the attack, where it does get eaten as expected, and they take 4.

On my turn, they play an Exploit, taking 1 of my 2 Combusts, before playing a Moonstone Vanguard. I draw an uncastable Scrounger, and spend the Combust pre-combat to take out the Vanguard before attacking in for 3: they still don’t block and take it before I pass. On their turn, they play a Plasma Primordial, and I just scoop here. I don’t have the Primal influence to take care of the Plasma Primordial with Rindra’s Choice, and they can mow through my board with shocking ease. I do think that keep was still fine, however. Yep: while you still have some outs, you’d need to 4-for-1 yourself going for Salvo into Flash Fry into Edict just to kill their Primordial, and you have nothing left compared to their stocked hand. Probably wouldn’t have scooped if we were at an Open, but it’s understandable here.

Game 2:

I keep a hand of Seat of Cunning, Primal Sigil, Dark Purveyor, Vara’s Favor, Scrapper, Scrounger, and a Seek Power on the draw. A little strange, but with the power tutoring, I should be golden on my influence. They take a mull to 6, so I might have a chance here. (Famous last words…) They play a Cylix, and I play my Seat and Seek for a Fire Sigil. They play a Feln Painting into a Lethrai Courier, which could be quite potent since I have no way of dealing with it at present. I play my Fire Sigil, Vara’s Favor their face, and pass; they play an Amber Lock, play an undepleted Seat of Cunning and ship it right back. I draw a depleted Painting, and decide to go Sigil into Gren here. Might have been correct to go Scrounger, however. I think that makes sense: even if they do remove it with SAA or Permafrost, you’d much rather them spend it on the Scrounger than say a Scrapper or Scraptank. If they don’t kill it, they probably wouldn’t block with the Courier, so you’re just chipping in for additional damage. On their turn, they play a Time Sigil and crack the Amber Lock; I attack with Gren on mine, which they take, before I sacrifice it to my Scrounger. After some pondering, I decide to play a Painting here and wait to get more value with the Favor and Scrounger down the line.

They play an Elvish Swindler and grab a Dichro’s Ruin, which is just delightful. I decide to Display the Ruin immediately before attacking in with Scrounger, which they block with Swindler. Post-combat, I play a Vara’s Favor to finish off the Swindler. That was a strange line. You’re not terribly concerned about the Ruin yet, and the Swindler isn’t doing much either. I don’t think it’s worthwhile to trade your Scrounger when you could just go for the Scrapper instead and leave your options open for next turn. Yeah…I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking either. On their turn, they play a Plasma Primordial. **sigh** At least I have Primal influence this time? I spend a Salvo on the Courier, discarding all copies of Salvo, before putting away a Shadow Sigil for Rindra’s Choice, which I clock the Primordial with. I then use a Razorblades to finish off the Courier – they have however already gotten plenty of value off it.

They play an undepleted Seat of Wisdom before passing; I get in for 1 with the Razorbot before sacrificing it to Scrounger to get back Display; I then play a depleted Painting and the Purveyor to buff the Scrounger as opposed to holding up the Display – they really don’t have much to do at fast speed, which signals to me that they’re probably close to being out of gas. As such, I’d rather go for the more aggressive line here. At the end of my turn, they SAA the Purveyor, which they had been aggressively telegraphing with their open power. If you think that they have an SAA here, then you should have definitely held up the Display and just attacked with the Scrounger as a 2/2; if they spend their SAA on Scrounger, you Display it and are fine with that. If they don’t, next turn, you’ve got the 7 power to both play Purveyor and hold up Display, letting you eat your dying unit for value. Wanting to reduce that high life total is understandable, but the line was liable to being blown out.

On their turn, they play an active Cylix, picking up a Trove and slamming down a 2nd Plasma Primordial before cashing in their Trove. On my turn, I topdeck a Combust, and immediately sacrifice my Scrounger to take out the Primordial. Kind of unfortunate since I did just buff it, but the Primordial is way too dangerous to let live. I decide to play out the Scrapper to just try and pressure them: hopefully they don’t have yet another SAA? They play a Time Sigil, and have a Pinnacle of the Reach and a Permafrost for the Scrapper. On my turn, I spend 1 Display to sacrifice the Scrapper, keeping a Flash Fry and a Seek Power over 2 Seats; as tempting as it is to use the Display here on the Pinnacle, I feel like I need the cards just as badly as they do at this point since my hand does complete bupkis. So I just pass; besides, if they find a Ruin or perhaps a Coveted Gemstone into a Staff of Stories, I imagine there are much higher priority targets. Their topdecks are probably more high-impact than yours, but you still can’t win with what you’ve got in hand, so that’s just an unfortunate evil you have to deal with. At least it’s a symmetrical effect and since you’re the one with the ability to pull the trigger, I think you’re fine holding off on clocking the Pinnacle here.

They do have an Elvish Swindler to grab a Dichro’s Ruin, so I am happy to kill that at the end of their turn. On my turn, I draw a Scrapper and Gren, playing the Gren and power before passing. Given your previous line, I don’t think anything changes here: yes, it’s unfortunate if the Scrapper gets hit by SAA or Permafrost, but it’s still a decent body that you could use to pressure them right now, particularly since it goes over the Swindler. Yeah…not sure why I didn’t, frankly. They draw 2, attack in for 3, which I take and regret doing so as they play a Vanguard and a Moldermuck, which is a lot of pressure coming my way. On my turn, I draw 2 Seats and still don’t play the Scrapper…for some reason. (In Storm’s futile defense, it’s 2am at the time of play. :P) They start by Exploiting the Scrapper from my hand, and attacking for 11; I block the Vanguard with Gren, and they follow up with a Plasma Primordial, which is…horrifying. They cash in a Trove and at the end of their turn, I use the buffed Flash Fry to kill the Vanguard.

I start my turn with a Scraptank, and sacrificing one of my Grenadins with Scrounger to buyback Razorblades; I then play out my GG and pass. On their turn, they play a Courier followed by an Amber Lock…and a 2nd Lock. They then crack a Lock and trade their Globule with my Scrounger before passing. I draw a Painting and a Display; I play the Painting, which I probably should have waited on, and sacrifice my Grenadin to Display – I take a Seek Power and a GG over 2 Seats. I play the Seek Power for a Fire Sigil, and play the GG before passing. At this rate, there’s a non-zero chance that I lose to my deck being empty, honestly

They play a Gemstone followed by an active Cylix, crack a Lock, and play a Vanguard before passing. Please just kill me. Please. uWu I draw a Seat and a Scraptank, and play Razorblades for 12 to take out the Courier and Plasma Globule. Ha! Look at me stalling out this game further! They play an undepleted Seat, crack the Gemstone, grabbing Replication Cell. They sacrifice their Primordial to it before replenishing it right back and use an Exploit to take the Scraptank out of my hand and cashing in a Trove. I draw and decide to scoop because I honestly have zero clue how I’m supposed to break past their board. Also, I’m exhausted from playing this game. (rofl) Punted extremely hard in many places, but somehow don’t think it made too much of a difference. That was a tight grip from Cananada there.

Final thoughts:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/0mbBzGRqzM4/surely-senpai-must-notice-me-now

Above is the list with the changes I’d make following the tournament now that I’ve had a little more chance to play the deck. I’ve replaced the variable Razorblades that I felt was only good with Scrounger/Gren out with the more consistent Vicious Overgrowth as an alternative way to deal with sites. I also haven’t been impressed by Gren even with the buff – it just doesn’t quite feel like the right shell to take advantage of all of its entomb abilities, which is why I’m back on 2 Moldermuck and 2 more Purveyor – it may be correct to go for a 3/3 split instead, but we’ll see. These changes also have the upside of smoothing out our curve a pinch. In the 2 drop slot, I’ve replaced Scrounger in the 2 drop slot with Grenahen – it’s the better early play despite it being multifaction, and whilst I can’t be as selective in cherry-picking the card I’d like to recur from my void, I believe that not having to sacrifice another unit is a worthwhile trade.

In the market, I’ve dropped Slag; since we have main-deck relic removal, it did feel a little redundant. I originally replaced it with Kaleb’s Favor, but I definitely want to give the new Grenadin Uprising card a shot – it might end up being too slow, but we’ll see. I’ve also taken out the Cyber Combustion I’ve pulled a grand total of zero times since building and playing the deck, and gone for the late-game powerhouse of a card in Nectar of Unlife, as I’ve mentioned above. Finally, I have also taken out the Devour, which I also have never taken, for a Kaleb’s Choice to break a Permafrost on a giant Scraptank or perhaps negate a potent Equalize. Of course, with the new set Stormbreak dropping and giving the Expedition metagame a delightful shake-up, all of these changes are speculative, and I can’t wait to see how to adapt this archetype for the new metagame.

Whilst there were a lot fewer people participating in the TNT tournament this time around, it was still spectacularly well-run, and I’m glad that I got to play out my matches with everyone this time round. I’m so far out of the running for the series championship, but SRFS is still holding onto their top spot thanks to their Week 1 and 2 wins – the rest of the field are going to need them to flop super hard in this last week to stand a fighting chance.

Speaking of SRFS, thank you so much to them for agreeing to collaborate with me on this tournament report: they have put in so much work into this on top of all the other things they usually do in the Eternal community, and it’s been wonderful having your insight and expertise in terms of deckbuilding and lines of play. 100% would work with you again. 😛

Alright, now it’s back to you readers: do you enjoy reading this massively long tournament report, or is it too much for even you guys to devour? Did you like the back-and-forth commentary style that I had with the guest, or was it perhaps too confusing to track? Which member of the Eternal community would you like me to aggressively pester to collaborate with me next? Let me know on Twitter @stormguard798, DM me as I’m lurking in the FE, TEJ or The Misplay Discords, or let me know in the comments section of the Reddit post. Until next time. 😉

Drafter’s Guide to the Friends of Eternal Fantasy League – 2021 OP Season

Greetings fellow entities of the Internet! I’m stormguard798, and normally you come here for some mediocre gameplay recaps or a deck-tech on the 3rd best thing you could be doing in any given format. But today, today I am speaking to you, not in the capacity of an Eternal player, but as the commissioner of the Friend of Eternal (FE) Fantasy League for the 2021 season. Do you like treating people as if they’re just numbers, letters and symbols on a spreadsheet in a way that’s only slightly demeaning? In that case, you have come to the right place.

For anyone unfamiliar with how the FE Fantasy League works, you will draft a total of 6 players – 5 active players and 1 substitute – and after the conclusion of each Eternal Open, you’ll score points based on how well those players do in the Open. In between Opens, you are free to swap players with other team ‘owners’ or from the ‘Free Agent’ pool in and out of your teams. At the end of it, the person with the most points will win bragging rights and literally nothing else. But it’s fun.

For anybody interested in joining the Fantasy League, you will unfortunately only be able to draft players who are currently not on an existing team, which means that a large number of prominent Eternal personalities have already been taken. However, there are still plenty of excellent players just waiting to be snapped up; out of everyone who is still available, who do I think has the best chance of rising to the top in the upcoming season?

(Listed in no particular order, but vaguely grouped for ease of reading )

EnclaveCryptologist – I most famously know them for the Skycrag Krull Drone Room that LOA popularised a while back, but they’ve also had their hands in quite a few popular archetypes, including the original build of Xenan Reanimator. One of the few free agents with the distinction of having previously been on a fantasy team, their creative deck-building has them well poised to destroy at many Eternal Opens – if they can stop it with the witty comebacks to everyone in Discord first, that is.

Kasendrith – Despite being a prominent streamer who primarily focuses on Limited gameplay, Kasendrith secured their qualification at last year’s Worlds through the Constructed LCQ. Now with even more Limited qualification chances and armed with strong technical gameplay across both formats, they were well-positioned to run it back and secure a spot at the 2021 Worlds.

Gunner116 – Full disclosure: I don’t draft very often in Eternal. But all my friends that do tell me that Gunner116 is 1 of the strongest drafters out there – and for good reason, given that they won the 2020 Eternal Draft Championship and are consistently Rank 1 on the ladder. I haven’t seen them play much constructed other than at Worlds, but you know what they say: Limited is the best format if you want to get better at the game. And Gunner has some strong chops.

AlcideBava – AlcideBava has had an absolutely phenomenal rookie season – or should I say rookie quarter because they have made 3 Day 2s in just 3 months. This time round, with a whole season full of Opens to qualify for, I expect they’re going to give even established veterans a good run for their money in terms of Top 64 qualifications.

[TBC] Mail – Previously unable to compete for personal reasons, one of TBC’s newest members and an active member in the Eternal community is ready to step out of just wrecking community tournaments and show everyone how lucky they’ve had it up until now.

[TBC] Frafa – Whilst not necessarily having the same kind of community clout as the rest of their team, Frafa is still a fantastic technical player – and has the stats to prove it. Hopefully this season they can convert those inevitable top finishes into a Worlds qualification.

[TEJ] Jedi_EJ, Johnholio and darth_herman – Am I perhaps a little biased here, considering that they’re my teammates? Possibly, but they create a very successful podcast focused entirely on playing Limited, and having played many of their decks, that knowledge extends very well into constructed deck building.

[TEJ] iplongno – ‘Team Killer’. ‘Triple Threat’. ‘That guy who makes my crappy decks better’. Regardless of how you know him, when you see his username across the screen from you, you know you’re in for a good fight. Having barely missed out on several Day 2 qualifications in that last season, Ip is looking for just a pinch more luck this season to steamroll their way to a Worlds slot.

[TRS] noverb – Though they haven’t been as active as before, when they do pop back in it’s as if they never left, Top 8’ing the EJ Peasant Tournament and rocking the TNE Team Showcase. When the Eternal Opens bring noverb back, they’re going to prove to us newbies just how much of a force they are be reckoned with.

[The Misplay] Gatosujo – The person with the best hair on the Misplay podcast, gato is an extremely creative deckbuilder and an incredibly diligent player (Seriously. I’ve heard stories about the number of games they grind for The Misplay meta.) and is poised to break out with some top-notch results in the upcoming season.

[The Misplay] Essarefess – Though 2 Worlds slots might be closed off to the TO of the community TNE series, multi-talented Essarefess proves that they’ve got the technical play to roll with the best of them when they’re not helping out with pretty much everything in the Eternal community (Seriously? How!?), and are at present running away with the lead in the TNT tournament series.

[TIL] applechips – A Worlds 2020 competitor and the #1 seed going into the Winter Invitational having qualified themselves 3 times over, applechips is a fearsome deck-builder and player and I fully expect them to similarly demolish the competition at upcoming Eternal Opens.

[WSG] Spiffirific – The winner of the Eternal Journey Peasant tournament earlier this year, the runner-up at the recent TNE Winter Invitational, and plenty of Day 2 qualifications in the 2020 season, spiffirific have amply demonstrated that they have everything it takes to win an Eternal Open and secure that slot at 2021 Worlds.

[TNT] LordPerth – Though I mostly know them for their intricate and innovative decks over on Eternal Warcry, LordPerth has proven to be a fearsome competitor both in ECQs and on the Top 100 leaderboard, and I fully expect them to repeat their performance with some spectacularly spicy decks in 2021.

IlyaK1986 – A very vocal and active community member who has had numerous popular decks on Eternal Warcry, this stalwart of the community is once again looking for some strong finishes in 2021 OP and hopefully do 1 match better this time around to secure their Worlds slot.

[ET] finkel – Granted, I don’t know much about finkel, but the stats don’t lie (thanks, Eternal History Project!), and finkel has had the most Day 2s in the 2020 season out of everyone that is not at present on a fantasy team with 9. Having seen their play at the TNE Team Showcase, I fully expect them to be capable of repeating such a feat in the upcoming Season.

So that’s my guide and suggestions for who to draft in the upcoming 2021 FE Fantasy League season. If this sounds like something that would pique your interest, head on over to the FE server and find the full set of details in the #fefl-news channel. Is there someone that I missed? Is there someone you don’t think is worthy of being on this list? Scream at me on Twitter @stormguard798, in the FE, TEJ or The Misplay Discords, or right here, on Reddit where I post now. Apparently. (shrug) Until next time. 😉

Stormguard’s Weather Report – The Misplay Ladder, presented by Butterball (trademarked) – February

In between testing for the upcoming Tuesday Night Eternal Winter Invitational, I’ve got to be doing something, right? Whilst it was only opened to their general Discord community later in the month as a result of the delayed Organized Play announcement, I have gotten the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Misplay Ladder, presented by Butterball. (trademarked). Look, I have no idea where the Misplay team got that one from. When you join, you get placed somewhere in the middle of the ladder, and can challenge up to 2 rungs on the ladder above you in either Throne or Expedition; if you win, then you swap spots with them. But be careful, you might also get challenged by the players who are currently ranked up to 2 places below you, so you need to hold onto your position whilst gunning for the top. Once your match has been completed, you may not challenge or be challenged by the same person for the next 48 hours. Whoever is left standing at the top of the ladder wins a sweet prize, courtesy of the Misplay. Not quite the cold hard cash of some other tournaments, but something worth fighting for nonetheless.

Whilst some people are packing some rather niche and dubious decklists (have you seen your decklists in the mirror, Storm?), with the entirety of the Misplay participating alongside some other strong players (wow, Storm, wow), the level of technical play from your opponents is right up there. There isn’t a rule to stick with the same decks throughout the month and all the matches are played using closed decklists, but for the purpose of writing this end-of-the-month report, I have elected to stick with 2 archetypes, 1 for each format. So for my inaugural climb up the ladder, what decklists did I choose to take?

Expedition:

Decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/ttAEVvhnZkw/the-misplay-ladder-february-expedition

Some people have a ‘guilty pleasure’ decklist that they fall back on; unsurprisingly, this is mine. There isn’t too much to talk about that I haven’t discussed previously – I have largely adopted the changes that I discussed the last time I played Kerendon in Expedition, and the Edict of Makkar and Desert Alchemist are largely in line with the logic I laid out in the Xenan article. The only thing of note here are the Knight-Chancellor Sirafs – I suspect you’ve been seeing them frequently as of late in the Kerendon lists you seen on ladder, and I’m inclined to agree with the collective assessment. Whilst susceptible to Suffocate, Edict of Makkar and Smite, the Sirafs add a dimension of inevitability to Kerendon to compensate, at least partially, for the lost power of Cylices, and since it has the same vulnerabilities as the other 3 drop options, it seems like a fairly straightforward shoo-in. There are only 2 copies in the list I have above, but since then, I had added the full 4 copies to my Kerendon deck.

Throne:

Decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/ltS8qKS8PAw/the-misplay-ladder-february-throne

Now for the actually interesting deck to discuss. The original decklist was one by deck brewer extraordinaire, EnclaveCryptologist, back when Buried Memories had just come out in a shell to fully utilise Dark Purveyor as effectively as possible. Your primary gameplan is to play a Dark Purveyor summon effect on an evasive unit, and clock your opponent for a truly terrifying amount of damage at the right time. This decklist has a whopping 47 units in order to maximise the potency of our Purveyor alongside plenty of ways to put them into the void. Darkwater Vines and Sporefolk do the most work in our deck to fill our void much like the Xenan Reanimator strategies that you’ve seen plenty of on ladder, with Vines having the added bonus of shoring up the ground against aggro. Whilst Spitefeeder and Gustrider aren’t as efficient at dumping units into our void, they have the upside of being evasive, which means they’re great targets to Purveyor up.

Even better, both of these cheap evasive fliers only cost 1 power, which means they can be recurred with Shadowlands Guide – getting back a 10+ power flier from your 3 drop on top of another body is probably not what your opponent hand in mind. And to make sure you don’t get bashed to death onto the ground whilst you’re dominating the skies, with all the units in your void, Shoaldredger gets cheap very quickly – I have had the distinct pleasure of dropping 0-cost Shoaldredgers on Turn 3 previously. Another excellent target for Shadowlands Guide, should the need arise. Lightning Sprite is our back-up evasive threat – whilst significantly more expensive and harder to recur, it has the advantage of being able to control our discards far better, particularly with the Felrauk, the Outcasts we have hiding out in the deck. Even though we aren’t taking advantage of our opponent’s discard, I never say no to 0 cost 5/2s with upside. Since we have elected to play Felrauks, our powerbase is unfortunately rather clunky to reflect that: despite requiring triple influence of both factions, we are running 4 Vows and 4 Chairman’s Contract for additional discard, which means we are playing 16 duals, including the 4 depleted Crests. Fortunately, I haven’t had too many curve issues since we do still have quite a few options for undepleted power, particularly in the early turns, and discarding Felrauks for no value on occasion is unfortunate, but unavoidable.

Of course, being in Feln, our units don’t have Endurance to block any pesky Permafrosts from our opponents, so we have a couple copies of Devour to be rid of that curse and get our units back in the void, where we have free reign to recur them. In order to maximise our unit count, we have eschewed a lot of traditional Feln removal, instead opting for unit-based interaction of Maveloft Huntress and Jotun Hurler – Jotun Hurler also had the upside of being plundered away or discarded to generate virtual card advantage. Following a suggestion I received, I do plan on trying out Shadowcreeper over Devour to eliminate any non-units from the maindeck and putting Devour in the market instead. Interaction with our opponent is definitely something this deck is lacking, so hopefully adding removal on a unit will help to solve some of those issues.

In the market, we have 2 pieces of very cheap interaction: Permafrost for opposing units, and Swift Refusal for incoming sweepers. As you’ll be able to see from the deck editing history, I previously included Savage Denial to dodge fast-speed removal for the unit I gave the Purveyor buff to, but it ended up being too narrow – besides, we could always recur the unit if need be. Another removal option would be Edict of Makkar, but this isn’t Expedition – Permafrost has been generally fine for me thus far. Haunting Scream is most frequently used to buyback a Purveyor, but giving flying and charge to either a buffed Spitefeeder or Gustrider isn’t a bad idea either, particularly if you have some Shadowlands Guides in hand. Champion of Cunning is in there to give my board of tiny units a group buff later in the game, but I haven’t ended up pulling it that frequently since you don’t often get to 5 power with this deck. And as you can see, I had eschewed the Dark Return for Krull, Xumuc Occultist in the market previously, but I think I’d probably go back to Dark Return, and here’s why: you don’t end up with a lot of power in the deck, because you have plenty of ways to discard any excess. As a result, when you Smuggler into Krull, you usually only have the option of getting back a 1 drop, which is fine depending on the situation, but generally not worth marketing for. Dark Return gives you more control over the timing and the cost of the unit you get back – sometimes you just want a Purveyor, and with only 1 copy of Krull, you aren’t planning on bouncing it back and forth.

Now here’s the question most of you are probably asking: why aren’t you playing the Know When to Hold ‘Em/Krull/Whispering Wind package? It was included in an earlier version of the build, but ultimately cut for a number of reasons. Firstly, you’re including Purveyor at 4, which means the only way to guarantee you will pick up a Krull off a Whispering Wind Discard is by pitching Purveyor, which you rarely want to do in this deck since it’s your biggest payoff. Granted, you sometimes get lucky, but it ultimately proved to be rather inconsistent. Secondly, Know is a non-unit, which adds to your non-unit count. Lastly, rarely in this deck are you trying to out-value your opponents by looping units back from your void over and over again through juggling Krull back and forth from within your deck, hand and market – this is still an aggro deck at its core, and detracting away from your primary game plan of swiftly murdering your opponent does affect some of its potency. As a result, despite Whispering Wind being a rather tantalizing inclusion in the deck, both being an evasive unit and a discard enabler, this cluster of cards didn’t pan out for me, at least in this build.

Would I recommend bringing this deck for a high-stakes tournament? No. Unfortunately, Kira strategies are sitting comfortably at Tier 0 right now, and is what I expect a large portion of players to bring to a tournament. Kira strategies I have found to be one of the worst match-ups for the deck between the flying blockers and silence effects – Intrusion also has the tendency of ruining things horribly for us. Therefore, whilst it is a fun option to catch some opponents off-guard on ladder with, this would not be my choice to bring to a competitive tournament.

Gameplay!

(So ideally, I will try and cast myself in the most flattering light possible in future months; for instance, not include the match which I played at the time of writing where I awkwardly fumbled through a new deck that I have no idea how to play. 😛 My opponent can inform you that it was painful for both of us to watch. I’ll also try to include only 1 match per opponent/archetype so that you can get the most varied matches possible. However, since the Misplay Ladder only opened up in mid-February, I unfortunately don’t have particularly many matches to pick from. So today, you all have the honor of parsing through all my matches with me, for better or for worse.)

Match 1: VS Supermaus (Expedition) (https://www.twitch.tv/supermaus95)

(Normally I’d give my impressions of what strategy I would adopt, but…closed decklists! Ergo, who knows what we might stumble upon?)

Game 1:

I keep an opening hand with a Combrei Painting, Argenport Cylix, Justice Sigil, Moonstone Vanguard, Exploit, and 2 SAAs. Some interaction and a threat, not too tragic. I don’t think I’d Pledge the Vanguard here since I’m on the draw; if I don’t draw a Time source by then, I’ll probably plunder away at that point. Supermaus kicks things off with a Hooru Painting, which signals to me that they’re most likely on Tradition Soldiers. I end up drawing another Moonstone Vanguard, and I decide to go with the depleted AP Cylix, which, as much as it feels bad, I think is wrong in hindsight; if I Pledge here, I can guarantee my 5th power in order to cast the other one; even though I’ll be thrown off-curve by not having undepleted power Turns 2 and 3, guaranteeing myself a Vanguard on 5 is definitely the better line. There is an argument for saying that throwing yourself that far off-curve against an aggro deck is dangerous, but considering that they didn’t play anything on 1, you could probably afford to take a turn off.

Supermaus plays a Hooru Vow into a Janitor David, which doesn’t get answered by my SAAs. Oh dear. I draw a Rolant, and when I play my Exploit, unearth a horror show of 2 Hifoses, a Dazzle, and an Argo’s Technique; I sit there for a good 30 seconds pondering which of Technique or Dazzle I should take; on the one hand, all of my units in hand have Endurance, which means the Stun mode on Dazzle isn’t going to be particularly relevant; on the other hand, it is an unconditional counterspell for the SAAs I have in hand, though they currently don’t have any legal targets for the SAAs regardless. On the other hand, Technique can be paid for, although that’s still not fantastic; they don’t at present have any Time influence, but I must imagine that they have it in hand. I end up taking the Dazzle because in my mind, by the time they play something I can SAA, I should have the power open to pay for Technique; I end up plundering one SAA since I don’t have any targets for it. Supermaus drops a Common Cause on Time and a weapon on their amplified Hifos before attacking for 4. I draw a Seat and end up passing it back. Not looking good for one of our heroes here.

They drop a Combrei Vow for a Justice influence into a Hifos and a Sigil before attacking, which is rather suspicious; I imagine they must have Logistics Expert in hand then. Not that it terribly matters when I draw a Time Sigil and ship it back. They play a Seat of Order and attack for 8 before passing; ok, so not a Logistics Expert. An amplified Daru Lee then? I play a Vanguard but it’s probably a pinch too late; it’s not an amplified Daru Lee, but a Fearless Crescendo, and I scoop it up. A little bit of an awkward draw from me, but not much I don’t think I could have done in that position regardless; my interaction didn’t line up well against their units. Kudos to Supermaus for respecting the KTE and keeping that Argo’s Technique up at ALL times.

Game 2:

My opening has 1 power with no Pledge nor Plunder, so that’s an easy ship back; my second hand has a Seek Power, a Seat of Mystery, a Justice Sigil, a Vanguard, an Edict of Makkar, an SAA, and a Diana. I’m on the play this time around, which is why I decide to pledge the Vanguard and go for a Seek Power finding a Justice Sigil. They play a depleted Seat and pass it back to me; I play a Seat of Mystery and ship it right back. Supermaus plays a Justice Sigil into Janitor David, when it comes back to me, instead of dropping either a Winchest Merchant or Deathwing, I decide to immediately go for the Edict of Makkar. Here’s why: my market at this juncture was Decree, From Anguish, Reality Warden, Challenge by Law and Svetya, Lightbringer, which, given I don’t have a 5th power at this juncture, isn’t fantastic. This is why I didn’t want to pull the trigger on the Merchant quite yet. On the other hand, they just played a David, which means the odds that I play my Deathwing and it eats an Overgrowth are pretty high. As a result, I go for the safest line here, holding up SAA, even if it does mean a possible less efficient use of my power. Having said that, I think going for Merchant now grabbing Warden, and then playing both Deathwing and Edict next turn is also a pretty fine line.

They play a Common Cause on Time and play out a 2nd David, joy, alongside a Daru Lee, which I am quick to snap off with SAA. I draw a KTE, which is a great fail-safe even if it does mean potentially losing my Fresh Recruits, but with no power in sight, I decide to go for the Deathwing here. I am, however, not at all thrilled to see another Deathwing on the top of the deck; I would much rather have power here. On their turn, they play a depleted Seat of Order followed by a Hifos to stun my Deathwing and crack back for 4; on my turn, I go right back in with my 2 Soldiers and play out the 2nd Deathwing that I just drew. There’s an argument for going for the KTE whilst the shields are down since my Soldiers immediately get replenished, but I’m hoping for them to extend just a pinch further.

They play a Hifos, grabbing power before dropping a Speed Grafter, which is perfect for me. On my turn, I drop a KTE like it’s hot to wipe their whole board, before getting in with my pair of Deathwings for 4. Following that, they drop a Frostclaw Rider for 4, and I decide to ship my uncastable Diana away the next turn into my market with Merchant for a From Anguish, which surprisingly happens despite their pause; that probably means they have Crescendo in hand. With a pair of Edicts in hand, here’s to hoping they just keep playing out more units I can kill. They play a depleted Seat of Order and pass, and at this point I’m not quite sure what’s happening. I play my depleted Seat of Vengeance, and go for an all-out attack; I don’t think Soldiers runs Ambush units. Instead, they play a Crescendo on my Soldier and completely blow me out of the water with an Aerial Battle. Oh. My god. Legend has it that my jaw is still floating at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

On their turn, they play a Frostclaw Rider and pass it back; I draw a Time Sigil, and unfortunately have to pass it back. They play an Argo Ironthorn before slapping me for 7; I Edict the Argo on my turn, and Exploit to have a peek at the remaining cards in their hand, seeing another Argo and a David. I make a huge mistake here taking the Argo; since I have the answer for the Argo in hand, and my Soldier is already stunned so it doesn’t make a tremendous amount of difference, I want to deny them the card off David because this gives me the best chance to recover; trading 1 for 1 with David is never a place you want to be in, and in such a close game, I shouldn’t let them have access to more cards. On top of that, lining up multi-blocks against this deck, in particular, is so dangerous because you’re likely to get blown out by tricks, so the Soldiers off the David Entomb aren’t particularly helpful either. They play the David as expected and grab a card off it before hitting for 7; I draw a Sigil and Edict the David before passing. They play a Hifos and put 2 weapons on it before attacking for 7, which I take. On my turn, I draw and play a Maeve, which might help me get back into this, but it might be a little too late; sure enough, they have an Argo Ironthorn to stun all my blockers and finish me off. Definitely could have played a little tighter considering how close of a match it was at the end, but honestly, that blowout was perhaps just a pinch too much for me to recover from. 😛 More kudos to Supermaus, by the way, for taking advantage of the closed decklist, and carefully guiding me to overextending into a wipe that I have perhaps seen twice before in my Eternal Journey. XD

Match 2: VS Slepher (Throne)

Game 1:

I mulligan an opening hand with 2 Crests, a Painting, a Shadow Sigil, 2 Huntresses and a Shoaldredger; there is barely any self-discard, everything is expensive, and frankly it’s just too slow, so it’s an easy ship back. I keep a 2nd 7 with 2 Sporefolk, 1 Spitefeeder, 1 Shadowlands Guide, a Crest, a Painting and an Insignia. Snap keep. Slepher opens with a Fire Sigil into an Oni Ronin, which means they’re probably on either Mono Fire or Skycrag Aggro. Not actually a terrible match-up for us since we have plenty of tiny chump blockers that provide incremental value. I play a Painting into the Darkwater Vines I topdecked before shipping it back. They play a Seal of Devotion, confirming they are Mono Fire, before playing an Autotread and pitching a Granite Coin to kill my Vines. In the playback, one can hear a very distinct and anguished ‘No!’ from me, for good reason: Autotread is extremely potent at shooting down my various X/1 evasive units, and as a deck that doesn’t have a lot of removal, it could definitely prove to be a problem down the line. At least the Discard to Autotread triggered my Vines? Silver Linings. They then attack for 2 with the Ronin.

On my turn, I play a Sporefolk and pass; they play a Sigil before attacking, and I block the Ronin with my Sporefolk. Now if I only I could discard that unit with all the Warcry buffs on it…They follow up with a Grenadin Drone and pass. I draw a Huntress. After playing my Crest, shoving a Seat to the bottom and seeing my chance to strike, I decide to play the Huntress going for the Killer attack on the Autotread – they might have a Salvo, which would be unfortunate, but this is my best opportunity to take out this Autotread before it wrecks my board. They do not and the pesky Sentinel goes down. On their turn, they poke in for 2 before playing and decimating an Emblem, playing the Elemental, and shipping it back.

Back on my turn, I take a very quick glance at my void before playing a Shadowlands Guide to bring back my now 0-cost Shoaldredger and following up with a Spitefeeder. Now that’s a way to stabilise the board. On their turn, Slepher starts by attacking with everything: I put the Shadowlands Guide in front of the Grenadin because it’s already done its job, and the Shoaldredger in front of the Ash Elemental – even if they use a Torch to remove it post-combat they are still in a terrible spot. I decide not to block with the Spitefeeder because if I do end up drawing a Purveyor next turn, I can start putting them on the backfoot instead. As it turns out, it’s a Blazing Salvo into a Rampage onto the Ash Elemental, which is probably even better for me since that leaves them pretty much completely out of gas.

I draw a Jotun Hurler on my turn, use the Snowball to pick off the Drone, and put the Hurler itself away for a Haunting Scream since I do have a pretty stacked void that includes a Purveyor. They do have a Yeti Pioneer, which might be kind of scary…if I wasn’t a giant luck-sack and flipped another 0-cost Shoaldredger right off the top. Yikes. Opting to take the greedier line, I decide to fire off my 2nd Sporefolk, just to get a very nice and juicy void for next turn, which also had the added bonus of flipping a Felrauk and forcing Slepher to pitch the last card in their hand. They are a stronger man than me because I would be completely flipping out right now at my opponent’s luck. They have a post-combat Grenadin Drone, but on my turn, I play the Haunting Scream and attack with everything for exactly lethal. Can’t say that was a particularly nuanced game, unfortunately; I just got really lucky. >.<

Game 2:

My opening 7 includes a Crest, an Insignia, a Chairman’s Contract, 2 Huntresses, a Felrauk, and a Shadowlands Guide; with only the Contract to trigger self-discard, as with Hand 1 of Game 1, the hand is just too clunky and slow. My 2nd 7 has a Felrauk, a Banner, a Painting, a Shoaldredger, a Devour, a Lightning Sprite and a Darkwater Vines. Still a little slow, but hopefully this Vines can stall them out, so I keep it. They once again lead with Turn 1 Fire Sigil and Oni Ronin, whereas I go for the Darkwater Vines, hoping it sticks around for undepleted Banners. They run the Oni Ronin into my Vines to knock off Regen, and then follow up with a Yeti Pioneer. Perfect! I was worried it would be a Coin followed by a Patrol, but this way, I still have Darkwater Vines to block and sacrifice to Devour, which is…exactly what happened. Following that, they play an Impatient Pyromage into 2 Oni Ronins, a 2/1 one and a 3/2 one, and an Oni Patrol. That is far too many units; please stop.

On my turn, I play a Huntress to take out the Pioneer – the last thing I need right now is for them to keeping dumping out their hand before I can get set-up, and plunder away 1 of 2 Smugglers – right now, I’m only looking for Permafrost. Since I plan on Permafrosting whatever big thing they draw anyways, the 3/2 Oni Ronin therefore becomes less of a priority to take out than Pioneer. On their turn, they attack for 10 and play and decimate an Emblem for an Elemental, which they play before passing. I go for Lightning Sprite, discarding and therefore playing Felrauk just to put out the maximum number of bodies on the board. On their turn, they attack with all the 3-strength unit: I block the Sprite on the Ash Elemental and the Felrauk on the Ronin, letting the only 3/2 without additional text through. Post-combat, they play a 4/3 Pyroknight and pass.

I decide to go for a 4-cost Shoaldredger here since Slepher still only has 3 power, which means they won’t be able to ultimate the Pyroknight just yet; that means if they plan on pushing past my Shoaldredger, they better come packing some burn spells that then hopefully aren’t going at my face. I then play a Crest to put the Insignia on top to the bottom. They attack with everything, dropping me down to 8 as I block the Pyroknight, but thankfully don’t have anything to follow that up with. On my turn, it’s one of the rare instances where I have this much power in play, so I use the Smuggler to grab the Champion from my market. I then play a Sporefolk which flips over and plays a Felrauk, forcing Slepher to pitch a Sigil. Is that what we call…stabilised? As such, I choose to crack in for 7 with Shoaldredger and pass. On their turn, they play a 4/3 Oni Ronin, and with poor attacks, send it back; on my turn, I slam down the Champion and just pass; I should have attacked with Shoaldredger here since it’s perfectly fine for me if they decide they want to double-block and trade – I have the advantage now and should be pressing it.

On their turn, they simply draw and pass. I draw a Shadowlands Guide and play it to bring back Darkwater Vines before playing a Sporefolk, and once again flipping over a Felrauk, causing them to discard a Fire Conjuring. Man, I’m getting extremely fortunate with the Felrauk flips this match. Here, I choose to just attack with the Champion since it just puts them dead next turn, and I have no idea how Mono Fire is going to deal with the deluge of units on my board. They play and decimate an Emblem in order to have a card to pitch to Jekk to take out my 2 Felrauks, but unfortunately that doesn’t save them from my flying Champion, which attacks the next turn for lethal. Slepher got off to a blisteringly fast start against me, but fortunately they didn’t have much gas following that, and I managed to stabilise. We might be an aggressive deck, but against similarly aggressive decks, we do have some semblance of longevity and late-game burst that they don’t quite have.

Match 3: (VS Essarefess) (Expedition)

Game 1:

I keep an opening hand with 2 Vanguards, a Justice Sigil, a Time Sigil, an AP Seat, 2 Moonstone Vanguards, a Deathwing and a Merchant. No interaction, but otherwise a solid hand; since I’m on the draw, hopefully I can find a couple of interactive pieces. They play a depleted Cylix and pass whilst I draw a Combrei Seat; learning from last time thankfully, I decide to pledge one of my Vanguards to guarantee my playing of the other one. They then fate a Xultan Arbalest, and I’m very intruiged to see what I’m up against. They then drop a Stonescar Painting into a Rust Grafter; I’m guessing they’re on some kind of Valkyries Armory build? I play a Seat of Vengeance and ship it back. They play a depleted Seat of Glory, poke in for 2 and ship it back; I draw and play my Deathwing. Though I was off being generally confused by their deck, given that I know they have an Arbalest in hand, and since battle skills don’t much matter to relic weapons, I should have gone for the Merchant and grabbed the Reality Warden, who is a giant roadblock of a unit against the relic weapon decks. Darnit.

SRFS plays a Seek Power followed by a Lynax, Moltenwing before passing it back to me; now the decision to play that Deathwing over the Merchant is coming back to bite me real hard, especially with no removal for the Lynax in sight. Fortunately I topdeck an Exploit, and seeing a Deathwing or the Arbalest in hand, I opt to take the Arbalest so that they don’t completely mow over me; I decide to plunder away my Makto to find a 2nd Shadow source, but no dice. (Also, I tried Makto for this one match and immediately regretted my life choices; it’s a terrible fit for Kerendon.) They play a Cylix into a Trove into a warped Deathwing off the top; not ideal, but Valkyries have a tendency to high roll. Can’t be helped. When it comes back to me, I play a Sigil and drop the Vanguard; if they’re going to give Deadly to a weapon, at least I’m hoping they burn it on the Vanguard instead of the Warden down the line. On their turn, they play a Shadow Sigil before activating the Grafter and plopping out the Deathwing we knew about. Since it’s closed decklists and all, just to err on the safe side, come my turn, I Exploit and am faced with a Decay buffed Deathwing, a Speaking Circle and a Seek Power: since I can’t break through the absolute glut of Deadly blockers on their side at present to pressure a site, I elect to take the Speaking Circle. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how to get past this absolute fortress of blockers since I can’t clear them out with KTE. I could try and go for a Merchant/Equalize play, but that seems like a dangerous proposition against a deck running numerous relic weapons.

I end up plundering away one of my Merchants to hit the power drop, and go into the market with the other one and pulling out Svetya – if we’re going to be stalled out here, I hope to at least try and make my units as big and as difficult for them to deal with as possible. They play the Seek Power and Deathwing we knew about before dropping a Fire Sigil and passing; when it comes back to me, I play a Svetya followed by a Justice Symbol – now to not have this unit removed, please. I pass, then they draw and pass. Then I draw and play a Justice Sigil, and am left with a KTE in hand. Feeling good about the buffs of all my units, at this juncture I choose to attack with my Vanguard, which at first glance probably makes absolutely no sense. Here is my reasoning: I have given +3/+3 to all of my units, and I have a KTE in hand to find those massive units in short order. That means I need to start whittling away at their board because outside of Edict of Makkar, I can’t deal with those Deathwings at all. At least if I attack, I still get a card off my Vanguard, and that’s what happens as it trades with a Deathwing. I draw an Enter off my Vanguard, and elect to go for the Enter this turn and having a bigger KTE next turn. Am I learning anything from the last time this situation popped up in the Expedition TNE? Absolutely not. On the other hand, however, I have not seen hand attack out of them yet; since they are a more Rakano-leaning build of the deck, I hope that isn’t the case and I’ll be able to KTE for 10 next turn.

Unfortunately, SRFS plays a Lynax before Warping their Deadly, Lifesteal, Heavy Artillery off the top, using the Lynax triggers to take out the 2 fliers before taking out Svetya with the weapon itself. So glad I played greedily now. They then proceed to attack me for 10 and put me down to a very precarious 9. C’mon, some good units off the top please with my KTE. I grab a pair of Dianas and a Winchest Merchant just to make sure I have plenty of fliers and recoup a little bit of life so I don’t just die to the Raildriver alongside the Lynax triggers next turn. Having drawn a Diana and a Vanguard off the 1st 2 Dianas triggers, alongside the Maeve I still have in my hand, I don’t feel a need to access my market again. Svetya has done her job. Now let’s flip this game around. On their turn, they attack with both Deathwings, and knowing I have plenty more threats in hand, I’m fine trading a Merchant and Diana for them, even if it’s not the most-efficient. Though they are now at 40 life, so that’s plenty of time for them to find an answer to eventually kill me with. They play the Raildriver on the Lynax, and use the triggers to kill my 2nd Diana. Fortunately, that means they do not have that weapon to kill my Maeve, which I play followed by my 3rd Diana and a Justice Symbol. There is however still the distinct possibility of just taking a huge chunk of damage to the face at any given point, so I need to be careful whilst pressuring them to make sure I still have enough blockers that they can’t chip in, even if I’m very favoured to win this race.

They play an Arach, Razorshaper, which is rather interesting – I suppose it’s more for buffing the weapons rather than spitting out a huge board of Grenadins – followed by a Treasury Gate, which is an unbelievably spicy meatball. Hot. But now I really need to start pressuring them, otherwise this Gate is going to spiral out of control fast. I play a Seek Power for a Shadow Sigil (shockingly, I still don’t have double Shadow influence at this point yet), and I deploy my Makto and a Vanguard. There was the option to attack with the 6/8 Diana, but considering how high their life total is right now, I feel like I need to bide my time a little since they’ll easily let it through and crack back for more. On their turn, they warp a Deathwing off the top – at least all 4 are accounted for now – play a Rakano Cylix into a Trove and deploy a Battlemaster Kitaxius. They then warp another Heavy Artillery off the top – joy – deal 8 damage to my face with the Lynax triggers and take out my Diana before she can use her ultimate. Fair’s fair.

Unfortunately, I am now just dead to the Raildriver that they have in hand, so I need to find some way to gain life stat. I play my Makto and draw into an Alchemist. Nope. I attack with Vanguard which they are quick to throw the Razorbot in front of and draw into a Seat; nope. I did however miss plundering my power with Alchemist to grab a Trove and try to draw into Diana. Ultimately, it didn’t make a difference as they played a 3rd Lynax before playing their Raildriver and smacking for lethal in the face with Lynax triggers, even if I had a buff from Diana. I think in that tail end of the game I set myself up pretty well, but sometimes you just don’t find the removal spells you’re looking for, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Also, yes, that game was just as exhausting to play for the both of us as it was for me to write and for you to read. Dear gosh.

Game 2:

My opening hand does contain only Argenport cards and only Argenport producing power, but considering that I have multiple cards that require double time and I am on the play this game, this is probably not a hand that I can keep. My second 7 has a Justice Symbol, a Painting, a Makto, a Deathwing, an SAA, a Merchant and a KTE. Now I can only cast 1 thing in my hand, and I’m completely screwed if I don’t draw any power. Unfortunately, the hand is too dicey to keep and I take the mulligan to 6. My 6 contains a Seat of Vengeance, an Argenport Cylix, a Shadow Sigil, a Justice Sigil, an Enter, and a KTE. SRFS, please proceed to not do anything for the first 5 turns: that would be great. We both open with depleted Argenport Cylices Turn 1, and on Turn 1 I play the Seat and pass. They play a Seat of Glory into a Watchwing Support – now, I haven’t seen this card in constructed too much, but from my experience in Limited this card completely slaps. So…I’ve got to be careful. On my turn, I play an Enter just to draw 2 Justice Sigils and ship it on back; they play a Seat of Vengeance followed by a Treasury Gate. **sigh** Even if I draw the SAA, I still can’t cast it. Darn it. XD

It comes back to me, and I draw a 2nd Makto. Maybe I can just kill them with fliers? Possibly? But for now, I just have to plop down a Justice Sigil and pass it right back. They play a Seat, a Kitaxius, and a pair of Seek Powers and pass it back to me. Rather ominous, not going to lie; I wonder what they’re setting up for. I draw, play my first Makto and pass it back. They have a Heavy Artillery to take out the Makto which makes me moderately sad as they whack in for 3, but fortunately I have a KTE to wipe up their board and deploy the Makto right back onto mine. However, they have a massive 10/11 Xultan Arbalest – which also makes a similarly sized unit, I’ll have you note – to blow up my Makto again and leave me in a precarious position. I play out my 2nd Makto and Edict the massive Minotaur on the board – could have possibly gone for the KTE here instead, but in this iteration, I don’t have any unit bigger than a 5/5 anyways.

The Makto predictably gets eaten by the Arbalest, and they follow up with a Steyer’s Tower and a 2nd Treasury Gate – dear god. I follow up with a Deathwing and just pass; in hindsight, knowing that they’re probably going to go for the Curfew Enforcement means that I should have probably held the Deathwing in hand since the excess Overwhelm Damage is coming straight for my face. I was sort of right, as it turns out they have a Spectral Scythe instead that bypass the units entirely and go straight for my face. Even though I have a KTE in hand to clear their board, I can’t deal enough damage to take out the relic weapon, so I just scoop there. Don’t think any lines of play would have made a difference in that position, unfortunately. XD

Match 4: (VS mistermath314) (Throne) (https://www.twitch.tv/mistermath314)

Game 1:

I mulligan my opening hand with only 1 power, and I keep my 2nd hand with 2 Insignias, a Darkwater Vines, 2 Shadowlands Guide, a Blight Pass Smuggler and a Shoaldredger. It’s not a particularly good hand, let’s be perfectly honest, but since I’m on the draw, hopefully I can pick up another source of discard so that I can get the engine going, and I don’t think going down to 6 will make this hand better. They go Turn 1 Fire Sigil into Oni Ronin, and with the Darkwater Vines in hand, I’m getting some serious déjà vu. I play my Vines and pass; they opt to play a Passionate Stonehammer but not attack with the Ronin. On my turn, I attack with my Vines, which they opt not to block, so that I can trigger the Gustrider I drew – I draw a Chairman’s Contract and a Lightning Sprite, and elect to pitch a Shoaldredger and a Guide. There is an argument to keeping the 2nd Shadowlands Guide and pitching Purveyor since the odds that my 1 drops at present will end up in the void are…not slim, but the power ceiling on Purveyor feels too good to pass up, even if I don’t have the power to play it at present. They Torch my Gustrider and elect to activate the Berserk on Stonehammer, getting in for 6; post-combat, they deploy a Oni Patrol post-combat.

Back on my turn, I deploy a Lightning Sprite since the Stonehammer is forced to attack into me anyways, and I’m fine with forcing them to 2-for-1 themselves here whilst I get set up. However, they end up exhausting the Stonehammer for a Thunder of Wings instead, and after some consideration, I opt to block with the Sprite, which in hindsight was rather poor. I have the Shadowlands Guide to get back the Gustrider if it really need be, and I also have a Smuggler in hand to grab Essence Feast, so really, I should have plenty of ways to deal with the flying Dragon – plus, I was at 19, so I think I could afford to take 4 here. On my turn, I play a Chairman’s Contract but hit no units, which means my Shoaldredger is still at 2-cost and can’t be bought back with Guide just yet; instead, I opt to play Smuggler and swap out my Sigil for a Permafrost before passing; I don’t think playing the Purveyor would be particularly helpful since their Patrol can just jump in front of my Purveyor, and that would be a terrible trade. Plus, considering how much burn they have, sticking the buff on the Vines still leaves it quite vulnerable, and I’d rather bring back something different with Shoaldredger and/or save the buff for something with a different battle skill. Here, none of the units they have in play are worth the Permafrost, so even though I’ve taken it, I opt not to use it yet: I’m expecting something along the lines of Jekk/Prism Golem/Milos out of this deck, which would be much better targets.

On their turn, they poke in for 2 in the air, and play a Fire Sigil, a Prism Golem and a 3/2 Oni Ronin. Perfect! On my turn, having just drawn a Felrauk, I play the Permafrost on the Golem and simply pass. They poke in for 2 and pass as well. On my turn, I draw a Painting, and fire off the Purveyor on the Smuggler and Berserk my attack – they easily double-block it with a pair of 2 drops, but Berserking pretty much forced them to do so. This also sets up for my Guide next turn whilst cleaning up their board a little. They attack for 2, and once against just pass. On my turn, I draw a Gustrider, and attack with Vines and Purveyor to trigger Onslaught – the Purveyor trades with their remaining 3/2, but I get to bring back Shoaldredger with the Guide and drop a Felrauk following the Gustrider discard – seems pretty worthwhile to me. On their turn, they play a Waystone, getting the Grenadin to shove into their market with their follow-up Merchant before attacking with Stonehammer, which I block with Gustrider. Perhaps they took a Flash Fire or Obliterate? On my turn, I start by attacking with everything other than the Darkwater Vines – they trade with Felrauk but still take 10. I then play my Vines followed by another Gustrider – out of my 3 options of Contract, Devour and Smuggler, I chose to keep Smuggler. Most likely, I’ll end up marketing for Scream next turn so I can close this game out with Purveyor. It’s not a massive burn spell but a Deheen Blitz, but they scoop when they realise they’re just dead on the crackback.

Game 2:

I once again mulligan a single power hand, and keep my second 7 of a Contract, a Painting, a Seat, a Sporefolk, a Shoaldredger, a Devour and a Lightning Sprite. Good mix of enablers and pay-off. They open with a Turn 1 Infernus and smack my beautiful face for 5, which is…horrifying, but not too tragic. At least they don’t have a 1-drop. I draw and play a Crest, putting the Insignia to the bottom. I think I’m good on power now, deck. They play a Stonehammer and T2, and I play a Sporefolk before passing. They opt to Berserk the Stonehammer to get in for 4, and follow up with a Prism Golem. On my turn, I play an undepleted Seat thanks to the Sigil I drew and deploy my Lightning Sprite; what I should have done is probably done is play the Chairman’s Contract to see if I discarded another unit that would have allowed me to deploy my Sholdredger for even less power, and then decided what to do. On their turn, they play a Waystone and a Milos before attacking – I eat the Stonehammer with Sprite and chump the Golem with Sporefolk, letting them through for 3 and eating a Firebomb; post-combat, they use the Torch to finish the Sprite off. On my turn, I use the Contract to discard another unit and the Firebomb (yay!) so that I can deploy both the Shoaldredger and the Sprite this turn. They opt for just an Oni Ronin before passing back to me without any good attacks.

Back on my turn, I start by activating Sprite, drawing a Vines and pitching the Seat I just drew. I then poke in for 2 – even though I plan to play a Vines followed by a Gustrider post-combat, in case they do have Salvo (I’m not sure if Mono F has 8 market access cards nowadays, but who knows) I don’t want to over-twist my Sprite. Post-combat, I play the Vines and Gustrider, pitching a Sigil and the Hurler. I then Snowball the Oni Ronin and use the Crest I just drew to scout, putting the Darkwater Vines to the bottom. At this point, my void is fairly well-filled, so I’m looking for something with a little more impact to help close out this game. Going back to them, they just play a Grenadin from Waystone before passing. Oh no. On my turn, I twist the Sprite twice before attacking in for 5; since I drew into one naturally, there is no longer a need for me to use Smuggler to grab the Haunting Scream, so I just pass. They play a Pyroknight on their turn before passing; on mine, I play a Spitefeeder before dropping the Purveyor, giving the buff to the Sprite; I should have put the buff on the Gustrider instead, but they definitely don’t have Salvo at this point otherwise they would have used it last turn, so I doubt this punt will matter much. I attack for 17 and put them down to a very precarious 1; on their turn, they draw and scoop. Pretty much the same trajectory for both matches against Mono-Fire – who’d have thought early Shoaldredgers would be so good against them?

Match 5: (VS Essarefess) (Throne)

Game 1:

To avoid another crushing defeat in Expedition, I elect to challenge SRFS in Throne this time because I’m a coward. >.< I mulligan my 1st hand of Shoaldredger, Darkwater Vines, Felrauk, Purveyor, a Crest, a Seat, and a Banner. This is a really borderline hand in my opinion because I’ve got the influence for Felrauk and a Purveyor, but in the end I decide to ship it back because if I don’t find Discard for this Purveyor, I’m screwed. (Oh, how I was going to eat my words in about 30 seconds.) My 2nd hand has 3 Insignias, a Vines, a Hurler, a Guide and a Purveyor – similar composition to the 1st hand and similarly borderline, but this time since my redraw will be to 6, I don’t think it’s worthwhile to go down to 6. So I keep it. I play a T1 Vines and pass; they play a Painting into a Bloodseeker. Oh. My. Gosh. This is going to be a wild match-up. I play a Contract and attack for 2, but they remember the Snowball and elect not to block. They play a Dreamstealer, and internally I am screaming because that is a massive problem for our deck. When it comes back to me, with no targets in the void for Guide, I play out my 2nd Vines and pass, bracing for impact. On their turn, they play a Seat of Cunning and pass, which is rather odd for a Discard deck that’s running Bloodseeker; I guess they have some kind of removal.

Despite that, I play an Insignia followed by my Huntress to go for the killer attack on the Dreamstealer anyways, because YOLO. And also because I really don’t have anyway else to get rid of it; I plunder the Hurler since it doesn’t do much at this juncture. Surprisingly, it happens, and I pass it back. They open their turn with a Tome and attack with the Bloodseeker; I block with both Vines which knocks the Regen off of both of them but takes out the Bloodseeker. Post-combat, they play a Gustrider, pitching a Sigil and a Felrauk; I opt to pitch the Sigil out of my hand. On my turn, I Snowball the Gustrider before attacking in a Vines for 2 and passing; still no 1 drop to buy-back, unfortunately. On their turn, SRFS uses a Know to grab Krull and get back a Dreamstealer on the board – now that’s a nifty interaction with Tome – before playing another Tome and attacking in with Felrauk, whom I block with my Vines. They then play a Gustrider post-combat, pitching the Know’ed Krull and an Elvish Swindler. On my turn, I draw a Huntress and plunder away 1 of 2 Guides since they’re not being particularly helpful right now to try and remove the Dreamstealer. It definitely feels bad giving them such a massive life buffer, but I’ve got to get this Dreamstealer off the board ASAP. On the bright side, their discarding of my deck hit 2 Felrauks, so I am able to rip apart the rest of their hand. Since they are now empty-handed, I attack with my remaining Vines to try and trade with the Gustrider – I am very much aware my library total is getting kind of precarious, so I’d like to kill them ASAP. They don’t end up taking the trade. Post-combat, I play my Guide to buyback a Shoaldredger and pass.

On their turn, they nick the top card of my deck before passing. Aight. On my turn, with a lack of particularly good targets, I put the Purveyor buff on one of the Felrauks to force a chump block, and get in with everything; they chump my massive Felrauk with the Gustrider but still take 17, and I pass. On their turn, they play Socrato, and with 14 cards left in my library, I scoop it up. Close game, as I expect all the games in this matchup to be. :DDD Those Dreamstealers sure are annoying to deal with, however…hopefully they draw less of those?

Game 2:

I’m on the play, and keep an opening hand with 2 Paintings, Devour, Shoaldredger, Sporefolk, Lightning Sprite and Felrauk. Could do with a pinch more power, but I could always snaccrifice the Sporefolk if I really need it. Plus, they’re doing most of the work for me, so hopefully that’ll mean a cheap Shoaldredger crashing the party shortly. We both play power and T1 and pass; I play T2 Sporefolk and pass. They play a T2 Dreamstealer – oh boy, so on my turn, I immediately drop the Huntress I just drew to pluck it off and plunder away the Devour for my 4th power. Perfect! Unfortunately, the next turn they play a Know, grabbing Krull and plopping the Dreamstealer back into play. …rude. XD They then follow up with a Tome before passing. On my turn, even though I know it’s going to trigger Dreamstealer, I play Lightning Sprite and twist, discarding Felrauk – it’s a pinch too much value to pass. I then attack for 3 with Huntress, which they take.

On their turn, they attack with Dreamstealer, which I’m happy to get off the board by blocking with Felrauk; they play a post-combat Gustrider, drawing a Krull and pitching 2 and getting back Dreamstealer again. XD They play a post-combat Socrato, which immediately dies and discards 7 cards from me. I twist my Sprite, drawing and pitching a Hurler, and using the Snowball to kill the Gustrider before twisting once more and attacking for 4. I haven’t seen any snowballs or removal out of their deck yet, so I’m much more comfortable twisting aggressively. Post-combat, I pass, but should have probably played 1 of my Gustriders to try and dig for that elusive Purveyor or Smuggler to try and close out this game before they find too many Tomes. In their turn, they play a Shadowlands Guide, bringing back Darkwater Vines, and pass. *sigh* More blockers. On my turn, I use the Huntress to take out the Dreamstealer, plundering away my Lightning Sprite – better take it now than when it gets really stacked – before attacking for 4. I play both my Gustriders post-combat, and end up keeping the Spitefeeder and the Devour – my train of thought was that I want more evasive threats, but with 3 fliers already on the board and no Purveyor in sight, it would have made more sense to have the removal spell in case they found a Gustrider to block my Sprite.

On their turn, they play a Crest and a Smuggler before passing; I start by attacking for 6 before Devouring one of my Gustriders to draw…2 power before passing. SRFS plays a Haunting Scream for the Swindler, grabbing another Tome before attacking with everything, including spending the Berserk on their Smuggler – I block the Smuggler with Huntress and the Guide with the Shoaldredger – definitely just should have knocked off the Regen of the Vines instead with the Huntress. In any case, this starts a chain reaction of Felrauks where I hit 2 of my Felrauks, causing them to discard, and that hits one of theirs. Felrauk party! Luckily for me, that gives me some blockers for the 2nd attack out of the Smuggler, and I eat it, picking up a 3rd Felrauk. That gives me lethal on board when it comes back round to my turn, but I topdeck the Purveyor anyways, and decide to play it out for the BM. >.< Don’t be like me kids.

Game 3:

Once again, Essarefess graces me with the only Game 3 of the tournament. Maybe I should just be matched up more often against them for better content? I keep a very solid opening hand of Contract, Painting, Banner, Shoaldredger, Spitefeeder, Sporefolk, and Darkwater Vines. Lots of cheap discard and a payoff to boot. We both start with a T1 Painting into Darkwater Vines, and on their turn they play a Banner followed by a Xenan Lifespeaker. Interesting. On my turn, I decide to go for the Spitefeeder and Crest over Sporefolk and Banner since I know that they will also be discarding plenty here, and I’d rather have the evasive threat. I put Devour to the bottom with the scout because I haven’t seen any removal out of them in either game. They play a Lifesteal Whispering Wind followed by an Insignia – here come the Krull shenanigans. On my turn, I play my Chairman’s Contract, the Shoaldredger and the Sporefolk, discarding 2 Felrauks without the influence to play them for free. The pain and horror. Should have gone with the depleted power and subsequently dropped the Sporefolk and Shoaldredger. Sigh. SRFS attacks with Whispering Wind, pitching Socrato before dropping a Smuggler and going rummaging in their market. Probably Haunting Scream for the Swindler they have in their void?

On my turn, I crack in with Shoaldredger to knock the Regen off of their Vines before playing a post-combat Gustrider, ending up with Huntress, Banner and Smuggler in my hand. I opt not to plunder with the Huntress as I play it to take out the Whispering Wind and follow up with a Banner. Again, should have played out the Banner first in case I drew into any Felrauks. As expected, they Haunting Scream for the Swindler, grabbing Tome, and attacking for 3, which I do not block. They end up discarding a Felrauk of mine and discard a Seat from their hand. On my turn, I get in with my 2 fliers and Shoaldredger, and they chump the Shoaldredger with Vines. Post-combat, I play my Smuggler and swap out my Painting for a very easy Scream here. On SRFS’s turn, they start by Know/Krulling – that’s a neat interaction with Lifespeaker, by the way, that I didn’t notice before to avoid taking any damage by taking it right back – and get back a Vines, which doesn’t end up hitting Felrauks from either side. They then attack in with their 1/1 Lifespeaker, which I block with Smuggler – they follow up with a post-combat Gustrider, pitching Krull and a Crest. I’m not going to lie, I thought my Scream was a goner there from a pitched Felrauk. They then play a Crest before passing.

Unfortunately, they now have a flying blocker, which is rather annoying, but we’ll get through it. I play Scream and put the Purveyor buff on the Smuggler before attacking with everything but my 2/1 Vines – they can put their now 3/1 vines and Gustrider or Smuggler in front of my massive Smuggler to double-block it, but everyone else still gets through, which still seems pretty worthwhile to me. They opt to eat the Felrauk with their Vines and chump block the Smuggler twice and take 16, which is not a line I would have taken. They’ve already seen Snowballs out of me, not to mention I could simply topdeck a Purveyor, so leaving the 23/4 on board seems a little dubious to me. On their turn, they Know/Krull for a Smuggler and grab a Shadow Etchings and exhaust the Smuggler, and at this point, I am very confused and/or worried about what’s happening. They grab a Krull from the market and buyback a Socrato, which, even discarding 7 cards from me, isn’t quite enough to empty my deck. I draw and simply attack with everything for lethal. Geez, Essarefess is truly the go-to person if you’re looking for some absolutely baller games.

Final thoughts:

Those were all the games I had the opportunity to play in February, and colacoma ended up defending their title as the Ladder Champion for what I believe is the 4th month in a row. I had a fantastic time playing in the Ladder, of course – everyone I faced has been extremely friendly and chill – and I definitely plan on making a run for the crown in March. Got to get that sweet prize, of course. Whilst it’s less structured of a tournament than that of the TNE or TNT tournaments, if you like to play good Eternal against some fantastic players in a casual environment, this might be what you’re looking for. You might play 1 match, you might play 20, it doesn’t matter; it’s just all about having fun.

I would also like to clarify since it was something that was brought up in a late-night, partially drunk discussion some time ago: I am not a very good Eternal player, despite my mystical luck-sack topdecks and ability to spike the occasional tournament. My deck-building choices are questionable at best, and I’ve got all my spectators burying their heads in their hands whenever they happen to catch me in-client. That being said, I do think I am capable of improvement, and reviewing my individual card choices and lines of my play hopefully will me, as well as you readers, become better players. 🙂

Which line do you think I have taken? Is there that one card that’s perfect for the deck that I somehow have completely glossed over? You’ll probably be able to find me on Twitter @stormguard798 or lurking in the FE, TEJ or Misplay Discords. I say probably because there’s a non-zero chance that I might end up dead behind the bookshelf on Polus after Parm adds all the inevitable new players to the Misplay Ladder following the publication of this article, and takes revenge for all the extra work I’ve created for him. >.< And of course, if you have any feedback for the articles in general, please let me know. Until next time! 🙂

Stormguard’s Weather Report – Team Not Tavrod Tournament Report – Stonescar Aggro (Throne)

I’m back so horrifyingly soon? What a surprise. In case you didn’t know, there was another tournament happening last week – the Team Not Tavrod tournament played in the Throne format. I’m not going to lie, I found out about this tournament literal hours before it started, so I just picked up whatever I had lying around in my bag of decks and just picked one that I felt comfortable playing. It should come as literal no surprise to anyone who knows me at all what I picked.

Decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/V3sZt03oynI/ss-classic

…shocker. Real talk, however, I think that Stonescar has a pretty good matchup into both Xenan and Kira-based decks, and as long as I don’t see too much control, which, to be fair, has been pretty much shoved out of the meta by the overabundance of Kira decks. On the other hand, the Throne ladder tends to be the complete Wild West, so who knows what I might encounter in this tournament?

Decklist discussion:

In terms of the deck composition itself, I believe that it is incredibly straightforward, and is very similar to the list I discussed last time, hence I won’t be going a massive deep-dive this time around. The only new addition to the deck since Bastion Rising and Buried Memories have come out is the Midchief Saluses, which have proven to be just…fine, to be perfectly honest. (Wow, we really didn’t get much from the new set at all, huh?) Nothing particularly mindblowing, but a 3/2 quickdraw, and nothing more than that, is sometimes exactly what you’re looking for, and those have slotted in over the Condemns we had previously to combat Yetis and Kira.

Instead of the Condemns which we’ve generally found to be too low impact, we have 2 Vicious Highwaymen, which serve to ping a Masterwork, a Justice unit, or just to break Face Aegis whilst still applying pressure on board. Unfortunately, following the arrival of Flash Fry and Smite from Buried Memories, I sort of felt that Vicious Highwayman wasn’t quite doing enough, and in the future, I would probably replace those Highwaymen with Kaleb’s Persuader a la the original deck – I haven’t seen too much Elysian since the Cylix nerf, and that was the primary reason not to play expensive weapons that might blow up in your face following a Pause for Reflection.

Now here comes the Shakedown VS Open Contract part of the argument. Open Contract is a great choice against Xenan, opposing Stonescar Midrange and Kira decks, because it allows you to cheaply answer a threat whilst not giving up tempo, and hopefully you can slam the door shut on them before the cost reduction really matters. On the other hand, Shakedown is also quite good against decks like Shrine/Trove, Control or Reanimator because you have the opportunity to snag a key piece of their strategy before it even hits the board. The feeling when you take their Arcanum Hourglass just brings me butterflies. I do think either option is defensible – and both options have the chance of backfiring spectacularly in your face – so it does come down a little what you’ve personally been seeing more of. I think if you run the Open Contracts, you can probably keep the Crests because you don’t need available power on 1, but if you’re running Shakedown, you should probably go with the new option of Paintings. (Which…I forgot to change in my list before submitting it for the TNT tournament. Look, prepare well; don’t be sloppy like me.)

Ok, now moving onto the market. I previously included Dark Return and Open Contract because they were fetchable with Condemn, but now I’m back to a pure Cen Wastes market, I’m eschewing Open Contract for the more open-ended Desecrate. I took out Silverblade Menace for Nullblade for concern over the Reanimator or Know/Krull matchup, but I think the raw power of Menace means I should probably swap it back in. I have included Bandit Queen as a way to close out the game against non-Kira decks (Intrusion just completely ruins combat for us), but I haven’t pulled it much in practice. As a result, it could worthwhile to consider other top-end-ish options, perhaps 4 cost Vara, Highwayman, or even Inferno Den.

Gameplay!

Match 1: (VS applechips)

Resident tournament slayer themselves, it’s always terrifying to be playing against them. That being said, I do feel pretty good about this match-up: I should hopefully be able to apply some decent pressure on them, and since they aren’t playing Primal for the Huntress, they’re going to have a tough time removing my units. Nullblade isn’t as great against them since they aren’t planning on looping any units with Krull; plus, a lack of Face Aegis means it would have been easier to clock them with Menace. As long as I dodge those Intrusions and that Pristine Light, we should be OK.

Game 1:

I mulligan an opening hand with 2 Insignias, a Crest, 2 Fire Sigils, a Jekk and a Cen Wastes Smuggler – whilst I feel that this is probably a keepable hand in certain matchups, considering I want to get extremely aggressive against most Kira decks, this hand just feels a touch too slow. The next hand yields a Seat, a Fire Sigil, a Yushkov, 2 Warleaders, a Milos, and a Shakedown. Whilst this hand is driskier, if I can draw at least 1 power off my Shakedown Nightfall draws then I should be in business and just start to whack in for a lot of damage. It’s a gamble, but I’m feeling a little lucky, so I keep it. There are no stakes, right? 😛

I open with a Shakedown, seeing Justice Etchings, Pearl Abbey Smuggler, and a Valkyrie Enforcer; on the bright side, that’s a pretty mediocre hand out of their side. Considering the units I have in hand, it’s a very easy Enforcer here; so much of my units’ utility comes from their text. They play a Justice Symbol, and I draw into a Seat and Milos. Never punished apparently, and I drop a Warleader. They play out a 2nd Symbol and a Justice Etchings, which is fantastic news for me. I plop down a Milos like it’s hot and get in for 5.

On their turn they drop an Alessi and pass; they probably have either Safe Return or Intrusion in hand to protect it, but it still doesn’t block either of my unis well, so I think I’m fine with that. Having drawn power the last 2 turns, I curve perfectly into a Yushkov before swinging in. They use the Intrusion and block the Milos, which is fine by me since my Warleader still gets to grow. On their turn, they play the Smuggler into a Symbol into a Bring to Justice on the Yushkov – I originally thought they were going to get Pristine Light, but this isn’t too bad either. Come round back to me, I drop my 2nd Milos and attack with everything; since they’re out of available power, I’m not concerned about a trick here. They trade a Milos with Alessi, but still take 7 damage and a Firebomb into their deck. Wanting to put on as much pressure as possible, I follow up with my 2nd Warleader post-combat.

On their turn, they drop a Tower and play some Valkyrie blockers for my units, but I topdeck a Buhton, kill their Smuggler, and just all out attack at their face – they only block Buhton and drop to a rather precarious 2, especially since I know you don’t have a Sword from your market in hand. I scout with Crest and leave my 3rd Milos on top. On their turn, they draw, and scoop. That game panned out pretty much exactly as I drew it up, just applying pressure and never stopping; don’t think there were too many interesting decision points in that game, unfortunately.  

Game 2:

My first 7 only has Fire-influence producing power alongside 3 Shadow cards; this is Throne, not Expedition – I’m sure we could do better than that. My second 7 consists of a Crest, an Insignia, a Fire Sigil, a Shakedown, a Warleader, an Annihilate, and a Cen Wastes Smuggler. With a good balance between threats and interaction, this seems like a keep. Here, my start would have been great if I remembered to make the power swap, but you can’t expect me to be competent. That’s a bit much of an ask. 😛 I end up leading with Insignia and Shakedown, mainly because I’d rather go Shakedown into Warleader, particularly since I’m on the play. I open with Shakedown, and see Alessi, Kira, and 2 Predator’s Instinct. Oh boy, that is…an unbelievably awkward hand. In this position, since I have the Annihilate in hand and I know they don’t currently have any protection for their Kira, I opt to take their Alessi. Plus, this way, I know I should be safe running out Warleader and getting a hit in – don’t think they’d run out anything on T2 here even if they draw another 2 drop unit. They play an Insignia and just pass.

On my turn, I Nightfall into 2 power cards, play out my Warleader and pass; on their turn, they play a 2nd Insignia into an Icaria. On my turn, I play the Crest, leave a Champion on top, and go for the Annihilate on the Icaria: I don’t want them pulling ahead in power since they do still have 2 unknowns in hand, and if need be, I have the Cen Wastes Smuggler to pull an Edict out of my market – or I could just slam a 5/5 Champion. Not too bad either. On their turn, they drop a Valkyrie Enforcer on the Warleader, which is honestly fine – I can still attack in, at least this turn, and it means they don’t have it around for my Champion, which I’m quick to play following that.

Next turn, they drop a Pearl Abbey Smuggler, play a Justice Symbol and pass; honestly, besides Trickshot Ruffian and Bring to Justice, I’m not entirely sure what they got. My first guess is probably Pristine Light since that card is fantastic against Stonescar, but I could easily see them picking up Stand Together and Sword, since they probably know I at least don’t have Torch, otherwise I probably would have used it last turn on the Enforcer. Not too sure here. I draw and play a Midchief Salus, amplified once, before swinging in with both units; they choose to double-block the Blackhall Warleader instead of the Champion, which screams to me they unequivocally have Pristine Light in hand; however, I’m still fine trading off my Warleader for the Smuggler. I decide to kill the Smuggler over the Enforcer because in this deck especially, it’s possible for it to grow out of hand really quick, and since I’m going to be the aggressor for most of the game, I’m not too concerned about the flying on Enforcer. On top of that, the fact that Smuggler is multifaction is definitely a point of consideration.

On their turn, they play the Kira we knew about, and play an Instinct on it, but elects not to fire off the killer attack and just pass. When it comes back to me, I open by Shaking them Down, and in response, they decide to Intrusion their units to nullify my combat and get another card from Kira; so I did see that they ended up taking the Pristine Light out of the market, and that rest of their hand consists of an Icaria, a Hojan and a Hooru Envoy. I’m not worried about the Envoy at present since they have no spells in hand to trigger it and to a lesser extent the renown on Hojan. I ultimately decide to take the Pristine Light out of their hands now that they don’t have any way to keep their engine going, and I feel like this Champion is what is going to get me over the finish line, so I best make sure it sticks around.

Following that, now that shields are down, I take the opportunity to play Smuggler and grab Edict to kill the Kira before it gets too out of hand – I still have no idea what they might draw, particularly off the Nightfall. It’s risky since that leaves me with no cards in hand to their 3, but I’m hoping that I can just keep pressuring them. They draw and play a Banner followed by a Hojan and 6J Icaria –  a pretty impressive set of blockers – and I hope that conspicuous 1 power left open isn’t another Intrusion. :S I grab a Banner and a Warcry-buffed Milos off the top, I slam down the Milos, and jam – show me the Intrusion. They elect to double block the Milos with Enforcer and Icaria, and let everything through; I assume the reason they left the Hojan around and dropping to a pretty precarious 2 life is that they have a power in hand to trigger its empower next turn, which still doesn’t put them in a great spot, honestly.

On their turn, they play out a 2nd Hojan and pass, which should honestly be ringing alarm bells for me since they had a Hooru Envoy which they could play it, which tells me that they probably have a trick – again, if this is Intrusion, I’m in a very bad position, but the odds are pretty low, and now that they have 2 Hojans for a massive life swing the next turn, I don’t think I can afford to just pass here – so I attack with everything. They plop a Hojan in front of each of Cen Wastes Smuggler and Midchief Salus – it’s Safe Return, which they use to pick up the Hojan blocking Salus and trigger renown, allowing them to trade with Smuggler and leave them barely hanging on at 1; I follow up with a post-combat Warleader.

When it jumps back to them, they play Envoy and use Etchings on it to grab an additional card, and go rummaging through their market; my guess is that they probably grab Bring to Justice here since they need to play out the Hojan to ensure they have enough blockers to survive, and they don’t have enough power to both do that and play Stand Together or Sword. It is, and they hit my Champion with it. I attack, and they’re forced to chump both of my units, and I drop a post-combat Yushkov to secure their fate. They draw and go for another Justice Etchings on the Envoy, but I don’t think there’s anything that gets them out of this; there isn’t, and they scoop it up. I had some very fortunate draws towards the end there, and my decision to keep pressing the attack where possible meant that those units were all buffed by Warcry, which, for a deck running so little removal, is unbelievably difficult to deal with. Be, be aggressive. Yes, if they drew Intrusion, they could absolutely pull the Uno-Reverse on me, but the odds of that were just so low that if they had it, they had it, and I should, instead of playing around everything, just go for the more likely line that gives me the win.

Match 2: (VS Sunsfury)

Another Kira match-up, oh boy. Hooru is probably a stronger iteration of the archetype, but I’m not sure if the addition of Fort Smasher, which is still going to be fairly straightforward to pluck off, is necessarily than Krull/Know shenanigans. Either way, the plan remains the same: play a bunch of big, smashing units, let them run themselves out of removal, and then smash. The Jetpack in the market is an interesting inclusion, but probably not fantastic against me since they’re going to be on the backfoot the majority of the time.

Game 1:

I mulligan an opening hand with 2 Buhtons, a Milos, an Annihilate, 2 Fire Sigils and a Banner; the hand is kind of mediocre thanks to the 2 uncastable Buhtons but still technically keepable, particularly since I’m on the play, but considering I want to be as aggressive as possible against Kira, I’m looking for a 2 drop. I keep my 2nd hand with a Fenris, a Milos, a Cen Wastes Smuggler, a Yushkov, a Crest, and 2 Fire Sigils. I’ve got a 2 drop, an aggressive start, and if I can draw 1 more undepleted power, the perfect curve out of this deck. I open with Crest, see the undepleted power I want on top, and pass. They play a Symbol and pass, I play Fenris, and they play Icaria. I play a Sigil and drop a Milos: honestly, them getting the ramp off Icaria isn’t the worst since they aren’t advancing their board in any way. They take 6, and that’s exactly what they do the next turn. As a result, I’m down for playing out the Yuhskov here and get in for another 6 since hopefully whatever they play will end up exhausted and I can keep pressing.

They play out a Tower, and shrink all of my units which unfortunately means I don’t have anything that can get past the Icaria. Hoping they don’t have a Bubble Shield here, I go for the Edict here and take down the Tower – I might have been able to snag a juicier target down the line, but I don’t want to give them an ounce of breathing room, particularly with 2 units in my hand. They draw a Firebomb, which is very fortunate for me, and play a Kira and Levitate her. They then follow up with an exhausted Hojan. I elect to attack only with Cen Wastes Smuggler, which they block with Kira and tell me that they most likely don’t have an Intrusion in hand; besides, they can’t effectively get in with Hojan unless they have (most likely) a Smuggler in hand for the Milos. Post-combat, I Seek Power and play a Champion, passing. There is something to be said of not playing out the power and holding it for a Jekk, but this way I can activate Fenris and play out the Salus I have in hand next turn.

Back to them, they start with an unexhausted Justice Etchings, which tells me they probably have bonus market access for that Pristine Light. They attack with Hojan, I opt not to block – which was 100% incorrect – they don’t run pump spells in their deck, and they’re going to eat my Champion down the road anyway. Sometimes my brain catches up just a touch too late as they play a Smuggler into Pristine Light. On my turn, I start by drawing with Fenris, attacking with Yushkov for 2, and playing out a 2nd Fenris. Let’s draw some more gas, shall we?

On their turn, they play out 2 exhausted Hojans and an exhausted Huntress – this Yushkov is putting in some work this game. I activate the undebuffed Fenris and attack with it and Yushkov – the Smuggler ends up trading with the Fenris, and I pass, holding up Annihilate in case of the Huntress Killer attack or barring that, a Hojan attack with Lifesteal. They opt for the Killer attack on the debuffed Fenris, which makes perfect sense to guarantee at least a trade. I Annihilate the imbued Hojan, and they poke in for 2 with Hojan followed by an exhausted Envoy. Oh boy. On my turn, having drawn undepleted power in the form of a banner, I decide to go for a Cen Wastes Smuggler into a Nullblade – I know that they’re not on the Know/Krull iteration of the deck, but I want to get rid of these units whilst I know that they’re empty-handed. I opt to hit the Hojan first simply because it’s the one that can grow.

They unfortunately just have a banner, and on my turn I draw a Salus – I definitely should have played it pre-combat for the Warcry buffs. I attack in for 5, they don’t block, and post-combat I finish off the Envoy. They draw a card and pass, and I topdeck a Vicious Highwayman to poke them for 1 and end the game. Felt that this game was incredibly straightforward from my side, and Sunsfury just could not recover from the pressure we were applying – a few bad draws, and SS turns the corner on you really quickly.

Game 2:

I keep a slightly dicey opening hand with Salus, Fenris, Annihilate, Yushkov, Milos, a Fire Sigil, and a Banner – if I could just draw 2 more power, this hand would be perfect, but that might not pan out that well considering I’m on the play. Crossing my fingers that I didn’t get too greedy. We both open with Banners, and I draw a Seat. Isn’t it wonderful to be a luck-sack sometimes? I play out Salus first and pass. They play a Huntress and immediately off my Midchief, but I follow up by smacking their face for 3 with Milos; they play a Hojan and pass with an inconspicuous 1 power open. I opt to slow speed Annihilate to make sure I don’t lose my Milos in an awful blowout into that Hojan alongside Intrusion, and play a 2nd Salus after adding another Firebomb to their deck.

They play an Enforcer, silencing Salus and pass, once again holding up 1 power; I still suspect Intrusion from the previous turn, so I play my Yushkov and just attack with the Salus – I’m honestly fine trading the silenced Salus for an Intrusion here since they’re not going to be able to put up blockers next turn, and that’s exactly what happens. They play a pair of exhausted Hojans, which is great news. I play a Buhton, imbuing Yushkov, killing Enforcer, and getting in for 12. Never gets old. I have the option of playing out either a Fenris or Warleader post-combat: I decide on Warleader, but in hindsight Fenris seems like the better option since it can force a trick out of them if I decide to block a Hojan.

They draw and pass, and frankly I’m just confused at this point – I suppose they probably have Intrusion, which would completely negate my combat, but still leave me with a massive Milos; and if they don’t have it, they’re almost assuredly dead next turn, with my having just drawn a Champion. I’m not too concerned about additional blockers, particularly since Yushkov is still around and they’re only at 4 Justice influence. On their turn, they see the writing on the wall, and scoop. Post-game, they did admit it was an unfortunate punt on their part not silencing the Milos with 2 Hojans in hand, especially with Intrusion as your trick. :/ Oh well, it’s still a victory for me. 😛

Match 3: (VS WitchyDiana)

This match-up is awful for me. There are sweepers, plenty of removal, and Darkwater Vines to stall out any of my 2 drops. And with the card draw they have, they have the late-game on complete lockdown. Gosh, removal faring well against big units – who’d have figured? 😛 In any case, my best shot of winning this match is probably just to draw into a bunch of Champions and hope that they don’t find Transpose into Turn to Seed.

Game 1:

I mulligan my opening hand with only had 1 power, and keep a hand with a Crest, a Seat, a Fire Sigil, a Fenris, an Annihilate, a Smuggler and a Champion. Pretty strong. I open with a Crest and see the Shakedown on top; I end up topping it, which I now believe to be incorrect – I’m hoping to just curve out on them anyways so there is unlikely to be a window of opportunity for me to play it and still doing something else. They draw a Hurler, play a Crest, and pass. I opt to play the Shakedown over the Fenris, which is just compounding on the punts here, especially since they didn’t play a Darkwater Vines – there’s something to be said about playing around a Hailstorm, but there are so many ways to remove the Fenris so at least get it out of them. I see a Huntress, a Hailstorm, an Exploit and 2 Snowballs; I take the Exploit because I don’t want them getting anywhere near my Champion.

On their turn, they play power and pass; I play a Champion and they play a Strange Broker. Gross. I, unfortunately, don’t have a 4th power for my pair of Yushkovs, and here, I decide to go for the Cen Wastes Smuggler grabbing a pre-emptive Bore for the eventual Tomes. With the Hailstorm, Huntress and Snowball in hand, I don’t think there’s a way of saving my Champion regardless since I’m missing my 3rd Shadow influence. Granted, I probably shouldn’t have run out a Smuggler into a known sweeper, but passing without doing anything and having no intention of doing anything would have been pretty bad and at least it’d get the sweeper out of the way, at least in my mind. I think there’s an argument for holding up Annihilate in the event they decide to go for the Huntress line, but if I were them, I’d be mighty suspicious of 3 open power out of SS, and as a result gone for Hailstorm + Snowball instead, especially with open decklists.

On their turn, they opt to double Snowball the Cen Wastes Smuggler and then use the Huntress to take out the Champion, correctly assuming I have plenty of things in hand to get swept up by Hailstorm. As a result, I use this chance to get in for 3 with Milos and knock off Face Aegis before playing a depleted Seat. They follow up with a 2nd Strange Broker into Huntress to finish off my Milos, and if this was a ladder game, I would have absolutely scooped it up at this point. They are still at 18 with a Hailstorm in hand, so I can’t even commit to the board to try and overrun them; plus, those 4/5 Huntresses are just a touch too big for Yushkov. I play out the Yushkov, and they play Exploit, taking Annihilate – probably looking to just beat me down with Huntresses, which seems fine. They play a Trove, and attack for 8, which I take. I get a huge chunk of power from Yushkov the following turn, and play a Fenris, activate it, play a 2nd Yushkov and attack with the 1st one; I’m not entirely sure if I have outs at this point, but them not having such a high life total would be a start. They attack, I take 8 and dropping down to 1, having not seen a 3rd Hurler previously, but as it turns out they have Incursion. Oops: should have blocked.

Game 2:

I mulligan a hand with 2 Fire Sigils, a Crest, a Yushkov, a Torch, an Annihilate and a Shakedown; this is far too reactive of a hand in this match-up, and I need to be applying pressure way earlier. I end up keeping my 2nd 7 with 2 Torches, a Seek, a Seat, a Fire Sigil, a Cen Wastes Smuggler, and a Champion. Not thrilled, but not poor enough to go to 6. I play Seat and Seek, whilst they play a Crest and pass. I play a Sigil and pass; they play an Exploit and take Cen Wastes instead of Champion – not entirely sure why there, but I’m assuming they have at least 1 Tome in hand they’d like to protect – everything else out of my market is rather unexciting in this matchup.

I play my Champion on 3, and they play Darkwater Vines into Exploit to take my Salus – ok, so that explains many things; a regen blocker for my Overwhelm unit is a pretty good way to buy some time. I play the Seat I just drew and decide to just attack with the Champion to hopefully knock off Regen – things are looking pretty bad, but not bad enough for me to double Torch a 1 drop yet. I hope. They don’t block, and I immediately regret my decision to not kill the Vines when they play a Huntress and Killer the Champion. I draw power, and I would not blame most people for straight-up scooping here. But this is a casual tournament for no stakes, so I’m content to just let it play out. I’ve got some time anyways.

They attack for 2 and pass; I drop a Warleader and have it immediately by Annihilated. They attack for 2 and pass, and when I draw more power, I probably should just double Torch the Vines here, let’s be entirely honest. But I don’t and pass it back to them; they play a Broker and poke in for another 2. I amplify a Salus twice – should not have done that as it gets plucked off before the Songs even resolve. Should have gone for it once and then double Torch’ed the Broker – repeatable Permafrost is fantastic against this deck. They clock in for 4 and play a Felrauk, to which I discard a power card; I draw Cen Wastes Smuggler, pick up a Nullblade since nothing else is helpful here, and Torch the Felrauk. They have a 3rd Exploi to take my Nullblade, and swinging in again for 4; I block the Strange Broker to shrink it to try and preserve my life total – not that it terribly matters once they drop the fully enable Intrusion on my face, and I scoop. Don’t think I could have done too much about it in the 2nd game – it was simply a very fantastic draw that I couldn’t contend with. 😛

Match 4:  (VS Joan/ChangelingRain)

Praxis Tokens is kind of a weird matchup because whilst they can’t effectively deal with any of my threats, we don’t have a good way of clearing their chump blockers, so on occasion, I’ve just sat there with my opponent, staring each other down for a couple of turns. We do have Bores for the Obelisks, and I’m not too concerned about the Inferno Dens since we’ll hopefully be able to push through that, and may we find a window to close out the game before they poke us to death. Although I must say, I am very glad to not see a Fire Conjuring out of their market – that is certainly one way I might end up dying in a hurry. 😛

Game 1:

I keep an opening hand with 3 Fire Sigils, a Banner, a Seat, a Fenris Nightshade, and a Champion – a little power heavy, but not poor enough to mulligan. Maybe we’ll find a Jekk to ditch the excess power to? :} I open with a Banner and pass; they play a Grenadin Drone. I play a Fenris, and they play a Logistics Expert followed by a Torch on the Fenris to get in for 2. Turn 3 I do find the fabled Jekk, which is wonderful, and drop a Champion. They play an Assembly Line and a Crest, and I start Turn 4 by attacking for 4 with Champion – honestly, the battle skills don’t really matter in this matchup, it’s just the stats – and they stuff a bunch of tiny Grenadins in front of it to trade, which is fine by me. I Jekk their face and the Expert post-combat to cut them on their power.  

Back on their turn, they play out a Temple Scribe followed by an Initiate and a Crest; back to me, I offer the trade of Jekk for their whole board, and I follow up with a Champion and a Crest, keeping Buhton on top – here, I should have probably just run out the Sigil in my hand over the Crest and just drawn the card with Trove: they’re unlikely to be able to remove the Champion regardless. Also, I should have probably bottomed the Buhton instead – since it doesn’t have any form of evasion, it really isn’t particularly helpful in this match-up. They play a Cykalis and clock me for 5; on my turn, I play Buhton and exhaust the Champion to kill the Initiate, which is…not great, since this allows them to keep chump blocking. Honestly, I think forgoing the imbuing and just attacking with everything might have been better since I’ve already committed to taking the Buhton. XD

They play a Kato, which unfortunately is just more chump-blockers, and get in for 5 again with Cykalis – c’mon, Torch. XD I draw and play a Yushkov, play a Crest, keeping Milos on top, and drawing it with Trove before cracking in with my 2 units. On their turn, they attack with both Kato and Cykalis, which is a little suspicious, but I block with Yushkov anyway; they Torch post-combat to finish my unit off, play a Supplier with both draws active, and follow up with a Drone – extremely smooth play there. Right now, I think I unfortunately need to hold back the rest of my units to avoid getting killed by charge units, so I cash in my 2 Troves and play a Milos before taking away their Tocas with Shakedown. They play an East Annex Smuggler and pass; since they didn’t play the card they took out; I’m inclined to think it’d be a Waystone Fragment or Flame Blast to the face.

Despite that, I opt to pitch the Cen Wastes Smuggler to the Jekk I have in order to take out Supplier and Cykalis – even if they did have Fragment, their units are still a pinch too small to get past mine. I play my 2nd Milos, and attack with both of them alongside Jekk – although unlikely they have Be Gone or Purify since I think they’d play it last turn, I hold back Buhton so I don’t get surprised on the crack back. They get in with everything, and manage to put me to 6; they did pull a Flame Blast which puts me to 1, and they scoop it up. A very close game which I almost shot myself in the foot with thanks to some misplays and Joan’s excellent play, but managed to get lucky enough to pull it back.

Game 2:

I mull my first 7 which only had 1 power, and decide to keep a Seat, a Crest, a Banner, a Highwayman, a Champion, a Yushkov, and an Annihilate. Definitely a little slow out the gates, but I am on the play, so hopefully I don’t get completely run over the first few turns, because the units in my hand are all great in this match-up. I Crest, and elect to keep the Seat on top; it’s depleted, but I do need the power. They play a Drone, I play a Seat, and they play another Drone followed by an Expert before poking in for 2. Oh dear – that’s a lot of very quick board presence. Fortunately I topdeck a Sigil to get my Seat online, and I plop a fully enabled Champion onto the board. They have a Cykalis, which gets in for 5 before passing.

When it comes back to me, I opt to go for an Annihilate on the Cykalis before playing out a Warleader – I can’t profitably block the Cykalis with anything in hand or on board, and that’s what got me so low the previous game. Hence, I opted to remove it instead of playing out the decidedly juicy Yushkov from my hand. On their turn, they drop a Kato and a Grenadin Drone for a terrifying number of bodies. I go for a Highwayman on my turn, pinging the Expert and getting in with everything – with the lifebuff from Highwayman, I should hopefully be able to afford to get a little more aggressive here – they double block the Warleader, but still take 10 to the face. They play a Supplier, picking up 2 cards before sacrificing the Kato shade and getting in for 7 with their motley crew. Probably figured that I wouldn’t use my removal on 0/1 Totemites, which would be entirely correct.

I play a Yushkov before attacking with both my units: they chump the Highwayman but still go down to 5 from the Champion. On their turn, they play an Expert amplified once alongside a Grenadin from Waystone, but both come in exhausted, which  puts them in a not fantastic position. Fortunately for me, I topdeck a Buhton, imbue the Yushkov, killing Supplier and getting in for a lot of damage – they survive the attack at a precarious 1, and me being back up to 21, they’re going to hard-pressed to finish me off from here, especially with lethal on my board. They do not, and scoop it up. Turns out that Lifesteal and ping from Highwayman does WORK against this archetype.

(Disclaimer: due to timing reasons, I never bumped into EarthsOverseer or johnkkez whilst I was awake, and therefore was unable to get in my matches against them. :/ Downside of playing asynchronously, I suppose. However, with my 3-1 record, I still somehow managed to place 2nd in my group due to a large number of missing matches, so thanks to the tiebreaker system of Battlefy, I’m in the semifinals. Honestly I’m shocked. XD But hey! I’ll take the content where I can get it. :P)

Semifinals: (VS Essarefess)

Stonescar Shrine tends to be a little grindier than Praxis, and can definitely win out of nowhere with some surprise Shrines. That being said, they do go a little less wide and aren’t that good at playing defensively, so I’m looking to overwhelm them with board presence before they can get set-up. I am absolutely snagging the Bore from my market every time, and having a Milos in play so they can’t afford non-lethal Shrines would also be nice. Essarefess themselves said that the match-up isn’t fantastic for them, but I could honestly see it going either way. Let’s find out.

Game 1:

I keep a hand with a Banner, 2 Fire Sigils, a Buhton, a Salus, a Fenris and a Milos. Snap keep. Enough power, 2 drops, and a Milos are exactly what I’m looking for. We both play power T1 and pass; they Turn 2 Exploit and take the Milos, which I agree with, particularly since it keeps me off-curve. I play a Salus, but on their turn, they play a Quiver and Brew it. Going back to me, I opt to play the Warleader I just drew over Fenris, just in case they have another Quiver. 😛 They Quarry, play a Grenadin Drone, and play a discount Exploit, taking the Annihilate, which makes sense given I don’t have the right influence for Buhton at present. I draw a Milos, and decide to offer the trade for Warleader, which they take – I’d rather them trade now than with Milos – before playing Fenris post-combat. They play a Strange Burglar, and on my turn, I play Seek Power before activating Fenris. Since I had the right influence for Buhton at this point, I think there’s something to be said of just imbuing the Fenris, cracking in and offering the trade – I don’t have an answer maindeck for the Burglar other than Jekk + Sigil, so ideally I’d want it off the board, and should be willing to trade my 4 drop for it.

They attack in for 5, which I take, and play a Shrine post-combat. I draw a Seat, which doesn’t help me with either concern, so I just slap down a Milos, crack in for 6, and play a 2nd Fenris post-combat followed by the Seat. They have a 2nd Makkar’s Quiver for both Fenrises, which is such a massive blowout. Man, this might be the first time I’ve ever seen that text on Warlock’s Brew come up. They attack in for 5, which I take, and the next turn I get in with Milos before passing, which I now consider incorrect. With the Makkar’s Quivers in play, I won’t be able to kill any of the small units with the Buhton Imbue trigger anyway, so I might as well get in for damage before they find units to start sacrificing and triggering Shrine.

On their turn, they play a Gleaming Grenadin, sacrificing it to draw 3 cards including a Firebomb, and then play out a Kato for lethal on me. I guess it didn’t matter anyway. Don’t think I could have done much about that, unfortunately.

Game 2:

I keep a Buhton, a Jekk, a Warleader, a Torch, 2 Seats and an Insignia. Particularly since I’m on the play, I’m hoping to just ride this Warleader and spit out massive units that just overwhelm them. We both play depleted power T1, and I open with my T2 Warleader. They play a Kato, but I get in with Warleader anyway and they chump with the Totemite. On their turn, they go for a Quarry, and I respond with an Annihilate – not the best value, but this Quarry ideally means I don’t have to contend with any blockers after the Shade goes away. They pitch a Devour and use a Combust on the Shade to take out the Warleader. Well…that was a bust. On my turn, short of a 4th power, I run out a Jekk with no summon ability – haven’t seen one of those in a while, eh?

They play a Quiver and pass, which is great news – at least we’re both strapped for power. I attack with Jekk and immediately cash in the Trove, and play the Fire Sigil I just drew. On their turn they play a Gleaming Grenadin and pass; I go for a Jekk attack, they play a discounted Devour, and I play a post-combat Warleader, leaving up Annihilate for Arach. They play a Shrine and pass. Yikes, still no power. I decide to just Annihilate the Rustling here since I have a back-up one anyway, and I want to keep the board as clear as possible. I poke in for 4, and play the Champion I just drew in lieu of another Jekk or Buhton since I am ahead right now and can afford to be a little patient with their summon abilities. They play an Exploit and take my Jekk – pretty straightforward choice I think since it’s the best card to clear their board with – and follow up with a Kato.

I Torch the Kato before swinging in with everything – they double chump and let the Champion through, taking 5. Post-combat, I play Smuggler and grab Bore for the 2 relics they have in play at present – if they find a bit more power, they’re quite in danger of just recovering with a surprise massive Shrine turn. They play Arach and sacrifice it with a Combust to get rid of the Champion – not sure if I’d have sacrifice the Arach there; might have gone for one of the Razorbots instead since it still bounces with Jekk. On my turn, I blow up both relics, Annihilate a Razorbot, and attack with everything – they block the Warleader, which I think is defensible; I think either that or the Jekk would make sense here since they’re quite a potent combo. They play a Gleaming Grenadin followed by an Arach; not desperately needing the card draw in this spot, I imbue Jekk with Buhton, killing the Razorbot and cracking in. They chump the Buhton and take 4; post-combat I cash in my Trove and pass. They play a power and pass, but I have a 2nd Buhton for lethal.

Oh, the very first Game 3 of this tournament, at least for me. How exciting!

Game 3:

I keep a debatable opening hand with 3 Seats, a Seat, a Crest, a Shakedown, and a Warleader. I am a little threat, but hopefully I can buy a little time if I can snag a Shrine with this discard. They play a Grenadin Drone, and I shake them down – as it turns out, Shrine is their only legal target. How serendipitous. They poke in for 2 and pass, where I drop my Warleader. They get in for a dubious attack with both Grenadins, and having remembered the Quiver, decided not to block. Turns out that’s exactly what they have – good for me. I opt to go for a 2nd Shakedown to clear the way but unfortunately whiff on targets; I get in for 2 with Warleader, and play out a post-combat Salus. They play an Arach, making 2 Razorbots, and I Nightfall into a Jekk, which I use to take out the Arach and hit their face; I think considering the nature of their deck, I should have probably gone for Arach and a Razorbot instead. Oops. I then poke in with Salus for 3.

They start by Exploiting the Champion from my hand and then play out a pair of Grenadins that they had gotten from Waystones. I mis-sequence, playing a Trove before scouting with Crest, and put another power to the bottom; wanting to eke max value from the 2nd Salus I have in hand, I opt to just attack with the Salus on board for 3, which they just take. The density of units on their board is starting to be of concern, however, but I can’t do anything about that. They play an Emblem, use Combust to take out my Jekk, followed up by a Strange Burglar before attacking with everything. Oh dear. I opt to block one of the 3/1 Grenadins, taking it out, but I’m still taking 11 and in a very precarious position. I draw a power, and elect to just scoop – they can start giving their units a buff with Quiver, and I can’t deal with the Burglar at all. (Kudos to Essarefess on the back-to-back TNT tournament wins, by the way; I wonder if they didn’t TO for the TNE series they’d just completely wreck the competition? :thinkingface: )

Final thoughts:

I had a really good time in my very first TNT tournament – the asynchronous matches work great for anyone with a busy schedule, and considering it’s a very casual environment with no stakes, it’s a great place to try out some fun brews in a tournament setting without feeling like you’re giving up too much. I’m not a fan of non-official tournament formats such as Serf or Hero (hence why I didn’t play in my own team’s Peasant tournament, shhh…), but if you are, they run tournaments every week. Definitely going to be coming back for the Expedition one! ^-^

As per usual, you can always hit me up on Twitter @stormguard798 or lurking in the FE, TEJ and now Misplay Discords. Until next time. 🙂

Stormguard’s Weather Report – Tuesday Night Eternal Tournament Report and Deck Tech – Xenan Midrange (Expedition)

Good day everyone! It’s stormguard798, back with another deck tech and tournament report following my run during Friday’s Tuesday Night Eternal (TNE) Tournament. Following the arrival of the Buried Memories mini-set, there has been a massive shake-up to the Expedition meta, with decks like Tradition Soldiers alongside Creation Sentinels rising to the top. Whilst I could have brought 1 of those 2 decks with me, in testing I felt that the mirrors were honestly quite boring and draw dependent, and nothing I found helped break that stalemate one often encountered besides just drawing slightly better. Let’s be honest here, drawing unbelievably well is not too far-fetched considering my deep investment with the luck-sack, but I was hoping to better my odds a little. So what deck did I end up going with?

Decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/R37Q644avbs/tej-s-signature-xenan

(BTW, the line ‘TEJ’s Signature Xenan’ is an off-hand remark from Ashe on the Eternal Journey Podcast’s Set Review of Buried Memories – go check it out and all the other episodes. It’s good. Or so I’ve been told. XD)

Ok, so before everyone starts flaming me for picking yet another Xenan deck, I’m going to lay out my logic. I think Moonstone Vanguard right now is one of the strongest units you can play: it puts you far ahead when you can ramp it out and it has Endurance, so you know it’s not going to get halted by a Permafrost. Also, I consider Logistics Expert to be one of the biggest sleeper/not-sleeper cards of the set, and it just does everything you’re looking for in a time-based deck. When we were considering how to effectively combat decks that were pumping out massive units for cheap with frightening consistency, the answer was clear: Desert Alchemist. It smoothes your draws, but it’s also a cheap deadly ambush unit – it doesn’t matter how big the opposing threat is. This build I feel is an incredibly adaptive deck that has a bunch of different option depending on your draw, but can also turn the corner at any moment. Here’s why I picked the cards that I did.

Inclusions:

  • Edict of Makkar – Let’s get it out of the way, to begin with. I personally don’t think it’s a sign of a healthy format when I feel like I can main-deck this type of effect and get away with it in most situations – and the disappointing thing is that I was not the only person to do so. Having said that, the two most played decks in the format are chock full of both Time and Justice units, and being able to answer them for just 1 power, no matter their size, is just unbelievably efficient. If a bunch more people suddenly pick up Grenadins or Feln Purveyor then I might swap back to Suffocate, but for now, I think it more than warrants main deck inclusion.
  • Trail Maker – So if you’ve read my previous article you know how much I adore Logistics Expert, so it should come as no surprise to anybody that I’m including it in my deck. The question then becomes do I also want to include Trail Maker. There’s been some internal discussion as to whether it is worth it to run both – because too many, and you risk getting completely blown out of the water by KTE. Or Autotread. Or Grenadins apparently. -_- That being said, whilst there is a very obvious downside of being destroyed, the upside of dropping a T3 Vanguard is just a little too juicy to pass up. Whilst there has been some divergence as to whether Expert or Maker is the better power dork, I think in this deck they are both worthwhile inclusions. Even though the additional influence was more crucial back when we had Ubsat in the deck, it’s still helpful to accumulate for both Alhed and Twinned Spiteling, and honestly, in a format that a lot about being fast and rolling high, I think it’s fine to include both power dorks here.
  • Steward of the Past – Let’s be honest: this is probably one of my more bizarre inclusions, coming out of both left and right field as a suggestion from Ip. Previously, I had Rhuus in this slot for some targeted void hate; yes, Vulk, we all know you’re a giant problem. However, there was some concern about curve as that may put too many units in the 5 drop slot. As a result, Ip proposed moving the Steward from the market into the maindeck and putting in an all-together different market option, which is what we ended upon. Although it is double Shadow, which means the odds of us being able to power out either 4 drop in our deck on T3 is low, it still is some semblance of void hate. Even though it doesn’t stop the first recursion, at least it stops Vulk from getting too out of hand. Despite getting slapped by Permafrost, the 5 health coupled with the deadly is surprisingly tricky to deal with in combat; it generally results in a trade even if I am a little bit down in power. More widespread void hate also helps to minimise the power of any Know When to Hold ‘Em/Krull shanhooligans should I happen to see them.
  • 26 power – Always include the fun 1 of Standard for surprises in open decklists; it forces your opponent to play around it even though you only have 1 copy. What joy. (I’m not going to lie, there was far too much temptation to shove in a Cabal Standard as well, but I think I’d rather have 4 of Symbol for influence reasons. Not sure how I’ll feel about that on Tuesday/Wednesday though. XD) Although I do have a bunch of cheap units and spells, I also have plenty of top-end and use my power late into the game, hence I’m comfortable playing 26 power. Maybe 27 power is correct, but again, math. Is really hard for me. 😛

Exclusions:

  • Any kind of auxiliary power (Seek Power, Etchings) – Originally, I was a base time deck with a Time market, which is why it made sense to run Time Etchings; however, now that I’m running a Shadow market (more on that in a hot second) it doesn’t make sense to run Etchings since I have much fewer Shadow units, so that’s out of the picture. Ultimately, I haven’t been terribly impressed by Seek Power since fiddling around with it, it still doesn’t really solve my influence issues by running Shadow Sigils and having Seek to find them, so I’d rather just rely on my power dorks alongside 8 Plunder cards – although it’s a lot more fragile, it’s been panning out OK for me thus far.
  • Ubsat, the Savior – So most Xenan Midrange lists that I’ve seen floating around on ladder, and although we played around with it for a bit, it ultimately cooled on us. Here’s why: Expedition influence is rough enough as it is, and we are playing a certain number of pure Shadow sources, which makes it hard to play Ubsat early. Next, because we’re playing auxiliary ramp with dorks, even if we do get to 4 power early, it’s still not guaranteed we’ll get to play the Ubsat. Although in practice it sounds fantastic in stomping an assortment of monofaction threats from Merchants, to Argo Ironthorn, to opposing Vanguards, in reality, it was often Turn 5 or 6 before we could unearth enough Time influence to play Ubsat, and most opponents’ hands tend to be emptied by then. With the injection of dominant multifaction threats such as Hifos and Vulk, I just don’t feel like Ubsat hits with the level of consistency I’m looking for.
  • Onoris Roa – Is it strange that after it got buffed, I started playing Onoris Roa less? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. On paper, it seems perfectly fine – a solid overwhelm body, text with some additional utility, and a decent late-game amplify. In practice…not so much. Pretty much every time I’ve included this card I’ve been rather underwhelmed; it’s an asymmetrical monofaction unit, which means it gets plucked off by a lot of removal, and not having a summon effect rather stings. You’re also not thrilled to ramp into this because it doesn’t let you steamroll if unchecked like many other threats. Maybe someone else can unearth the build where Onoris is potent, but for now I’ll keep being underwhelmed.
  • Swirl the Sands – So last time we played Xenan as a collective in Expedition, we chose to run Swirl the Sands maindeck, having been bodied by relic weapons and flying Valkyries the TNE just before. However, Valkyries have been heavily pushed out by just stronger Tribal decks (sorry Dichro, but you did NOT help your tribe) and most of the relic weapons have gone with them. Whilst there are still some fliers (looking at you, Hifos) and some relics (looking at you, Vulk), they are a lot more manageable by the rest of the removal in the deck, hence eschewing the more situational spell from my deck.

Market:

  • Vine Grafter – The glaringly obvious advantage to running Grafters is that you have the option of running the Speaking Circle in the market. However, given the recent nerf to Speaking Circle coupled with the fact that I’m expecting a lot of aggressive decks, relying on the Speaking Circle to stabilise isn’t necessarily viable, especially with its wild agenda. On top of that, now ramping out the Speaking Circle might not be such a good thing, since it’s now the first circle that’s at a disadvantage. That levels out the playing field a lot for me. Now, which faction: Time or Shadow? I previously went with the Time market for one reason: cleaner relic removal. That is it. Now that I don’t feel aside from Vulk’s Heart there are many multifaction relics that I’m expecting, I, therefore don’t feel that a Time market is necessary, and am leaning towards Shadow for its more versatile disruption options. Auralian Merchant is pretty powerful in serving as yet another power dork to power out the fabled T3 Vanguard, but for me, the allure of the Shadow market is just a little too strong. So now it’s a pick between Vine Grafter and Kerendon Merchant, and whilst having Deadly on Kerendon Merchant is particularly potent in playing defensive, I ultimately felt that the ability to give one of my massive Time units regen outweighed the tempo advantage of paying 3 VS paying 5 for my market access. A 6/6 Endurance Regen unit in the form of a buffed Vanguard is truly stuff out of most aggro decks’ nightmares. I do think that all 4 market access units are defensible 1 way or another, however, but this is the one I felt would pan out the best. 🙂
  • Suffocate – Now that I’ve shoe-horned Edict of Makkar into the main-deck, I’ve elected to pick up Suffocate as my cheap market removal spell – sometimes you just need a few more ways to pick off that pesky Wump and Mizo or Jarrall. That being said, with Mandrakes being mostly out of the picture now, there are fewer targets for Suffocate, which is why I feel it’s fine as a market card.
  • Nectar of Unlife – I previously had this as a 1 of in the main in a lot of my decks, but given that I was looking for some kind of void drawing effect in the market, this fit the bill perfectly. Yes, it’s both an inefficient removal spell and an inefficient void draw spell, but the versatility of being able to do a bit of both I think warrants its inclusion in some way in the deck. (Also, it’s a great way to deal with Tower – turns out that site is still fantastic.) Also, the feeling of the light in your opponent’s eyes fading when you play this for 11 is wild.
  • Express Route – The classic catch-all removal spell that gets around void recursion by sending it straight back into your deck. Particularly good against Vulk, but honestly just a necessary back-stop in case something goes horribly wrong.
  • Slimespitter Slug – Unfortunately, Valks aren’t super dominant in the meta anymore, so I’m not getting as much use out of the flying hoser as I’d like; it still hits Hifos and Winchest Merchant, which is solid. Having said that, it’s still a massive unit that I can fetch from my market in a pinch, and don’t underestimate the value of a giant honker that just sits there and gets bigger. Just look at the Prackalackin VS camomilk game from TNE 7.
  • Moldermuck – Ok, so I was super indecisive on what my last slot should be, and even looking back I’m not entirely sure I made the right choice. I considered packing Reappropriator as probably the best piece of relic interaction against Sentinels, but that deck probably pack both Flash Fry and Smite, which means it’s going right back to them anyways. There was some discussion of putting in Krull, but I personally feel that Krull makes way more sense with Merchant or Smugglers because you have a little more autonomy over when you pull – rarely do you play and activate Grafter in the same turn and still have enough excess power to pull a meaningful threat back from the void, so since I’m sticking with Grafter, I didn’t think Krull was a good enough option. In the previous iteration of Xenan, our team packed a couple of Pull from Nightmares main which we then tried relegating to the market. However, there were quite a few games where I didn’t end up finding triple Shadow influence, so it felt a little too risky. As a result, in the end I went with Moldermuck, just as a way to completely gum up the board against a deck like Grenadins or Mono Fire, just constantly spitting out more bodies. I didn’t end up pulling it all during the tournament, so that may not have been the right move. You win some, you lose some. XD

Gameplay!

(I would just like to keep in mind that I have not watched any of the commentary from Telemokos and Ip, in part because I want my perspective to be completely impartial and purely based on what I was thinking, and also in part because I’m honestly a little terrified by how much Ip flamed me – that man does not hold back. {Just kidding – it’s mostly because I’m too busy being distracted binging Big Brother Canada before the new season starts.} In any case, if you’d like to see the VODs and their perspective on my matches – I had the feature match Matches 1 and 4 – you can do so below.)

Match 1: (VS Prackalackin)

Oh dear god, if there was a match-up I did not want to see, at all, it may just be this. It’s a deck filled with ping effects to just mow down my power dorks, and since they’re not fighting much on the axis of combat, there’s a pretty good chance that I just can’t kill them fast enough before they plop Align. Since they’re killing all of my ramp, I’ll only ever be able to drop my threats on curve (probably). I only have 1 way to deal with a Tesseract Prime, period, so whilst I may be able to weather the 1st one, I probably won’t be able to deal with the 2nd one. Or 3rd. Oh gosh. Also, they’re in all the factions that Edict of Makkar does not cover, so that’s a completely dead card in this matchup. There aren’t too many so-called ‘good’ targets for my removal spells, I’m just going to try and fire them off as aggressively as I can just to make sure Prack doesn’t build out too much of a board that makes it easy for him to go for a surprise Align. Probably not winning this one, but here’s to hoping. :fingerscrossed:

Game 1:

I end up keeping an opening hand with a Cylix, a Time Sigil, an Edict, an Expert, an Alhed, an SAA, and an Alchemist. Although I don’t have any top-end in my hand, Alhed is not a bad wall for all of the tiny units out of Grenadins, and even though Edict is a dead card, I have a way to plunder it away in hand. The question is whether I open with T1 Expert, or instead lead with the Cylix and guarantee my T2 Alhed. I end up leading with Expert because it has a higher upside, but in hindsight, considering how much cheap pinging they have, it would have probably made much more sense to just go with the safer T2 Alhed. It turns out it was an Overgrowth instead, but the point still stands. I play my depleted Cylix, and just pass back to a pair of Sparking Vermins. How horrifying.

On my turn, having drawn 2 Vanguards on not Turn 1 (thanks Pledge), I plunder away one of my Edicts into a Sigil just to hit my power drops with the plan to just block a Sparking Vermin the next turn. They are getting to the point where they could just go for a 1 drop Grenadin into Tesseract, so I need to start keeping their board as clear as possible. They end up picking it off with Razorblades and making a 1/1 deadly, which stonewalls the 2 Vanguards in hand. I topdeck an Alchemist, immediately plunder away my other Edict, and go for SAA on the Razorbot – got to keep them off Align where possible, and try to go for the exact same play as last turn.

On their turn, they just play a Gleaming Grenadin and pass without attacking, which screams to me ‘I am setting up for Align’ since they do have 3 open power and the requisite influence. I go for the cheeky 2 damage with Alchemist because I’m pretty sure they have Realign the Stars, and plan on Aligning the next turn. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about it in hand having drawn another uncastable chonker, so I just drop the Alhed and cross my fingers. Predictably, they have it and proceed to Align my next turn. I scoop right here as they have 2 Snipes from the Sparking Vermins to completely refill their hand, and I have zero way of dealing with the Tesseract Prime at least for a few more turns.

Game 2:

I keep my opening hand with a Symbol, 2 Seats, a Time Sigil, a Spiteling, an Exploit, and an Expert. Learning nothing from last game, obviously, (I’m on the play, so I got greedy), I open with a Turn 1 Expert to go for the unbelievably greedy T3 Spiteling. Fortunately, they don’t have an immediate ping, just a Gleaming Grenadin, so next turn I play my Time Symbol and slap down an Exploit – I see 2 Sparking Vermin, a Downdark Scavenger, a Realign and a Wisdom, which is honestly kind of lackluster of a hand, and that also indicates to me that they only have 1 more power in hand. Regardless, I snap off the Realign, because I feel that is the least replaceable card they have, and they can’t play Wisdom right now anyways. I plunder away my Time Sigil, which is definitely very greedy, but…have you seen my plays this game?

They go depleted power into topdeck Condemn for my Expert, which is simply wonderful. XD They probably go for either Edict or Permafrost out of the market here is my guess. I topdeck a Time Symbol, which I’m comfortable with playing here and just going for the Trove into a Seat. They play out their pair of Sparking Vermins into a 3rd power – wow, look at this lucksack. (I really can’t criticise) I play my Twinned Spiteling knowing the Timekeeper is probably going to get removed in some way – I did draw a 2nd Logistics Expert as a back-up threat which is nice, however. They have the Edict as expected, and when they attack, I block a Sparking Vermin with my Spiteling, because it’s going to get Snipe’d down at some point anyway, and I want to reduce their unit count for an out-of-the-Primal Align.

They drop their Scrounger, and snack their Gleaming Grenadin to get back Condemn – here I play out an Amplified Logistics Expert and this is probably a punt – I know they’re most likely going to go Condemn into Permafrost, so I should have probably run out Steward here as bait first, and that is…exactly what they do. I drop an SAA on the Scavenger, and then drop my Steward – they probably just have the Wisdom in hand, and I would strongly prefer my Steward to stick around. Of course, I’m entirely wrong as they go Sigil into Razorblades, which is honestly not particularly threatening. Here, I punt by playing the Vanguard out pre-combat – since I’m trying to make it seem as if I’m awful (which is honestly not that hard), I’m trying to bait Prack to block the Steward with the Razorbot, and not having a much better threat to block down the line probably incentivizes them to do so more.

Of course, it doesn’t end up mattering because I go and topdeck another Vanguard, and also topdeck a SAA off the first Vanguard draw to pick off the Razorbot that blocks it, and I’m fortunately very much turning the corner here with my pair of Vanguards. They play power and pass, and the fantastic topdecks keep coming with a Curtain Call and Alhed off my Vanguard draws – they take 13, and at this point, even if they get Align, I should still be able to close things out. I end up running out the Expert instead of holding up Curtain Call cause there’s nothing in their deck that can threaten my board anyways. They draw, and scoop it up.

Game 3:

I keep an opening hand with Trail Maker, Logistics Expert, SAA, 3 Sigils, and a Symbol. Going for the excessively greedy line, I open with a T1 Expert, hoping they do not have a Condemn. If you were rational and learned from previous games, you’d probably wait and just open with Time Symbol into Trail Maker, so you can still amplify Expert if need be, which is just assuaged when I draw my 4th Time Sigil. I play my Trail Maker, they play a Seek Power, and I regret all of my life choices when I draw my 2nd SAA. They grab a Razorblades to pluck off my Trail Maker, and I draw a Touvon I can’t play. Joy. XD They Vicious Overgrowth my Expert, which just sets back my Touvon even more. XD I play a Trail Maker and drop my 5th Sigil – please live. Please live. It dies on the end of my turn to a Flash Fry, and honestly I deserve this for my sloppy play. XD

They just attack with the Vermin and pass without even playing power, which is unbelievably suspicious – probably a Wisdom or a Realign. I topdeck an Expert and amplify it to hopefully start applying some pressure. They go for the Realign, and are probably just 1 or 2 Grenadins off from just wrecking me. They Razorblades my face just for the Razorbot, which tells me that they probably have another 1 cost Grenadin in hand coupled with Align, which means as much I would like to go for the Touvon here, I think I need to SAA the Razorbot and pass. They go for a slow speed Wisdom on their turn and play out a power before trying to poke in for 1 with Vermin – I try to go for the ambush block with Alchemist, but unfortunately, they have the Condemn to pick it off, and probably went looking for the Edict. I clock in for 4 with my Expert, and they play out a Scraptank on their turn and then drop their Align for 0. Joy. And then they Edict my Expert.

I plop the Touvon in at the end of turn hoping to draw into a Vine Grafter or if not that, a power to plop down Alchemist. I draw a fairly unhelpful SAA, and pass it back to them. They have a Sparking Vermin, sac it with Scrounger to Snipe and draw 2 cards, buyback Condemn, and frosting over my Touvon. Oh boy. They crack in for 12, and I’m in unsurprisingly awful shape. I draw an uncastable Touvon, and SAA that Scrounger immediately – I’d prefer not to die to pings, thank you very much. It doesn’t end up making a difference as they have Overgrowth into a Gleaming Grenadin, and I scoop it up. Not an archetype I was expecting going into this tournament at all, and Prack capitalised well on the punt that they didn’t even know I made. XD

 Match 2: (VS wsgRon)

I had planned this deck for a perhaps slightly slower build of Creation Sentinels, but I still think the deck will fare just fine against a more aggressive deck – we had a strong match-up against Mono Fire even with the main deck Edicts, and the Edicts should be able to clean up any of their cheap threats hat we can’t hit with SAA. I am a little concerned about them drawing multiple Vulks cause we don’t have clean 1 for 1 removal to deal with them unlike Flash Fry out of Fire decks. On top of that, with the Vulks having Overwhelm, the plan to just block them with Deadly Units isn’t quite as clean. That being said, I don’t think this match-up will be nearly as difficult as the previous one.

Game 1:

I mulligan my opening hand which only had 1 power; although it had Vanguard to pledge on Turn 1 and Expert + Exploit to Plunder, it just felt a little too dicey if they did manage to remove Expert with Salvo, especially since I am on the draw. I end up keeping my 2nd 7 of 2 Alchemists, an Exploit, an Edict, an SAA, a Sigil and a Xenan Cylix. Plenty of plunder to sculpt my hand as need be, and plenty of removal to deal with early game pressure from their side. Now let’s find a threat. After both playing power and passing on Turn 1, they open with a Flameheart Patroller whilst I opt for an Exploit to hopefully snipe a Vulk before it drops – I do get one, but they have 2 copies total, alongside a Relay Point, a Controlled Demolition, and a Blazing Salvo. Fortunately, they don’t have any power in hand, so depending on their draws, I shouldn’t be under too much pressure. I end up plundering away 1 of 2 Alheds instead of 1 of 2 Alchemists, which is a punt – considering they have both Salvo and Demolition in hand, Alchemist isn’t going to be particularly helpful in ambushing a big threat anyways. Unfortunately for me, they do topdeck a Combrei Vow and proceed to drop a Vulk. On my turn, I have the Edict in hand, which I’m quick to fire off, and plop down an Alhed to force the Demolition out of them next turn should they want to get through – I’d much rather use their Demolition to save their Patroller then have a recursive Double Damage Vulk to deal with down the road.

They do however topdeck a 3rd Vulk, and I’m positive fuming right now – at least they don’t have another power to get in with the Patroller this turn. Small victories. I play a Shadow Symbol and simply pass before they get in with Vulk – I decide to block here, and here’s why – if they don’t use their trick, we trade and that’s just swell. They probably sacrifice one Heart to another and that buys me a little time. If they do use the trick, then they don’t have it down the line for my Alchemists. I’m taking a decent chunk of damage regardless, but I’m still at 20 life and I think I can afford to do so right now. They decide to Relay Point instead, holding up the Salvo, but I run out my 1st Alchemist anyway and plunder Alhed to guarantee my next power drop – which is perfect, because I topdeck a Vanguard. Granted, it’s going to die to Slag, but small victories. One step at a time. Here, I wanted to keep the Alchemist for Vulk and SAA to blow them out in case they went for Demolition on Patroller to apply some pressure, which is not outside of the realm of possibility. I move to attack with Alchemist, and they understandably Salvo it.

They go for the Slag on Vanguard, play a Vow, and attack in for 5. I drew a Symbol and simply choose to pass: if they go for the attack here, I can ambush in Alchemist; if they go for Demolition (they have 1 card in hand, and I’d be surprised if they’d marketed it, because the card SLAPS), then I can blow them out with SAA on top of keeping the Alchemist. They play a Painting and attack with both units; I ambush in the Alchemist, plunder the Symbol, and block; being a competent player, they do not blow their trick here, and the 2 units trade. They then sacrifice their Relay Point to bring back Vulk, and I at present don’t have a good way of dealing with it.

I draw an Alchemist, draw with Trove, and decide to play the Grafter here – they’d have to topdeck a Flash Fry to get past it; otherwise, I should be able to buy myself a turn here since Demolitioning the Vulk doesn’t do anything. They don’t Fry up my plant, and I only get poked for 2. Next turn, I use the Grafter to get market access and give Alchemist Regen, which is about to be a complete blowout if they don’t have some fast speed removal for it. On their turn, they open with a Temple Raider and attack with everything. My Regen Alchemist leaps in and block Vulk, forcing the Demolition out of their hand to save it; I take 4 from Raider, but on my turn, I Express Route the Double Damage Vulk from the board.

Granted, I’m still at a very precarious life total, but if I can get the block with Alchemist on the Raider I think I might have a shot here. On their turn, they just draw and pass; I topdeck an Exploit and fire, taking the only legal target Autotread, before deploying my Trail Maker. I think there’s definitely an argument for going for the SAA on the Raider and try to turn the corner, or simply Plundering away the Trail Maker for actual power. I’d much rather save the SAA for the Phoenix Stones that I know they have in their deck, but I probably should have just Plundered the Trail Maker since there’s a good chance it just gets removed.

They draw and pass; I draw, play my Symbol and ship it straight back. Oh dear. They play a Vow and pass, and when it gets back round to my turn, I see that they are just bricking hard, so I decide to turn the corner and be a little more aggressive, using the SAA on the Raider and getting in for 5. Missed a whole turn’s worth of damage by not going for it earlier, but…sunk cost fallacy, you know? They draw and pass again, whereas I draw a Curtain Call and am positively thrilled. I attack again for 5, and on their turn, they plop an unallied Temple Raider; I play my Time Symbol after drawing a Shadow one – no point in holding too much power in hand when this deck has plenty of ways to use it. And even though they elect not to block, I fire off the Curtain Call to put them to 1 and just a horrible spot moving into the next turn. Now that I have a decent life buffer, I shouldn’t be dead to any strange surprises. They play out their 3rd Raider, but I Destiny Call off the top, and that’s game. Definitely got unbelievably lucky there with Ron bricking for 5 turns, but it happens sometimes. 😛

Game 2:

I mulligan my 1st 7 since it had 1 power and no pledge; my second 7 is 4 Time Sigils, an Edict, a SAA, and Touvon. Even though I’m on the draw, this hand is just way too dicey against a fast aggro, so it’s a very obvious 6 for me. My 6 contains a Shadow Symbol, a Seat, a Time Sigil, a Curtain Call, a Steward, and an Edict. Not tragic, honestly. I open with a T1 Symbol whilst they go for Phoenix Stone. Oh no. I play a Seat, pass, and they have a Patroller. I topdeck an Alhed and play that alongside a Sigil – where are the Combrei Units for my Edict? XD They play a Vow, buff the Patroller, and I opt to take the trade here: even on a mull to 6, I have the stronger late-game, so I’d rather trade off early. No tricks occur, and they play out a Fort Smasher post-combat. Now, even though I have the option of Edict-ing here, I play out the Twinned Spiteling I drew instead – no need to remove it just yet when I can simply block.

On their turn, they drop an allied Temple Raider which I block with the Spiteling half of the Duo, and there are no Salvos to be found. On my turn, after drawing an Alchemist, I decide to just Edict the Fort Smasher and get in – considering that Timekeeper is a symmetrical unit, if I can get this Timekeeper to grow it’ll be rather tricky for them to deal with it, so I’d prefer not to trade it off here. On their turn, they play a Vulk, and I decide not to Alchemist at the end of their turn – with 2 Shadow Cards in hand, I won’t be able to get a Time Sigil anyways. On my turn, I attack with the Timekeeper as I’m down for a trade here; they elect not too, and I follow it up with Steward post-combat.

They attack with Vulk; since with the Curtain Call in hand I should be winning this race, I elect to just take the 5 so that I can still get in with my units. Post combat, they drop a 2nd Vulk, which may be rather problematic. I draw a Cylix, and since I now have enough power and Time influence for Alchemist + Call, I’m down for attacking; there’s something to be said of holding a unit back, but I think that telegraphs my Curtain Call in hand far too obviously. Although I don’t gain quite as much life, I still think this is a very worthwhile tempo trade. Even better, after declaring blocks, they opt to try and Salvo the Alchemist, which means I get to completely blow them out with the Call. They pass without activating the 1st Vulk’s Heart, which tells me they probably took Smite and are planning to remove one of my units on attacks.

I draw a Cylix and play it before attacking with everything; they block Timekeeper with Vulk, and Smite the Steward; I follow up post-combat to Steward both Vulks in their void and draw with Trove. I find a Vine Grafter, which I plan to use next turn to get me a Regen Slimespitter Slug – now that Smite is out of the picture, it’s going to be unbelievably tricky for them to deal with Slug. They use a Heart to buyback a Silenced Vulk, and because they’re so low, on my turn they have to block one of my units for fear of a 2nd Curtain Call; I don’t have it, but Steward trading with Vulk isn’t that tragic either. Following combat, I went for the Grafter play as expected, and pass it back.

On their turn, they play a pair of Relay Points, probably hoping to block whilst dropping a relic to activate Heart with on their next turn, but unfortunately I Destiny the Curtain Call into an Edict for exactsies. A very strong draw from me following a mull to 6 coupled with some later Vulks out of my opponent’s side led to my pretty decisive victory there, but it could have definitely gone south if they’d been able to loop some Vulks in between my Stewards.

Match 3: (VS AsheAcer)

This is a match-up of ‘Can I kill all of their fliers??’ Honestly, though, it’s otherwise quite difficult for them to push through on the ground through my deadly units, and depending on my draw, I can amass some ground pressure or defense quite quickly. Having said that, Passionate Stonehammer is terrifying to see now that I’ve dropped Suffocate main. I do think the deck is just asking to trip over its own feet with its influence requirements, so maybe I’m getting worked up over not much.

(For context: I had just spent 25 minutes trying to sort through my technology issues before this match, so I am not entirely in the right headspace for some serious Eternal, to be perfectly honest. Also, I had flamed AsheAcer very hard for bringing this deck to the tournament prior to starting because it’d require some serious Magical Christmas land draws to win in general. Let’s see how that panned out. >.<)

Game 1:

My first hand is a Vanguard, a Touvon, a Seat, a Cylix, an Edict, a Spiteling, and a Curtain Call. My main concern is that I have a lot of depleted power, and won’t be doing anything relevant until Turn 4; especially on the draw, this hand is probably far too slow in this matchup. My 2nd hand contains a Cylix, a Shadow Symbol, an Expert, 2 Sigil, and 2 Exploits. Although I don’t have any removal, hopefully I can snag the burst threats out of their hand before they even drop, and it’s probably still better than going down to 6. They open with a Justice Symbol, and I draw a 2nd Expert – it’s great that now I have a semi-threat should I need it – before playing a Sigil and 1 Expert. They play an Ironthorn, ship it back to me, and I Exploit, seeing a Martial Efficiency, Ruffian, and Vanquish; seeing as they have an active Ironthorn that I won’t be removing any time soon, Ruffian seems like the best choice, especially if they draw a flier shortly. I elect not to plunder here, cause I’ve learned from Match 1 what typically happens with my auxiliary power. They poke in for 3 with Ironthorn, and pass it back to me. I play a Sigil, Exploit, and see that they’ve found a flier – no thank you. Hopefully I’ll be able to bait out the Vanquish with my Amplified Logistics Expert the following turn so they won’t have it around for when I drop Touvon.

Unfortunately, they topdeck Tower like a lucky AsheAcer, and I’m absolutely flipping out. XD It also puts 2 fliers on board, which is very tricky for my current hand to deal with. I draw a Curtain Call, and opt to play out my Amplified Logistics Expert here. There is an argument for saving it and just Curtain Calling, but that is way too defensive and doesn’t really deal with the site, so I’d rather draw out the Vanquish, and slam the Touvon later on to deal with the site ghagt way and hopefully get max Call value. I do still need a pretty beefy unit to push through to that site because of the known Efficiency in hand, so I need to make sure my Touvon sticks.

Understandably, they Vanquish the Logistics Expert and put me down to 10. I play a power and pass, heavily signalling Touvon; they play a pair of Gloves on a Valkyrie, but still walk the Ironthorn right into my big ambush boi. On my turn, I Curtain Call and activate Touvon, taking down the site and hopefully stabilising for a bit life wise – I drew a Vine Grafter, so if I can get down a Slug, that should be game. They attack for 5 in the air and put me down to 11 before passing, and on my turn, I play and activate Grafter, putting away the Shadow Symbol for Slug before cracking in with Touvon for 8. On his turn, Ashe plays Ruffian, which is just lethal, but then he has to style on me by playing a 2nd Ruffian – and he still has a Martial Efficiency in hand. 1 turn too late, unfortunately. 😛

Game 2:

I mulligan my 1st hand with only 1 power; my second 7 has 2 Time Sigil and 5 Shadow cards, which is not passable either, so I unfortunately have to go to 6, which is rather nervewracking against this deck. My 6 has 2 Shadow Symbols, 1 Time Symbol, a Temple Standard, an Alhed, and a Touvon. Oh dear. We each open with a Symbol, and they have a T2 Ironthorn again. Joy. I play the Standard on Turn 2, and they follow up with a pair of Gloves on their Ironthorn before slapping me for 6. I draw an Alchemist, play a Shadow Symbol and decide to just pass with the intent of plundering away Touvon and deploying a pair of Alheds or my Spiteling next turn; unfortunately, I don’t think Touvon will be terribly helpful in this matchup. They play a Spireguard Valkyrie, and I block the Ironthorn with my Alchemist. On my turn, I end up playing the Spiteling; in hindsight, it would have made more sense to play their pair of Alheds, even if Spiteling is better value cards wise; I need to quickly start pressuring them before they kill me in the air, and it’s not as if Ashe would ever take the trade.

On their turn, they play a Patroller, Justice Symbol, and a Ruffian, clocking me in the air for 10. Oh dear. I better find a removal spell quick. On my turn, I play an Alhed before hitting for 4, holding up the Alchemist to block the Patroller, and passing. In hindsight I should have attacked with Spiteling here since I had no intention of blocking with it. They play an Ijin, and just attack with the Valkyrie for 3; I opt not to ambush in the Alchemist, and on my turn, I play a Cylix, draw with Trove and pick up a Symbol. Oh no. I play out my 2nd Alhed since I had the Time Sigil to grow the pair of them next turn, and attack for 5 with the Timekeeper. On their turn, they play power and attack with all their units, making the Patroller a 5/3; I ambush in Alchemist and block so that I would have exactsies for lethal next turn. Not that it terribly mattered since they had Martial Efficiency for lethal in the air anyway. Sometimes you just don’t draw any of your removal, and there’s not a terrible amount I felt that I could have done about that. I’ve definitely gotten extremely lucky on Ashe in previous TNEs, so turnabout is fair play. 😛

Match 4: (VS TCGcthulhu)

This is the deck I brought Xenan to beat, so I hope that this pans out well. Ideally we can ramp into an early Vanguard to throw them off, or just completely mess up combat for them between ample removal and deadly units. It also definitely helps that in these factions, they don’t have the 1 cost market spell to get rid of my power dorks particularly easily, so there’s a lot less risk to including them. As long as I don’t draw horribly, and play around the obvious interaction like Technique, I should be good.

Game 1:

My first 7 has a Time Symbol, 2 Time Sigils, a Spiteling, 2 SAAs, and a Curtain Call. Whilst it’s nice to have 2 pieces of removal, I can’t play anything in my hand, and since I’m on the play, it’s too risky of a hand to keep against Soldiers; I redraw into a hand with 2 Time Sigils, a Seat, 2 Spitelings, a Curtain Call and an Alhed. Whilst I can still only cast 1 card in hand, hopefully I can either draw into a Plunder card or simply another shadow source to unlock the rest of my hand. Whilst this hand is still quite risky, I don’t think it’s worth going to 6; might be very wrong, however. I open with Seat, and they play a Painting into Logistics Expert. I draw a Time Symbol and play out my Alhed; they play out a Dovid and Daru Lee, which is pretty terrifying due to my lack of removal. I play my Time Symbol and just ship it back. On their turn, they play Hifos, and go for a Call, but misclick and don’t end up exhausting any of their Soldiers. Undeterred, they clock in for 4 with Dovid. On my turn, I play a pretty big Spiteling, and although they have Dovid into Vicious Overgrowth for the Spiteling, they don’t have a good answer for the Timekeeper since they aren’t running Permafrost in their deck.

 On my turn I hit my 6th Time influence for Alhed and slam; fearing the trick I do have, they don’t block, and I follow up with my 2nd Spiteling. They go Dovid into Vicious Overgrowth again, but still don’ really have good attacks. Seeing that they have no open power, I start by attacking with all my units; they let my 2 Timekeepers through, and I Curtain Call for lethal. Considering I was unable to find a removal spell for Hifos at any point, I think that would have been a drastically different game hadn’t they misclicked, but unfortunately that’s how it panned out, and my draw capitalised on that very quickly. :/

Game 2:

I mull my 1st 7 with 2 Shadow Symbols, a Curtain Call, a Steward, 2 Alchemists, and a Trail Maker; even though I am on the draw, no Time influence means this is an incredibly sus hand. My 2nd 7 has 2 Time Sigils, a Seat, a Cylix, a Vanguard, an Alchemist and an SAA. Excellent: interaction and Vanguard. Snap keep. They play a Painting into a Shock Troops, and I lead with my Xenan Cylix – I’m not planning on doing anything this turn anyway, and in case I draw a Twinned Spiteling, I want to guarantee undepleted power later on down the line, which I consider worthwhile despite losing out on the minor upside of possibly eventually drawing a Trove. They poke in for 1, play Logistics Expert and a Justice Sigil, and pass; I draw and play an Alhed since they have nothing on board that can get past me right now.

They play a depleted Painting and pass, which probably means they’re pretty stuck on Primal influence; as a result, I choose to attack with Alhed and hold up Alchemist or SAA. They find it in the form of a Vow next turn, and elect to lead with Dovid into a Vicious Overgrowth to take out Alhed and poke in for 1 before playing a Daru Lee; the Lee immediately eats a SAA from me. I draw a Curtain Call, and elect to play the power and pass; considering that I don’t have much of a board presence right now, I’m considering plundering the Curtain Call away since it’s not fantastic in this position to guarantee that I have enough power for Touvon.

That is exactly what I do when they attack, and they fortunately do not have Martial Efficiency – they had Hardiness, which allows their Troops to get in for 4, but they still end up losing their Dovid. On my turn, I slam down the Vanguard, whereas on theirs they play another Shock Troops and pass; on my turn, after a little deliberation, I choose to open by attacking with Vanguard – they can double block and trade, but they know about Curtain Call in my deck, which probably makes them a little wary because it puts them at risk of losing their whole board; even if they do have a trick of their own, it means they won’t be able to use it against Touvon. Besides, without Permafrost, they don’t have a good answer to Touvon main. They do have the Argo’s Technique, and I lose my Vanguard, but next turn they attack and I plop a Touvon in front of the Shock Troops – whilst there is a risk of them having just drawn Martial Efficiency, considering they didn’t have it previously, the odds are pretty low. They do not, and instead play out their 3rd Shock Troops post-combat.

On my turn, to be power efficient, I play my Sigil alongside a Vanguard and Grafter before attacking in with Touvon. On their turn, they play a power and pass, and when it comes back to me, I draw with Touvon to see if I draw anything interesting before attacking; I do draw an Edict, but even if I use it I don’t have lethal this turn. Either way, I’m incredibly far ahead at this point that it’s not too much of a concern; post-combat, I put away a Time Symbol and grab Slimespitter Slug; in hindsight, I should have probably put away 1 of my 2 Spitelings because with a Touvon on board and them having very few ways of dealing with it, I have a great outlet in which to dump my power, so I should be playing out power where I can. They have a Vicious Overgrowth to deal with a Soldier of mine on their turn and amplify it to buff their units, but on mine I Edict a Shock Troops, and they proceed to scoop it up.

Post-tournament thoughts:

On the bright side, I managed to win both match-ups which I had brought this deck specifically to combat, but I was completely blindsided by some unexpected archetypes – I guess you should never be targeting your expected meta too aggressively. I wasn’t impressed by Moldermuck nor Suffocate in my market at all, and I’ll be swapping them out for something different moving forward; I’m considering moving Exploit to the market because as we saw in the games against Ashe, whilst it’s nice to rip a key threat from their hand, it can be too slow on occasion against the aggro deck – plus, sometimes your opponent just topdecks like a maniac. I’m also considering playing Devastating Setback in the market just as a fail-safe against the go-wide decks I appeared to struggle against. Of course, I also have the option to pack The Speaking Circle should aggro be less popular, but I honestly don’t think that will be the case. XD

In terms of the main-deck, there was some discussion in the tournament chat about KTE, most likely in a Argenport or Kerendon shell, being a very good counter to Soldiers and Sentinels, which I wholeheartedly agree with. I tried to make the powerbase in Kerendon work but it just completely fell apart on me; perhaps KTE might still work in a different shell, perhaps Purpose, but I’m not entirely sure how that would look like. If Kerendon becomes popular, I think I’d probably still keep Steward in the 4 drop slot, but there aren’t really that many good options against Kerendon on that curve slot. If KTE does become popular, however, I might need to dial back some of the power dorks to avoid getting completely blown out by one on Turn 4.

On the other hand, judging from what I’ve seen poking around ladder as of late, some people might be playing Xenan Midrange as well – this very iteration, thank you very much. Now if that’s what people are bringing to counter Soldiers and Sentinels (honestly, I think both this and KTE work – it really is a matter of preference), then I would almost assuredly go Ubsat since there’s still a lot of value in silencing their hand later in the game, and tends to be more impactful against the cards Xenan Midrange decks are playing. (I’m looking at you, Twinned Spiteling.) Although those match-ups tend to devolve into whoever can play their Ubsat first, which isn’t always the most fun thing to play – or watch.

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with how I played, and I still consider this deck to be a very good ladder climber as well as a solid choice for the very last TNE of this season tomorrow. The deck itself is fairly intuitive – I mean, it’s just like all other midrange decks – so if you’re still searching for something to bring tomorrow, this definitely feels like a reasonable choice, so pick it up and give it a few games. Hope I don’t have to end up facing any of you on this list in the Swiss. XD

As per always, you can find me on Twitter @stormguard798 or lurking in the FE or TEJ Discord to talk about this deck, Eternal in general, or not Eternal in general. Until next time. 🙂

P.S. For all the people wondering why the sudden change of series title, we were recently joking in TEJ chat about all the fun different puns that you can make with the abbreviation of my username: Storm. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of very good ones, and this is the title I settled on. Hopefully, this tournament report can give you a good snapshot of the current meta, but like most weather reports, it’ll probably be inaccurate by the time it gets published. 😛

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