“Meta Insight” are a series of articles covering the differences between various Shadowverse deck archetypes, their role in the metagame, common play patterns and tech cards.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Anti-combo tech cards such as Nilpotent Entity, Mugnier and Seraphic Blade are played to primarily combat Forest/Dragon/Gremory Shadow and other combo archetypes. Seraphic Blade also has the important defensive utility of answering Summit Temple against relevant Haven decks, and Mugnier can also pick up value in the Portal mirror by silencing the card draw from the opponent’s Analyzing Artifacts and other Last Words effects, as well as the occasional relevant Amulet (e.g., PtP in the Portal mirror or Summit Temple/Elana’s Prayer against Haven). The main purpose of Nilpotent Entity is to prevent Dragon players from resolving Dagons and other Storm cards (or at least, make them have a Seraphic Blade), and it can also serve to delay damage in aggressive matchups with big Storm-based finishers (e.g., Daria Rune, Summit Temple). The anti-combo tech cards are very important for tournament Artifact Portal lists, and I would say that running 3-5 of these cards is fine for ladder (depending on how often you run into non-Portal players), however, these cards do cost you percentages in the Portal mirror and against proactive decks like Daria Rune, as you’re cutting Mechagun Wielders/Artifact Calls to fit in these tech cards, and as such, you are making your deck run worse. If you’re running into a lot of aggressive decks, I would personally recommend a build akin to 佐々木久美’s or ミヤネウロ’s decklists, which run full playsets of Calls and Mechaguns and also include Technomancers to make the archetype really consistent against early game pressure, but that obviously leaves you a bit soft to Dragon/Gremory Shadow.
• The Radiant Artifact setup is not something that you can reliably set up in every single game that you play, so it’s not uncommon for Artifact Portal lists to include 1-2 damage cards that can either contribute to the Radiant Artifact gameplan or compliment the archetype in other ways. The most common choice for this slot is Path to Purgatory, which is fairly easy to activate around turn 6, and is mostly just a big Demonic Strike, but if your deck is spinning its wheels a little too much (as in, you can’t find a Biofab or a Radiant for Biofab), you can sometimes just set up a PtP and play defensively to set up a 2-turn lethal. Path to Purgatory is especially relevant in an aggressive metagame, as you can get away with never actually generating any Radiant Artifacts, and instead focus on building a board of Mystic Artifacts and/or heal with Syntonization tokens, so running at least 1 PtP gives you some insulation against Aggro Shadow/Daria Rune. Other cards once could try in this slot include Ines (basically, a reverse PtP, in that you play Ines first and then start your chain), cards that serve as extra copies of (bad) Shions (e.g., Craving’s Splendor or Keen Enchantment), and so on. All of these cards are pretty interchangeable and mostly depend on player preference/expected meta, but PtP is most likely the best option against an aggressive field, so this is generally the most common option.
• Early-game card draw, such as Magna Giant, Mechanical Designs and Night’s Way, is an alternative to the more conventional early-game cards like Technomancer, that can set up the deck’s gameplan better. These types of effects are obviously redundant with Focus and Artifact Call, and cut into the anti-combo tech card sector, so if you’re not playing 3xCall, you’re probably not going to find a slot for Night’s Way, but if you’re not concerned about the Dragon matchup, some number of Mechanical Designs can improve your percentages in the Portal mirror and against other proactive decks.
• Ancient Apparatus is an anti-aggro tech card, the primary utility of which is providing healing against burn-heavy archetypes like Aggro Shadow/Daria Rune (though the card can also be used to fetch Mystic/Radiant Artifacts if you’re not under a ton of pressure). Dawn’s Splendor is a similar option that is primarily good against Daria Rune in particular, but also does work against Khawy and Necroimpulse, so there is some overlap between it being an anti-aggro tech card that also has fringe utility against Gremory Shadow, with the obvious downside (compared to, let’s say, Nilpotent Entity) of it being a one-shot effect.

Regarding Control Portal

Identifying cards: Slaus, Wheel of Fortune, Ramiel, Colossus Omega, Awakened Ragna, Karula, Arts Master.

Control Portal is a fringe archetype that utilizes the defensive utility of Nilpotent Entity, a disruptive early-game package of Slaus/Box of Puppets/Karula and a variety of defensive Neutral cards (Ramiel/Fluffy Angel/Zelgenea/Dawn’s Splendor/etc.) to utilize its win condition, which is generally a combination of enhanced Awakened Ragna with either Colossus Omega or Zelgenea. The deck’s game plan is generally a bit too slow to consistently race the more unfair decks of the format (if you’re winning on turn 9 and need to set up a Colossus Omega on turn 6, then a turn 3 8/8 with a Zeus friend coming along can get in the way of things), but the deck has some potential against the more all-in combo decks (e.g., Dagon Dragon has a lot of trouble with triple Nilpotent Entity decks) and conventional “fair” aggressive decks (e.g., if you’re playing against Aggro Shadow in Rotation and you have 3xFluffy Angels in your deck, it’s usually a pretty comfortable matchup, and similar ideas apply to aggressive Unlimited decks, as most of them lean heavily on Rivayle cards to function), so Control Portal is a very polarized deck in a ladder setting. The archetype could have potential if it gets more Slaus/Box-style disruption cards in future sets, but the only thing Control Portal really has going for it (over Control Blood) is the surprise factor, as it’s unheard of for an Unlimited Portal deck to not play Acceleratiums. The sheer audacity of this Yuwan bastard!

Atomy Shadow

Identifying cards: Fount of Angels, Haunted House, Coffin of the Unknown Soul, Princess Knight, Lord Atomy, Cloistered Sacristan, Zeus, He Who Once Rocked.

Atomy Shadow is a tempo deck that revolves around playing its eponymous card in order to generate a large tempo swing on turns 3-4. An 8/8 on turn 3 isn’t really that great by Unlimited standards in current year, however, Atomy has significant synergy with Coffin of the Unknown Soul and Cloistered Sacristan, which put a lot of stats into play, even more so if said Coffin had a Zeus or He Who Once Rocked to immediately start pressuring the opponent’s life total, or a Deathbringer to control the board. In order to hit Atomy more consistently, the deck generally doesn’t include any Fanfare followers, which allows Princess Knight to always fetch up Atomy in the early game for the turn 4 combo. Some of the key recent additions to Atomy Shadow include Death of the Party (which is an early-game play that replaces itself, gets some extra fodder to activate Atomy easier, and does some chip damage to the opponent), as well as Necroimpulse (which turns the deck into a quasi-aggro deck, in that if you go off on turn 3-4, a Necroimpulse follow-up is generally enough to close out the game on the following turn against non-Portal decks; in addition to that, you can always just use Necroimpulse to simply play Atomy on 4 if you don’t have anything better going on).

In the early game, you’re generally looking for specifically Atomy or Princess Knight if you don’t have an Atomy; and if you have an Atomy or PK, you can also keep Coffin of the Unknown Soul, Death of the Party, Staircase, Fount, etc. If you’re keeping Atomy with a Coffin, also keep HWOR/Zeus to go along with it.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Atomy Shadow is generally not an archetype that particularly cares about what the opponent’s trying to do, but a bit of early interaction can still be somewhat useful; this can include Manifest Malice (good against aggressive decks, incidentally also helps activate Atomy a bit) and Seraphic Blade (answers Nilpotent Entity/Summit Temple), which can slot in at 1-2 copies, depending on how aggressive the field you’re playing against is.
• The other avenue which allows a bit of customization is the early-game card draw slots. I am of the belief that Princess Knight should be a 3-of, and I place a lot of value on 1-mana amulets (Fount of Angels and Haunted House, although the latter doesn’t draw cards, but can generate Ghosts with Burial Rite effects), as they make setting up for Atomy a lot easier, but I think there is a lot of potential flexibility in the Death of the Party/Death’s Mistress slots. Some potential options include Staircase to Paradise (which lets you reload after an early Atomy), Undead Parade (sets up Fatal Order and potentially enables a turn 2 Atomy with Haunted House, which is quite silly), Cursed Coin (eats up Necroimpulse Shadows and only draws cards at EoT, but if you chain together BR effects in the early game, it can effectively draw 2-3 cards for 1 mana), Altered Fate (more of a midgame card that can be used to look for Fatal Order or Necroimpulse, also conveniently generates a lot of extra Shadows), and if you want to get even more highroll-y, Frozen Mammoth (doesn’t draw cards, but generates an extra body with Atomy). I have personally been very unimpressed with Staircase and I believe that the card is simply an outdated carryover from old Atomy Shadow builds, so I believe that the most consistent configuration is generally 3xDeath’s Mistress+2-3xDeath of the Party, with some optional flex slots, which depend on the field you’re expecting to see.

Gremory/Tyrant Shadow

Identifying cards: Jackshovel Gravedigger, Bone Maven, Lady Grey, Deathweaver, Sarcophagus Wraith, Deathly Tyrant Gremory, Death Teller, Path to Purgatory.

Gremory (a.k.a. Tyrant) Shadow is a combo deck that utilizes Gremory refunds to set up lethal with some combination of Deathly Tyrants and Necroimpulse. Previously, the deck used to commonly include Path to Purgatory as its primary finisher, which was enabled using the combination of Minthe and Sonata of Silence to get to the necessary Shadow threshold. In recent times, the format has gotten a lot more aggressive, so the Minthe + Sonata builds have been gradually getting pushed out by Altered Fate lists, as the deck has more than enough damage to close out games with just 3xTyrants and 3xNecroimpulse, and the Altered Fate build is faster (since it doesn’t need to take a 4-mana setup turn) and allows you to fit in more defensive tech cards. The general game plan of the archetype involves trying to get Gremory active on turn 6 and then winning the game on the spot with either double Tyrant or a combination of Tyrant and Necroimpulse.

In the early game, you’re looking for card draw of all shapes and sizes (Procession, Death’s Mistress, Sarcophagus Wraith, Soul Conversion, Guilt), as well as Bone Fanatics (as SoulCon targets) and Jachshovel Gravediggers (as Procession targets or to contest the board). Going second against Shadow/Rune/Haven, it is generally correct to keep Lady Grey, and if you’re keeping Lady Grey, also consider keeping a Jackshovel even if you don’t have a compatible card (Procession/Mistress) for it.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Fatal Order and Deathbringer are an anti-aggro package that allows Gremory Shadow to have better outs against decks that pressure its life total with large boards and Storm damage (e.g., Atomy Shadow, Daria Rune, etc.). The deck runs a fair amount of Burial Rite effects between Procession/Mistress/Bone Maven, so it’s often not too difficult to set up for an active Fatal Order by turn 4-5, which can then be used to stabilize (in aggro matchups) and punch through Wards in the post-Gremory stages of the game (against decks like Elana Haven). In addition to that, Deathbringer has the defensive utility of transforming Aggro Shadow’s 3-drops and dealing with evasive Shadow Reapers in the early game, as well as other fringe archetypes in the format (e.g., it stems the bleeding against Atomy Shadow and deals with various snowball-y cards like Rivaylian Bandit against certain tempo decks), so the package has a fair bit of utility even outside of its primary application.
• An alternative to the Fatal Order/DB package is the more old-fashioned Ghostly Grasp build of the deck, which can fit in more proactive early-game cards (e.g., more SoulCon effects, and 1-drops like Bone Fanatics and Skull Beasts to go along with them). With Bone Maven added to the archetype, Gremory Shadow has enough healing against conventional aggressive decks (e.g., Daria Rune) with Lady Grey/Wraiths/Bone Mavens, so there is less of a necessity for the Fatal Order package compared to the pre-mini-expansion builds of the deck. With that said, Ghostly Grasps aren’t going to cut it against the more unfair decks of the format (e.g., Atomy Shadow and Artifact Portal), so I personally prefer the Fatal Order build for the current ladder environment. One of the upsides of not running Deathbringers is that you also unlock Ginsetsu as a defensive tech card, which is relevant against decks like Loxis Forest, for example, but not particularly exciting (at least, in my testing) otherwise.
• Seraphic Blade is an anti-Portal/Haven tech card, and has the utility of answering Nilpotent Entity once you set up Gremory (e.g., Tyrant into Necroimpulse leaves you with exactly 2 mana to deal with Nilpotent), as well as early Acceleratium/Summit Temple. Seraphic Blade has little to no utility against Rune/Forest/Dragon and against non-Aggro Shadow decks, so it’s somewhat narrow in application, and as such is primarily a tournament-oriented tech card.
• Aenea is an anti-combo tech card, primarily intended to be good against Dragon and Forest. The card is pretty slow and doesn’t really contest the board by itself, or at least with a level of impact appropriate for the Unlimited format, and more importantly, playing Aenea on 4 often slows down your Gremory by a turn, which makes it a very narrow tech card in my experience. I wouldn’t really recommend it in Fatal Order builds of the deck, but it’s not too unreasonable in more draw-heavy shells.

In the early game, the two key cards you’re looking for are Alchemical Confectioner and Loxis, and if you’re keeping both, you can also consider keeping Rhinoceroach and Shamu & Shama in non-aggro matchups. In addition to that, I tend to keep Elf Queen and Ramiel more or less regardless of the matchup, as they are good for their evolve effects when going second and are fine proactive options when going first. If you’re playing Xeno Sagittarius, it’s a keep with a 1-bounce effect of any sort (prioritizing Guidance/Deepwood, but if you’re playing Barrage, keeping Xeno + Barrage is fine against Portal/Haven going second), and if you’re doing Xeno things on turn 2 going first, you obviously shouldn’t keep Ramiel. Alberta is theoretically good against Dragon/Rune/Blood, but I’ve had too many cases where Alberta is either straight up unplayable in the early game or where Confectioner/EQ are better plays on curve, so I tend to never keep Alberta and instead try to look for more impactful cards.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Xeno Sagittarius, Nature’s Guidance and Airbound Barrage are optional inclusions in the archetype that allow it to combo off more consistently and cycle cards in the early game. I would personally consider Guidance more or less a core card (as it’s almost identical to another card we’re already playing), and Xeno Sagittarius is what ties the whole package together, so it’s more or less a free inclusion if you’re not trying to fit in more defensive tech cards. Barrage does feel a bit overkill, especially considering the fact that some of the matchups where early Xeno cycling is relevant (e.g., Rune/Shadow/Portal) often don’t involve followers on the other side of the board, so Barrage is a bit difficult to utilize, and you’d have to cut Wind Fairies to fit it in (which, in turn, makes Walder worse and makes Xeno worse at drawing cards in the early game). Be that as it may, Xeno is more or less “free” (aside from the board space requirements) during Loxis turns, and with the archetype moving into more of a all-in combo-oriented direction, I don’t really see a significant enough reason not to run a full playset, but the Barrage/Wind Fairy distinction is more meta-dependant (with Wind Fairy generally having more utility against the current Unlimited field).
• Alberta is a tech card against other decks that don’t tend to develop a board presence in the early game, such as Rune/Dragon/Gremory Shadow. Alberta adds a bit of damage to your Loxis setup if you set it up in the early game, and since it banishes itself after attacking, it’s very good at clearing out your board space (which can get clogged up if you’re playing 3xXeno in a deck with a bunch of Tree cards) during the combo turns. The downside of Alberta is that, for most intents and purposes, it is often a worse Confectioner in the early game, and in matchups against proative decks, Elf Queen is often preferrable to play in its place, particularly when going second, as the deck’s early-game setups generally require you to resolve a Travelers’ Respite, so the mana often ends up not quite working out, where Alberta either gets stuck in your hand or you have to ignore the board for a turn (by not evolving Elf Queen) and go all-in on Loxis being able to close out the game with Alberta set up. In addition to that, Alberta is very awkward in multiples (since the effect doesn’t stack), so if you’re running 2 or more copies, you run the risk of having more dead draws, even if the mana situation ends up working out. For these reasons, there has been an observable decline of Albertas in Unlimited Loxis lists over the course of the mini-expansion: the card is clunky and competes with a lot of the deck’s other, higher-priority early-game developments. This doesn’t mean that Alberta is bad in the deck per se: it’s not as if running 1 or 2 copies is a crime, but if you’re playing a highly combo-oriented list (with things like Xeno Sagittarius and Guidances), Alberta can be extremely clunky and difficult to utilize in proactive matchups, so Alberta is comparable to some of the other proactive threats you could be running (e.g., Varmint Hunter, Ramiel, Quixotic Adventurer, etc.), and in my personal experience, the card hasn’t felt too great in the current Unlimited meta. It could be that in a greedier or more midrange-y environment, Alberta has a lot more value, but if you’re trying to compete with the unfair decks of the format, 1 or even 0 copies of Alberta are what I’d personally recommend for general ladder play.
• Speaking of which, Ramiel is one of said proactive threats one could include in Loxis Forest lists. Ramiel‘s primary utility is that it allows you to ramp when going second, and potentially go off with Loxis on turn 5 if you go Ramiel into Respite on 4. The issue with Ramiel is that if you have a Ramiel and 1 setup card (e.g., Respite or Pastures), you end up with only 2 mana to work with during your Loxis turn, which isn’t generally enough to close out the game on the spot (mostly for board space reasons, as you need to either invoke Walder or summon Alberta to clear up space without using mana to have enough to resolve the Roach at the end of the chain), so what often ends up happening with Ramiel curves is that you either go Ramiel into Elf Queen on 5 (with some other setup card along the way) and then do the Loxis thing on turn 6, or if you have a double Loxis hand, you do a half-combo on 5 and setup 2-3 Vehicles to do the big push on turn 6. For that reason, you need to have pretty specific circumstances for Ramiel to enable turn 5 lethals (you’d generally need a double setup, e.g., Respite on 2 and then another amulet on 4, or to have a double Pastures hand without Respites), so it’s a fine inclusion, but not particularly unfair in what it does. Dawn’s Splendor and Quixotic Adventurer are alternatives to Ramiel, in that they give you things to do in the early game and have defensive/offensive utility during the midgame turns. Varmint Hunter is another card that falls into a similar category to Ramiel: it allows you to go for a Loxis on turn 5 (if you have a Respite) when going second, but to really close out the game on 5, you’d have to have more than just 2 setup pieces (read: 2 open mana on turn 5), so it similarly requires you to either have an opening of either double Respite or Pastures. For this reason, Ramiel is generally more versatile than Varmint Hunter, as you don’t go second every game and 4 is less than 2 (thrilling analysis, I know), but some combination of the 4 cards mentioned in this section contribute more to setting up your combo than excess bounce effects or Albertas would. And yes, Dawn’s Splendor is a combo setup card, because not being dead improves your chances of getting your combo off. It’s not nearly as convoluted of a logical leap as saying that Armageddon is a mana fixing spell when you have a Crucible of Worlds in play (as it can allow you to cast a double non-W spell), so it obviously makes sense.
• Seraphic Blade is an anti-Portal/Haven tech card, the main utility of which in the deck is answering Nilpotent Entity, but sniping a lone Acceleratium or Summit Temple when the opportunity arises are also decent applications for its effect. Broadly speaking, Loxis/Roach Forest can theoretically win through a Nilpotent Entity if you deal some early chip damage and/or have a lot of mana to work with, but it’s not uncommon for Portal lists to only run 1xNilpotent, so you can sometimes answer it and then Elf Queen their board and simply go off on the following turn, but most of the time, the strategy for dealing with Nilpotent Entity is “hope they don’t have it” (which is far from ideal, but works more often than it doesn’t against 1xNilpotent lists), so I wouldn’t really recommend Seraphic Blade if the only deck it targets is Artifact Portal, but if you’re also seeing a lot of Haven or aggressive decks in general, it could be a decent 1-of to consider.
• Aria’s Whirlwind is a carry-over from the more control-oriented Roach lists and helps against specifically Artifact Portal and aggressive decks in general. The issue with Whirlwind is that the card uses up your combo pieces, and the card that you’re often looking to cut for Whirlwind is Elf Queen, which is a lot more versatile in non-aggro matchups. I’m not a fan of Whirlwind, as the card has felt very clunky in my experience, and I feel that the more control-based non-Loxis Roach shells as a whole are just strictly worse than its Loxis-based counterpart, so while I’m leaving up a Control/Roach list to demonstrate what I’m talking about, it’s not exactly a deck I’d really recommend, and the same applies to Whirlwind.

Regarding Vehicle/Aggro Forest

Identifying cards: Spring-Green Protection, Cactus Cowboy, Fita the Gentle Elf, Rivaylian Bandit, Fount of Angels, Vagabond Lizard, Wandering Chef, Lina & Lena, Sukuna, Mighty Malleteer.

Buff/Aggro (a.k.a. Vehicle) Forest is an aggressive tempo deck that revolves around the neutral Vehicle package and utilizes a variety of pay-off cards (e.g., Fita/Rivaylian Bandit/Chef/ Varmint Hunter) and Storm cards (Walder/Sukuna/Lina and Lena/Mallet Monkey) to leverage the early tempo lead and close out games. Rivaylian Bandit is one of the most important cards in the deck, as snowballing an early Bandit is about as unfair as Forest can really get in the Unlimited format. Generally speaking, Vehicle Forest is an aggressive deck that does really well against other aggressive decks (e.g., Aggro Shadow) due to having a lot of Rush-based early developments, as well as Wandering Chef (which can both control the board and stabilize your life total), however, it struggles against the more unfair decks (e.g., Atomy Shadow) and is often not fast enough to pressure Artifact Portal or even Encounter Dragon. The deck performs decently well against Rune, but that is about the only redeeming quality of Vehicle Forest, compared to more well-rounded archetypes like Aggro Shadow/Blood, for example.

D-Shift Rune

Identifying cards: Alistair, Tiny Magus, Chain of Calling, Demoncaller, Crystal Fencer, Kuon, Founder of Onmyodo, Dimension Shift.

Dimension Shift Rune is a combo deck that utilizes its titular card, Dimension Shift to close out games. The archetype’s primary combo setup generally involves getting to Shelldock Isle range and activating Crystal Fencer (which usually happens around turn 6) and then closing out the game with Dimension Shift, often on the following turn. The archetype certainly has the potential to close out games on turn 6 (particularly on the draw or if you have a Dimension Shift in your opening hand), but as a general rule of thumb, D-Shift Rune is a turn 7 combo deck, so it often plays out games as a quasi-control deck (particularly in aggressive matchups).

In a similar fashion to Daria Rune, the cards you’re generally looking for in the early game are Crystal Witch, Fate’s Hand and Chaos Wielder, and if you have one of those, you can consider keeping Insight/Glow/Magic Missile, although keeping Glow against Portal/Dragon is obviously inadvisable. If you have either multiple Fate’s Hands/Chaos Wielders or a Fate’s Hand with a 1-drop, it’s generally fine to keep those with a Dimension Shift.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Alistair is an anti-aggro tech card that does a lot of work against Aggro Shadow/Daria Rune/Selena/Summit Haven, often effectively being a 1-mana removal spell in the early game. It is important to note that you can Glow your own Alistair back to hand to reuse its effect, which is primarily relevant against Shadow/Haven (as they tend to not trade into it in order not to waste damage), which effectively means that you can KaleidoGlow to answer 3-drops. Alistair is an awkward card against Portal, as they often don’t deal damage to your face in the early stages of the game, and the card doesn’t help you advance your game plan (as it doesn’t Spellboost your hand by itself), so Alistair makes the deck run slightly worse on average, but gives you a bit of extra early interaction.
• Demoncaller and Traditional Sorcerer are optional inclusions that serve double duty in the archetype: on the one hand, these types of effects can help control the board in the midgame, and on the other hand, you have to have a certain number of followers to actually be able to close the game off of a Dimension Shift, so Demoncallers can be part of your win condition as well; though I should mention that recent D-Shift builds have been pretty follower-light (with Kuon getting cut from a lot of builds, for example), so the deck often just uses Dimension Shift for extra mana to play Runies with, so the low follower count is not something I’ve personally found to be an issue for the archetype in my testing.
• Maiser is an alternative option in the Fiery Embrace/Alistair/Demoncaller card slots, and unlike Daria Rune, D-Shift decks often have trouble finding Maiser-compatible followers in the early game, so Maiser is almost exclusively a Dragon Warrior in D-Shift lists (as you can’t really use it too well in the early game if you don’t draw multiple copies, and it’s not as if you can really fit in Marshals either). Broadly speaking, Maiser is bad against unfair decks (but so is Alistair, to be fair), so if you’re looking to fit in Maisers, you often have to trim some of the 2-drops as well (e.g., Clarke, Glow, etc.), as Maiser really likes to be a full playset in Spellboost-based decks due to its self-synergy, so it’s not as flexible of a tech card as Alistair/Demoncaller/etc. In a ladder setting, Maiser also has the important utility of masquerading as Daria Rune, which is primarily relevant against combo matchups, since you can force their hand by not showing Crystal Fencers/Demoncallers and other D-Shift-specific cards.
• Chain of Calling/Sorcery in Solidarity are an optional inclusion in follower-light builds of D-Shift Rune: if you’re not playing Clarke and swap out Demoncallers/Fiery Embraces, you can isolate your Chain of Calling pool to just Runies/Chaos Wielders/Crystal Witches and Fencers, which makes the deck a lot more consistent at finding its missing pieces. The drawback of cutting Clarke is pretty negligible, as you’re cutting your 2-mana cantrip (more like 4 mana, even) for a 2-mana one, and as mentioned in the previous sections, there isn’t much of a difference between running Demoncallers or not. The issue with Chain of Calling is that you are limiting your deckbuilding to not include Demoncallers/Alistair/etc., which makes the deck marginally weaker to aggro (although the impact of these changes is obviously debatable, especially if this swap allows you to run more Spell-based early-game action), but also makes you a bit better in Rune mirrors (you go off faster and never give the opponent any Glow targets), so if you’re facing a lot of Daria Rune, these follower-light Chain of Calling D-Shift builds might be something to consider.

Regarding Vehicle Rune

Identifying cards: Rivaylian Bandit, Quixotic Adventurer, Rivaylian Deputy, Astral Dancer, Vagabond Lizard, Magical Gunslinger, Gabriel, Heavenly Voice, Terra Nova, Mirror Witch.

Vehicle Rune is an archetype that is similar in construction to Rotation Vincent Rune, and the deck is often mostly (if not entirely) Rotation-legal, with the main difference being that it doesn’t actually run Vincent itself (it’s generally a bit slow and finding Chefs with Gunslingers is a higher priority in Unlimited), and a notable inclusion in the Unlimited version of the archetype is Formbender, which is primarily an answer for the Atomies and such of the world, and the occasional Falise (which is mostly just a bad Mirror Witch, but sometimes 3 copies isn’t quite enough, so you have to go with the next best thing, as the only Storm cards cheap enough to make the cut here are Mirror Witch, Falise and Europa, and we don’t want to talk about Europa). It is certainly impressive how there are some archetypes that are almost entirely Rotation-legal (Aggro Shadow being the other relevant example) and can still compete in the Unlimited format, which just goes to show that Quixotic Adventurer is the most powerful Shadowverse card to ever exist. I am being hyperbolic. The real culprit is Rivaylian Bandit.

Elana Haven

Identifying cards: Will, Underworld Priest, Wandering Chef, Zoe, Queen of Hope, Elana’s Prayer, Elana, Purest Prayer, Reverend Adjudicator, Set.

Elana Haven is a reactive tempo deck that utilizes its namesake Amulet, Elana’s Prayer, to generate tall boards of followers (that have a tendency to have Ward) and keeping its life total high. Elana Haven is not the most complex of decks, and the archetype’s primary purpose is farming aggressive decks that don’t pack enough interaction, so the deck has a more or less an auto-win matchup against aggressive decks like Aggro Shadow and Daria Rune, but struggles against decks that either have infinite removal (Artifact Portal), “tall” tempo decks (e.g., Atomy Shadow) and fast combo decks that pack enough interaction/damage to get through your Wards (e.g., Dragon and Gremory Shadow). Elana Haven wasn’t really a deck before the Skullfane nerf, as it’s quite meta-dependant and bad against Skullfane decks across the board, but the shift of the format towards a more aggressive environment has made Elana Haven one of the big winners of the Skullfane patch: when everyone is trying to play aggro, having a deck that’s chock-full of healing and tall Wards is about as good as it gets. Elana Haven has been falling off after the mini-expansion despite getting access to Smilecure Priest, which allows the deck to do some pretty unfair things in the early game (who would’ve thought that 0-mana cards can do unfair things?), but the deck is still extremely polarized and not exactly something I’d bet on going forward: I can pick up my Artifact Portal list from 5 months ago and it’s still going to be a fine deck, but I can’t really say the same about Elana Haven a month after its initial emergence in the format.

The general game plan of Elana Haven is to get 1-2 Elana’s Prayers in play and then try to generate a threatening board every turn until your opponent is out of damage/cards. For that reason, the cards that you’re generally looking for in the early game are Elana’s Prayer and Jeweled Brilliance, as well as Elana going second; although keeping both an Elana’s Prayer and an Elana is a bit greedy, so I wouldn’t keep both against hyper-aggressive decks like Shadow, and I’d prefer to have a Kel instead of an Elana against Shadow/Rune. Golden Bell is a pretty free keep if you’re playing it, and if you’re already keeping Elana’s Prayer, I’d also keep Chef/Io/Stalwart Featherfolk going first. A lot of the deck’s early game cards are pretty redundant with one another, so I don’t think there’s much reason to aggressively look for 2- and 3-drops, and I’d rather look for more high-impact cards.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Tender Rabbit Healer, Stalwart Featherfolk, Robowing Precant, Io, Will, Puresong Priest, Golden Bell and Monastic Holy Water are all optional early-game cards that help enable Elana’s Prayer. I would personally consider the core Elana shell to include Chef/Fluffy Angel/Zoe/Lorena, but the other cards in these card slots don’t really matter, and I’d expect any configuration of 9-15 cards in those slots to serve their role decently well. In my personal opinion, cards that come with bodies of their own are more valuable than plain healing effects, so I would prioritize Featherfolk/Io/Will/Robowing/Rabbit Healer over Set/Puresong Priest/Holy Water, and Golden Bell has the important utility of being playable on turn 1, while still having value in the post-Elana stage of the game, although I’m not married to the idea of Elana Haven decks having to include Golden Bells no matter what in current year, as card quality has improved tremendously since the last time that Elana Haven has been a relevant deck.
• Blind Justice is a tech card against Shadow/Rune/Portal and has the important utility of either anwering cards that are get too big for you to deal with in conventional ways (e.g., Zealots of Truth with Enchanted Swords) and the utility of banishing 3-drops in Aggro Shadow and denying card draw to Portal players. There is an argument to be made that Elana Haven doesn’t have much reason to run Blind Justice, as it mostly helps you in matchups that you’re either very favored or very unfavored in, so it doens’t net you a lot of percentages, but the card can still give you outs to decks like Atomy Shadow and other decks that generate board states that you can’t deal with otherwise, so Justice has a fair bit of value in those fringe matchups.
• Jeweled Brilliance is a tutor for Elana’s Prayer. There was a period where Elana Haven lists didn’t actually run Elana itself and simply had Brilliance with Elana’s Prayer as its only target, but the issue with that approach is that Brilliance obviously doesn’t allow you to run Realm of Repose or whatever other Amulets you might be inclined to include (e.g., Golden Bell), so it does impose a bit of a deckbuilding restriction on the archetype and doesn’t fit into a lot of current Elana builds, or at least, doesn’t allow you to cut Elana from the deck if you want to ever have a shot at beating Artifact Portal.
• Reverend Adjudicator and De La Fille are optional top-end inclusions that help you stabilize in extended games. I’m personally not a fan of De La Fille, because 6 is a very big number for Unlimited, and you’re generally not going to get more than 2-3 triggers out of DLF, as games just don’t last that long. Reverend Adjudicator, while somewhat clunky, does a lot of work to help you stabilize, and if you look at all the ways Aggro Shadow can get through with a turn 5 Reverend Adjudicator, the list is either going to involve some unusual tech cards or be more or less blank, so I’d consider Adjudicator a key inclusion in the deck for its current purpose in the metagame.
• Realm of Repose is a tech card against OTK-based combo decks (e.g., Encounter Dragon, Gremory Shadow) and Artifact Portal. A lot of Portal lists don’t run Mugnier, so Realm of Repose can allow you to set up a board that the the Portal player generally can’t interact with, and set up a 2-turn lethal. The caveat to RoR is that it’s a pretty slow effect (you can’t really pull it off without a Kel, and the 2 mana you need to spend is a very real cost), so it can often be simply too slow to fight Artifact Portal, but RoR at least gives you a chance in that matchup. The other issue with RoR is that the card interacts awkwardly with Jeweled Brilliance, so you can’t really fit a full playset in Brilliance builds, but if you want a better shot against Dragon/Portal, Realm of Repose is the first card to consider.

Regarding Kel/Sanctuary Haven

Identifying cards: Alchemical Confectioner, Travelers’ Respite, Holy Sanctuary.

Kel/Sanctuary Haven is a blanket term for control decks that utilize Holy Sanctuary with various effects to control the board and stabilize against aggressive decks, and uses Holy Bowman Kel with cheap healing effects as its primary win condition, though it’s mostly just a control-oriented attrition archetype in most matchups. The idea of defensive Haven decks centered around Realm of Repose (and at some points, Aegina) isn’t exactly novel, but with the introduction of Smilecure Priest, the archetype has a proper win condition that’s faster than the atrociously slow Ra/Zelgenea/Feather Rush game plan. With that said, Haven doesn’t exactly have the best card draw, so the archetype can’t really function as an all-in combo deck and more often works like a grindy reactive deck that attempts to answer the opponent’s threats, all while hiding behind Realm of Repose or Wards from Holy Sanctuary, and eventually closes out the game once it draws enough Kel pieces and/or generates a large enough board presence behind a RoR buff (in relevant matchups). The archetype does well against conventional aggressive decks and OTK-based combo decks that fold to RoR (e.g., Loxis/Roach Forest, Encounter/Dagon Dragon), but struggles against incremental or “infinite” combo decks (e.g., D-Shift Rune and Zooey/Roost Dragon) that can either win through RoR or can outlast your answers by virtue of having more card draw, and the matchups against things like Atomy Shadow and Artifact Portal often come down to having your “silver bullet” answers (e.g., Metamorphosis and the 4-drop Kel, respectively), which you’re not always going to find/play fast enough to stabilize. With these factors in mind, the Kel/Sanctuary archetype is a promising, if narrow archetype, that isn’t too bad in terms of its role in the metagame, but is somewhat inefficient for ladder play due to the slow and reactive nature of its game plan, long story short, the deck loses very fast and takes a while to win games, so it’s only really practical to play in tournament settings, and Control Blood is likely to be a more well-rounded archetype for general ladder play.

Regarding Ward Haven

Identifying cards: Sacred Stone Apostle, Ramiel, Anre, the Enlightened One, Sarissa, Luxflash Spear, Enchanted Knight, Wilbert, Grand Knight, Saintly Leader, Feather Rush.

Ward Haven occupies a similar niche to Elana Haven: it’s a defensive tempo deck that does well against aggressive decks, and unlike its Elana counterpart, focuses more on snowballing early treats (such as Sarissa) and less on healing. For most intents and purposes, Ward and Elana Haven have a very similar matchup spread, and while the archetype is better at pressuring the opponent with things like Anvelt/Feather Rush, I don’t think there is much of a difference between playing Ward and Elana Haven, except for the budget aspect: if you’re not invested into Rotation Haven cards, Elana Haven is 2-3 times cheaper to build than Ward Haven, but if you want to play a mostly Rotation-legal Unlimited deck, Ward Haven would be my second recommendation after Aggro Shadow.

Zooey/Roost Dragon

Identifying cards: Zooey, Arbiter of the Skies, Dragon-Devouring Dread, Genesis Dragon of Disaster, Pumpkin Dragon, Resplendent Phoenix, Wind Reader Zell.

Zooey/Phoenix Roost Dragon is a combo deck that utilizes its eponymous card, Phoenix Roost (as well as Resplendent Phoenix) to repeatedly play Zooey, Arbiter of the Skies, which makes your leader immune to damage. Doing so gives you ample time to set up your win condition, which previously involved either bouncing Zooey with Ian to get more damage, or using the combo of Dagon, Lord of the Seas and Wind Reader Zell to deal 30 damage to the opponent (assuming no anti-combo tech cards), but these days, simply throwing enough 9-10-mana Storm cards at the opponent’s face is often enough to seal the deal. There are two primary builds of the archetype: the Dragon-Devouring Dread shell, which runs Genesis Dragon of Disaster, Ghandagoza and Pumpkin Dragons, which means that the win condition for the DDD shell is generally the storm damage from Ghandagoza/Zooey/Genesis Dragon; and the “vanilla” Zooey shell, which often runs a playset of Ian, Dragon Buster to repeatedly bounce Zooey, which allows it to stall for longer. Generally speaking, the DDD build is a bit better at ramping (since you only need to 2 DDD activations and 1xDragon Oracle to play Phoenix Roost on turn 3), which makes the initial setup way safer (the faster you ramp, the less of an opportunity window your opponent has to kill you on the crackback), but the Ian shell is better against anti-combo tech cards like Nilpotent Entity (you have more time to dig for answers once you’re fully set up).

Zooey/Roost Dragon is a bit of what I would call a “glass-cannon” combo deck, in that your early game setup generally involves playing Phoenix Roost, drawing some cards or evolving Resplendent Phoenix to have a backup against anti-amulet tech cards, then passing the turn and seeing if your opponent can kill you with out-of-hand damage, which is certainly not impossible for some decks (e.g., most hyper-aggro decks and decks like Gremory Shadow) if you’re discounting all cards in their hand by up to 50%. For that reason, there are some decks which are more or less free matchups for any and all Phoenix Roost decks if you manage to ramp at least once and just play Roost on curve (e.g., D-Shift or Daria Rune), but for a lot of other prevalent decks, you either have to ramp twice (primarily applicable to DDD lists) or outpace their big setup turn (e.g., if the Shadow player is about to activate Gremory next turn, or if the Portal player already has a 14-power board on turn 3, it might already be too late to play Phoenix Roost), which makes Zooey/Roost Dragon somewhat draw-dependant. Another thing to note is that if you’re going second and have a somewhat slow-ish hand, you can use the Resplendent Phoenix setup, but it’s obviously somewhat contingent on you not having any of your combo pieces in your hand, so, for example, if your hand is Resplendent, Pumpkin Dragon, Zooey and a Cursed Furor/Oracle, the correct line of play is to save all the card draw until the turn where you play Resplendent Phoenix (that’s right, no Zooey on turn 1!), and then try to go Resplendent into Zooey into Pumpkin (so long as your mana allows for it) in order to maximize your chances of having Zooey/Call on the following turn. So, long story short, if your opening hand has both ramp and Phoenix Roost, you can use your card draw however you want, but if you have a Resplendent Phoenix with no Roost or with (little to) no ramp, you have to be a little more careful about your sequencing.

Naturally, the cards you’re looking for in the early game include Dragon Oracle, Cursed Furor and Phoenix Roost. Going second, you can also keep Resplendent Phoenix instead of Roost. If you’re playing a DDD list, you can also keep DDD with a non-Zooey (do not fuse Zooeys!) fusible card (e.g., Ghandagoza/Genesis/Pumpkin, although you should obviously try not to fuse Pumpkin if you’re going for a Resplendent Phoenix line of play).

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Angelic Smite is a tech card against Nilpotent Entity in specific (and other miscellaneous damage-preventing amulets, e.g., Realm of Repose in Control Haven), as well as random big Wards (e.g., Shion-ed up Mystic Artifacts, or He Who Once Rocked/Zeus in Atomy lists) that you can run into on occasion. Angelic Smite is run over Resolve because it draws you a card, which Zooey/Roost Dragon gets more mileage than the opponent’s deck, in most cases.
• A similar, if more recent, inclusion is On Wings of Tomorrow, which is more so targeted at follower-based decks, and can help dig for answers or Zooeys (which is kind of a universal answer to most problems, to be fair) and even push 2 extra points of face damage in certain scenarios. Embodiment of Cocytus is similarly a pretty universal answer, the primary utility of which is to have access to early-game healing, but it also has the application of supplying an 8-drop for your DDD-related needs. It is what it is, sometimes you have to pay 4 mana for a Dragon Oracle or to draw 2 cards, don’t laugh.

Regarding Discard Dragon

Identifying cards: Wise Dragonewt Scholar, Turncoat Dragon Summoner, Dragoon Medic, Shark Warrior, Shipsbane Plesiosaurus, Wildfang Dragonewt.

Discard Dragon is a midrange archetype that utilizes discard-related synergies (more specifically, Shipsbane Plesiosaurus pings) to control the board and cycle through its deck to find pieces of its combo finisher, which are comprised of Wildfang Dragonewt and Altered Fate. The deck includes Dragon Emissary to consistently have Shipsbane active on turn 4-5, and then starts cycling cards and dealing chip damage to the opponent, eventually setting up for the Wildfang combo. Discard Dragon is a pretty fringe archetype, but it does particularly well against aggressive decks (as it has a lot of efficient tempo tools and healing with Shark Warrior/Dragoon Medic, which allow it to race things like Aggro Shadow quite well), and has the potential speed to close out games on turn 6. The archetype struggles against the more streamlined combo decks and the more unfair tempo decks like Artifact Portal/Atomy Shadow. I don’t think there is much of a reason to really play Discard Dragon in the current Unlimited format, but it is a functional archetype with its own niche in the format.

Regarding (Ayer) Aggro Blood

Identifying cards: Lucius, Silverbolt Hunter, Quixotic Adventurer, Hellspear Warrior, Showdown Demon, Yurius, Levin Duke, Yurius, Traitorous Duke, Ayer, Ashen Brawler.

Aggro Blood is an evergreen Unlimited archetype that has been doing exactly what it says on the tin for years: the deck plays a curve of cheap followers and a slew of burn spells/Storm followers that pressure the opponent’s life total and punish greedy openings of various decks. With this mini-expansion, however, the Aggro Blood archetype, fringe as it may be, has undergone a huge transformation with Ayer and Shemyaza being in the picture: these two cards allow the deck to play 9+ 1-drops and 6xRazory Claws, and still have game against the more healing-heavy decks of the format (e.g., Elana Haven) and the utility of Shemyaza as a 4-mana wrath against decks like Atomy Shadow allow Aggro Blood to play the control role in certain matchups and not just be a one-dimensional beatdown deck. The introduction of this highly efficient draw engine has also led the deck to shift away from being as handbuff-focused with Storm cards and evasive threats (e.g., Hallessena) to a more grindy and occasionally Avarice-based build, with cards like Showdown Demon and Hellspear Warrior working particularly well with Ayer/Shemyaza. An important aspect of the archetype is that some of its cards have modular use cases based on the matchup, for example, Garnet Waltz can be used for board control in matchups where you have to play the control role, and it can also go face for 3 against combo decks, and in a similar fashion, once you have the Shemyaza engine going, you can use Quixotic Adventurer to make any of your other cheap followers into efficient Rush-based removal, or you can use it with Blood Wolf/Hellspear for more burn, so the archetype has a lot of variety in its play patterns.

In a metagame sense, Ayer Aggro Blood is more of an aggressive tempo deck than a hyper-aggro deck like Aggro Shadow, so it can struggle against the straight up control decks with out-of-hand win conditions (e.g., Control Blood) and unfair archetypes that can go over the top of it with Storm damage (neither Artifact Portal nor Atomy Shadow are really unwinnable matchups, but you are put into this awkward spot where you have to win the game before they assemble enough Radiant Artifacts or Fatal Orders/Coffins to kill you with Storm damage, but you also have to keep the board clear at all times with Io/Shemyaza), but Aggro Blood is quite good at pressuring slower combo decks with its aggressive early-game curve and abundance of burn damage, and it has a decent amount of interaction to race tempo decks like Daria Rune and Selena/Summit Haven. One of the presented lists in this article is a 6xYurius one, which is heavily teched for the Gremory Shadow matchup (that deck has an awkward time answering these defensively-statted early threats, and the cards that they do play feed the Yuriuses), but there are certainly avenues for the deck to be more aggressive with cards like Savage Wolf and more handbuff cards (e.g., Hellblaze Demon/Vuella), so the archetype still has a lot of room for optimization.

Regarding Turbo Flauros Blood

Identifying cards: Restless Parish, Bloodfed Flowerbed, Disciple of Lust, Antelope Pelt Warrior, Contemptuous Demon, Scrappy Werewolf, Creeping Madness, Prison of Pain, Corrupting Bloodlust, Flauros, Knight of Purgatory, Rouge Vampire, Valareik, Omen of Lust.

Flauros (a.k.a. Pain, a.k.a. Wrath) Blood is an aggro deck that revolves around utilizing Wrath-based synergy effects to get proactive tempo, with the main feature of the archetype being its ability to invoke its eponymous 5/3 on turn 3. A common play pattern for Flauros Blood is to try to set up 4 Wrath triggers on turn 3, which means saving 0-mana Wrath activators (Gift and Parish) with either a Prison of Pain or Corrupting Bloodlust. You need 2 0-mana activators if you don’t have a Flowerbed or any of the EoT-pinging 2-drops (Contemptuous Demon/ Antelope Pelt Warrior), and you obviously need one less 0-mana card for each of the on-board EoT enablers. Alternatively, if you don’t have Prison/Bloodlust, you can similarly try to save a Creeping Madness, but that obviously still requires you to have either an appropriate amount of pinging effects or 0-mana Wrath enablers. Long story short, Flauros Blood specializes in invoking Flauros on turn 3, which in most cases should be enough to get you into Wrath range on the following turn, which in turn enables the rest of your Wrath pay-offs (such as Scrappy Werewolfs/Valnareik for damage, Contemptous Demon/Nightscreech for interaction, Rouge Vampire/Antelope Pelt Warrior, and to a lesser extent, Wings of Lust for healing). Flauros Blood was one of the decks that I was extremely excited about after the EA release, but the deck has 2 major issues in its current iteration: on the one hand, hitting yourself in the face 7+ times to set up your midgame pay-offs is a game plan that Daria Rune and Shadow are very happy to see from their opponents: if you’re going second and get a bit too excited about Flowerbeds, you can literally be dead on turn 4 against Aggro Shadow, and other depressing interactions (e.g., between Shadow Reaper and Gift for Bloodkin) make Flauros Blood an awkward deck for the current Unlimited meta. The deck does pretty well against straight up combo archetypes (e.g., Dragon) and the more scrappy tempo decks (Selena/Summit Haven), but burn-heavy aggro decks are an issue. The second issue with the archetype is the Knight of Purgatory “bug” (could be an intentional interaction, but it’s not really clear), where the Wrath condition is checked before the end-of-turn phase, so if you go into Wrath range with Prison of Pain/Flowerbed or any of the pinging 2-drops, KoP doesn’t get invoked, which means that Knight of Purgatory is often effectively delayed by a turn, which puts a damper on the performance of the archetype. With these reasons in mind, a lot of the more recent Flauros builds tend to be less all-in on the “turbo” aspect of its game plan, and try to be more midrange-y, with extra card draw like Shemyaza/Blood Pact and more midrange threats like Jorm, turning it into more of a scrappy tempo deck and less of a hyper-aggro archetype. Be that as it may, while it could be that once (or rather, if) the format goes back to its more combo-oriented roots, Flauros Blood could be an interesting deck to explore, and it’s possible that the KoP interaction gets fixed at some point (although I obviously wouldn’t count on it, as it’s a pretty fringe interaction and nobody plays Unlimited, so people don’t really complain about it), but at present, Flauros Blood looks like a pretty mediocre deck for the current Unlimited format. Big sad.

Regarding Average Axeman OTK Sword

Identifying cards: Average Axeman, Dualblade Flurry, Mirror Image, Dramatic Retreat.

Speaking of unusual directions for the Methodology/Unsheathed Blade package, Axeman OTK Sword is a combo deck that runs a single copy of Average Axeman, which it can then either fetch up with Proven Methodology or, in the event that you draw it, either Archangel of Remembrance it back into your deck and then Methodology it on turn 4 if you’re going second or play it on turn 5, then shuffle it back into your deck with Retreat, which you can then fetch up with Pompous Summons or Proven Methodology and set up for a turn 6 OTK with Unsheathed Blade and various buffs (e.g., Craving’s Splendor/Mentor’s Teachings/etc.) and Mirror Image (which, unfortunately for our Average Axeman, summons the base copy of it) to generate extra mana with Dualblade Flurry, which can then allow you to go again with the 5-6 mana that you get from the second Flurry attack, but you obviously have to have either a Mirror Image or a Retreat into Summons/Methodology to generate a new Axeman to apply the buffs on. If you Methodology into Axeman and then Dualblade Flurry it, that’s 12 damage, and if you can then chain together Mirror Images, Retreats into Summons, buffs, and so on, it is theoretically possible for the Axeman OTK Sword to win on turn 5. In practice, if the combo works (which is a pretty big “if”), it’s more of a turn 6 setup at best due to how limited you are by mana on turn 5 and due to how bad Sword card draw is (meaning that you often have to take a setup turn on 5 with Unsheathed Blade into Retreat into Summons/Methodology, and the actual combo starts on turn 6, once you have a 0-mana Axeman). Axeman OTK Sword is inconsistent and non-deterministic with its combo (since Teachings/Retreat draw cards and can thus give you extra damage in the middle of the combo, and if you’re going off counting on drawing the pieces you need it with those cards, you don’t always get enough to close out the game), but it is a pretty spectacular archetype, and with a bit of future support to its buff/tutoring packages, could open up a new combo-based direction for Unlimited Sword decks.

Regarding Spartacus Sword

Identifying cards: Grand Acquisition, King’s Welcome, Conscription, Navy Lieutenant, Test of Strength, Altered Fate, Spartacus.

Spartacus Sword is a blanket name for Sword decks that utilize Spartacus as its win condition. In order to get to casting its big flashy 6-mana Laboratory Maniac, the deck utilizes the combo of Steadfast Samurai, Armor of the Stars and Navy Lieutenant, the pieces of which can be tutored up with King’s Welcome/Pompous Summons (these decks generally run only 1-2xSpartacus, so Welcome is likely to find Navy Lieutenant) and Proven Methodology or the strictly worse version of the effect, Conscription, to fetch Steadfast Samurai. After setting up your defenses, you then proceed to wheel through your deck with some combination of Altered Fates and Grand Auctions/Trails of Light/Grand Acquisitions to fill up your hand with cards. Due to Steadfast Samurai having a 5-mana Enhance effect, you generally need to do your Steadfast Sammy + Armor setup on turn 4, and then Ward up on the following turn, so the deck can just lose to a good aggressive draw when going second, and in addition to that, a lot of decks in the format can answer Steadfast Samurai if they know that it’s coming: Haven decks can snipe it with Kel/Selena tokens, Portal can Syntonization for a Bane token, Rune decks can double Runie it, Gremory decks can Jackshovel through it, Dragon decks can eat it with DDD or snipe it with Encounter, there’s Contemptous Demon in Flauros Blood, and so on, so a lot of decks in the format either have incidental answers to the Samurai lock or are fast enough to race you before you can get your shields up, and the Spartacus win condition itself often takes until turn 8 to actually close out the game, which makes the deck weak to burn as well. This combination of factors, even in the absence of Shady Priest/Anvelt/Skullfane decks, make the archetype more of a complete Sportaflop. RIP Stefan.

Stats corner

The below charts show the performance of various deck archetypes in qualifiers of open JCG events, which follow the Conquest Bo3 ruleset. Deck archetypes are categorized by their popularity (as in, how many players brought said deck) and the average number of match wins of lineups containing the specified deck archetype. For the qualifier performance chart, deck archetypes are sorted in descending order of Score values, where Score is a weighted average of “winrate score” (a linear scale where the 100% represents the maximum number of match wins among deck archetypes with more than 10% meta share, and 50% representing the average number of played matches per player, which is equal to exactly 15/16 for a 4-stage single elimination bracket, but gets adjusted accordingly when not all player slots are filled, as BYEs don’t count as played matches) and the “frequency score” (a.k.a., “relative frequency”, in other words, the ratio of popularity of a deck compared to the most popular deck in the field: e.g., the most popular deck of the format has a relative frequency of 100%, and a deck that is played half as much has a relative frequency of 50%), with the weight of the sum determined by the adjustable “Meta score parameter”, set by default to 80/20, meaning that the default formula for calculating Score is 0.8 * [Winrate score] + 0.2 * [Relative frequency].

For more detailed information on how the archetypes are defined, I’d recommend looking at the conditional clauses in class-specific sections of the qualifier spreadsheet linked below.

JCG qualifiers spreadsheet (EA, mini-expansion)

JCG top 16 spreadsheet (EA, mini-expansion)

JCG open Unlimited events site directory (data source)

Legacy spreadsheets

JCG qualifiers spreadsheet (EA, post-Skullfane nerf)

JCG top 16 spreadsheet (EA, post-Skullfane nerf)

JCG qualifiers spreadsheet (EA, pre-Skullfane nerf)

JCG top 16 spreadsheet (EA, pre-Skullfane nerf)

JCG qualifiers spreadsheet (December mini-expansion)

JCG top 16 spreadsheet (December mini-expansion)

JCG qualifiers spreadsheet (October-November patch)

JCG top 16 spreadsheet (October-November patch)