“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.

Reanimate Shadow has the obvious advantage of the Deathbringer + Fatal Order package wiping the floor with fair tempo decks like Loxis Forest (that can’t really develop more than 2-3 followers a turn), which allows the archetype to skimp on some of its early- and mid-game cards (which is where the preference for Kasha over Goblin Queen comes from, for example), but conversely, also means that you have to rely on Path to Perdition as your win condition against control decks (such as Sanctuary Haven), which means that if your opponent isn’t doing anything proactive, you’re going to be deploying your threats a lot slower than Midrange Shadow would, even if the total number of threats you have (IMT/Necroimpulse/Path and Bone Maven, kind of) is pretty comparable between the two archetypes. For that reason, Reanimate Shadow is a better choice in tempo-dominated metagames (e.g., if you’re expecting to face a lot of Aggro Dragon/Loxis Forest/Vincent Rune/Baal Blood), but it is worse than BR/Midrange Shadow against reactive decks like Sanctuary Haven/Roost Dragon/Karyl Rune, and can even get outvalued by some of the worst decks of the format (namely, Midrange Sword and Evolve Portal) if they run anti-Amulet tech cards (read: Resolve of the Fallen).

Mulligan priority

• Always keep Undead Parade, Demonic Procession, Kasha and Sarcophagus Wraith.
• Keep Psychopomp Tour Guide with Parade.
• Keep Savoring Slash against Shadow/Dragon/Forest/Portal.
• Keep Goblin Queen going second. Also keep it going first if you either have a 1-2 curve or a non-Wraith hand with a Jackshovel.
• Keep Bonenanza Necromancer if you’re going first or if you’re up against Dragon/Haven. If you’re not keeping Bonenanza Necromancer, keep Jackshovel Gravedigger (even when not going first).

The mulligan priority for the two archetypes has a lot of overlap and generally involves keeping card draw that can advance your game plan and develop early-game tempo/contest the board. An important factor to keep track of in the context of this Burial Rite-based game of solitaire is that most BR cards leave you with a card disadvantage, so if you don’t have any cards that draw (or generate) 2 cards by themselves (e.g., Wraith, Kasha, Goblin Queen, Tour Guide) and draw too many spells, the BR engine can fizzle if you run out of followers to discard. In addition to that, sticking a Bonenanza Necromancer on turn 2 often allows you to draw 2-3 extra cards, which can enable some of the fastest Gremory setups the deck can pull off, but if you’re on the draw against proactive classes, Necromancer is unlikely to stick, but against classes that don’t do anything in the early game, it is often correct to keep, as even if the opponent has an answer, they will either have to waste a Cursed Furor/Blind Justice, which is a beneficial exchange for the Shadow player. This is appplicable to Dragon/Haven, and if you somehow know that your opponent’s on Spellboost Rune, Bonenanza Necromancer is a pretty safe keep as well.

Optional inclusions and tech cards (BR/midrange)

• Ruinblade Reaper is a tech card for the Shadow mirror, various Amulet-based control decks (e.g., Sanctuary Haven and Roost Dragon) and “fair” midrange decks (e.g., Midrange Sword). The primary purpose of RBR in the current Rotation format is being an anti-Haven tech card, as bringing back an RBR alongside a Blight-proof threat around turn 8-ish (e.g., Bone Maven and then evolving the 6/5, or simply a Conquering Dreadlord) is pretty backbreaking for Sanctuary Haven, and, in a similar vein, if you’re going off with Gremory in a Shadow mirror before your opponent is in Gremory range, a resolved RBR effectively shuts down the opponent from doing anything productive in response. Since the main way of summoning RBR is generally through Bonenanza Necromancer, I don’t believe that there is much merit to running more than 1-2 copies of RBR (the in-hand discount can be awkward to activate in relevant matchups) with the amount of card draw BR Shadow has (the deck can often draw 30+ cards by turns 8-9), I’ve had very good results with a single copy of RBR against Sanctuary Haven, and would advise against running 2 or more copies for general ladder play, though a lot of tournament-oriented lists are split between either running 0 copies (for players that are trying to target Dragon/Forest) or 2 copies (lineups that target Haven), the latter sometimes cutting Invincible Monster Trio as well (which I wouldn’t really recommend for the high matchup variance of the current ladder environment).
• Conquering Dreadlord and Fieran are tech cards that specifically help in proactive matchups (e.g., Loxis Forest, Baal Blood, Vincent Rune) by way of generating free tempo in the midgame. The upside of Invocation followers in this specific deck is that you can still pitch these cards to Burial Rite effects even if you do end up drawing them (and Fieran is even Procession-compatible!), but the drawback is that sometimes you’re going to be drawing unplayable cards. An alternative to Invocation cards is to simply include more card draw (e.g., Kasha), which cuts down on the random variance, but obviously makes the deck weaker against Forest/Blood. I personally prefer limiting the number of Invocation cards in most decks I play (partly due to the frustratingly random nature of their effects, and partly due to the fact that these cards cut into your tech card slots and make the deck less flexible), but Invocation cards are perfectly valid inclusions in the deck if you don’t have a problem with the draw variance these cards introduce.
• Milteo is an optional inclusion that complements Invocation cards (Fieran and Dreadlord) in particular, and is generally a passable midgame play in the deck. Milteo is pretty clunky and can be difficult to resolve against Loxis Forest/Aggro Dragon, and a lot of decks have answers that prevent Milteo card draw, either incidentally or intentionally, so Milteo is pretty cuttable in the current format. Since the most likely (46.875%) split is 2-4, Milteo has notable synergy with proactive 4-drops (Fieran, Shuten-Doji and Goblin Queen tokens), but since the second most likely (31.25%) split is 3-3, in a non-trivial amount of cases, Milteo will bring back two Sacrophagus Wraiths, which is far from ideal, and that is even without going into the lowroll cases (the 1-5, which happens 18.75% of the time, and the 0-6 split, which is 3.125%). With these factors in mind, I’ve personally found Milteo to be quite cuttable so long as you’re not running 4+ Invocation cards, but it is obviously somewhat meta-dependant.
• Zelgenea is primarily an anti-Dragon/Blood tech card that brings some valuable healing to the archetype. With Bone Maven in the picture and most Shadow lists cutting the Io package, BR Shadow has a tendency to get burned out by decks with a lot of reach, and 1-2 Zelgenea improve those matchups by a very significant margin. It can be said that Zelgenea somewhat competes with Milteo, with both of the cards being these clunky midgame threats, and I would personally consider at least a 1-of Zelgenea necessary for general ladder play, but if you’re trying to pack more Dreadlords/Fierans, it is generally one of the first cards to get cut.
• Shuten-Doji and Io, Journeymage are an optional package that give the deck additional Gremory pay-offs, with Shuten-Doji being a 4-mana Gremory reset (which is particularly relevant in games when you draw all of your Gremories), and Io is a passable play in the early game and a good mana sink in the post-Gremory stages of the game, and can push a lot of damage if you have Shuten-Doji going. The downside of Shuten-Doji is that the card is often uncastable pre-Gremory if the deck is running well (you don’t want to waste 8 Shadows on it), so the best Io/Shuten splits are generally either even (e.g., 2/2) or with a slant towards more copies of Io (e.g., 2/1 or 3/2), as Io is a better stand-alone card and is better in multiples, although if you’re running 2 or more RBRs and end up casting it from hand often, it is not that unreasonable to run Shuten without Io as well.
• Goblin Queen is a tech card for tempo-based matchups, with the main application of the card being that it a “draw 2” effect in the early game and can represent 10 power on turn 4 when going second. Goblin Queen has synergy with Fieran and works particularly well with BR effects, as it generates 2 followers to “bury”, but it obviously doesn’t draw cards from your deck, so it’s not as effective at activating Gremory as Sarcophagus Wraith. Goblin Queen is pretty interchangeable with Kasha (the latter is a bit better against control decks, while Goblin Queen is more of a tempo card) in lists that don’t include Milteo, but Kasha obviously always fetches up a Psychopomp as once of its draws, and Goblin Queen has natural synergy with Milteo by virtue of its 5/5 token being a 4-drop, so most BR/Midrange Shadow lists tend to include Goblin Queen in their standard configuration, but Kasha is also an option in that card slot if you’re trying to be more control-oriented.

Optional inclusions and tech cards (Reanimate)

• Path to Perdition is a tech card for healing-heavy matchups (primarily Sanctuary Haven and Roost Dragon) and converts some of your rective tools into late-game face damage. I would personally consider Path to Perdition more or less mandatory as at least a 1-of, and if you’re seeing a lot of Haven, I’d consider running a second copy. In a similar fashion to Ruinblade Reaper, Burial Rite-based Shadow decks can get away with running these “silver bullet” answers to specific decks in the format due to how much card draw these decks have (and in the case of followers like RBR, due to being able to recur them later in the game if you’re forced to use it for Burial Rite purposes in the early game), so I’ve personally found 1xPath to be sufficient, but if you’re facing decks with incidental Amulet answers (e.g., Ruinblade Reaper in BR Shadow lists, or Dragon-Devouring Dread in Roost Dragon) or a lot of Sanctuary Haven, a second copy could be something to consider.
• Necroimpulse is the main card that competes with Path to Perdition for its card slots: certainly, it is less efficient in terms of raw damage, but in a lot of tempo-oriented matchups, once you manage to stabilize, you don’t really need the whole 14-damage Perdition setup to close out games, and Necroimpulse is more than sufficient, so if you’re facing a lot of tempo-oriented decks, a 1-of Path and 1-2xNecroimpulse are a more well-rounded configuration than double Path/0xImpulse builds of the deck.
• Kasha is the 3-drop of choice in most Reanimate lists, due to the deck being a lot more reliant on Burial Rite setups and generally less tempo-oriented. With that said, a lot of the factors mentioned in the Midrange section apply to Reanimate lists as well: if you want to be a bit more proactive, Kasha can be swapped out for Goblin Queen, although Goblin Queen obviously gets a lot happier in a Milteo deck, and most Reanimate Shadow players avoid getting in the way of such a lovely couple.
• He Who Once Rocked was an optional inclusion in early mini-expansion builds of Reanimate Shadow, primarily as a an additional late-game aimed at decks of the Sanctuary Haven/Roost Dragon variety. Generally speaking, a 1-of HWOR isn’t going to affect your ability to recur Deathbringers in matchups where it’s relevant, as you can always just use it for its Accelerate mode, after which point Deathbringers are more likely to get reanimated (since you’re running more Deathbringers and probably “bury” more of them on average), and in matchups where you just want as much damage as possible, if you Burial Rite the initial HWOR, you will always get it with Fatal Order/Necromancer (because it costs 10 and Deathbringer costs 9). As the deck developed, it seems that the consensus has settled on running an extra copy of Path to Perdition instead of HWOR, as it doesn’t mess with your Reanimate pool, and I am personally of the opinion that everything HWOR does for the deck, an extra Necroimpulse would do better, so I wouldn’t recommend He Who Once Rocked. The old skeleton’s glory days are long over, and it seems that he only gets to rock in Atomy decks these days.

The Aggro Shadow mulligans are very straightforward and generally involve trying to hit a good 1-2-3-4 curve. The most important points in the curve are the 1-drops (since you’re only running 6 and you’re seeing the least of your deck to have a 1-drop on turn 1), the 3-drops (since those set up Gold Mine/Milteo/Forced Resurrection), and the least important parts of the curve are 4-drops (even if you don’t have a Wraith on 4, you can usually find an efficient line of play that uses up all your mana) and 2-drops (which are pretty redundant with one another and are the most populated spot in the deck’s curve, with most lists running 12-13 playable ones). In terms of priority, you generally prioritize Fanatic over other 1-drops since it trades better and works with Psychopomp, and for 3-drops, you generally prefer cards that don’t eat into your Shadow count in most matchups (even more so when you bring them back repeatedly), but in matchups where you tend to trade a lot (disgusting, I know), Skullfish is slightly better to have, which is primarily relevant against Portal, West Wind Haven and in the Shadow mirror.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Shao, Shady Apothecary is an optional inclusion that makes your early game a little more robust and can be used during later points of the game for some (inefficient) damage. The problem with Shao is that it is the worst of your 1-drops, and it also interacts awkwardly with Vehicle-based Amulets, and if you take into consideration the fact that games in which you use Shao‘s Necromancy effect, you’re basically locking yourself out of activating Necroimpulse (particularly in matches where you bring back Skullfish a lot). Shao is a pretty low-value card, so it’s in a similar spot to Gold Mine Necromancer (which is another “1-mana” midgame card), and even if you generally don’t want to pay the full retail for Gold Mine Necromancer, it is better than Shao when you’re out of gas and trying to set up for a Necroimpulse.
• Gold Mine Necromancer and Forced Resurrection are optional inclusions that bring a lot of value to the 3-drop package. Of the two cards, Resurrection has the important utility of dealing with non-Set Wards, and in some matchups, you can even take advantage of the opponent not having early-game followers (which can come up against Dragon or decks like Sanctuary Haven and Karyl Rune) to play Resurrection on your own followers for tempo on turn 4, although this can obviously come back to bite you against Fluffy Angel decks. Gold Mine is generally a lot more low-value than Resurrection, so it is more cuttable, and can be replaced with extra 2-drops or Shao if you’re facing a lot of aggressive mirrors.
• Wandering Chef is an optional inclusion that helps in aggressive matchups, more specifically, against Aggro Dragon. Shadow has a variety of proactive 2-drops that you can run (e.g., Death of the Party/Triscythe Reaper/Grudge Knight/etc.), and these types of cards improve your matchups against either decks with a lot of chip damage (e.g., Aggro Dragon) or archetypes that force you to trade a lot, where having a consistent early curve (as in, more Shaos and 2-drops) with good mana efficiency is valuable. I’ve personally found the standard 12 2-drop setup more than sufficient, so I get the impression that most of these optional 2-drops are a bit overkill and make you run of gas more often, so I personally prefer the 3xGold Mine configuration, but there are obviously always going to be 1-2 flex slots left over, which can either be a 1-of Shao or whichever 2-drop you might prefer, which don’t really make a huge difference for a fast deck with effectively 0 card draw.

Loxis Forest can certainly just cycle through its deck in the early game, in a similar manner to its Accelerate counterpart, but it can also play a more tempo-centric game: if you’re landing followers on curve, it makes your Loxis setup that much more backbreaking. To this end, proactive cards that put pressure on the opponent (Quixotic Adventurer or turn 1 Walder in relevant matchups) are valuable, and cards that can set up Loxis on turn 5 by themselves (Varmint Hunter/Vagabond Lizard) are at a premium. Alberta is a somewhat matchup-dependant card, in that you want to have it against decks that don’t develop anything in the early game, and it’s only really good against proactive decks if you can eat a 2-drop with it, so I tend to not keep Alberta going second if I’m expecting my opponent to have a 2-3 curve. Keeping these proactive openings against Rune can be a bit of a crapshoot, as if you’re up against Karyl/Spellboost Rune, it’s obviously a great card, but if you’re up against Vincent Rune and your opponent starts doing Rivaylian Bandit things, an early-game Alberta looks pretty silly, but in my experience, Vincent Rune is less popular on ladder than all other Rune archetypes combined, so the odds are generally in your favor, even if it’s a bit of a gamble.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Alberta, Autumnblade is primarily a tech card against slower decks and makes it so the deck can function (to some extent) without going through the whole Loxis setup, and makes your Loxis turns better if you have Alberta primed and ready to go. These factors make Alberta a great card against decks that don’t develop followers in the early game (e.g., Haven/Dragon/non-Vincent Rune, and to a lesser extent, the Forest mirror), but mean that it’s a bit of a gamble against decks with more proactive early game setups (e.g., Shadow/Blood/etc.). With these factors in mind, Alberta is an important tech card against Haven/Dragon, but gets worse the more Shadow/Blood/Sword you’re facing. Alberta primarily competes with Walder (and to a lesser extent, Elf Queen) for card slots, so running 2-3 Alberta generally means that your Loxis turns can be a bit more clunky (since you have access to fewer copies of Walder) if you don’t have Alberta set up, which is the price you pay for trying to target reactive decks.
• Ramiel is an optional inclusion that helps you set up a slower Loxis swing turn when going second. Ramiel is a fine card, but the main strength of Loxis Forest in the Rotation format is that the deck tends to go off on turn 5, and while Ramiel allows for some cute tricks (e.g., Ramiel on 4, Pastures on 5, Loxis into active Sukuna on 6), it is a bit slow against Shadow/Dragon and obviously isn’t particularly great when going first, so it’s generally pushed out by Quixotic Adventurer in a lot of Loxis Forest lists.

Accelerate Forest

Identifying cards: Aerin, Forever Brilliant, Lionel, Woodland Shadow, Fairy Flowering, Levon, Scentbound Sword.

Accelerate Forest is a reactive combo deck that utilizes the Accelerate package to generate damage through one of its two win conditions (Walder and Fairy Flowering), and controls the board with various combinations of reactive Accelerate cards (Skipper/Lionel/Aerin) and bounce effects in combination with Levon and Xeno Sagittarius, which can be used for board control and card draw, respectively. The deck generally wins through resolving a big Walder, and against healing-heavy decks, you sometimes need more damage, in which case you can set up a proper 10-mana combo of Varmint Hunter + Flowering + Walder. An important aspect of the archetype is fetching up Walders: you’re running 3 copies of the card, and the first couple of copies can be used for tempo/chip damage without worrying too much about it, but the third copy almost always must be saved to be a finisher. For that reason, it is often correct to set up a turn of 2 Accelerate cards followed up by a bounce effect (Deepwood or Wind Fairy) at some point throughout the game, which sets up your win condition. Another tricky card to mention in this context is Levon: in aggressive matchups (e.g., Aggro Dragon/Loxis Forest/Baal Blood/etc.), Levon is often the card that allows you to race the opponent, and if you have an early Levon in those matchups with enough targets to increase its KDA, Walder is not as high of a priority. The other effect to be aware of in specific matchups is Xeno Sagittarius: in the vast majority of matches, you can just use it to cycle your excess bounce effects and itself, but against specific decks (primarily applies to Shadow, but also applies to decks like Midrange Sword and West Wind Haven and such), it can be important to save Xeno for a board clear.

Accelerate Forest is one of the better decks in the format at dealing with Shadow, it can race or go over the top of slower control/combo decks (e.g., Sanctuary Haven and Roost Dragon), and one of the big downsides of the archetype is its weak matchup against Aggro Dragon: the matchup is certainly not unwinnable, but it is difficult to race Aggro Dragon in a conventional manner, and you don’t have nearly enough defensive tools to heal out of range of Aggro Dragon’s damage. In addition to that, the conventional wisdom is that Accelerate Forest is unfavored against Loxis decks, but the matchup is certainly not unwinnable in my experience: if you have a good opening with a bit of early pressure and the Loxis Forest player has a slow (draw-heavy) opening, it is not impossible to pressure the Loxis player into wasting their resources to answer your early developments, so it’s more of a tempo-based matchup. With these factors in mind, Accelerate Forest has mostly been pushed out by its Loxis counterpart after the mini-expansion, which is not to say that Accelerate Forest is a bad deck, but more so that Loxis Forest does better against Aggro Dragon, while Accelerate Forest is more of a deck to target Haven with, and due to how the dynamics of the Forest mirror tend to end up working out, Accelerate Forest is a pretty fringe archetype in the current Rotation format.

Mulligan priority

• Always keep Reclusive Ponderer, Kokkoro and Elf Queen.
• Keep Levon against non-Dragon/Haven/Rune classes. Going second, also keep Deepwood Wolf with Levon.
• Keep Xeno Sagittarius with Wind Fairy/Deepwood Wolf.
• Keep Alberta if you’re not keeping Elf Queen going first. Going second, keeping Alberta with Elf Queen is fine.
• Don’t keep Walder.

The mulligan priority for Accelerate Forest is quite straightforward, as you’re primarily looking to cycle through your deck by any means necessary, which includes keeping early-game cantrips and Xeno Sagittarius when it’s paired up with bounce effects. Against proactive follower-based decks, Levon can interact with the opponent’s board, and when paired up with bounce effects, can even set up to be your secondary finisher later in the game. The most clunky part of the Accelerate package is generally the bounce effects, since they require a target to use (meaning that it’s often a bit awkward to utilize these cards during Skipper/Aerin turns), and while it might be an acceptable line of play during the later stages of the game, bouncing Kokkoro/Elf Queen in the early game sets you back in terms of tempo a little too much, so it’s not really something you should be doing against proactive decks. It should be said that just because you’re keeping Elf Queen/Kokkoro, doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to play these cards on curve: if the matchup permits, you can always delay Kokkoro to get 2 cards out of it, and if you’re going second, it is sometimes correct to save Elf Queen for its AoE effect. Unlike its Loxis counterpart, Accelerate Forest isn’t as good at presenting early pressure, with Alberta being just about the only exception as far as proactive cards go (the earlier you set it up, the more opportunities you get to get chip damage out of it), though it’s certainly possible to keep some sort of Pastures + Ponderer or double Pastures hand to start beating down with Walder on turn 2, which is primarily applicable to matchups like Aggro Dragon and Spellboost Rune, but can backfire if you end up against Roost Dragon or Vincent Rune, for example, which is why I wouldn’t recommend doing so blindly in ladder games.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Alberta is a tech card for the Forest mirror and other tempo-oriented matchups. Accelerate Forest has a harder time activating Alberta than its Loxis counterpart, but nevertheless, if you can manage to set up an early Alberta, it’s possible to recur it multiple times over the course of the game, particularly during Varmint Hunter and Skipper turns. With these factors in mind, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to run a couple copies of Alberta, trimming some of the copies of Aerin/Lionel/Elf Queen/Varmint, but it’s also not unreasonable to play 0 Alberta, as there isn’t much that Alberta would do for the deck that a third Varmint Hunter wouldn’t. The downside to Alberta is the case of drawing multiple copies of it, as the effect doesn’t stack, and since you’re often cutting healing/interaction to fit in Alberta, the card makes you weaker against proactive midrange decks by proxy, and if you go too deep on cutting Aerins, for example, your matchups against decks like Aggro Shadow start losing percentages as well.
• Xeno Sagittarius is a flex slot in the deck, and mostly competes with Elf Queen and, to a lesser extent, Varmint Hunter. Xeno is an important card to have against Shadow, and I’d personally consider running at least 2xXeno necessary, but if you’re not facing as many “tall-board” proactive decks, then you can get by with a single copy.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Major Prayers and On Wings of Tomorrow are somewhat interchangeable draw spells that have a similar rate to one another. Major Prayers is better at finding answers (since it can hit Blind Justice/Scripture and Blight) as well as Holy Sanctuary, while Wings of Tomorrow is better at finding threats (most notably, Ra and Yukari). Wings also has the rare utility of giving you an extra 5 damage (that goes through Yukari) in Sanctuary Haven mirrors, which tend to end around turn 12-13-ish, but you should obviously be aware of that fact once you get to active Union Burst thresholds, you can no longer draw cards with Wings, so you have to decide whether you’re drawing cards or saving Wings for pressure quite early (around turn 6-7), which makes Wings a bit complicated to optimally utilize in Haven mirrors, and this is not one of the contexts where “a high skill cap card” is equivalent to a “bad” card, but is more of a testament to the fact that Wings of Tomorrow gives you an opportunity to misplay, and keeping note of the damage application of the card can give you a lot of percentages in Haven mirrors. The exact split depends on what you’re trying to target (e.g., Prayers is slightly better against aggressive decks, while Wings is better against midrange/control decks), but as a rule of thumb, Prayers costs less so it’s generally preferable, but I personally have a soft spot for a 1-of Wings, as it helps you close out games a bit faster by avoiding the nightmare scenario of Ra hiding in your bottom 3, and it just makes your ladder games end a bit faster. I know it’s from a different patch, but the irony of the triple Prayers hand with the turn 17 Ra being exact lethal (12 from Ra + 4 from Zelgenea) is not lost on me, what a game.
• Io and Paladin of Clemency are optional inclusions that help contest the board in the early game and can generate healing procs for Sanctuary/Lorena to go off. Io is a bit more proactive (the 1-damage ping is often relevant in the early game), but Paladin does draw a card (and sometimes even two) in a non-trivial amount of cases. In my personal experience, Io does more than Paladin in most cases, and Paladin has a tendency to clog up your board and can often limit your developments if you have 2 Sanctuaries out, so I personally prefer running more copies of Io in this card slot, but if yo’re lighter on card draw, Clemency can be a better choice.
• Blackened Scripture is an anti-aggro tech card that specifically shines against Aggro and Burial Rite Shadow. Generally speaking, Blind Justice is a lot more versatile as an answer and as such is played a lot more, but having some redundancy in matchups where the opponent either has valuable Last Words effects (e.g., Razia) or threatens to bring back their 3-drops repeatedly can be valuable. A slower alternative to Scripture is Acolyte’s Light, which is good against BR Shadow, Sword and Aggro Dragon, but is a bit too slow against Aggro Shadow, so depending on how greedy you want to be, there are ways to customize your suite of removal. Scripture is a bit too loo-impact for the current Rotation format, but a 1-of Acolyte’s Light can be a good inclusion if you’re facing a lot of Shadow.
• Archangel of Evocation is primarily a tech card against generally aggressive decks and Karyl Rune. The issue with Archangel of Evocation is that you don’t always have time to develop (more specifically, evolve) it if you’re behind on tempo, which makes it an awkward card against decks like BR Shadow or Accelerate Forest, but it is a pretty versatile, if cuttable, card in the current Rotation format. Some other options in this card slot include Calm Featherfolk (works well if you play it on 1 and then have Sanctuary on 4, but it’s obviously a worse 5-drop than Evocation and limits your board space) and other strange high-end healing cards like Vice, Death Grip (which I’ve personally found quite underwhelming, but the card is a bit cute if you really want to get get get get got got got got specific decks that can’t deal with untargetable Wards, as it does set you up to have access to multiple 1-mana healing triggers, just don’t let the blood rush to your head).
• Four-Pillar Tortoise is an optional inclusion that helps fetch up Holy Sanctuary and mostly serves as a 4th copy of Jeweled Brilliance. Since the deck never really does anything proactive in the early game, a 1/4 Ward on turn 3 is a fine proactive development by Sanctuary Haven standards, and I personally don’t think there is much of a reason not to play a 1-of Tortoise, as a lot of the deck’s other card draw is significantly worse than the first copy of Tortoise; running more than 1 copy can often be pretty redundant, however, as you only have 3 cards Tortoise can hit in your deck.
• Romantic Chanteuse is a tech card for the Haven mirror and the Baal Blood matchup. Sanctuary Haven mirrors often come down to which player starts playing their Yukaris last (yes, playing Yukari while on full health is worse than playing it when you can also get value out of your other healing cards, shocking, I know), and to a lesser extent, it comes down to which player drew more Yukaris (which can be a factor, but if you’re running a decent amount of card draw, you should be able to dig 25-30 cards deep in a Haven mirror even with a bad draw, as those games tend to take a while), but Chanteuse can rig the odds in your favor by having more quasi-Yukaris in your deck instead. Chanteuse is not as universal as Yukari and doesn’t allow you to generate a board to protect with Yukari, and outside of Haven mirrors, neither stops damage from non-follower sources nor gives you a healing trigger, so I’ve personally found Chanteuse to be pretty underwhelming for ladder play, which is not to say that it’s a bad card in Haven mirrors, but more so that I’d rather play cards that answer a wider range of threats in the format while also helping the Haven mirror (e.g., Wings of Tomorrow has a similar impact to Chanteuse, but is a way better card in a vacuum), but it is a valid choice for tournament lists if you’re expecting to play a lot of Haven mirrors.

The mulligan strategy for West Wind Haven generally involves trying to find one of your “highroll”-y Amulet 1-drops, with Anvelt having the biggest potential pay-off, and Noa being the worst option (as it’s often just a vanilla 5/5 at most). In addition to that, the Neutral scam package of Ramiel/Goblin Queen are good cards when going second, and keeping Ramiel going second allows you to play Goddess of the West Wind on turn 5 (which is a highroll, but isn’t that unfair in the grand scheme of things, as your Noa tends to be smaller, and the opponent still gets 6 mana to answer your cards). Keeping both Goblin Queen and Ramiel is often fine, as you get the flexibility of saving the better card for the evolve turn and if all else fails, you can just play them as a 2-3 curve; though the general plan when you have both is to GQ on 3 and then Ramiel into double Goblin on 4, which potentially sets up for a West Wind or Wilbert as follow-up. Against aggressive decks, you have to contest the board to some extent, so having a 2-drop is fine, and if your early curve can support a Rivaylian Bandit activation, that is obviously helpful, if nothing else, as a proactive tempo play.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Wandering Chef, Io and Archangel of Remembrance are the 2-drop flex slots, which you can adjust based on what you’re facing. Generally speaking, Chef is the easiest to include and is something I’d consider a no-brainer: it’s pretty easy to activate with Quixotic/Vagabond Lizard/Gabriel and has the best statline of the optional 2-drops you could run. Io adds a bit of reach to the deck, and an be a decent tempo play against BR Shadow (as it can often snipe a 1/1 in the early game). Archangel of Remembrance does a couple of things in the deck: on the one hand, it’s a really good card against Shadow, and on the other hand, it gives the deck an avenue to draw cards with its evolve effect, which is generally worse than Ramiel/Goblin Queen in the vast majority of cases, but is better than nothing. In addition to that, Remembrance can shuffle redundant copies of Set/Noa if you’re trying to set up a good West Wind, which is primarily relevant in Sofina lists (since changing the split in a particular direction makes a tangible difference), but can also apply in the rare cases where you either draw multiple Goddesses of the West Wind or if you draw all 3 of your Sets/Noas. The deck can run any of the mediocre Neutral 2-drops, with Master Sleuth and Vyrn being some of the options I’ve seen the most, but these cards have been mediocre in my testing and I wouldn’t recommend running them.
• Rivaylian Bandit is an optional inclusion that helps you establish an early tempo lead. Bandits need a bit of additional support to consistently work, so cards like Vagabond Lizard and Gabriel are at a premium in Bandit lists, but in my personal testing, even with 3xVagabond/Gabriel, I still found Bandits a bit clunky and inconsistent, and I’m not as high on Rivaylian Bandits than Wandering Chefs in my evaluation: in its worst case, Chef can at least be a 2/2 for 2, and sometimes you evolve it and get value out of the clown car, so it’s not as bad when you don’t find any of its enablers.
• Sofina is a somewhat unusual inclusion, in that it makes your Goddess of the West Wind pulls somewhat random (which primarily means that you don’t always get a big Noa), which makes the deck worse at pressuring opponents (a Set + Sofina WW setup is very annoying to clear in conventional ways, but also doesn’t really pressure the opponent’s life total a whole lot). Where Sofina really shines is the Aggro Dragon matchup, as it stops Bahamut/Wings of Tomorrow from meaningfully affecting your board, and it’s still enough pressure to serve as a clock in that matchup. The other utility of Sofina is that it can enable Chef in its Amulet form, and getting the Sofina buff on something like Ramiel is also decent, which is an upside compared to the other West Wind payoffs that don’t immediately affect the board when played in the early game. With that said, Sofina does make you worse in pressure-oriented matchups (e.g., against Forest), so I generally wouldn’t recommend playing more than 2xSofinas, and the best split in my testing has been 1xSofina/3xSet/3xNoa, which doesn’t obviously mean that it’s optimal (the 0xSofina variant is still the most consistent in general), but it is something to consider if you’re facing a lot of Dragon.
• Zelgenea is an optional 1-of that I personally consider a no-brainer inclusion. The deck has a lot of 6-drops, sure, but it also has a lot of healing and can often lack the chip damage in the later stages of the game, which is where your 1-of Zelgenea can swoop in and steal games. Zelgenea is obviously pretty slow and doesn’t really align with the deck’s game plan, but I think that the opportunity cost of playing a 1-of Zelgenea in this type of deck is so low that it’d be foolish not to take advantage of it.
• Anvelt and Unicorn Altar are optional inclusions that make your early game stronger. Anvelt is obviously a lot more high-impact when it goes off, but the critical word here is “when”, which, for a deck running only Wilberts/Ramiel and Goblin Queen (kind of) as its early-game Wards, Anvelt is only really good if you have two different Ward-based followers in the early game (e.g., Ramiel with Wilbert), and even with that, Anvelt rarely activated before turn 7 in my testing, so Anvelt has been pretty inconsistent in my testing. Unicorn Altar is the safer alternative: it always does 4 damage to something (not the whole board, but still) on turn 5, and it gives you a playable (if off-curve) 5/5 on turns 4 and 5, which can be weaved into your curve and generate extra pressure. The main issue with 1-mana Amulets is that they’re bad in multiples: you don’t want to draw multiple Noas/Anvelts, as they’re awkward for your curve and will clog up your board, stopping you from playing your good cards like Goddess of the West Wind, so it’s justifiable to run neither Anvelt nor Unicorn Altar if you want the deck to have a low curve. I personally really like Unicorn Altar over Anvelt (and over not running any other 1-mana Amulets), as it’s more proactive and actually works well in multiples (depending on how the Unicorn discounts stack up), but Anvelt is obviously a lot more impressive when it works well.
• Major Prayers is an optional inclusion that helps you find more threats to deploy in slower matchups. On Wings of Tomorrow and Benevolent Blight are an alternative to Prayers and have the big advantage of affecting the board in a meaningful manner and conveniently curving into Goddess of the West Wind on the following turn. I would personally consider Wings of Tomorrow to be almost a no-brainer inclusion as 2-3 copies, but you can also consider Prayers/Blight if you’re running out of gas too often.
• Fieran is an optional inclusion that makes the archetype a bit more threatening in the post-West Wind stages of the game. We can joke about how Goblin Queen was a card that made Rally Portal as good as it was, but West Wind Haven’s short list of Rally enablers starts with Wilbert and ends with Goblin Queen, so the deck isn’t very good at getting to Fieran thresholds, and in my testing, Fieran only really activates on the turn following the Goddess of the West Wind turn, which is pretty slow. The advantage of Fieran is mainly that if you play West Wind on 6, and then Fieran gets invoked on 7, you can get away with only deploying a single threat on that turn (e.g., Ra/Wilbert/Set or another West Wind) and still put a lot of pressure on the opponent; in addition to that, Wandering Chef gets a lot happier with Fieran in the mix. The downside of Fieran is that sometimes you draw your 4-mana 2/2 in the early game, and that doesn’t really make me happy in most games. Notably, if you’re playing a playset of Archangel of Remembrance, you can shuffle excess copies of Fieran back into your deck and get value out of it that way, but that is more or a band-aid solution to the problem of hemorrhaging card advantage. I generally wouldn’t recommend including Fieran in the deck, but if there is a bit more Rally support for Haven at some point in the future, it could be something to consider.

Regarding Ward Haven

Identifying cards: Sacred Stone Apostle, Vengeful Sniper, Enchanted Knight, Sarissa, Luxflash Spear.

Ward Haven is another proactive midrange Havencraft archetype that involves putting big followers into play by mulliganning aggressively for 1-mana Amulets. Generally speaking, Ward Haven is a fine deck and does quite well against aggressive archetypes like Aggro Dragon/Shadow, but the obviousy flaw of the deck is that the Neutral removal package that is played in a variety of decks to target Aggro Shadow conveniently also deals with a lot of threats Ward Haven tries to develop. In addition to that, while the early-game Anvelt highrolls are a strength of the deck, West Wind Haven is generally a more “unfair” tempo deck in the grand scheme of things and simply does more with its swing turn, and the difference between the 2 decks’ early game packages is quite negligible. An upside of Ward Haven is that you can run Yukari, which is a powerful card in certain matchups (e.g., Spellboost Rune), but Sanctuary or Control Haven are both better Yukari decks. Ward Haven is a decently playable deck, but it’s ultimately overshadowed by its more popular Haven counterparts, and it is not a particularly exciting deck for most people to pilot after months of its prevalence in the format. It’s not the worst deck one could be plaing, that’s for sure, but I’m not sure why I’d want to actually play Ward Haven in the first place.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Colosseum on High is an anti-control tech card that I would personally consider a core inclusion in the current Rotation format. Due to being an Invocation card, you never really want to play more than a single copy of Colosseum, as you only really pull it out of your deck in matchups where its effect is relevant, and try to avoid doing so in Dragon mirrors and against Loxis Forest-style decks, and you never really want to draw multiple copies of it (spending 6-7 mana to draw 2 cards isn’t very efficient even if you’re ramping, apologies to all of the Hedron Archive enthusiasts in the audience), but a single copy of Colosseum is more or less a no-brainer and improves the archetype’s matchups against Sanctuary Haven/Reanimate Shadow/Karyl Rune-type of decks by a very significant margin.
• Tiamat is a pretty back-breaking card against conventional proactive tempo-oriented decks and adds a lot of healing/interaction to the archetype, and my personal impression is that one has to have a very strong reason not to include Tiamat in a Dragon deck with no restrictions to its follower pool. The drawbacks of Tiamat are that it’s a bad card against Haven/Roost Dragon/etc., and that the more Tiamats you run, the less likely you are to find damage with Draconic Call. For that reason, if you’re trying to target a more control-heavy field, Zelgenea might be a card to consider in this slot: it doesn’t interact with Call the same way Tiamat does, and still gives you a good bit of healing in matchups where it matters. I should also mention that a relevant Tiamat interaction to be aware of against BR Shadow in particular is Tiamat‘s ability to hide Storm cards from follower-based interaction: e.g., if you’re up against BR Shadow and they take their Milteo/Jackshovel turn (meaning they only have 1-2 board slots open, or even 0 when accounting for Fieran), simply evolving Darkprison Dragon/Reggie and hiding it with Tiamat can be a better way to race the opponent than just clearing the board with Tiamat and then deploying your Storm threats. This isn’t something that Zelgenea can really do, but it is obviously very matchup-dependant (you have to be up against a deck that tends to go wide on board and at the time time, has limited access to non-follower-based removal) and only really applied to non-Reanimate Shadow decks, but it is something to be aware of if Shadow decks don’t play a lot of Zelgeneas.
• Draconic Call is one of the cards you can trim to 2 copies if you’re keen on playing Tiamat, although I would personally recommend looking into cutting some of the lower-cost followers in the deck first before cutting card draw. In this context, Ghandagoza is an important 1-of against slower decks and a key card to consider if you’re looking to trim a copy of Call: if you’re not running Ghandagoza, Call consistently fetches two 4-drops, which are good at filling out your curve at that (post-Overflow) stage of the game, while Ghandagoza can be too clunky to really utilize against proactive decks like Loxis Forest/Vincent Rune, so the 1-of Ghandagoza makes your Call a lot worse in specific matchups. I would personally consider Call a core 3-of in non-Zelgenea Aggro Dragon lists, as you can definitely run out of gas if you cut too much card draw, and I personally dislike cutting Call in general, but it can be a valid approach in top-heavy Aggro Dragon lists.
• Balefire Wrenchsmith is an optional inclusion that serves as your 4th and 5th copies of Quixotic Adventurers by way of being an early-game Reggie activator and a late-game damage card. The primary card Wrenchsmith competes with is generally Ice Dancing Dragonewt, as the two cards have a lot of functional overlap (playable early, or a bit of extra reach later on), and Wrenchsmith is more conditional than IDD, but has some other conditional utility (apart from activating Reggie, it can also give Razia Rush and make Zelgenea trade with things) that can be helpful in the midgame. Balefire Wrenchsmith and IDD are some of the first cards to consider cutting if you’re trying to fit in more midgame healing and/or interaction (Tiamat/Zelgenea) or Draconic Calls, as these low-impact damage cards are not essential for the deck to function in most matchups.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Tiamat is a card that I would personally consider a core inclusion as at least a 2-of, and if you’re facing a decent amount of Shadow/Forest, a full playset is a configuration I’d personally recommend. Being more of a reactive deck, Roost Dragon makes better use of Tiamat than Aggro Dragon would, and while it is a bit of a dead card against Sanctuary Haven, Tiamat is an invaluable tool for a reactive deck like Roost Dragon and one of the big reasons to play the deck over some of the other control-oriented archetypes of the format.
• Erntz, Justice is an anti-Haven/Reanimate Shadow tech card. Erntz is a big Storm card that is specifically good in matchups where you can afford to save Evolve points without falling behind on tempo too much, and if you’re particularly good at winning coin flips, Erntz can serve as both a defensive threat and a Storm card, whichever one you need more at the time. Tails never fails, as they say. Jokes aside, the real downside to Erntz is that running Erntz in your deck makes your Draconic Call inconsistent, meaning that you can’t Call for DDD in the early game, which isn’t hugely relevant in a lot of games, but is a slight downside, since once you get all the DDDs out of your deck in an Erntz-less list, you’re only hitting Ghandhagoza with Call, which doesn’t rely on saving evolve points/winning Erntz coin flips. For this reason, I’ve personally found Erntz to be a pretty mediocre inclusion in the deck, and I personally believe it’s better to run more card draw and fewer high-end threats for the deck to function more consistently.
• Gargouille is an optional piece of the DDD package that helps against specifically Loxis Forest (being a big Ward) and doesn’t disrupt Draconic Call the way Erntz tends to do. In my experience, Gargouille often ends up rotting in your hand, as it’s not really a card you’re ever happy to play, even if it’s discounted to 4 mana. I’m not a huge fan of this French vanilla 7-drop, but if you’re cutting Erntz and feel like DDD doesn’t have quite enough fuel to consistently work, 1-2 copies of Gargouille could be something to consider as the least bad option, followed by even more awkward cards like Boom Devil and Mammoth God’s Colosseum.
• Draconic Counsel is an optional inclusion that helps if you’re running a lower threat count. Counsel looks 4 cards deep and can often discard redundant ramp pieces, though the tendency to discard Tiamat/Georgius instead of Cursed Furors can sometimes be an issue. Scalebound Plight is a similar effect, which gives you a bit more control over what you discard, but only digs 2 cards deep, and is a sensible alternative to Counsel if you’re having issues manipulating Counsel RNG. Another optional card draw effect to consider is Starbright Deity, which particularly shines in matches where you draw a lot of your high-cost cards pre-Resplendent Phoenix and can “reset” specific threats that you might need for that matchup: e.g., if you have a 10-cost DDD that you used to ramp in the early game (which means that it costs 10 and is stuck on the left side of your hand), but you need to answer a Path to Perdition, you can set up to Deity and then use the 10-mana copy of DDD as fusion fuel for the discounted one, and in a similar fashion, if you draw Erntz/Ghandagoza pre-Roost and you need damage against Haven, you can Starbright Deity to clone 1-2 of your big Storm cards. Starbright Deity is very clunky and is primarily relevant in slower matchups, so it’s difficult to justify running more than a single copy of it, but it does tangibly change the way the deck is played and gives you outs in situations where your deck is running awkwardly, in a way that no other card draw effect would allow to.

Mulligan priority

• Always keep Dragon Oracle, Cursed Furor and Ramiel.
• Against non-Shadow classes, keep Encounter from the Deep.
• Going second, keep Embodiment of Cocytus.
• Keep Archangel of Remembrance and Fluffy Angel against Shadow/Portal.

The mulligan priority for OTK Dragon generally involves trying to find your ramp cards, and while Ramiel doesn’t always ramp you (or at least not when you’re going first), it is generally a fine turn 2 play even when going first. I tend to keep Encounter as much as I possibly can, as I’ve been burned by not drawing Encounter on time too many times to count, but in the Aggro Shadow matchup in particular, your win condition is rarely the actual Disrestan combo, and you’re often winning by just answering all of their threats and healing out of range of their reach, so you don’t really need Encounter against that deck and it’s better to look for early action.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Archangel of Evocation is primarily a tech card against aggressive decks (e.g., Aggro Shadow/Dragon/etc.), that also serves as an anti-combo tech for against other combo decks and Karyl Rune. In a general meta setting, running a single copy is sufficient, but if you’re seeing a lot of aggro decks (and, hell, Karyl Rune), then running a second copy is fine.
• Embodiment of Cocytus is a general inclusion against decks with chip damage that is played as a 2-of in most OTK Dragon lists. The problem with Embodiment is that it’s a very clunky card when going first, but if you’re seeing a lot of Sword/West Wind Haven, a third copy can improve your percentages in that matchup, due to its utility as an 8-mana board clear.
• Blazing Breath, Clash of Heroes and Sudden Showers are optional inclusions that can improve the deck’s early game interaction. These types of cards are often redundant with your other removal, but due to how limited the card pool is for OTK Dragon, having 1-2 extra removal spells can be valuable against decks like BR Shadow, but none of these cards are ever going to be particularly high in impact.

Spellboost Rune is a deck that doesn’t really function without a Runie, so while there are some exceptions (e.g., highroll-y early game cards, such as Maiser on the draw and things like Alistair/Vincent in relevant matchups), I’ve found that it’s often correct to mulligan for Runie pretty aggressively. Crystal Witch is also a snap keep: it’s not quite a Fate’s Hand, but it’s the closest we’re getting to a Rotation-legal variant of the effect; at its worst, it’s a slightly inefficient cantrip, but at its best, it is one of the cards that enables the unfair Spellboost openings. Maiser is more or less a very fancy Dragon Warrior in most matchups, and while it’s nice to get its third trigger (particularly, if you’re playing a Vincent in your deck), it’s a perfectly fine card if you only two Rapid Fires out of it, and if you draw multiple Maisers, it is usually fine to run out one of them to set up for the second copy, so it’s a fine card in multiples, and there are even fringe cases where getting the double discount on your Rapid Fires is relevant (e.g., against Archangel of Evocation decks, double-discounted Rapid Fires will still cost 0: even if the game interface doesn’t show negative numbers, 1-2+1 is still 0, layers can be a bit confusing). Alistair is a relevant card against classes that hit your face in the early game, and Vincent is only particularly relevant against Shadow (as it allows you to get rid of Milteo‘s card draw effects). If you have a Runie, it is also acceptable to keep other early-game playables, as well as Kuon (which isn’t as essential to the archetype with Maiser in the picture, but still good to have early on, as having both Runie and Kuon in your opening conveniently lines up the 10-Spellboost threshold to go Runie into Kuon on turn 6, which is one of the most “unfair” things the deck can pull off).

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Vincent is primarily an anti-Shadow tech card that happens to have synergy with the Maiser/Golem Marshal package. In my experience, Vincent isn’t particularly great in a lot of matchups, and I do not believe that there is enough pay-off to run it in a Spellboost-based deck. A lot of recent Spellboost builds run a 1-of Vincent, and some even dip a bit farther with Rivaylian Deputy. Deputy isn’t particularly great, but it’s at least a 2-mana cantrip and sets up for Maiser. A cute inclusion in Vincent lists is Magical Gunslinger, which can fetch up Vincent (since all the followers in Spellboost Rune have Fanfare effects), so you can run a singleton Vincent with some number of Gunslinger, but I’ve personally not been terribly impressed by Vincent in general, so I don’t think the Gunslinger tutor setup is particularly necessary either, even if it does help with drawing multiples. Before the Maiser buff, there have been some hybrid Spellboost lists running Vincent and Angelic Melody, but with Maiser the package seems a bit obsolete (as you can just run Maiser and Marshal). I should also mention that Vincent has a certain impact on the deck with its “3-of-a-kind” leader effect, which works particularly well with Maiser (and incentivizes you to save the third Rapid Fire, for example), and Vincent also works with Impalement Arts (if you Spellboost it enough times). Vincent puts a slight incentive on you to run as many 3-of Spells as possible, which makes cards like Fiery Embrace a bit awkward to cut/include, but that is a very marginal effect that shouldn’t matter in most cases, so long as the majority of your Spells are 3-ofs.
• Alistair is a tech card against any sort of deck that plays followers in the early game, and in matchups where the effect is relevant, Alistair is an incredible tempo tool. The main cards that Alistair competes with is Demoncaller and Fiery Embrace, which have the upside of Spellboosting your hand immediately, but Alistair doesn’t require as much setup. The downside of Alistair is that it can be a dead draw against decks like Sanctuary Haven and Karyl Rune, but even in those matchups, you often don’t mind just dumping it out of your hand and hoping it doesn’t get slapped by Archangel of Remembrance. I think that Alistair is an important effect to have in the deck in certain matchups, but I don’t think the effect is versatile enough to include in ladder lists.
• Sorcery in Solidarity is a card that has been a no-brainer 3-of in Spellboost Rune lists for as long as it has been in the format, but with players going deeper down into the Vincent hole, this is one of the cards that can get the boot in favor of Deputies/Marshals/etc. In my opinion, there is no real reason to cut Sorcery in Solidarity, as it’s one of the best cards in the deck at finding Runie/Kuon for when you need them, and if you’re thinking about cutting Solidarity chasing that Vincent high, I’d suggest examining what exactly Vincent does for your deck in your matches first before making questionable decisions.
• Daria is a card that has seen play in every iteration of Rotation-legal Spellboost decks so long as it has been legal, and with further optimization of the archetype, it is historically the first card to get the boot. The issue with Daria is plain and simple: you need to have 5 or fewer cards in hand to resolve Runie, and Daria‘s effect can range between being a 4/4 that draws a card and a 4/4 that clogs up your hand with cards that you can’t resolve, which is not particularly great. The cards that Daria competes with are Demoncaller, Traditional Sorcerer and Fiery Embrace, all of which have the utility of Spellboosting your hand and not just a random part of your deck that Daria sees, and both Demoncaller and Embrace are very important to have against proactive decks (as they affect the board state), so I’d personally consider some combination of Demoncallers/Fiery Embraces better for the general ladder environment and I really dislike having the variance of Daria ruin Runie setups, so in my experience, Daria is just an aggressively terrible inclusion in the deck, even if it’s a common 3-of in tournament-oriented lists.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Clash of Heroes, Spice Shower, Mystic Absorption, Impalement Arts and Magic Missile are some optional inclusions that help balance out the deck’s Spell/Follower split. Of these cards, these effects have different utility, and the rule of thumb is that higher-value cards are generally better than effects that just ping something for 1 damage or replace themselves. Of these effects, Clash of Heroes is one of the highest-impact tempo effects (since the deck tends to run a lot of expensive followers, and it notably works really well with Ramiel as it doesn’t take any damage from the fight effect), but Clash is somewhat redundant with Alistair and other removal effects you’re running. Spice Shower has the important utility of dealing 2 damage to any target, which is often a relevant breakpoint for early-game interaction and an important factor in the late game (e.g., if you’ve only played one Karyl over the course of the game and have a Karyl on 10, the 10 damage from Karyl, the 4 from Zelgenea and the 2 from the Spice Shower lines up really well, and similar breakpoints are common with turn 4-5 Lhynkal lines of play), and it’s also a healing card that doesn’t take up 6-7 mana and can be used without a target. Mystic Absorption is primarily an anti-Shadow tech card and has the utility of being an interaction spell that replaces itself, however, Karyl Rune isn’t very good at getting to the critical “Shelldock Isle threshold”, so Absorption falls off quickly as the game goes on. Magic Missile is similar to Spice Shower, but is a bit faster and can replace itself when you’re trying to dig for answers/correct the Madcap split.
• Forbidden Darkmage is a anti-combo tech card against Accelerate Forest and Roost Dragon, which can also be a cantrip in matchups where the effect isn’t relevant. The main downside of Darkmage is that it’s a follower, so you have to cut some of your high-end followers to slot it in (e.g., Pholia/Archangel of Evocation/etc.), but unlike most other followers, Darkmage has a lot more synergy with Madcap than other utility followers: you can use it as a cantrip to find a second Spell, and you can play it and then discard your hand with Madcap, which makes the opportunity cost of running Darkmage incredibly low, even in matchups where the damage prevention effect isn’t particularly relevant.
• Aleister (not to be confused with Alistair) is an anti-Shadow tech card that has taken over the Archangel of Evocation slot after the mini-expansion. This is not to say that Evocation is worse than this shiny mini-expansion-limited legendary, but Aleister is particularly efficient at answering Goblin Queen boards (since Goblin Queen usually bumps into something when evolved) and lines up really well against Milteo (though a lot of Shadow lists don’t run Milteo, but that’s besides the point), and if you Madcap enough times, it is not impossible to get a free evolve out of Aleister in the late game, and I’ve had matches where Wings into Aleister on turn 8 was enough to answer IMT-filled boards, so I get the impression that there is little reason not to play Aleister in the deck if you had Evocation in there previously. An alternative to Aleiester is Formbender, which also has somewhat notable utility of hosing Sanctuary Haven (which is generally a Rune-favored matchup, so it’s not as valuable of a tech card) and can still answer Milteo and deals with other fringe amulets (e.g., Colosseum on High in Aggro Dragon, Phoenix Roost in, you guessed it, Roost Dragon and Path to Perdition in Reanimate Shadow).
• Force Barrier is a tech card against Blood, Sanctuary Haven and every Rune deck in the format. The card is pretty mediocre against Shadow and Dragon, but being a Spell, it has a bit of a privilege in the deck due to how it affects Madcap splits, but the effect is still pretty narrow and I wouldn’t recommend playing the card, even as a 1-of.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Vincent, despite being the archetype’s eponymous card, is not that essential in a lot of matchups, so the card is cuttable, especially if you don’t run Chefs and have Magical Gunslingers consistently tutoring up Vincent as its only target. In my experience, Wandering Chefs are very important in the deck (being the only source of healing the deck has access to), so the 0xChef lists with the Gunslinger/Vincent tutor package generally felt pretty clunky and inconsistent and show mediocre results in tournament play. With that said, if you find away to replicate Vincent‘s utility in the deck (e.g., with Formbenders), one can attempt to cut Vincent to 1-2 copies, but that stipulation is obviously contingent on not facing a lot of Shadow to really succeed. This might be somewhat close-minded, but I’ve personally found that cutting Vincent from Vincent Rune to be a bad idea in the current Rotation format.
• Terra Nova is an optional inclusion that can get you all 3 Vincent triggers with minimal help (sure, you have to have a follower in play) and has the important utility of re-activating a snowballing Rivaylian Bandit when going first. Angelic Melody is an alternative to Terra Nova that has seen play in earlier builds of the archetype, but Terra Nova is a lot more self-sufficient and the Terra Nova buff can actually push some face damage if you have followers in play, so Melody in general feels a bit greedy (since it needs Vincent to get most of its value) and win-more (since you need to have multiple followers in play to get value out of it), while Terra Nova has an (arguably) worse failure case, but doesn’t require as much help and is a passable, if unexciting, play when you don’t have Vincent active.
• Gabriel is one of the deck’s primary win conditions and is particularly relevant against Loxis Forest and other proactive tempo-oriented decks, as it puts a sizeable Ward and snowballs one of your other followers when it comes down. Gabriel also gets you two Vincent triggers “by itself” (well, not quite, as you need to have another follower in play, but it’s close enough) and can re-activate Wandering Chef/Rivaylian Bandit in the midgame. While Gabriel is more of a “win condition” in tempo-based matchups, Mirror Witch is the deck’s primary source of reach against reactive decks: not only is it an efficient Storm follower by itself, it also gives you a valid target for Maiser and Vincent tokens, which can represent a fair bit of damage against decks like Roost Dragon or Sanctuary Haven. As a rule of thumb, Vincent Rune lists need somewhere in the realm of 4-6 of these cards to consistently close out games in my experience, and I’d personally prioritize Gabriel over Mirror Witch for the current ladder environment.
• Artistic Arcanist is an optional inclusion that has significant synergy with Vincent: not only does it trigger Vincent 3 times by itself, but it also gives you a persistent Amulet that you can keep in play to make Vincent tokens more mana-efficient. I’m not saying that Arcanist is an Acceleratium, but it kind of is. In addition to that, Arcanist can activate Bandits/Chefs in the early game (there is some random chance involved, of course, but you can often trade in a way that lands the buff on the right follower) and can even serve as a bad Gabriel if you have a couple followers that managed to stick in play in the midgame.
• Runie is an inclusion that has synergy with Vincent, Maiser and not a whole lot else in the deck. Runie, and by extension, the rest of the Spellboost package (e.g., Insight, Impalement Arts, Magic Missile, Authoring Tomorrow, Angelic Melody, etc.) are a very greedy inclusion in the archetype and can often get stuck in your hand if you don’t manage to find Maiser/Vincent to get proper value out of these cards, and if you include additional low-cost Spells, you lower the overall card quality of the deck, as the main cards to get the boot usually include high-impact synergy cards like Gabriel/Vagabond Lizard/Terra Nova/Arcanist, which in turn make the rest of the deck function worse as a tempo archetype. At the time of writing, Runie-based Vincent Rune lists show aggressively terrible results in tournament results, and while the temptation to mix these two synergy packages is understanable, I don’t think there is any reasonable way to really pull it off without sabotaging the rest of the archetype.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Shemyaza is an optional inclusion that helps against proactive decks as a 4-mana Wrath. Shemyaza is a bit awkward as a draw engine in the Rotation format, as Baal Blood has too high of a curve to effetively utilize drawing 4 cards every turn, so it’s difficult to play Shemyaza before turn 6-ish in most cases. With that said, if there were more “fair” midrange decks in the format that won exclusively through generating a threatening board (e.g., West Wind Haven or Midrange Sword), Shemyaza could certainly be a card to consider, but as it stands currently, the archetype would need a lot more 1-drops to properly utilize Shemyaza the way Blood decks are able to do in the Unlimited format.
• Garnet Waltz and Razory Claw are optional inclusions that add a bit of extra reach to the archetype. Intuitively, Garnet Waltz makes more sense (as it doesn’t lose you health and can also be used to get an evo point for Io/Ravening Corruption), but Razory Claw has the utility of targeting followers in the early game (which obviously doesn’t really make any Blood players happy, but it is what it is) and can bring down your life total to reach relevant Lucius thresholds and activate Skull.
• Some alternatives to the above non-Baal-compatible cards include Moonrise Werewolf, Tyrant of Mayhem and Rouge Vampire, none of which are particularly great in the deck, but make Baal easier to activate. Due to the card pool limitations enforced by Baal, there isn’t much room for tech cards in the archetype, but some of the most common cards to consider trimming (if you’re trying to fit in a particular card) are genearlly Silverbolt Hunter and Hallessena.

Pain Blood

Identifying cards: Rouge Vampire, Nightscreech, Vampire of Calamity, Contemptuous Demon, Scrappy Werewolf, Darhold, Abyssal Contract, Hazhan, Demonblade Knight, Knight of Purgatory, Aragavy the Berserker, Seox, Heavenly Howl.

Pain/Wrath Blood is a midrange archetype that utilizes cards that damage your leader to generate value and tempo from its midgame threats. The archetype has access to a lot of out-of-hand damage with Aragavy, Scrappy Werewolf, Seox and Permafrost Behemoth, so the deck rarely has issues closing out games once it starts to stabilize, but getting to that critical Wrath threshold is often the tricky part, and the deck has a play pattern of dropping its life total to 10 or less around turns 5-6, and then gradually starting to heal back up in the later turns, which make it a juicy target for aggressive decks with out-of-hand damage.

In a metagame sense, Pain Blood struggles against decks with a lot of midgame chip damage (such as Aggro Dragon, Baal Blood, etc.), as the deck tends to lower its life total in the early game and doesn’t always manage to stabilize under pressure. Pain Blood does pretty well against slower midrange decks that don’t pressure its life total (e.g., Spellboost Rune, Midrange Sword, etc.), as Pain Blood can close out games around turns 8-9, and has a lot of redundancy in terms of its damage, so it is quite difficult to heal through out of Blood’s range through conventional means. With that said, tempo decks that generate a big swing around turns 5-6 (e.g., Loxis Forest) can be very difficult for Pain Blood to get through, which is one of the main reasons why Pain Blood has been on a steady decline in tournament play: not only does it not perform well against conventional aggro decks, but the emergence and later prominence of Loxis Forest in the format has put a damper on any attempts to bring Pain Blood to Conquest events. On ladder, Pain Blood is a bit polarized: it does decently well against some of the slower decks that see ladder play (e.g., Midrange Sword, Spellboost Rune, Roost Dragon), but struggles against a lot of the more aggressive archetypes in the format and doesn’t always have sufficient pressure to deal with Sanctuary Haven. All of these factors combined make Pain Blood difficult to recommend: it is a real Shadowverse deck, but it doesn’t really have a good niche in the format that would make it worth playing.

Mulligan priority

• Always keep Vampiric Bloodbinder.
• Going first, keep Silverbolt Hunter or Rouge Vampire as a 1-drop. Against Shadow, also keep these cards when going second, and if you don’t have any of the above 1-drops, keep Nightscreech.
• If you’re not keeping a 1-drop, keep Creeping Madness.
• If you’re not keeping Bloodbinder, keep Contemptuous Demon.
• Keep Bear Pelt Warrior against Shadow/Dragon/Forest.
• Keep Darhold and Permafrost Behemoth against Sword/Forest.

The goal of Pain Blood in the early game is generally to curve out and set up for your Wrath thresholds around turn 5. To this end, you’re looking for cards that can either contest the board, or in the case of Rouge Vampire/ Contemptuous Demon/Bear Pelt, give you some early healing to offset the health you’re losing to your own cards. In slower matchups, where you’re not afraid of dying on turn 6 (very brave, I know), you can be a bit greedy and keep your high-value card draw effects, as these cards will help you transition into the late game if your life isn’t in too much (immediate) danger. I am never sure when to keep Vampire of Calamity, and the card just tends to rot in my hand too often, so I don’t tend to keep it, and try to look for more proactive cards instead.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Silverbolt Hunter and Vampire of Calamity are your early-game tech cards that help against aggressive decks. As a rule of thumb, proactive cards generally do more in a vacuum, so Silverbolt Hunter is generally played as a playset, and Vampire of Calamity can be cut to a 2-of. In a similar vein, Bear Pelt Warrior is a card that specifically helps against Aggro Shadow/Dragon: against Shadow, it gives you some protection against Resurrection, and against Dragon, it forces the opponent to trade, as the thing threatens to heal for 4 if it’s allowed to evolve. Now, you might be wondering, why don’t we just play Fluffy Angels if we’re so afraid of aggressive decks? The answer is that you certainly can run a couple of Fluffy Angels, but things like Bear Pelt/Silverbolt/Vampire of Calamity also help you in matchups where you’re trying to be proactive, so they have a better balance in terms of their utility in different types of matchups, but if you’re really facing nothing but straight aggro, a bit of fluff can be something to consider, if you’re not as much of a beast, that is.
• Hazhan is a card that has utility as both an answer against midrange decks and a healing card against aggressive decks. Hazhan is a bit clunky and doesn’t work against every deck (e.g., Goddess of the West Wind makes Hazhan very sad). I would personally consider at least 2 Hazhans to be core inclusions in the deck, but it is certainly cuttable if you’re trying to fit in more early-game tech cards.
• Zelgenea is primarily a tech card against Aggro Dragon and also helps a bit in the West Wind Haven matchup. Pain Blood is very good at getting to the 14-health threshold required to activate Zelgenea, and while it’s not a very efficient answer, the card gives you a big chunk of burst healing in the Dragon matchup, and is notably one of the few ways Pain Blood can answer the 7-10-power Noa hiding behind a Set in the West Wind Haven matchup. I would consider 1-2xZelgenea a sensible choice in the current ladder environment, and the cards you’re generally cutting for it are Hazhan and Seox.
• Speaking of which, Seox is a key card in midrange matchups, such as Sword and Spellboost Rune. Pain Blood has a lot of direct damage between Aragavy, Scrappy Werewolfs and Permafrost Behemoth, but it doesn’t always have quite enough to close out the game. The issue with Permafrost Behemoth in particular is that you can’t play it if doesn’t quite kill the opponent, as you’re open to be dead on the crack-back, and Seox only costs 6 mana, which allows you to fit in Contemptous Demon/Nightscreech/Rouge Vampires/etc. on the same turn, all while Seox itself can pick off some threatening followers while pushing face damage. I should note that you rarely get to the Union Burst (15) threshold, and I should also mention that you don’t always have to go face with all of your Seox(es), as Seox can just trade on both of its attacks, so long as that you leaves you with enough damage to close out the game on the following turn. In my testing, Seox is a bit clunky, so I personally think that running 2 copies is generally sufficient, but if you’re facing a lot of Sword, for example, a full playset can be reasonable.

Regarding Highlander Blood

深田シェイミ’s list Source

グリパッチょ’s list Source

Identifying cards: Volteo, Hedonistic Dealer, Ramiel, Goblin Queen, Embodiment of Cocytus, Roulette Vampire, Gabriel, Heavenly Voice, Io, Journeymage, Sudden Showers, Craps Devil, Wandering Chef, Gluttonous Demon, Ruinweb Spider, Pureshot Angel, Fulminating Berserker, Bahamut, Primeval Dragon, Discerning Devil, Redcap, Vagabond Lizard, Romantic Chanteuse.

Highlander/Singleton/Volteo Blood is a Shadowverse deck (in a very loose definition of what the word “deck” means) that utilzies Volteo, Hedonistic Dealer as its primary win condition, and due to Volteo requiring that out of all cards in your deck, “there can be only one” of each (which is a reference to the 1986 “Highlander” movie, hence the naming convention). Due to the eccentric nature of the archetype, Highlander Blood decklists wouldn’t fit the regular tab layout, and as such, example HL Blood decklists are shown as a list of link above. In a more concrete sense, Highlander Blood is a deck that aims to cheat out bit followers with Volteo‘s EoT effect, and due to the prevalence of Accelerate followers and the high power level of Neutral cards in the set, there is enough of a card pool for the archetype to be functional. Some standout cards that should be mentioned in the context of Highlander Blood are effects that provide immediate board impact when pulled by Volteo: Gluttonous Demon, Wandering Chef and Ruinweb Spider, these cards are some of the “highroll” Volteo outcomes, alongside the Bahamuts and other beefy followers of the world. This combination of the early game of the deck being a disjointed mishmash of random playable Blood cards, Neutral control tools (with Ramiel, Embodiment of Cocytus and Zelgenea being the highlights) and the late game win condition being a literal roll of the dice of whichever followers you’re lucky enough to get, make Highlander Blood a pretty inconsistent archetype in the context of the format, and while it does decently well against decks with a limited amount of answers (e.g., Accelerate Forest, BR Shadow, etc.), the archetype auto-loses to any proper midrange deck (e.g., Spellboost Rune, Midrange Sword), and its performance against aggressive decks hinges on stabilizing with your random early-game cards and then getting good Volteo RNG, so the deck is, frankly speaking, some of the most high-variance decks one could play in the Rotation format. This can be seen as a good thing, as you never know what you’re going to mulligan into, and if you’re a fan of limited formats, you can export your favorite Take 2 deck into Rotation, add a playset of Volteos and the other 7 cards (Zelgenea, Ramiel, Embodiment of Cocytus, Gluttonous Demon, Wandering Chef, Ruinweb Spider and Bloodsoaked Archdemon would be my recommendation, but you can obviously substitute whatever cards you drafted out of that list), and there you have it, your creation is complete, and you didn’t even have to netdeck anything. Not knowing what your deck does in any given game or which followers are going to sit in your clown cars at the end of each turn, now that’s what card games are all about, Volteo, take the wheel.

The early-game strategy of Evolve Portal generally involves trying to find Tien, as it’s the card that the deck doesn’t really function without, but keeping delayed early-game card draw is also acceptable (Tien can also draw a card for 3 mana, which isn’t terribly exciting, but hey, it’s at least better than Triome cycling). Colossus Omega is an acceptable play on turn 3 if you’re not doing anything else on turn 3, and while it is a bit counterintuitive, it is fine to run out Colossus on 3 even if you’re not removing anything, so I tend to keep the card even against decks that don’t play anything in the early game. Ramiel doesn’t need much of an explanation, but I’ve personally been quite surprised by how few decks can consistently answer a turn 3 Grappler on the play, and even if you’re expecting it to be answered (or if there’s a Jackshovel out and about), you can always just play it on 4 to cycle a card, it’s not as if the deck really does anything productive on turn 4 when going first anyway. There could be other reasonable keeps to look out for in the midgame that are more build/matchup-dependant (e.g., Combustion Demon against Shadow), which might be added to this section once there is more of a consensus on the optimal build of the deck, but for the time being, I’d like to stick to the more common staples of the archetype to give a more general outline.

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Focus and Elemental Brink are optional inclusions that make the deck run better when you can either play two or more of these 0-mana effects in the same turn or combo it with Karula. Focus seems like more or less an auto-include in the archetype, and I’ve personally found Brink incredibly valuable in the deck due to how it interacts with Karula. Gravity Grappler is in a similar category to these synergy pieces, but it’s more of a stand-in for Karula: it doesn’t quite work as well for floating 3 mana, but it’s still a decent combo with Brink/Focus on turn 4 and gives the deck something proactive to do on turn 4 when going first, which isn’t something available to the archetype after Spinnah got pushed out of Evolve Portal lists and with Sylvia not consistently being active on 4.
• Ramiel is a card I’d personally consider a core inclusion if you’re running the “float mana” package, as it allows you to ramp into Enhanced Karula or a full Gravity Grappler on turn 5, and since a lot of the deck’s pay-offs are mana-gated, having access to more mana has other incidental synergies in the deck, such as Vyrn and Zelgenea, among other things.
• Combustion Demon is an anti-Shadow tech that has two primary functions: it disrupts Milteo card draw and can help the deck get through IMT boards (with a bit of luck). Combustion Demon is a fine inclusion in the deck, but I wouldn’t consider it something that you really need a full playset of: if you’re running a more removal- or card draw-heavy list, Combustion Demon can be a bit redundant with a lot of other cards in the deck, and as such, has had pretty significant negative winrate correlations in available Evolve Portal tournament data, and I’ve personally been somewhat unimpressed with the card in my testing.
• Resolve of the Fallen is a common inclusion that helps against proactive midrange decks, Aggro Dragon (gets rid of Colosseum on High) and Amulet-based control decks (e.g., Sanctuary Haven). The drawback of Resolve of the Fallen is that the card is very clunky before turns 6-7 (which is the point of the game when you’re in a more dire need of removal spells), but it certainly does a lot to answer threats once you get to the late-game. In contrast, cards like Wings of Tomorrow and Kitty-Cat Arsenal have a lower ceiling, but are significantly better than Resolve in the midgame of most matchups where removal spells are relevant, so my impression is that Resolve of the Fallen is a bit too greedy for the current Rotation format, and it’s no coincidence that the only Evolve Portal lists to ever make top 16 in Rotation JCG events (before and after the mini-expansion) ran 0xResolve, so the card could very well be a trap.
• Syntonization is a card that I’ve advocated for in literally every single Portal deck for as long as it has been Rotation-legal, and I personally find it incredibly confusing that so many Evolve Portal forgo the card altogether. Sure, I get it, I would prefer to play an actual Baphomet if I had the chance, but Syntonization is the next best thing. “B-b-but, ackchually, Baphomet only draws Blood followers, so it wouldn’t draw anything in a Portal deck, feeble cursed one!” Well, how about you just stay petrified if you’re going to behave like that? Straid is an archetypal tsundere character, and if you don’t think so, you are wrong.
• Zelgenea is an optional healing card that allows you to live longer in damage-heavy matchups and has the additional utility of giving you a free Evolve trigger at the start of turn 10, which can often mean the difference between being in Tien range or not. I’d personally consider a couple copies of Zelgenea more or less mandatory, but it is cuttable if you include Fluffy Angels instead.

Regarding Rally Portal

Identifying cards: Marionette Expert, Stringmaster, Illganeau, Horror Astray, Goblin Queen, Box of Puppets, Mind Splitter, Fieran, Havensent Went God, Wandering Chef.

Rally/Puppet Portal is a midrange archetype that utilizes Puppet-generating cards (Marionette Expert/Box of Puppets/Phantom Blade Wielder/etc.) in combination with Stringmaster/Mountainous Marionette and various Rally pay-off effects (Fieran/Mind Splitter, as well as Illganeau/Iceschillendrig in the later stages of the game) to set up threatening board states. Some Rally Portal lists also play the Lazuli + Kaiser package, which gives the deck a bit of extra reach in the late game, but most Rally Portal lists purely rely on the tempo advantage generated by the deck’s pay-off effects to win games, and Iceschillendrig with Zelgenea are the deck’s main source of late-game value. For most intents and purposes, Rally Portal is more or less just a bad BR Shadow, and if you look at all of the new cards Rally Portal has gotten after the devastating Illganeau nerf, there wouldn’t be a lot of cards to name aside from Mountainous Marionette (which is a sweet card, but doesn’t quite pull the deck together) and Colossus Omega (which is fine in Rally lists, but is a lot better in the archetype it was designed for). Well, setting aside all of that aside, Rally Portal didn’t really get enough playable support after the archetype’s best card got nerfed by (effectively) 3-4 mana back in December for its sins in a metagame dominated by Loxis Forest. With these factors in mind, I don’t think there is anything I can say about Rally Portal without repeating my statements from the December MI article (which covered the archetype before the Illganeau nerf). It can be said Rally Portal isn’t exactly a deck that anyone is eager to play, and while it could have some potential, it is more or less simply worse than Burial Rite Shadow and West Wind Haven in its niche of proactive tempo-oriented “go wide” decks, so I don’t think there is much reason to play, optimize or discuss Rally Portal in its current state.

Regarding Artifact Portal

Identifying cards: Robotic Engineer, Android Artisan, Artifact Scan, Ironsting Archaeologist, Mobilized Factory.

Artifact Portal is yet another Portal archetype that was caught in the crossfire of the Illganeau nerf and didn’t get any particularly playable support in the recent expansion(s). There are some tools for the deck to potentially function, between all of the Paradigm Shift cards and Mobilized Factory, but the deck doesn’t have an actual win condition after Absolute Modesty rotated out, and the deck was frankly too slow to compete with the field even back in November, so my suggestion to Artifact Portal enthusiasts would be to play it in a different format, you know, the one that has Acceleratiums that cost 4 less mana. Well, maybe Cygames did actually learn something for once, one can only imagine what Unlimited would look like with another 1-mana Acceleratium/Augmentation Bestowal-type of mana-refunding effect, so it’s not all bad.

Mulligan priority

• Always keep Ramiel, Kagemitsu and Gelt.
• If you’re not keeping Ramiel or if you’re going second with a Ramiel, keep a proactive 2-drop, which can include Arthur/Shield Phalanx/Steadfast Samurai, in order of priority.
• Going second, keep Goblin Queen.
• If you’re keeping Ramiel going second or if you’re up against Haven, keep Nahtnaught.

Midrange Sword’s early game isn’t something I can say a lot of positive things, but you have to try and contest the early developments to the opponent’s proactive developments. In that aspect, Kagemitsu is probably the best early game card in the deck, but with the 2-drop situation being as dire as it is in Sword decks, Ramiel is a close second. Goblin Queen has some nice modality in the archetype when going second: if you don’t have a turn 4 play, you can always save Goblin Queen for that purpose, but if you’re not under a lot of pressure, you can go Goblin Queen on 3 into Ramiel with double Goblin on 4, which sets up your Rally thresholds nicely and conveniently curves into Nahtnaught or Alyaska + Thief on 6. Speaking of Nahtnaught, the card is one of the main reasons why Sword has a favored West Wind Haven matchup, so I tend to blindly keep it against unknown Haven opponents, and it can still pick up value against Sanctuary Haven as well, since that deck always has Amulets in play (and can set up some untargetable Wards).

Optional inclusions and tech cards

• Goblin Queen is a tech card against aggressive decks that helps Sword’s weak early game. Goblin Queen aligns really well with a lot of what Sword decks are trying to do, but it has the fatal flaw of being a Neutral card, and Eahta, God of the Blade is a bit racist towards Neutral cards, so it’s difficult to justify running it as anything more than a 2-of. This is one of the reasons why anti-aggro tech cards such as Combustion Demon, Archangel of Evocation and Fluffy Angel don’t quite make the cut in most Sword lists (although Fluffy Angel also infringes on the highly contested 3-drop slot), and one of the reasons why key cards like Resolve of the Fallen often get cut from the current iteration of Evolve Sword: there is a limited amount of Neutral cards you can feasibly run without sabotaging your Eahta consistency, and with 4-6 slots occupied by Ramiel and Wings of Tomorrow, the more Neutral cards you run, the worse your win condition gets.
• Nahtnaught and Alyaska are, frankly, two of the main reasons why anyone would want to play Midrange Sword from a metagame perspective. Cutting Nahtnaught makes the archetype observably worse in all available tournament results (at the time of writing), and while Alyaska is a bit more conditional, I’d still consider running at least 2xAlyaska more or less mandatory. You can certainly cut these cards if you’re not playing against Shadow/Haven, but be aware that you are losing a lot of percentages in some of the deck’s best matchups by doing so.
• Steadfast Samurai is an awkward card in the Io, Journeymage universe, and doesn’t do a whole lot as a 2-drop. The main utility of Steadfast Sammy is that it can provide the deck with a tiny bit of out-of-hand damage: after a certain point, all of your Sword cards stop costing mana, which is where the 3 points of Storm damage can be valuable, and the damage prevention effect is marginally relevant as well.
• Outlaw Gunner is a card that helps you against aggressive decks and gives the deck a potential out in certain matchups by potentially giving Seofon Ward. In the vast majority of cases, the main utility of Gunner is that you can play it off Amelia and then give Ward to whichever card you play on the following turn, which helps stem the bleeding against aggressive decks. In that sense, Outlaw Gunner is a bit similar to Goblin Queen, with the main difference being that it gives you less immediate tempo, but more potential pay-off in the later stages of the game.

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 2% 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 Rotation events site directory (data source)