Hi everyone! It’s stormguard798, and following the weekend’s TNE tournament, I’ve got another deck tech and tournament report coming your way. Expedition has just rotated: there’s a brand new set, the card pool has completely changed, and everyone is trying their hand at spicy new brews and synergistic tribal decks. So what do I do? I go back to the deck that had dominated old Expedition and play Kerendon. Obviously. I’m a grinch for fun, so obviously. On a more serious note, given that it’s still a fairly open meta, I’m very much inclined to simply jam all the solid ‘glue’ cards and all the strong value cards in 1 deck. I also expected to see at least some number of Grenadin decks and Pyrotech combo decks, and I felt this deck was quite well-positioned against both of those, which is why I ended up taking it. Let’s take a look at the various cards!

(Btw, I’m just going to skip past the old cards like Know Thy Enemy (KTE), Send An Agent (SAA), cause…they’re good. You play them. Moving on.)

Decklist:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/JketwVFY0fM/did-you-miss-me-anti-pyrotech-kerendon

VODs! (I didn’t play in any initial feature match I don’t believe, but there’s a lot of fantastic play and commentary, and gives you a pretty good cross-section of how every other deck plays, so you can see what lines THEY take, and therefore how to block them. :}) Thanks to Telemokos for uploading them! ^-^

Inclusions:

• Onoris Roa – Now that Feartracker is no longer in EXP, I was looking for another strong defensive unit that would be good value by itself, but also a great hit off KTE, and Onoris just perfectly fit that bill. With Annihilate out of the meta, there aren’t too many popular options right now to deal with it outside of SAA, and if you have the excess power to sink into gaining the extra life, it can close the door against the aggro decks. Other than that, the spell damage invulnerability also comes in handy against Pyrotech decks since they need 2 Pyrotech Explosions, 1 to deal with this and 1 to hit your face, and it only gets worse in multiple. Finally, being a 5/5 Overwhelm for 5 is honestly a perfectly fine unit for beating down with, which sometimes we do need to switch to depending on the matchup.

• Deathwing – It’s a perfectly serviceable unit on 3 (a Vampire Nighthawk is never really too bad, for those people who have played MtG before): gains some health against aggro, blocks big fliers out of their side, and is just another hit off KTE. Not the most exciting card, but I think one that is necessary, at least in the current format.

• Enter the Monastery – With Display of Vision no longer being an option, a card that helps ramp is important to peel ahead and ensure you get to the power that you need late game for massive KTEs and the like. Ultimately, I felt that I’d rather have a Draw 2 Justice Sigils as opposed to the possibility of merely playing a Scheme in the form of Bartholo’s Keepsake, which would be the fail case here; I also didn’t feel that I had a lot of good non-power hits for Keepsake other than Deathwing since you do want to ambush in Alchemist as opposed to playing it on your turn, which is why I leaned towards playing Enter. (I am open to hearing why I am dead wrong here.) As such, I’m playing 6 Combrei duals in the form of 2 Seats and 4 Paintings, and only 3 copies of Enter since I only have a total of 7 Justice Sigils.

• Exploit – It’s a fantastic hand attack spell, and plundering also helps fix some of the influence issues you might encounter. Particularly considering that Pyrotech Combo is still popular in not only EXP but in Throne, it’s just disruption that you need to pack right now. Easy 4 of in any Shadow deck, no question. Next. Whilst we’re on the topic of plundering, I’m running 25 power with 8 ways to plunder and the 3 Enter, which I’ve found to work well to get the necessary power for this deck, and therefore have no need to run even more power.

• Builder’s Decree – Again, probably one of the generically strongest cards to come out of the new set. You usually don’t want to play this on 1 since you’re still down a card with the effect, but it’s nice to be able to do that in a pinch; particularly in the late game, if you can get 1 or 2 Sentinels off this, it’s going to be absolutely game-changing. Since there aren’t many board wipes particularly in Expedition, dropping this, blocking their board wipe and just crashing in ends the game pretty quickly. We are only running 2 of it in this deck because realistically it is a 5 drop that makes a 5/5 with some bonuses and flexibility, and it can have quite a low floor, but the modality of this card is so powerful to not run at least a couple.

• Suffocate – Similarly to what Doc28 had pointed out in their article (go check it out if you haven’t already!) with Mandrakes and Argenport Valkyries being so prolific in the meta as of now, there are so many fantastic targets for a Suffocate from The Merriest Mandrake (TMM) to Deathwing to Rolant – a lot of the commonly played defensive value threats are cleared by a Suffocate. I couldn’t quite fit 4 in, but in the current meta, I do believe that playing 4 is certainly fairly defensible.

• The Sites – I decided to address both sites at one point because they sort of serve the same function: a source of constant value that culminates in a massive game-ending unit if it isn’t dealt with; with all the removal and disruption that this deck packs alongside some fantastic defensive units, the deck can definitely protect both sites well. The question now becomes which site is better. On the one hand, The Speaking Circle works better with our curve since only KTE is at 6, and is also slightly heftier and harder to deal with; being able to block opposing sites out of control decks is great. On the other hand, Lord Steyer’s Tower has a reliably strong agenda even if I very rarely trigger the Valkyrie-Warp clause on it, whereas I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with the randomness of The Speaking Circle. We ultimately went for a 2 Tower/1 Circle split, but following the tournament and seeing all the sites that people are playing particularly out of AP, I almost certainly would go for 3 Speaking Circle. It is kind of clunky at 6, which is why we aren’t running 4 of it.

Exclusions:

• Just Desserts/Vanquish – Lumping the 2 of these together because they’re both 2 power Justice removal spells. My biggest problem with both of these is that they both sort of rely on high power creatures; whilst they were both solid back when FTP Sling was a popular deck in the meta, particularly Just Desserts which reflected back the unit’s own damage. Since the archetype has been pushed out due to a lack of good 4 power 6 attack units, and with Mandrakes and AP Valkyries as creature decks flooding the ladder, there aren’t just that many units that these removal spells can hit that can’t be answered by more versatile options such as SAA. Also, given the strong Tribal theme of this set coupled with the fact that tribal units tend to be fairly cheap, I don’t think we’ll be seeing a lot of both of these for a while, at least in the main deck.

• Combrei Healer – Another option that I had considered over Deathwing in the 3 drop slot; a 2/5 unit blocks well and passes me a Water of Life is certainly fine. However, power creep in this game has not been great for Healer, and the flying coupled with the deadly is just so much more versatile in holding threats back; the flying on Deathwing also allows me to go aggressive should the situation call for it. If I felt I needed more units for KTE, this could perhaps warrant inclusion, but for now, it’s just been edged out by better options.

• Nectar of Unlife – This deck doesn’t pressure all that well and hence I thought it might struggle with sites, so I initially included this as an option that can do direct damage to sites, and also have additional utility to buy back some units in the late game – and boy do we have some truly delightful units to buyback. The problem arose when Grenadins, which this can still act as a removal spell for, started to thin out of the meta, and Mandrakes shot up in popularity, which this doesn’t deal with at all due to their high toughness. Whilst having the option to buy back units is nice, it’s still not a particularly power-efficient way of doing so, and ultimately more effective options just edged this out of the deck.

• Seek Power – After you’ve had an entire Expedition of Petition and then you go back to Seek Power, my gosh is the contrast painfully stark. Yes, it can help you fix in a pinch if need be, which this deck occasionally struggles with given its tough influence requirements, being only able to grab 1 influence at a time is still rather painful. Ultimately, I found it better to simply roll the dice with our 8 Plunder cards, and with those, I didn’t find myself into many raw power issues. This was cemented by the decision to run Enter the Monastery as I wanted to maximise the number of Justice Sigils I had.

• Massive Greatsword/Backbreaker – Man, does anyone remember how broken Backbreaker was at only 5 power? Wow. On a different note, however, with SAA being such a clean answer to Backbreaker in the format, I didn’t like my odds on using something like a Backbreaker to try and stabilise. Whilst the ability to recur it with Maeve is nice, that’s a little bit random and dicey, and I don’t think TJS is quite the faction for target relic weapon recursion. On the other hand, whilst not being able to be pipped by SAA is nice, but I feel the late game value that Massive Greatsword provides just pales compared to what the sites can do. Definitely worth some consideration in the market, however.

Market:

• Winchest Merchant – Somehow probably one of the most controversial pieces of the deck. Between this and Plate Grafter, I feel as though the flying is just a more powerful keyword both offensively and defensively, and whilst being able to grant something like a Deathwing or Onoris Endurance is very strong indeed, you don’t often have turns where you just have a bonus 3 power sitting around, nor could you afford the tempo loss. Tell me if I’m wrong here. On the other hand, Regen is definitely a much spicier keyword, which is why I considered Vine Grafter; giving a regen shield to something like a Rolant or Onoris could absolutely completely change combat. However, the shadow market is absolutely awful; there’s no generically strong top-end cards like a Svetya or Greatsword, and although there is some void hate and a lot of efficient removal, there is no interaction for relics (which makes sense, given the lack of relic removal in Shadow outside Burglarize, period) and overall just a weaker market despite the stronger Merchant.

• From Anguish – This slot was either going to be From Anguish or Vanquish, but after a quick look at the meta, the only thing of major concern that Vanquish could hit that From Anguish can’t is Wasteland Broker, which I think I’m pretty fine with. Hence, I elect for the more versatile option.

• Equalize – I will be completely blunt here: I am very, very bad at using this card properly, as you shall see later on. Having said that, this is a very efficient boardwipe, and prior to this TNE tournament, I hadn’t seen too much Face Aegis out of control at all, which also enables the discard part of it as well. As a deck that typically does want to dump most of its power on the board anyway, we don’t often have a lot of cards in hand, and coupled with the Enter, we could get some pretty spicy Equalize turns off. I say could, since my teammates have pulled this off to much greater success than I have. I swear I’ll work out how to play this card eventually! (But seriously, it’s great. Even warranted some main deck discussion if we were running the Relic Weapon suite, but still fantastic even then.)

• Tayana the Mender – Not the flashiest form of relic interaction, and it doesn’t deal with relic weapons at all. However, if control decks are on the rise after TheBergund’s win, then Tayana is sort of necessary piece to deal with Worldpyre and possibly Beacon Control decks (if those become a thing again). However, if the meta does have a consistent shift away from that, since we don’t have use for Tayana’s first line of text, I could see removing her for something like Greatsword.

• Reality Warden – Originally I had Gavel in this slot. However, do you know want Mandrakes have a really tough time dealing with? A multifaction giant unit – pretty much only Express Route is a clean answer to Reality Warden. Shutting off Shoal Stirrings and other recursive shanhooligans from the Mandrake, as well as Maeve’s recursion in the mirror will steal games, and I’m willing to sacrifice the efficiency of Gavel for an absolute tank of a unit.

• Svetya, Lightbringer – A little awkward against relic weapons, but Svetya has been a staple of Justice markets and occasionally main since she was released. Whilst she can be a little awkward at 6 being missed by KTE, which is why she isn’t in the main deck, she is still a must-answer late-game threat that can completely take over the game in right spots. My favourite play? Dropping her just before an opposing site is about to complete its agenda. Sorry not sorry. 🙂

• Combrei Vow – I originally had a market power in the original iteration of the deck, but since switching to Enter the Monastery, I didn’t include any Time Sigils in my deck, so I wasn’t able to fix with the Vow anyway, and I didn’t really have a use for power in my void. In addition, it was mostly there for fixing rather than raw power, so I felt that it ultimately wasn’t too necessary.

(Disclaimer: I am now about to include the tournament report section of this article, which I tried to detail for all of y’all the best that I can. However, I will say that this is probably 1 of the worst tournaments that I have ever played. The number of punts that I made per match is nigh astronomical; I’m not as familiar with the deck as I was with Stonescar, so I definitely didn’t play as well. Hopefully, you can take all the mistakes I made, and proceed to NOT repeat them. :D)

Match 1 (VS Narttram):

On Xenan Mandrakes, I’m really hoping to draw a number of Suffocates to stave off the 3 drops and 4 drops, before sweeping up the rest of the 2 drops with a KTE. Whilst Exploit can be kind of strong in taking a key value piece like TMM, considering this is a tribal deck, amongst the rest of them there is a large redundancy of Mandrakes to get their engine started. I think if we’re able to stick a Reality Warden to shut off the Shoal Stirrings and cut off their late game recursion plan, which the deck does have a difficult time removing other than Express Route, then we should be able to outvalue them in the long game fairly easily. My prerogative is to spend their removal aggressively because as with all tribal decks, the synergy between all the mandrakes really amplifies their power the more they have on board.

Game 1:

I mulliganed my first hand since it only had 1 power; I keep a second hand with a Justice Sigil, an AP seat, an AP Cylix, KTE, SAA, a Merchant, and an Exploit. I decide to keep this hand because if I really need to, I can attempt to plunder the SAA in order to attempt to get some Time influence, but with a SAA, a KTE and the Merchant to snag a Warden later on, this hand seems great if I can piece together the influence this round. Fortunately, I topdeck a painting, and we’re off to the races. On Turn 2, I Exploit and see a Tangler and a Vine Grafter; I decide to take the Tangler here because both can be hit by a SAA and Vine Grafter can still get swept up by a KTE; I decide to plunder my Diana here to find a 2^nd Time influence, but alas, no dice. On Turn 3 I play the Merchant and grab the Reality Warden in hopes of playing it eventually.

They then play out a slew of Mandrakes; I manage to kill a Shadowcreeper with a SAA, but couldn’t find any more removal for the 3 drop Venomous Mandrake and Invasive Creeper, instead deploying a 2^nd Merchant for Svetya putting away KTE. They play the Vine Grafter and ult it, giving their legion of Mandrakes lifesteal and deadly; I hop in with an Alchemist and plunder away the Warden, but they’ve gained a ton of life. Even after deploying Svetya next turn, I have to throw her in front one of the deadly mandrakes to stay alive and die on the following turn. In terms of decision points here: I think my choice or going after the Tangler with Exploit was correct, but should have probably saved my Send An Agent for not a 2 drop since I knew I had the KTE in hand; got a little trigger happy there. I think that in that position since I was feeling kind of overwhelmed by their board presence and we were pretty even in terms of cards in hand, I think Equalize would have been a pretty good choice. Frankly, Equalize would have been pretty good throughout this matchup, but as you see, I’m too much of a buffoon to realise I need to pull it. As I will aptly demonstrate…right now.

Game 2:

…I am so ashamed of how I played this game, my goodness. XD My opening hand was 2 Justice Sigils, an AP Cylix, 2 Dianas, a SAA and a From Beyond; I decide to mulligan this hand because I have 3 Time cards and no way to play them. My 2^nd hand has 2 power, a Combrei Seat and a Justice Sigil, but fortunately, I do have 2 Alchemists and a mono-Shadow card in a From Beyond to plunder away and get my Shadow influence, so I end up keeping this hand. In addition, I have a Merchant, as well as a KTE. I end up doing exactly just that on Turn 2, and on Turn 3 I draw an Exploit and take a peek at their hand: a TMM, a Vine Grafter, a Goliath Flytrap, a Shadowcreeper, and a Fatal Misstep. I end up taking the TMM because they have 3 cards that can ultimate in hand and 1 more on the board, and at present I don’t have a removal spell that can deal with it, so I don’t want them to get too much insurmountable value. I keep the KTE in hand to hopefully clear their 2 drops, which is my rationale when I block the Vine Grafter they play the next turn with my 2^nd Alchemist just to blow the Regen. Oops. .-. I think that signalled far too hard to them that I had a KTE and stopped them from overcommitting.

On Turn 5 I punt again, dropping an Onoris Roa to stop their blockers and completely forgetting about the Fatal Misstep I just saw in their hand. Should have tried to make them burn it on a cheap unit or at least one with a summon effect. I sweep their board on Turn with a KTE and find a 2^nd Onoris, which is great; they follow up the KTE with a Regen-buffed Shadow Creeper off the Grafter alongside a 2^nd Grafter. At this point, I have a Maeve, an uncastable Rolant (been kind of unlucky off those Alchemist Plunders, and a Merchant.) Given that they are almost empty-handed save for possibly the Flytrap in hand, I definitely shouldn’t have run Maeve out and instead gone for the Merchant into Equalize or Reality Warden; if I can get them to use the Creeper ultimate on the Onoris, I should well clear to drop the Maeve and start accruing value. Of course, I drop the Maeve there and then, and it predictably eats the ultimate of the creeper. Why did I do that? Punts I say. Punts.

On my following turn, I play the Merchant, putting away Rolant to grab a Svetya, entirely forgetting about the Aegis nullifying part of Shadowcreeper. I think here I maybe should have just pressed with Onoris just so I can start getting some damage in whilst I’m still sort of ahead. On their turn, they simply ultimate with the Vine Grafter, so I run out the Svetya to block any more units from hitting the board, realising my punt when the Svetya’s Aegis immediately gets popped. They pass without doing anything, and then I topdeck an Exploit to take a quick peek at their hand; for context, at this point I still have a single Merchant in my hand. They have a Slug, a Regen boosted Broker, a Goliath Flytrap, and a Suffocate. I punt by taking the Slug here: my rationale was that I didn’t want them to take my only source of damage now in the form of my flying Merchant, but obviously looking back at it, they could just do that with Suffocate instead. Here, I absolutely should have taken the Broker, because right now I don’t need them gaining a bunch of life to put this game far out of reach for me. I plunder the 2^nd Rolant now into a Justice Sigil (oh dear), and I don’t feel great right now.

They play the Broker as expected, and the following turn I drew a Diana, draw a SAA, and clock that Broker. At this point, given that I have 2 5/5s on board, I think I should just start clearing the way and knocking off those Regen buffs. This is the reasoning: they don’t have a lot of gas left in hand, and as I pointed out, Mandrakes is a deck that’s all about unit density. Although I’m trading down, I have the far stronger late game (at least in my opinion) and I need to clear the way so that when an Invasive Creeper or Venomous Nightshade comes down, it won’t be nearly as impactful. However, I didn’t and you’ll see how it all falls off the rails. They Suffocate Diana, which tracks, and play out the Flytrap, which I clock with a 2^nd SAA. They then play out a 2^nd Flytrap and a Shoaldredger. I play out Merchant and grab…Reality Warden?? (In my mind, I wanted a blocker, but I think given how cards-even we are right now, Equalize was the correct play.)

They attack with the Shoal Dredger, play out a Vine Tangler, and I play a Warden on my next turn. They attack with the dredger on the following turn, and forgetting about the 1 of Temple Tactic in their deck, double block and get completely blown out. They then play out an Invasive Vinecreeper. Fortunately, I do have 2 Shadow at this point, which allows me to drop a pretty beefy Rolant from all the Svetya procs. (Yes, she is still on board.) They play power and pass, creeping up to that ultimate on Vine Tangler. I play an Enter the Monastery and play out both power; what I should have done here is grab Equalize with my Merchant, because when they drop their 7^th power and completely destroy my board with killer attacks backed up by Regen and Lifesteal, I wasn’t able to come back at all. Even if I had played out Merchant at that point, they still have massive Shoaldredgers that I couldn’t clear because I had 2 units out. Definitely a game that I perhaps could have won if I had played more intelligently. Darn.

Match 2: (VS Slepher)

^^the deck I literally brought this one to fight against. I definitely feel good about having lots of disruption to hopefully pick off Merchants, Realign and Machinations at various points, depending on what is offered to me. Hopefully, I’ll be able to back up that disruption with some decent pressure particularly in the form of Onoris; I don’t have to be concerned about Fatal Misstep out of this decklist (thank goodness, oops), and there’s only 2 Pyrotech Explosion; if I can take 1 away from them and stick an Onoris, they essentially cannot win. Which would be great. I think seeing the Discard, they’ll know not to make an early grab of Overloader since they only have the 1 of, so I’m also hoping to keep up SAA in order to hopefully interrupt, well, something if I see it coming.

Game 2:

(Game 1 Slepher unfortunately got stuck on 2 power for about 10 turns. Moving on.)

My first hand has 2 Paintings, a Justice Sigil, 2 SAAs, 1 Enter, and 1 From Beyond; whilst I love the perfect power to go into a Turn 3 Enter, I also don’t have any Shadow influence, which I need to cast all my Discard. Hence, this is an unfortunate mulligan. My next hand I keep an AP Seat, an AP Cylix, an Onoris, a Speaking Circle, an Exploit, a Tower, and a From Beyond. Whilst I do have a lot of depleted power, Exploit can hopefully plunder these not-very-impactful-in-this-matchup sites into some more power. So I keep it. On Turn 2 I play the From Beyond and take a Realign the Stars over a Hardiness and Beseech; perhaps it was correct to take the hardiness so that can’t combo with Overloader, but I don’t see a Merchant or Condemn right now, so I want to cut off their route to finding Machinations. On the following turn, I play Exploit, and take a Wisdom over the Trove or the Hardiness; not seeing a Machinations or any other pieces, really, besides the Hardiness is fantastic, and I certainly don’t want them to dig into 1. I unfortunately have to plunder away the Onoris here since I still haven’t found any Time influence, but it’s not too big of a deal.

The next turn I go for an Alchemist, plundering away my Speaking Circle whilst they go for the Wisdom. The following turn, I go for Tower to try and get some pressure on the board; I just Plundered away my big unit, and I need to find a way to close this out in short order whilst I have the upper hand. They cash in a Trove and Exploit taking the Deathwing, which I think is defensible since I still can’t play the 2^nd Onoris that I’ve drawn. **sigh** They follow up with an Ixtun Merchant, which is screaming alarm bells and hopefully I can find some hand attack. However, the next turn, I don’t draw anything meaningful whilst they Overloader with Hardiness into Machinations and take the win. Maybe I should have taken Hardiness there to slow down the combo, but them finding a 2^nd Wisdom and just drawing into another Machinations AND a market card was rather unfortunate.

Game 3:

My first hand only had Justice influence and no way to plunder, so I ship that; my 2^nd hand had 1 Combrei Seat, 1 Justice Sigil, 1 Diana, 1 KTE, 1 Circle, 1 Deathwing, and 1 Onoris. This hand is also not fantastic either with no hand attack, and no way to cast anything in my hand. Unfortunately, I think it’s correct to mulligan this as well, and my hand of 6 consists of 2 AP Cylices, 1 Painting, 1 Suffocate, 1 KTE and 1 Rolant. Definitely not a great hand, and I’m kind of worried that I might lose to the matchup I specifically geared this deck to beat. Which would be rather mortifying. XD On Turn 2 they Exploit and take my Rolant which is a bummer; but I draw an Alchemist on Turn 2 and plunder away Suffocate which is fairly useless in this matchup. On Turn 3 I play the Shadow Sigil and decide to not run out the Merchant so that I could market away the Trove the nest turn. On Turn 4, I do just that, but honestly I’m not entirely sure what to take from the market since my hand is all over the place; I also have an Onoris in hand but right now I don’t have the 2^nd Time influence. I settle on Equalize as the best option right now over Svetya since I’m not sure if I’ll be able to cast her.

Nothing really happens over the next few turns; I do luck into topdecking the Exploit and Turn 6 and taking their Machinations over Hardiness and Beseech; they just play the Beseech next turn and put their influence together, which is very worrying. They play power and pass, and next turn I completely whiff off the KTE. They play power and pass, which is rough. I choose this moment to Equalize because I’m so low on cards and don’t have a board of any kind, and just taking cards out of their hand makes it harder to have enough cards to Merchant away. They pitch Permafrost, Hardiness and a Primal Sigil, probably keep some card draw in hand. They From Beyond the SAA out of my hand, but fortunately I immediately top deck a 2^nd one. Although I still don’t have any board, which is unfortunate. We go back and forth drawing nothing for a couple of turns in the world’s most awkward standoff.

Then I topdeck a Maeve to hopefully get back into this. However, there’s a couple more turns of awkward me bashing Slepher for 4 whilst I keep drawing power. They Exploit my hand, but have nothing better to take than the SAA. I get a Cylix, play a Trove, draw into a Diana, and I am off to the races. They grab a Suffocate and then follow up with an Ixtun Merchant. On my turn I play Onoris – not amplified, so that I could still play Winchest Merchant, which I use to grab Svetya to pressure and lock out the combo. Next turn, they play Wisdom on their turn and pass, which tells me they’re probably digging for a combo piece, so I slam that Svetya, thinking they’re only moments away from finishing me off.

On their turn, they keep digging with Beseech, a Trove, and Wisdom, either digging for a combo piece or just cause they can’t play any units. I once again invoke the luck sack and rip an Exploit off the top, taking the Machinations they have in hand (which is sitting next to an Overloader) and clock them for enough damage that next turn should be lethal. They don’t find anything, and I narrowly take the win here. It was a lot closer than I want it to be considering played well, I think we’re quite favoured in this matchup. I also got some extremely lucky draws, and the fact that Slepher was unable to piece together the combo even after drawing so many cards was extremely unfortunate.

Match 3: (VS Frafa)

Honestly when you break it down Argenport and Kerendon have very similar game plans; some early disruption, value units, and just a very strong late game; whilst I think that having the SAA is fantastic against Backbreaker, Tavrod and the like, sites in general, as I had mentioned previously, can be tough for this deck to deal with, and 8 of them on the opposing side can amount to a big problem. On the ladder this matchup turned out to be pretty even; let’s see how it pans out now.

Game 1:

(For the record, this may be the MOST exhausting game of competitive Eternal that I have ever played. To be clear: most matchups were done with Game 3 by the time we finished this one.)

I keep a hand with 1 Xenan Cylix, 1 Combrei Seat, 1 AP Seat, 1 Onoris, 1 Enter, 1 Rolant, and 1 KTE. A good mix of power and threats plus all my influence sorted out – it was a very easy keep for me. And I even draw the Sigil to enable my turn 3 Enter. They end up playing a Deathwing on Turn 3, and I decide to go with the T4 Onoris over the Rolant as the more power-efficient play. Following that, they go for a Turn 4 Merchant, and I Exploit following that: I elect to take the Tavrod because I don’t have any removal for it in hand right now, and it’s honestly not the worst if they just Vanquish my Onoris here since they can’t play both that and the hammer; I end up Plundering Rolant here because I don’t have any removal to back it up, and I want to try and make my power drops.

The next turn they go for a Tower, but I clear the 1/1 Valkyries with KTE and plop down a Deathwing of my own before finishing off the Tower – I’m fine with not getting too much value here and just go for the board clear now because I don’t want them to come up with more ways to defend their site. They end up Vanquishing the Onoris and playing out a Merchant, but since I’ve drawn SAA two turns in a row, I’m fine with playing out my 2^nd Rolant here. They play out the Svetya, which I’m happy to 2 for 1 myself for before that gets out of control with the double SAA. However, this opens up the window for them to drop a Backbreaker and take out Rolant, but now it doesn’t have enough attack to deal with the Maeve I just drew and played. They instead elect to play a Tavrod and use the Backbreaker to take out the Deathwing instead. Following that, I go for an Enter and pass, setting up the KTE for the next turns while I take a Tavrod hit to the face.

I KTE the next turn, hitting a Desert Alchemist and a Rolant, but they immediately clear the way with Hammer and Suffocate out of hand, with me taking yet another Tavrod hit. (Insert brief interlude where I can’t read my own scribbling scrawl, oops – of what I can parse, important thing here is that I play a Speaking Circle with enough defensive options to let me eventually complete the Agenda and play a Queen of Glass. They attempted to clear my blockers with Backbreakers: I had 1 SAA in hand, but another one buffed by Tavrod takes out the Queen of Glass.) I play Merchant into Svetya to lock out their units for a turn, but they assemble a motley crew of Deathwings to clear my leftover Circle and make way for their own. However, they didn’t find anything good off the Circle, and I just crack it with Svetya. Following that, I Exploit their hand and take the Backbreaker over a KTE from their side since I want to keep the train rolling with my Svetya.

They manage to get 2 Rolants on board to really clog it up and get me down to 3 with their Merchant, but I topdeck Builder’s Decree, block another site, and stabilise against those Rolants with 14/14 Sentinels. I whack in with both to get them down to 4, and when they retaliate for a last-ditch effort, I have an Alchemist in hand to ambush them, and that’s an exhausting Game 1. Truly. That took 23 turns, and I don’t think I’ve conveyed the depth of that through this. 😛

Game 2:

I keep an opening hand with 2 Justice Sigils, 1 AP Cylix, 1 AP Seat, 1 Alchemist, 1 Enter, and 1 Exploit. Quite power heavy, but between the 2 Plunder cards I think I can work it out. I snap off the Turn 2 Exploit and I see: Merchant, Deathwing, Tavrod, Exploit, Circle, and Backbreaker; I take Circle since I believe I would have the hardest time dealing with it down the line; they then Exploit on their turn and take the Enter. I play a Cylix and pass on Turn 3 whilst they drop a Deathwing; I play my Rolant and they play a Merchant. I From Beyond to snag that Edict that they had marketed for, and use 1 Alchemist to plunder another for a 2^nd Time influence.

On Turn 7 I decide to put away Onoris for Svetya with a Merchant seeing as they’re both 5/5 beatsticks but Svetya has much more utility in this matchup. They then drop the Speaking Circle and kill my Rolant with Pillage. I dig with a KTE the next turn, hoping to find something, but only snag a Deathwing; since I know at this point I can’t pressure the site effectively through their fliers, I hold off the Svetya until right before the site is completed so that I can block them getting a Queen of Glass. I then Exploit and take a Tavrod from their hand, but still can’t stop the pair of Deathwings getting in every turn in the air. I draw an unplayable Tower, and with nothing else that sends it into the deciding game. I haven’t been giving Deathwing enough credit as a card; lifesteal swings a race well, and flying allows you to race in some spots if need be. I think it may have been a mistake to put away Onoris at this point since as I said, it’s still my best option for threatening sites; however, grabbing that Svetya for that sweet play was great, even if I didn’t win.

Game 3:

I keep a questionable opening hand with 2 Justice Sigils, 1 Merchant, 1 Diana, 1 Xenan Cylix, 1 From Beyond, and 1 KTE. It’s a dicey hand to keep, but I’m hoping I can disrupt them enough to keep them off balance. I draw an Exploit on Turn 2 and fire it off; I see a Speaking Circle, Backbreaker, Merchant and a Tower; here I take the Tower over the Circle even though Circle is a harder site to deal with since I kept a slow hand and would rather not have to contend with a site so early. They play a T3 Deathwing whilst I decide to go with an unenabled Enter to keep hitting my power drops. On T4, they Exploit taking a Winchest Merchant, and just keep pecking in with that Deathwing. I play a Diana on T5, but they eat it with a Backbreaker. The following turn, I play a Merchant grabbing a From Anguish: my thought process is that there’s no way I would be able to contend with the Circle that they clearly will drop the next turn; Equalize doesn’t help me if they have an active relic weapon, and Svetya will just eat the Backbreaker; perhaps Reality Warden should have been the choice here, but I’m not entirely sure.

They play the Circle as expected, and get Auric Herdward, Kemmo’s Blueprints, and Soldrain Smithing much to my complete dismay. They play the Herdward to protect their Backbreaker before taking out my Merchant; unfortunately the next turn I just draw power and have to pass. They play the Blueprints and drop a Tavrod. I play a KTE for 8 the following turn hitting a Deathwing and Desert Alchemist, which would normally be fine save for the giant relic weapon that they get back with Smithing. They clear a deadly blocker, and I block Tavrod with the other. The next turn, I play out my Maeve, hoping to somehow get lucky with some big units off the top, knowing that it’ll be eaten by 1 of the 2 Relic Weapons in hand. That is exactly what happens, the agenda is completed, and a 2^nd Speaking Circle is played. (If I wasn’t very dead already, I definitely would have been here.) I From Anguish the Queen of Glass, but have no units left to avoid taking a massive Backbreaker hit. I do manage to find an Onoris to gain 15 life, and have a SAA for the Queen of Glass, but it’s just not enough to deal with the relic weapon – and the backup one. Sort of got off to a slow start that Frafa capitalised on perfectly, and could never quite come back.

Match 4: (VS EarthsOverseer)

(I’m out of Top 4 contention at this point, but fortunately I don’t get a bye or anything like that, and my opponent is also happy to play out the match. So here we go!)

This is another similar Argenport Valkyries-esque deck, but I feel that our matchup is actually better than against TBC’s iteration, and here’s why: there are more 2 drops units which all get cleaned up by KTE; the inclusion of Halberd doesn’t really help against something like Rolant or Diana; and there are less sites, so hopefully it’s all just slightly more manageable. Otherwise our strategy is pretty much the same: just out grind them, and hope that our KTEs and late-game power carry us over the finish line.

Game 1:

I keep an opening hand with 2 Justice Sigils, 1 AP Seat, 1 AP Cylix, Exploit, Deathwing and KTE. Although I don’t have any Time influence in this hand, I am able to play the entirety of my hand with the power that I have, so I feel comfortable keeping this hand. On Turn 2, 1 Exploit and get the choice between Kitaxius, Tower, Rolant, Merchant and Backbreaker; I take the Tower because frankly, I’m not confident I’ll be able to pressure past it with this hand. And also it’s just the best card right now. 😛 They run out their Kitaxius and an Unmoored Valkyrie, which I’m more than happy to sweep up with a KTE on T4. They then Merchant into more power on T4, which signals to me they’re probably strapped on power, which is great news for me.

On my Turn 5, I play Diana, and on theirs they play another Kitaxius. On my T6, I deploy a KTE for 6 which kills their unit and nets me another Diana; they still unfortunately cannot play their Rolant due to influenc troubles. The following turn I just play a Builder’s Decree to lock them out even further, and although they’re able to eventually find a 6^th power, I’d gone Merchant into Svetya the following turn to completely seal the deal. As I had hoped, the 2 KTEs really shut down any hopes of them developing a board, and particularly with them stumbling on power, they just couldn’t apply any pressure before I got set up. Now one more draw like that pretty please. XD

Game 2:

I mulligan my first hand since it only had 1 power, and keep a hand with Xenan Cylix, AP Cylix, AP Seat, 1 Painting, Onoris, Deathwing and a Suffocate. Not the strongest hand for this matchup I believe, especially if they can stick a Tower, but hopefully they don’t deploy too many threats too quickly. They open with a Shadowfang Valkyrie on T1 and a Kitaxius on T2; I quickly Suffocate the Kitaxius before they get too much value off that, possibly with a Halberd the next turn. On Turn 3 they Exploit the Deathwing, which means I just play a depleted power and pass; however, they drop a Tower on Turn 4 and just start whacking in. I can’t seem to find any undepleted power, which means by the time I get to start playing and attacking with Onoris, it’d already be too late to pressure the site. My plan now is to just hold the SAA for the Rota when it drops, but they manage to Exploit it out of my hand the turn Rota drops and draw a bunch of cards.

With the rest of my hand being power, I just plop down an amplified once Onoris Roa, but the next turn they drop a Kitaxius and another Tower, and this time I can’t get past their giant Rota. I draw a Builder’s Decree to block the Rolant they have in hand and make a huge unit, but I still can’t deal with the fliers and they have sufficient chump blockers for my Sentinel, at least for a while. I draw Exploit and take the Rolant, but the following turn, they draw and drop a Backbreaker to clear my Onoris. Then I die to Rota in the air. Definitely a risky keep against this deck considering I got out-tempo’ed pretty much as expected, but I don’t think going for a new hand would necessarily have been better.

Game 3:

I keep an opening hand with Xenan Cylix, 1 Painting, 1 Justice Sigil, SAA, 1 Merchant, 1 Diana, and 1 KTE. Pretty happy with this overall – although I don’t have the influence for Diana just yet, I have some removal and a KTE to sweep through the early units. They open with a Turn 2 Exploit taking my Merchant, following up with a Turn 3 Deathwing; I Exploit on Turn 3 instead, messing up the sequencing of my power in the previous turns, and take the 2^nd Deathwing over the Trove or the Unmoored Valkyrie, plundering the Diana into a Time Sigil. They then proceed to warp a Tower off the top of their deck and Ironclad Oath up their Deathwing; I pass whilst doing nothing on Turn 4 hoping to sweep things up once they play Steyer’s Beckoning. On their turn, they Exploit the SAA in my hand, and warp a Kitaxius off the top, which is wonderful. I decide to deploy a Rolant before dropping the KTE the following turn, hoping to get some blockers out of it; massive punt, as they go Merchant into Edict to take it out. Staring a huge board at sub 10 life and no way to deal with the upcoming Rota which will completely refill their hand, I just scoop there. Whilst I think going for the KTE and not being greedy there was the correct play, I don’t think that it would have made much of a difference as I wouldn’t have been able to answer the Rota anyway, and it just would have put them way too far ahead.

BONUS!!!

That’s right; as you guys might have seen from the decklists, my teammate Iplongno and I piloted the same 80 cards on Friday, and we had worked on this deck together throughout the week since they released. They, of course, being an actually good Eternal player, piloted this deck to a 4-0 in the Swiss before dropping in the semis. So here are his thoughts and insight for 2 matches that were caught on the Twitch vod.

Round 4: (VS theovermaster on AP Valkyries)

We jump straight into the middle of Game 2 where Ip is already up a game. Whilst Ip right now has a very strong hand, he knows from a previous Exploit that Theo has 3 Equalizes in hand alongside 2 Rolants, an Exploit, a Hammer and a Suffocate, which is a similarly stacked hand. Ip starts by Builder’s Decreeing the 3 Equalize since the rest of Theo’s hand doesn’t have a way to deal with the Onoris nor the 7/7 that the Decree generates. Since there are 3 board wipes in hand, Ip spreads out his threats so as not to get completely blown out; hence he played out an Onoris Roa following the 2^nd Equalize not only to reduce the cards in hand for Rota, but also to force out another Equalize whilst still essentially being the same for cards despite not being able to amplify it – not that their life total was in much danger.

On a subsequent turn where Ip played out both a Maeve and an Onoris, they left up sufficient power to be able to play either an Alchemist or SAA depending on whether Theo went for Hammer of Authority or Backbreaker. For the following Equalize, Ip pitched a Rolant and a SAA since they had enough beef on board to contest a relic weapon at this point, and could rebuild with KTE if necessary; they’d rather save the Suffocate for dealing with the Rolant Theo has still yet to play. Truly incredibly played making very informed decisions on what Theo had in hand, and proceeding to play around it at literally every opportunity so as not to ever give up his advantage.

Semifinals: (VS johnkkez on AP Valkyries)

There’s a very specific play that Ip wanted to highlight here: he’s staring down a massive board from johnkkez’s side filled with Valkyries, and decides to triple block a Rolant with all of his units except for the Rota; this is not to kill the Rolant, but rather to reduce the number of units on his board to only 2; the reason for this is that he has taken both an Equalize and From Anguish from the market. When Ip drops the Equalize, johnkkez has to sacrifice most of their board, and is left with a Rota and a Rolant; Ip then plays the From Anguish on the Rota, and swing in to take out a Tower that was threatening to spawn a 2^nd Rota. With this play, he has very much Equalized the board and set it back to a fairly even game.

However, there was a slight punt: at this time, johnkkez has a Hammer of Authority out, which isn’t large enough to take out the Rota. However, Ip is suspicious that johnkkez might have a Backbreaker in hand. Instead of firing off the SAA on the Hammer right there and then to draw an extra card with Rota, he reasoned that he should have instead waited for them to replace the Hammer with a Backbreaker to try and take out the Rota before blowing them out with SAA; given the open decklists, we know that the list doesn’t have good ways of dealing with a Rota main, and having that Rota stick for a few turns could have made all the difference. Johnkkez did indeed have a Backbreaker to take out the Rolant, and the massive relic weapon smashed all the way to victory.

Final Thoughts:

For anyone who thought this pile of good cards would be straightforward to play, it’s not. I don’t consider myself a particularly poor player, but there were so many lines that I just didn’t see with this deck when playing it; perhaps it’s the freshness of it, but looking back on the various plays and evaluating what I did, hopefully it’ll help me – and you, the reader – pilot this deck better in the future.

In terms of playing this deck on the ladder and in upcoming tournaments in the future, I might consider playing Sharp Tactician in the market over the Reality Warden as pioneered by all the other JSx decks this weekend, especially if units jam packed with keywords like Rota, Rolant and Deathwing become popular courtesy of AP Valkyries. It has also been pointed out to me by my friend Mail that it may not be worth it to run Enter the Monastery because you can’t always reliably get the second clause to trigger, and while draw 2 Justice Sigils is fine, it’s not particularly exciting; it may be worth to fill out the deck with additional interaction and units instead, or some more diverse fixing such as Seek.  

Of course, a very special thanks to iplongno for lending his insight to the deckbuilding process and the lines of play. I think this is still an incredibly viable deck to bring to the upcoming TNE tournament on Tuesday that truly rewards you for knowing both yours and your opponents’ decks inside and out, and that massively rewards players who can find the correct line. If you are seeing this article as it is released, take it for a spin. Who knows? You may end up liking it as much as I did.

As per always, hit me up on Twitter @stormguard798, in the FE or TEJ discords if you have any comments about my terrible gameplay or questionable deckbuilding choices. Until next time. 🙂

P.S. I don’t really draft in Eternal – I believe I am currently unranked despite the rest of my team all being in Masters or something, who knows – but Schaab writes fantastic articles about limited, and all of their advice on a recent article about evaluating cards segues smoothly into constructed as well. I don’t have a credit card nor disposable income, but I’m sending my support here. ❤

Hi everybody! For those who don’t know me, my name is stormguard798, and I’m the newest member of TEJ.

Over the past week or so, the rest of the team and I have been working on Stonescar specifically as a meta call against Yetis and Kira (which comprised a shocking 0% of the tournament metagame, but more on that later.) So, let’s see how it all broke down!

(Btw, I’m going to skip through all the cards that go into a SS deck, like the Champion of Chaos, the Annihilates, and so forth, because frankly, you’re not all buffoons!)

Deck List Link:

https://eternalwarcry.com/decks/d/TLuRaXDpjVI/stormguard798s-tne-deck

Inclusions:

• Yushkov the Usurper – Following the Instigator and Cutpurse nerfs, the tempo of the deck has been hit pretty badly since it’s less likely that we have the curve of 2, 3, and 4-smash. That’s where Yushkov comes in: by being able to exhaust blockers, it’s akin to giving our units charge, which allows to still get past them. Whilst not impressive stat-wise as a 4/4, being able to dodge Torch, Defiance and Hailstorm is still super crucial against Control and Aggro, and the Urn-like effect still works through Permafrost. With true midrange and SS being less popular, Yushkov is perhaps more resilient than one might think. In addition, the exhaust effect also breaks Aegis on the likes of Svetya, Lightbringer or Jennev Merchant, which saves us that extra removal spell against units that might otherwise be quite a roadblock. Finally, don’t think that 1-time extra power boost isn’t super valuable – it allows you to cash in that Treasure Trove that you get from Jekk, or perhaps sink it into a Fenris (more on that next paragraph.)

• Fenris Nightshade – A unit that somehow sparked a serious amount of discussion in the Discord Server, now that Blackhall Warleader is the only viable 3 health unit in SS, we’ve been going through all the viable 3 attack 2 drops (since you don’t have 3 health, you better have 3 attack), and Fenris just happened to be the most viable one. Whilst drawing a card with their ability is costly, it’s quite helpful in a faction-pair that doesn’t have a Cylix and that generally doesn’t have good card draw options. (apart from Jekk, of course). In any case, it’s a perfectly fine attacker, and being able to reap card advantage in situations such as the mirror really can help swing the tide in your favor. Having the option to sit back and draw cards or just spend your power on what you have in hand favours knowing your deck, as well the matchup very well, so you know when to drive, and when to hold back.

• Condemn – Probably the most controversial choice, to be blunt. It’s a very low impact card, and the market options that it provides are also incredibly low-impact, which is also why I was initially very skeptical of it. However, since we’re not in Primal, we don’t have access to Snowballs, which have proven to be crucial in matchups such as Yetis and Kira – having that single targeted point of damage, particularly at fast speed, has swung many matchups; you love/hate to see it when this blows up a Thudrock’s Masterwork. In any case, although it’s low impact, quite a number of the market cards you would normally play with full access to the suite of Fire/Shadow cards are 1 cost anyway, so it frankly just works out rather serendipitously.

• Shakedown – Another massive deviation from my previous iteration of SS is this, which is frankly only possible because you’re not clamoring to hit double Fire on Turn 2 for Cutpurse. In any case, Shakedown has proved immensely helpful for disassembling an opponent’s hand; taking their Kira, or their lord (Wump or Masterwork), a tricky Elysian Wump and Mizo, or perhaps a Merchant from the combo decks. Either way, right now, many decks in the meta are overly reliant on key pieces that amplify the power of the deck or require a cornerstone piece; take those away, and they’re significantly weakened, which is aptly demonstrated through the use of From Beyond in the TJS decks. Since there’s no way to trigger the transmute part of From Beyond, Shakedown just seems like a better option since it’s more diverse in its available targets, and since we’re (usually) the aggressor, the Nightfall tends to favor us.

• Seek Power – Even though this is an aggro deck, this deck is still unbelievably power-hungry. I would even go as to say that the deck needs to hit 4 power every game for you to stand a chance since we are running 13 4 drops. As such, you need the extra 2 virtual power to guarantee that you hit your 4^th power, and besides, you can always ditch the Sigils to Jekk if you need to. Seriously. This deck is unbelievably power-hungry, and you’ve got ways to sink it if you need to.

Exclusions:

• Bandit Queen – The previous iterations of SS had 12 2 drops, which as I pointed out, made the play of 2-3-4 all the more likely. However, since we’re less likely to curve out now, coupled with the fact that Intrusion makes the Quickdraw bestowed through Queen significantly worse since they can get plenty of profitable blocks on us. Sorry Queen, but your reign is over.

• Argenport Instigator – I’ve seen some build still pack Instigator, which I think is just holdover from previous iterations of the deck. Need I remind you that Instigator’s effect is symmetrical, and rarely do you end up benefiting from it except perhaps against midrange: you usually have to end playing defensive against Yetis anyway, so the damage is a knock against yourself, and Garden Control doesn’t have enough units to make the incidental ping worthwhile, and instead clocks you for a chunk when they hit you with a board wipe. I just think you have plenty of better options right now, and hence while they were good, now is not the time to instigate things.

• Yeti Pioneer – Another 2 drop up for discussion is the Yeti Pioneer, which honestly is perfectly fine even with the reckless since 3 power is enough to storm through most early-game plays. The biggest problem is that I don’t think that the extra power does too much. You need to play your Charge Units like Milos or Buhton pre-combat, and a lot of your top end has heavy influence requirements anyway, so the odds you’re going to be able to play out a Yushkov or Jekk on Turn 3 isn’t great. Not that you’d want to be discarding your 4^th power to Jekk anyway just to get him out a turn early.

• All the 1 drops (Pyroknight, Oni Ronin, Kazuo, etc.) – I sort of grouped all of these units into a category here because I didn’t include them all for essentially the same reason: the 1 drop units are not impactful enough and just far too vulnerable, considering all the Snowballs flying around on the ladder lately. Being a non-Primal deck, card advantage is something the deck struggles with, and the way it wins is by having essentially must answer threats on board constantly instead of attempting to bury your opponent in cards. Hence, having low impact units that easily die I find is just antithetical to your overall strategy. If you want to play a bunch of 1 drops, play Skycrag instead.

Market:

(Honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure how to talk about this since there’s a lot of nuance and options to the market, so I’m just going to have a casual chit-chat on all the market cards and their considerations? Sound good? Excellent.)

• Open Contract – This was the card I have removed for Condemn in my original build since they’re both removal spells. Edict of Makkar was guaranteed a slot regardless because of how efficient a card it is, removing 5-6 power creatures for just 1, but the question was whether a 2^nd one was necessary in the market. Primarily, Open Contract goes after Diana and Rolant since it’s really hard to kill those units using our deck’s removal suit otherwise. However, Open Contract does hit Jekk, Yushkov, and the like, and with Doc28 popularizing the Jarrallcrag archetype as of late with a particularly pesky 4 of Kenna main deck, I felt that it was worthwhile to include this card.

• Sabotage – Honestly, it’s a fantastic card against Control; snipes their sweeper or their game-changing Just Desserts. (more on that later.) However, I am very poor at playing this properly I must admit, and I seem to keep firing off when there are no good targets, especially since you tend to play this later in the game. In any case, the card is fantastic, but it’s really hard to play properly. Have at it.

• Flame Blast/Silverblade Menace – From my perspective at least, the 2 cards fulfil a very similar role: to blast your opponents in your face for a last hurrah. Yes, there is an argument to be made that Flame Blast can double up as removal, but frankly, it’s pretty awkward and clunky removal, and when my opponent spends their whole turn removing my unit and nothing else? It doesn’t tend to be that bad, because it’s hard to be able to do anything else meaningful whilst being able to kill a worthwhile unit. On the other hand, Silverblade Menace steals and snatches games against control decks if timed right, which is why I considered it to be worth the inclusion of Cen Wastes Smugglers just so I can play this unit. It’s that good, especially if Garden Control is making a comeback following Worlds.

• Dark Return – Whilst this card is occasionally quite dead, it’s part of why it makes such a good market card. Units like Champion of Chaos are extremely difficult to deal with for some decks, and buying back a 2^nd copy just hammers the nail in some situations. In addition, getting back a double-damage Jekk is also quite worthwhile. Yes, it can be awkward against Decay in the form of Cen Wastes and Rolant, but just get a different market card in those cases. Against Control, getting back a charge unit could be potent at the right time, and getting another shot with Silverblade Menace is something that a lot of players often don’t see coming.

Playing this deck on Ladder:

As you might have noticed, I’ve conveniently left out some crucial cards that I have included in my deck, for discussion right now. I am packing 3 of Buhton and 2 Kaleb’s Persuader – despite losing his best partner in crime in the form of Cutpurse, but he’s still quite potent. However, I think his greatest potency is against SS or Control (with the 5 power charge damage), and is unfortunately rather awkward against a deck like Yetis which is packing Blazing Salvo. Plus, since we’re slower than Yetis, we often want to play defensive, and a 5/2 isn’t exactly the most robust defender. We run into similar issues with Persuader since you get the most benefit out of that weapon by attacking. As a result, whilst I like the split of 3 Buhton and 2 Persuader in a more open meta (the 3 Buhton due to the rather tough influence requirements, which means semi-often you just need to market them), I don’t think they’re particularly good against low to the ground aggro, which is what I’ve found predominantly on the ladder.

As such: here are the changes I would make, at least as an initial pass:

In:

+2 Sear

+4 Vara, Vengeance Seeker

Out:

-1 Cen Wastes Smuggler

-2 Kaleb’s Persuader

-3 Buhton

If you’re going to take a slower approach, Vara is a very strong card particularly against Yetis to stabilize. I probably would not lead with Vara to try and stabilise as I think both Yushkov and Jekk do a better job in the situation that Vara gets Permafrosted, but holding off and dropping her when they’re (probably) out of removal can be game-changing because 1 hit with her could decide the game. I’m not a huge fan of her in a more general meta given the popularity of cards like Send an Agent or Annihilate and she doesn’t have a fantastic summon effect if your opponent just going to clock her afterwards, but specifically against Yetis, she’s pretty good.

Similarly, under most circumstances, I don’t think Sear is a particularly efficient card as both removal and burn, but being able to hit crucial sites like Garden and Masterwork that Torch normally isn’t able to target. In addition, being fast speed is crucial for interacting with the protection spells out of Kira decks, even if you are power negative. It may even be correct to ditch the remaining 2 Merchants since our market isn’t particularly good against Yetis so that you could play 4 Sears instead, but more testing is required.

… (Play lilting musical interlude as we transition to the next part.)

Tournament Report!

So instead of having a typical play-advice section with tips and tricks here, I just played in a Tuesday Night Eternal tournament with this deck, so I think it’d be best to talk about my thoughts and how I played around each match up.

For anyone interested in watching the VODs of the games, here it is! I play in Round 3, semis, and the finals. 😊 I would strongly recommend pairing the VOD with my notes here, just to have a clearer picture of what is going on.

Round 1: YurickYu on Garden Control.

In this matchup, your focus is really on charge units and milking that Silverblade Menace as hard as you can. Ideally, you get to pull off an early Shakedown to dismantle their hand or suss out any removal. Whilst Champion of Chaos is usually a pretty good card here it merely gets eaten by Defiance. Or Just Desserts. In addition, Garden Control decks, this one included, now generally run Jennev Merchant with Royal Decree, so if you do decide to run Sabotage, remember to preserve that. Also save your Dark Return for buying back Menace. Finally, since everyone packs 4 of Knife, keep their life total in mind – it might be worthwhile to keep their life total above 10 in some spots so that they don’t get a free Knife.

Game 1:

I keep an opening hand with 4 power, Milos, Condemn, and Yushkov. Although this is kind of a slow hand, I do have a charge unit, and a pretty decent piece of bait in the form of Yushkov. Fortunately, my opponent was rather strapped on power, so they spent most of their turns drawing cards and Petitioning. On Turn 4, I decided to play Yushkov over the Smuggler, instead choosing to hold it to try for a more opportune time to blast them in the face. Fortunately, I just kept applying pressure with units as they kept being strapped and power, and I was able to blast them with a relatively small Menace to finish them off.

Game 2:

Overall this game was a little more balanced because they were able to find some power. They went Turn 3 Jennev Merchant into Turn 4 Wasteland Broker, so they already have a surprisingly decent board presence for a control deck. Here, I decided that it was worthwhile to trade my Champion of Chaos for their Merchant and Broker because it’s fairly easy for them to kill the Champion of Chaos, honestly, so getting rid of 2 blockers and Torching their face seems pretty worthwhile. Without Open Contract main, it is rather difficult for us to deal with Broker, so I’m happy to just get it out of the way to get some pressure going. Knowing that they probably just took their Royal Decree, I hold the Cen Wastes Smuggler in hand so that at some point, I hopefully get enough power to play the Smuggler and the Menace in the same turn. I was able to stick a Fenris to just bash in and draw some cards and is also why I ended up deciding to Condemn and grab Dark Return to get back the Fenris, simply because I felt that I was already pressuring them well enough whilst still keeping card parity. Eventually, I had enough power to slap a Persuader on a Buhton all in the same turn, and I guess that caught them a little off guard, clinching me the round.

Round 2: Duocat on Garden Control

As so aptly mentioned in their deck title description, they are quite literally on the exact 80 that LightsOutAce piloted to victory at Worlds. Having said that, even though there aren’t things such as the 1 of Ageworn Vestige like in YurickYu’s list, our gameplan against this deck is pretty much the same.

Game 1:

I open by keeping what I consider a pretty dicey hand with 3 power and 2 Yushkovs, although it pans out in the end. Side note: if you have 2 or more 4 drops in hand, do NOT keep a 2 power hand. Period. The risk is not worth it. I end up running out Yushkov first on Turn 4 since he’s a less important unit particularly in this matchup, and I’d rather spend their Vanquish on this rather than the Buhton. Afterwards when there had been some trading back and forth, removal for units, I end up running out the double Champion of Chaos just to try and get them dead quickly since I was unable to find a Cen Wastes Smuggler. From the pattern of cards in their hand off the previous Shakedown, I knew that they didn’t have a Harsh Rule since the only cards not revealed to me were the Hurlers; therefore I felt comfortable doing so. They eventually do kill my Champions of Chaos and slap down with a free Knife to kill my 2 drop. At that point, even though they had a Garden out, I opt to Milos their face and take out their Knife, despite them possibly having another one in hand. I reasoned that since I had just kept drawing power the last few turns, my best hope of stealing this game is hoping that they A. Draw a Firebomb, and B. Don’t have another Knife since I had a Torch in hand, and would be at 8 after the Milos attack. Unfortunately, they have another Knife and take that game.

Game 2:

I keep an opening hand with a lot of depleted power, but it did have a Condemn and Cen Wastes Smuggler, so right there and then I decided that my primary gameplan would be just to clock them for a bunch with Menace. Twice. Here’s my 1^st punt: I take a Hailstorm with my first Shakedown, but I take a Torch over Defiance with my 2^nd. My reasoning here was that I didn’t want them to kill my Buhton, but I also had a Champion of Chaos in hand at the time, which they then promptly killed with Defiance. And then they killed my Buhton with Vanquish. 😦

Here’s my glorious 2^nd punt: instead of saving the Dark Return for Menace like I had originally planned, I end up grabbing the Buhton who just died instead, getting in for 6 but promptly dying the next turn to a Torch. We stall around for a couple of turns when I feel like I finally have the window to drop the Menace on them; however, they made the excellent heads-up play to grab the Just Desserts off their Garden about 5 turns before, and completely blow me out. I do have a massive life buffer off the Menace, but they’ve found a Knife and are just absolutely crunching me with it. I don’t find enough burn to finish them off even with a Double Torch in hand, and they take the round.

I would just like it noted that my opponent played gloriously well this round: going into this, my teammate and I knew that our primary path to victory would be Menace, and given that this is open decklists, unless they’re stuck on power as in Round 1, Game 1, Garden Control is far favoured in this matchup as long as they properly play around the Menace. A well-deserved victory.

Round 3: Kal_Shadowstep on Feln Midrange splashing 2 cylices.

Now contrary to the previous 2 rounds, I feel very good about this matchup. They don’t have a lot of cheap removal outside the Annihilate, and most of their early units are fairly easy for this deck to handle – as long as we can run them over before they get a chance to get to that Icaria, I like our chances. That being said, an unanswered Lifestealing Rindra or Vara will swing the game heavily in their favor, so ideally, I want to try and save removal particularly for those units. Or just leave them in Torch’able range.

Also, being on the same team as Kal, I know that my teammate, Iplongno, apparently smoked Kal in Round 1, and we’re on a similar deck. So there’s that too.

Game 1:

I keep perhaps what is one of the most questionable hands so far this tournament, with 4 power, a Seek Power, a Jekk and a Buhton. Fortunately, Kal is also off to a very slow start, so I’m not punished too badly here. (I hear from the VOD that it was unfortunate I couldn’t get a faster start to punish their power base, which is definitely fair, but I felt that having the Jekk to eat a Merchant or Rindra on 4 would just be the bees’ knees.) I decide to hold off on Turn 4 Jekk simply because they do run a decent number of units, so I feel that I could get the 2^nd target off Jekk pretty easily. Right here, I completely punt by forgetting that the Champion of Cunning can reasonably block my Buhton, but I still feel that it was acceptable to just get the Champion of Cunning off the board before either of its 5 influence abilities kick in. And as expected, they make the trade instead of taking 10 to the face. I think it could definitely be argued that my deck has almost no ways of getting Champion of Cunning off the board, so although it wasn’t what I was thinking, it still panned out fine.

(P.S. It’s great having the VODs to reference when making these tournament reports. Makes it far, far easier.)

So the next turn, Kal drops a Smuggler, which is the perfect target for a double-damaged Jekk even if my Jekk does get plucked off by Annihilate. Here, given the open decklists, I am very surprised Kal goes for Rindra especially given we have open decklists, and knowing what’s in their hand: I’m almost tempted to either go straight for the Vara or Malediction here from their side. They have no clean way of killing Buhton in their deck period outside of Shadow Icaria, and my only way of dealing with Vara main deck is an Annihilate. I think the Rindra play is more defensible if he had a spell to buff it on his turn such as a Dazzle or Send an Agent, but running out the naked Rindra is just very risky here. Eh. Back to me and my bad plays. I pitch the Milos here to the Rindra simply because I have another one. Next turn I draw the Torch, so I go for Torching the Rindra, playing Milos, and then Torching post-combat. I think had I not drawn the Torch, the safer play would have been to go for Persuader on Buhton and save the Milos for next turn, but since I know that they have no 1 drop interaction, I’m fine with going for this line.

Game 2:

I see 4 power, a Shakedown, a 2 drop and a 3 drop, and I know I’m good to go. My gameplan right now is just to completely curve out on them and take Kal down before he has a chance to deploy any units. I notice the commentators mention possibly taking Petition over the Blight Pass Smuggler, but given the composition and curve on my hand, I am more than happy for Kal to just spend their turns finding power instead of impacting the board. Which is exactly what they do, and I even draw a Buhton to top off my curve. I don’t have the Fire influence for Buhton, but I top deck a Yushkov anyway, so all is well and good – they can’t even win through blockers now since I have the charge unit in hand that I know I can deploy next turn. And that’s exactly what happens.

Round 4: Iplongno on Stonescar.

Ah…so it had to be. My teammate and I who worked on the same deck, facing against each other in the Round to decide the Top 4. (Or not really, you’ll see what happens) Truly a very fun battle. In any case, this matchup is a complete toss-up. Since there are no Open Contracts main deck, it’s hard for both of us to deal with each other’s Champions of Chaos, hence, the person who can stick their 2^nd Champion of Chaos (the 1^st one being a must answer) is probably going to be the victor. So let’s see how this panned out.

Game 1:

Not really too much to stay here: I have Torch for Street Urchin, Torch for Blackhall Warleader, and Condemn into Open Contract for their Champion of Chaos. Unfortunately, they have an Annihilate for my Milos, and I just draw only power after that. People may frequently question the viability of Stonescar as a deck, but this is a deck that heavily punishes you for stumbling. Even just a little bit.

Game 2:

I end up going to 6 on the play since my 1st hand had 1 power and my 2^nd had 2 sigils and no Seeks, which is awful for such an influence heavy deck. On Turn 1, I shake them down, and am very disappointed to not see a Champion of Chaos here: that’s probably the biggest advantage of this iteration, to be able to snipe Champions of Chaos before they hit the board. I take the Instigator over the Condemn here, which may have been wrong since I did have the Torch to deal with the Instigator. Whilst Condemn doesn’t kill anything in their deck, providing access to Open Contract is crucial. And lo and behold, I draw the Champion of Chaos the next turn, which they proceed to Open Contract on Turn 3. On Turn 4, I go for Milos and a depleted power before they deploy a Yushkov. Here, there are some very interesting Yushkov interactions as I play a Yushkov the following turn, they play a 2^nd one, and now everything’s just completely exhausted, my brain included trying to navigate this.

The turn after their 2^nd Yushkov, I decide to go for a Persuader on Milos since they don’t have enough power for Annihilate, so I’m confident I can get at least 1 proc off my weapon, which lines up perfectly with the Jekk I top-deck the following turn. However, they Torch the Jekk, and I’m unable to find any more gas. I make a Persuasive Milos attack into a double block just to try and reduce the number of blocks, but it didn’t matter as I didn’t draw anything else relevant that game. (I did draw a Milos, which did nothing unfortunately. :P)

(At this point, I’m 2-2, and given how the bracket panned out, I’m pretty sure I’m just out at this point, so I log off Eternal and go to brush my teeth because it was almost midnight Singapore time at this juncture. Then I get pinged by Iplongno and in the tournament chat, telling me to get ready for the Top 4, and I’m so confused. Turns out because of the way people got paired up and down, there were only 2 3-1s, and I somehow got the best breakers out of everybody at 2-2. So I guess it didn’t matter who between Iplongno and I won Round 4 since we would have both made Top 4 either way, which I do find kind of amusing. And then I get paired up against them in the semi-finals, and honestly? I’m just ready for a repeat of Round 4 right now.)

Semi-Finals: Iplongno on Stonescar.

Game 1:

I keep a rather sketchy hand with only 2 power, both of them Sigils, especially on the play, but I’m hoping between the Nightfall on the Shakedown and the Fenris I can hopefully draw into some extra power. Fortunately for me, Iplongno took a mull to 6, which is fantastic. However, when I don’t draw a 2^nd Fire source, I’m sort of immediately regretting my decision, which is why I immediately go for the draw of Fenris, unfortunately missing. Next turn, they drop a Milos, which I Annihilate at slow speed once I get the opportunity to because right now, I don’t have anything to block it particularly well.

The next turn after Ip drops their Cen Wastes Smuggler and gets back the Champion of Chaos, I’m just digging for that 4^th power. I can’t play either Milos, exposing the Champion of Chass to Torch is a horrible idea, and everything else is not particularly power-efficient. At least the Champion of Chaos isn’t on board right now, and so I have a 1 turn window for me to try and keep digging. Perhaps I shouldn’t have blocked the Cen Wastes Smuggler there with Fenris, but since I know that I’m going to go Condemn into Open Contract the next turn regardless, and I was getting kind of low off the Fenris draws, I felt that would be a defensible play.

I do let the Warleader get through for an attack but promptly kill it the next turn with Annihilate, unfortunately, as I had previously mentioned, this 2^nd Champion of Chaos is a huge problem for me, especially since I still don’t have a 4^th power. I finally draw my 4^th power, and just stuff some blockers hopefully to take out the opposing Champion: at this point, I’m so low on life, and my only hope is that Ip completely punts here. He drops a Milos, and I’m pretty much screwed regardless since no matter how I block, that Champion is going to live. I do drop to 1, but there’s nothing left for me to do.

Game 2:

I am once again blessed by the luck-sack gods as Ip mulls to 6 again (although seeing the VOD, in his position, I would have done exactly the same thing. Don’t be greedy, cause as you literally just read/saw, it never pans out.) I keep an honestly fantastic hand with 3 power, Shakedown, Annihilate, and some units. I once again snipe the Champion out of their hand (hehe), and manage to Annihilate their Milos before getting in with my own, and so far, I’m in great shape – I’m just looking for 1 more power for my 4 drops. Seeing the VOD, I understand why they’d go for the Open Contract if they’re concerned I have a Champion in hand, but in their position, I might actually be tempted to go for the Dark Return and get back the copy I had discarded, simply because it’s such a good card. And besides, on a mull to 6, you want to be as offensive as possible in the mirror. As luck would have it, I top deck the 4^th power, and slap that Persuader onto Milos while Annihilate is down.

Here, the Open Contract looks fantastic as it gets rid of Milos, but the Persuader has absolutely done its work and gotten me that sweet Sigil to pitch to Jekk and ruin Ip’s Yushkov. I was kind of surprised by the non-lethal Jekk on my Jekk there, but looking back, Ip was definitely in a tough spot, and it makes sense that he’d try and go for the redraw. Next turn, I’m fine trading away my Jekk for their Smuggler here since I have 5 cards to their 1, and even if they Annihilate away the Yushkov there they’re still not in fantastic shape. Next turn, I play my 2^nd Yushkov to really shut down any out-of-the-blue damage in the form of charge units (which looking at Ip’s hand now, is honestly super painful to watch) and since the Jekk doesn’t have any stats left thanks to Decay, I opt instead for the Open Contract in case Ip does draw a ChaCha. He doesn’t and scoops it up there.

Game 3:

(Honestly, I was extremely excited since this was the first Game 3 that I had played all night; the anticipation is tantalizing.)

So I manage to keep a pretty glorious hand should I be able to find a 4^th power; getting Turn 2 Warleader is exactly where you want it. They do remove it, and the reason I don’t run out Jekk is because I’m thinking they’re probably sandbagging some big units if they instead choose to pass Turn 2 with Annihilate up, so I figure that there’s no point in going for a low-value Jekk here since they’ll probably be plenty of blockers. In the Stonescar mirror, it’s so important to eke every last ounce of value for every single card. I go for the Yushkov over Jekk on Turn 4 even though I could just pitch the banner, mainly because I’m greedy, and hopefully I can snipe a Yushkov at some point. :} Ip removes Yushkov with Open Contract and plops down a Street Urchin, which I’m more than happy to kill before it takes 1 of my cards. Here, because I’m playing the exact same archetype as Ip, the odds that whatever card that he grabs is synergistic with his game plan and the rest of his hand is very high, so I don’t even want them to have the chance to twist here.

Here, I see them deploy a 2^nd smuggler, probably for either Dark Return or Menace, not too sure which at this point honestly, which tells me they probably don’t have a Champion in hand since I feel like that would be a better play, nor do they have a Yushkov since I’d just plop that in front of the Jekk. As a result, I feel comfortable firing off my 2^nd Jekk here because even if it does eat removal, I still get a Trove out of it. I end up pitching the Milos because since I suspect they have removal and either Return/Menace, then Milos is the least impactful card in this spot – if they do have the Menace, they’d just play it next turn and not wait until I have a Milos out. Here, I do disagree with their play of getting Cen Wastes Smuggler over Street Urchin with their Dark Return, and here’s why: getting that card off me is so important when we’re both running out of cards, and there’s nothing in the market that you really want with your 3^rd Cen Wastes anyway. It is a slightly better unit, but if you get 2 twists off of Urchin, you could draw into cards that will get you back in this game, considering we’re both relatively healthy right now.

I choose to Annihilate the Milos over the Torch since I know they have the Smuggler whom I can’t Annihilate in hand, alongside what I still suspect is some kind of removal. They play the Smuggler and not do anything with it, so I Torch it, and now, the card advantage from the Troves is ridiculous to the point that I think it’d be really hard to lose from here, especially since Open Contract is out of the picture. And I win! On to the finals after defeating the bane of the Swiss himself. :PP

(Love you, Ip. The only bane you are is your opponents’.)

Finals: Theo Ver Master on Elysian Spells.

Whilst I don’t have anything that dies to a single Snowball, those Wump and Mizoss get out of hand very quickly, especially since main deck I only have Torch and Jekk to deal with them – here, I think this is one of the few matchups where it makes sense to play aggressively with Jekk just to get rid of my favourite furry yeti boi. However, another thing to note is that they don’t really have any hard removal – just a lot of bounce spells – so my true 4 drops in Yushkov and Buhton are going to be key in this matchup. I disagree with the commentators here, and I actually think that Yushkov is not as bad in this match-up even if their deck is named Elysian Spells because they do play a surprising number of units. The 2 key interactions with Yushkov here are exhausting the Conjurer and their dancing army, as well as delaying the Killer attack from Huntress by a turn. Kaleb’s Persuader is probably at its worst in this matchup purely because of the 8+1 bounce spells, but with the lack of hard removal, if I can find the right time to deploy it this could be game-changing.

In this matchup, I’m going to be leaning a lot on Open Contract and Edict of Makkar. They may be a spells deck, but Stonescar wins by having just tough to deal with value units. Conjurer and Wump are just 2 units that, much like of what Stonescar’s units do, absolutely take over the game if left unchecked. Since they don’t have sweepers, you can push through by attacking a decent chunk of the time, and whilst it’s nice to have Menace as a back-up plan, I don’t think you necessarily need it to win, unlike in the Garden Control matchup. (DM me if you disagree.)

Game 1:

I keep an opening hand that I tell no one to keep because of the 2 power, but I had already taken my free one, and as per usual, I get greedy since I have the Fenris in hand. Fortunately, I rip the power off the top like a boss, and now I’m just looking for another 1. Seeing that they’re off to a slow-ish start, I just try and keep the pressure on with a Milos on Turn 3. The following turn after they deploy Wump, I want to try and get that off the board as soon as possible, and since I didn’t draw a 4^th power, I’m more than happy to Condemn, Edict, and shake it all about here, snagging a Jarrall – I am kind of disappointed to not see another Wump or Conjurer to snag here, but Jarrall is still a pretty good hit.

The turn after, I still don’t manage to draw the 4^th power, so in my mind, the Menace plan is off the table for now. I debate whether I should go for the Cen Wastes or the Fenris here, but I decide to deploy another Fenris on the chance that my best move next turn is to just draw off of that – which pans out pretty well when I Condemn that Huntress. I do punt here by not putting away the Persuader here: I’m quite far behind now, and I’d rather have a unit than a card with a terribly low floor such as the Persuader. I do get very fortunate with the Jarrall missing over and over again on the draw, however, so that Theo isn’t running away with card advantage as I had expected. I am completely punished for my earlier misplay when 2 turns later, I slap a Persuader on Fenris and get completely blown out by Theo’s topdecked Pause. Oops. So now I’m in a really bad spot, and the spell count is unfortunately not quite high enough for me to be able to clock them with Menace, so I may have punted the game away there.

Next turn, I go for an Annihilate on Jarrall, but they counter it with Dazzle, which gives them the chance to get the 8^th Primal, but either way, Theo rips a Primal symbol off the top. At this point, I’m completely panicking and play the Fenris instead of the Cen Wastes Smuggler and putting away the Fenris. (Look, it’s 1am and my brain isn’t exactly functional.) I go for Condemn into a Dark Return into a Milos, which honestly is all kinds of wrong: they have all kind of fast speed interaction that makes it awful. I think here, I should have put away the 2^nd Cen Wastes Smuggler and grabbed Menace on the off chance, having the Condemn to pop a face Aegis if need be; I don’t think it wins me the game at that point, but I’m getting so low on life, I need to get the life buffer from Menace just to give me a chance to draw something. Either way, I played pretty horribly that game and lost as a result. XD

Game 2:

I keep a 3 power opening hand, and have a 2 and 3 drop, which is exactly what I’m looking for to just absolutely run over Theo here, and that 4^th power on Turn 3 is just the cherry on the top of a really strong opening hand. My Milos does get hit with Pause for Reflection, which is unfortunate, but fortunately, it’s still around and kicking in its original form, unlike with an Equivocate. Given the open decklists, I actually really like Theo’s play of Jennev Merchant over the Conjurer here, simply because he knows that I have Buhton in my deck, and getting that Conjurer removed for free would be absolutely backbreaking. Perhaps it was a little aggressive to offer the trade with Fenris for Merchant, but Jennev Merchant is actually kind of a pain for me to deal with once it’s on the board, and as the commentators pointed out, I think it’d be tough for me to outgrind the Elysian deck anyway, so I’m just pressing while I still can.

Here, I’m not a huge fan of hitting the Yushkov with Permafrost: I think there are way better targets in my deck like Jekk or Buhton that don’t actually do anything once you’ve got the Permafrost down on them, especially if I’ve imbued a unit with Buhton. I understand the desire to stymie some of the damage here, but I don’t think the body on Yushkov is horribly relevant, especially once Theo starts spitting out Stormdancers. Here, they go for the double Snowball play on Fenris, which makes complete sense; I’m faced with an interesting decision here on whether to go for just the Buhton and save my Sigil for Jekk, or go with Buhton + Annihilate. Ultimately, I decide to press my advantage whilst I’ve got it, especially since they won’t be able to put up more blockers at least through Yushkov, and kill the Conjurer with Buhton and the Stormdancer with Annihilate, and just crash in for 8 while the Merchant is down. I understand why Theo went for the attack with Merchant now based off the information on the vod, but I think it’s just such a risky play, particularly if I have any more charge units in hand, such as a top-decked Milos and a Firebomb.

The following turn, I just want to set myself up as best as possible to win on the following turn, because I’ve gone through the lines, and there’s just no way for me to win in that spot through the Jennev Merchant with Aegis. Hence, I pitch a Jekk to Condemn, use Open Contract to get the Merchant off the board, and crack in with Milos. At least this way, I force them to have the Pause for Reflection next turn in order to stay alive. I go for the Jekk straight out of the gate to force it out of them, which they do, and just swing in with Buhton to force the chump block – Theo only has 1 power left, so I’m not worried about Equivocate at this point. The next turn, I understand where Theo was coming from wanting to make blockers with Conjurer and using all those bounce spells at sorcery speed, but this Yushkov coming in absolutely clutch and exhausting all those blockers for a clear path to victory and tie up the round.

Game 3:

I keep an honestly kind of sketchy hand with 3 power, a Smuggler, a Condemn, a Jekk and a Persuader: given that I have the 2 market access cards, I will likely be heavily leaning on the Menace plan this game assuming I can find another power, and probably market away the Persuader. The biggest problem with the hand is that it really doesn’t apply pressure in the same way that the previous hands do, which is a concern because it might give Theo some time to set up. I am, however, super fortunate to rip the Shakedown – a little late on Turn 3, but still allows me to nab the Conjurer – I have units with strong summon effects that I don’t mind being Equivocated at this point, and the Primal Etchings doesn’t do anything with their board – to hopefully buy myself a little more time before they get set up.

Following that, I drop the Cen Wastes Smuggler – no point in running out Jekk here – and I guess my reasoning at the time is to put away the non-Sigil power, so that if I do slap a Persuader onto my Smuggler, then I’ll have the Sigil I need to empower Jekk with; I grab Edict since I know they have a Conjurer, and I’d rather save the Open Contract for a Jarrall down the line. Seeing them drop the Conjurer here and only have 1 power left incentivizes me to go for the Persuader line here since I know they can’t Equivocate it, at least this turn; they don’t hit Cen Wastes Smuggler with Pause here and instead save Conjurer with the very telegraphed removal spell, which I can appreciate given the composition of the hand. Besides, they can just hit Smuggler with Equivocate next turn, and I won’t be able to clock the Conjurer with Jekk given that it only does 4 damage.

Funnily enough, Theo electing to not play out the Conjurer again actually puts me in a really bad spot, because I don’t want to run out any of my Jekks like that at this point, which is why I go for the Cen Wastes Smuggler into the Silverblade Menace – learning from Game 1, you see. Here, I decide to go for the Menace since the Condemn can fetch an Open Contract later on if need be. Jekk is great, but 3 of them with no Sigils in hand is a bit much, and there’s definitely diminishing returns with each copy here given how many of Theo’s units have 3 or more health, requiring me to just keep finding Sigils. This is why I opt for the Condemn at the end of Theo’s turn instead of waiting, because if I don’t get a Sigil, then I still want to Open Contract the Conjurer before it gets out of hand. Of course, being the luck sack that I am, the turn after I immediately draw a Sigil, but it’s not something I could have necessarily predicted, and I clear their board and put myself firmly in the driver’s seat.

Theo actually comes back really well with a Wump, a Huntress and a Wisdom to refuel their hand; unfortunately, the luck of the RNG gods once again smile on me with the Shakedown able to take the Wump out of their hand even after they return it with Pause; I guess there’s an argument for me taking Etchings here to ensure they can’t get their Decree, but seeing no cheap Primal units to exhaust, I feel like my best play here is to simply contest the board as best I can. Though Wump is still a bit from transforming, I don’t have any more ways to deal with it, so I don’t want to chance the Wump transforming into a Party Pair because that could completely swing this game in their favour.

Theo doesn’t really find anything super helpful here, running out the Jotun Hurler to grab the Permafrost – maybe they should have just gone for Royal Decree here, but there is, of course, the concern of just dying on board. I fire off the Menace because if they don’t have Pause then they’re dead – they do, but does put them precariously close to being dead; right now, my plan is to possibly just grab the Dark Return next turn if they find a way to kill Menace, or just grab another Jekk from my market if need be. Fortunately, they don’t have anything, and I pull off the win by blasting their face with Jekk, staple of Stonescar.

Parting Thoughts:

It was a great tournament: thank you again for Telemokos for organizing it, Essarefess for being the TO on Friday, and gatosujo for commentating my sweet, sweet punts. As this has amply demonstrated, just because the deck has been nerfed doesn’t mean Stonescar can’t still pack a massive punch, especially when you’re unprepared. I plan on writing 1 of these every 2 weeks in line with Tuesday Night Eternal, so hopefully, you’ll see a few more coming around shortly.

Do you disagree with my card choices? Do you disagree with my lines for certain situations? Do you just want to finish what you started in Twitch chat and continue to flame me for my deck choice in general? If you do, you can find me on Twitter @stormguard798 and lurking around the Friends of Eternal or Team Eternal Journey Discord. Thanks for reading!